USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has launched a new application system for all EU food certificates (dairy health, dairy transit, composite health and composite transit)—the Electronic Document Creation System (eDocs). All certificates created in eDocs will flow automatically to the Electronic Trade Document Exchange System (eTDE), so that both exporters and port health authorities can view the electronic certificates online. Paper certificates will still be required though until the EU gives us permission to only use these electronic certificates.

AMS Dairy Grading will require all exporters requesting certificates for the EU to use eDocs by Sept. 1, or else pay higher fees to fax in certificate requests. The current online application on the AMS website will be disabled when the transition to eDocs is complete on Sept. 1. In order to use the new eDocs application system, exporters must register for eTDE, which includes a trip to a USDA Service Center to prove your identity with a government-issued ID. Registration is per person—there is no company-wide registration—so all those who plan to request exporter certificates must register.

AMS will be holding training sessions in July and August to prepare exporters for the transition to eDocs and eTDE. Full details on the training sessions and eTDE registration are in the AMS Letter to the Industry (also follows this Member Alert). Please note that exporters must sign up for two training sessions—a high level session to be held in July and a detailed session to be held in August. eDocs is now up and running, so exporters may use the system once training is completed.

While the EU certificates are the only dairy documents programmed in eDocs to date, additional certificate applications are expected to migrate to eDocs in the near future, including the AMS certificate for China. More details on these additional documents will come as they are integrated into the system.

Please contact Sandra Benson at sbenson@usdec.org with any questions.