Regulators near compromise on Lacey Act enforcement

Regulators near compromise on Lacey Act enforcement Federal agencies involved in implementing a new requirement for documenting all wood or plant-based imports have reached preliminary consensus with industry groups on a compromise intended to calm the fears of importers nervous about their ability to comply, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture official.
   Lawmakers included a provision in this summer’s Farm Bill amending the Lacey Act, which regulates trade in fish and wildlife, designed to stem the flow of goods made from illegally harvested wood. Under the law, importers face a Dec. 15 deadline to begin filing declarations specifying the scientific name and species of any wood or plant material contained in a product, and the country of harvest.
   The broad nature of the act has many international traders worried that even products with trace amounts of wood byproduct would be covered, leaving them flailing for ways to obtain the information from their overseas suppliers. They envision an administrative nightmare heightened by the prospect that U.S. Customs and the USDA were prepared to require the use of paper documents, erasing the benefit of the efficient electronic process most importers use to file their customs entries.
   Customs and Border Protection and the Agriculture Department’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) have nearly completed an implementation plan that would phase in the requirements for the production of the declaration, officials at both agencies said.
   Under the preliminary plan, which still needed to be signed off on by key lawmakers and committees on Capitol Hill, the act would be implemented in stages. During the first phase, covering the period between Dec. 15 and April 1, 2009, submission of the paper plant declaration will be voluntary. Importers will be required to file the information after April 1, but in electronic form — although the paper option will remain available.
   'We realize that trade is done electronically and that analysis of the data is best done electronically. We're working hard to make that available on April 1,' Alex Belano, assistant branch chief for commodity, import and analysis at APHIS, told American Shipper.
   Belano said the USDA and CBP will use the time until April to meet with industry groups and disseminate information about the compliance program as it is developed.
      Phase two is also limited to the most obvious wood and plant-related items, such as flooring, furniture, paperboard and plywood, while deferring enforcement of gray areas involving processed wood byproducts until the scope of the Lacey Act can be administratively or legislatively narrowed a bit, Belano said.
   Full enforcement of the act, or phase five, would start in January 2010, he said.
   The situation is still fluid because the agencies are still taking feedback and hashing out what products fall in phases three through five.
   Belano said musical instruments, guns and toys probably will be categorized as phase 4 products.
   CBP is optimistic that a legacy software program used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can interface with the agency’s automated trade processing system and serve as the pipeline for transmitting the new import declaration, said Cathy Sauceda, CBP’s director of import safety and intra-agency requirements, said.
   Meanwhile, a coalition of trade organizations has mobilized to get lawmakers to modify or postpone the Lacey Act provision. It plans to propose that Congress place a moratorium of up to two years on enforcing the law and direct the Government Accountability Office to study its scope and impact with an eye toward making recommendations on how best to identify illegal wood harvesting, according to Kenneth L. Bargteil, chairman of the customs committee at the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America and vice president of compliance for Kuehne + Nagel USA.
   “We want to bring attention to Congress that the language is far more sweeping than is necessary to achieve the goal of the law. We would favor having the law more narrowly focused and figure out how to use the data more strategically” rather than just be a paper-collection process, he said. ' Eric Kulisch