Seafood Import Procedures and Certification of Admissibility

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Parts 216, 300, and 635</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 241010-0269]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BK86</RIN> <SUBJECT>Seafood Import Procedures and Certification of Admissibility</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS proposes to revise regulations to provide for electronic entry filing of data from the Certification of Admissibility (COA) form, which allows entry of certain fish or fish products otherwise subject to trade restrictions pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act (Moratorium Protection Act), or Atlantic Tunas Convention Act (ATCA). This proposed rule would standardize and consolidate existing permit, reporting, recordkeeping, and entry filing requirements and allow nations to use their own aggregate catch documentation. The intent of these actions are to enable the continued flow of trade while adhering to existing statutory requirements. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before February 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments on this action, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2022-0057, may be submitted by either of the following methods: <E T="03">Electronic Submission:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter NOAA-NMFS-2022-0057 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Bryan Keller, Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce, National Marine Fisheries Service, 1315 East-West Highway (F/IS5), Silver Spring, MD 20910. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period, may not be considered by NMFS. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted for public viewing on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change. All personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). Written comments regarding the burden-hour estimates or other aspects of the collection-of-information requirements addressed in the proposed rule may be submitted to the Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce, and/or to NMFS. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bryan Keller, Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce, National Marine Fisheries Service (phone: 301-427-7725; or email: <E T="03">bryan.keller@noaa.gov</E> ). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Several statutes, including the MMPA (16 U.S.C 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), Moratorium Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 1826d-k), and ATCA (16 U.S.C. 971 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), authorize the U.S. Government to impose trade restrictions on certain fish or fish products (both wild-caught and aquaculture) of a foreign nation, or other entities that have competency to enter into international fishery management agreements as per the Moratorium Protection Act, where the nation has failed to meet the standards or requirements of the United States. In order to allow for entry of similar fish and fish products that are not subject to trade restrictions, NMFS developed the COA fish harvest record form, which is designed to accompany a non-prohibited shipment of fish or fish product to attest to its method and location of harvest. NMFS currently uses paper-format COAs that require signatures of the certifying official of the exporting nation prior to arrival and the U.S. importer upon release into the United States. This information collection is currently approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under control number 0648-0651. The COA is currently referenced under separate regulations that implement the MMPA (see 50 CFR 216.24(h)) and the Moratorium Protection Act (see 50 CFR part 300, subpart N). NMFS now seeks to automate the COA and entry process and proposes to amend and consolidate COA-related permit, reporting and recordkeeping, and entry filing requirements in a new subpart S to 50 CFR part 300. The goal is to ensure consistency in the COA requirements for importing non-restricted products across all programs. This proposed rule would make conforming edits to regulations promulgated pursuant to the MMPA, Moratorium Protection Act, and ATCA, including adding a cross-reference to the new subpart S. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Current COA Use</HD> The COA procedures are used to facilitate and monitor trade in fish products from nations that are subject to narrowly defined trade restrictions ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> specific nations, fishing gear or fishing areas) under the MMPA, Moratorium Protection Act, or ATCA, but for which conditions of harvest may allow for entry of certain fish or fish products (see 16 U.S.C. 1371(a)(2)(A); 16 U.S.C. 1826j(d)(2); 16 U.S.C. 1826k(c)(4); and 16 U.S.C. 971d(c)(4) and (5)). To date, NMFS has allowed use of a COA fish harvest record form to import non-prohibited fish or fish products from nations subject to import prohibitions in two situations under MMPA authority. In the first case, to protect the endangered vaquita porpoise, certain fish products from Mexico that are harvested by specified fishing gear in the Upper Gulf of California that incidentally catch vaquita are subject to trade restrictions (see 85 FR 13626, March 9, 2020). However, those types of fish or fish products are admissible when documented by Mexico via the COA as having been harvested in other fishing areas outside the Upper Gulf of California or with other fishing gear not subject to the import restriction. In the second case, to protect the endangered Maui dolphin, the U.S. Court of International Trade issued a preliminary injunction on the import of certain fish products from New Zealand that were harvested with set net or trawl gear off the west coast of North Island (see Slip OP 22-130 at <E T="03">https://www.cit.uscourts.gov/sites/cit/files/22-130.pdf</E> ). However, those types of fish or fish products were admissible, when documented by New Zealand via the COA as having been harvested in other fishing areas outside the west coast of North Island or with other fishing gear not subject to the import restriction. As of April 2, 2024, the MMPA import ban was lifted for fish or fish products from New Zealand. Detailed information on the current trade restrictions and provisions for use of the COA to file entries for admissible shipments can be found at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/foreign/marine-mammal-protection/seafood-import-restrictions.</E> NMFS worked closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to implement the trade restrictions and use of the COA fish harvest record form to document eligible entries. In the two cases referenced above, NMFS worked with CBP trade specialists to determine the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTSUS) codes applicable to the fish or fish products subject to the trade restrictions. NMFS then worked with the CBP Office of Field Operations to implement the trade restriction, with the scope of the restriction specified by the country of origin and the HTSUS code of the product. For the applicable country of origin and HTSUS code combination, the Document Image System (DIS) submission was required in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal. NMFS communicated the scope of the seafood trade restrictions and the documentation requirements for entry to the trade community through notices in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (see <E T="03">https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/03/09/2020-04692/implementation-of-fish-and-fish-product-import-provisions-of-the-marine-mammal-protection</E> ) and/or use of the CBP Cargo Systems Messaging Service (see <E T="03">https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/33ef290</E> ). Upon the effective date of each trade restriction, CBP port inspectors began monitoring seafood imports from any affected countries to determine if the COA fish harvest record form had been submitted for the selected HTSUS codes. Absent the COA fish harvest record form, the entry was rejected and the entry filer (customs broker or importer of record) notified of the documentation requirement. Pursuant to a data-sharing memorandum of understanding, NMFS receives a daily feed of entry filings from CBP and, for entries requiring the COA, is able to validate the information presented on the COA fish harvest record form. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Action</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Consolidating COA Requirements in New Subpart S</HD> NMFS proposes a new subpart S to 50 CFR part 300 (the International Fisheries Regulations) to provide consistent COA requirements for use across the MMPA, Moratorium Protection Act, and ATCA programs. Under the proposed rule, the importer of record would be required to possess an International Fisheries Trade Permit (IFTP) issued under 50 CFR 300.322. The importer of record must file electronically, at the time of entry, or in advance of entry, the message set required under this subpart with U.S. CBP via the ACE portal. All produ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 66k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━