Your association has had a number of inquiries in our office about the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) had published a notice regarding their final rule-making for regulations governing the entry of Canadian wood packaging to the U.S. and the planned implementation of ISPM 15. The notice indicated that the regulation would come into force in July 2014. This notice was picked up by some freight forwarding companies in the US and sent to their clients.
We followed up on this issue with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) who followed up with USDA's Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) who advised that the notice is not an indication of early implementation of the rule, but a semi-annual list of regulations awaiting publication, and that the times provided in the notice are estimates of dates established many months earlier. There is no change to the current bilateral exemption on ISPM-15 implementation between Canada and the US. APHIS indicated that it expects that more concrete timing on the publication of the rule may be available in the fall 2014.