Releasing shipments to US Customs with shipment confiscation

ExportUSA has successfully brought a line of food products into compliance for a client that the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) had forbidden to make imports into the United States with a consequent halt of shipments at customs

ExportUSA oversaw the entire procedure to bring those sales and imports into America into compliance by interacting with the FDA, the USDA, US Customs, and a company that validates autoclaves for product sterilization

Many products that are vacuum-packed or require heat treatments for sterilization must follow an advance authorization procedure for imports to be sold in America. The FDA establishes the rules for compliance and works with US Customs to ensure that food products to be imported into the United States comply with the law.

Even the slightest variation in the manufacturing and/or sterilization of this class of food products are subject to the FDA's approval before shipment and import into the United States.

In the case in question, the client had changed the autoclaves used to sterilize the products. When the shipment arrived in America, US Customs held up the merchandise without clearing it.

Next, the FDA put the company on what is called a "blacklist" or list of companies that cannot import food products into the United States. In addition to this "blacklist", the FDA and US Customs keep a list of companies that can import their food specialties into America, but each shipment is physically inspected before customs clearance of the merchandise.

The client company involved had been put on the FDA "blacklist" for almost six years with no resolution of the problem related to authorizing for American import a series of food specialties subject to advance authorization by the FDA (specifically, the SID procedure).

ExportUSA's food engineer intervened and resolved the situation by bringing the products into compliance, handling the whole FDA authorization procedure for importing and selling this type of food specialty in the United States. ExportUSA's engineer had previously worked with the company that specialized in validating our partner's autoclaves to produce the technical support documentation for the sterilization process.

After forwarding this documentation to the FDA, the company was removed from the "blacklist" within a couple of weeks and now can once again import its preserves into the United States of America without fear of holdups in US Customs.

The FDA's letter to the client (provided below) approves the successful work of ExportUSA and removes the client company from the list of companies that cannot import food products into America.