AMS Set to Deploy Organic Filing in ACE Over Next Few Months, Agency Official Says

NEW ORLEANS -- The Agricultural Marketing Service plans to deploy new filing capabilities for organic inputs in the ACE certification environment for testing in May, with deployment to the ACE real time production environment to follow in June, Stacy Swartwood, who runs the agency’s Organic Integrity Database, said during a panel discussion April 24.

AMS has met with software developers for an initial review of the filing requirements, and is set to mandate filing of 18 blocks in ACE, with a few additional optional items, “but that’s it,” Swartwood said. Under the agency’s final rule on organic import enforcement, compliance with filing and other requirements will be mandated as of March 19, 2024 (see 2301180051).

“We tried to minimize duplication as much as possible,” Swartwood said, speaking at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference. Once filing requirements are in place, “everything will work exactly the same way it does now,” with “all the same bypass and displaying options” in the system, she said.

“We’ll be working with you all on the rollout,” she told the crowd of brokers and forwarders.

AMS is working on the other systems for importers, certifiers and foreign governments that will be needed to implement its final rule. AMS will have an “importation module” built into the Organic Integrity Database and it will be “ready to use by certifiers” in early fall 2023, allowing six months lead time before compliance with the final rule is required, said Kristin Tensuan, assistant director-trade systems at the USDA National Organic Program.

AMS also plans to release a ‘”trading partner module” in May, which foreign governments and their certifiers can use to store the “organic operations” and “generate a certificate,” Tensuan said, speaking during the same panel discussion. Trading partner government operations for export “will also be listed in the organic integrity database,” she said.

AMS is first working with Canada to get their exporter operations into the system, and will then work with other countries “on a rolling basis,” including the EU and Switzerland, Tensuan said.

“Additional information will be posted on the AMS website over the next several months,” Tensuan said. “We’re still gathering information.” The agency expects a “lot of questions” and will “work on those and get the information out to the community,” she said.