The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) plant inspection stations (PIS) will begin rolling out the use of Entry Status Notifications (SO70) messages to communicate directly with filers, on August 7, 2023. The major focus of this implementation is to facilitate the inspection process by allowing APHIS officers to record their inspections more efficiently and expedite goods to market.
The new messages will automate reviews of APHIS’ Core Message Sets for propagative material (AP0400) destined for a PIS. Once implemented, cargo destined for an APHIS PIS will no longer receive an automated “may proceed,” message. Filers will receive messages that include “Data Under Review,” “Hold Intact,” and “Data Rejected”. And only after the inspection process is completed will they receive the message, “May Proceed.”
APHIS’ new SO70 message implementation will be phased in across the different PIS locations to allow APHIS IT developers and Help Desks time to focus on issues that may arise during rollout. The tentative rollout dates and corresponding PIS locations are as follows
| 1st wave – Aug. 7 | 2nd wave – Aug. 21 | 3rd wave – Sept. 4 | 4th wave – Sept. 18 |
| Beltsville, MD | Atlanta, GA | Seattle, WA | Miami, FL |
| JFK, NY | San Diego, CA | Guam | |
| Linden, NJ | Houston, TX | Honolulu, HI | |
| Orlando, FL | Nogales, AZ | San Francisco (SFO), CA | |
| Carolina, PR | Los Angeles (LAX), CA | ||
| Los Indios, TX |
It is important to note that these messages will be coming from APHIS’ Agriculture Risk Management (ARM) system through Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). ARM consumes the relevant ACE APHIS Core message set and will communicate the validity of this data back to trade via the new SO70 messages. These rules are designed to supplement the rules enforced by ACE and will not reject entries. Filers will be required to update and resubmit entries upon receiving messages except “may proceed.”
Copies of the ARM PIS Technical Rules Statements can be found in the APHIS Core ACE PGA Message Set Implementation Guide (ver. 5.3). For help with the APHIS Core Message Set filing, please visit ourwebsite, send an email to ace.itds@usda.gov, or call our help desk at 1-833-481-2102.
