APHIS Announces Advances to Phyto Certificate Tracking System

February 23, 2012 by Brian Feito|Other U.S.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced changes to its Phytosanitary Certificate and Issuance Tracking (PCIT) system. PCIT will begin automatically transferring phytosanitary certificates to foreign countries receiving U.S. exports, reducing previous delays associated with paperwork verification. In addition, APHIS is expanding the availability of user-printed phytosanitary certificates, eliminating the need for users to pay for shipped documents.

(PCIT, which automates the issuance of phytosanitary certificates for agricultural commodities exported to foreign countries, was created in 2005. According to APHIS, thousands of industry users and hundreds of Federal and state duty stations are actively using PCIT, and state and country governments issued more than 530,000 export certificates for individuals and businesses through the PCIT system in FY 2011.)

See APHIS press release (dated 02/16/12) here.