USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has added the China sanitary certificate to the Electronic Document Creation System (eDocs), the online application database launched in mid-2013, initially for four EU certificates. All certificates created in eDocs flow automatically to the Electronic Trade Document Exchange (eTDE) system. eTDE is the online interface that allows both exporters and registered port health authorities to view the electronic certificates online. The Chinese ports have been using eTDE for two years with the meat and poultry sector, and are excited to see the dairy certificate added to the list of available certificates. China will still require a paper AMS certificate during this transition time. Therefore exporters are required to provide a paper certificate to importers until the Chinese government instructs they are prepared to accept just the electronic certificate.

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 April 2014 to prepare exporters for the transition to eDocs and eTDE. Full details are in the AMS Letter to the Industry (immediately following this Member Alert). Exporters must sign up with AMS for two training sessions-one high level session and one detailed session. Exporters are encouraged to register for eTDE before they join the second training session. Information on eTDE registration is available in the Owner User Guide, which is available on the USDA eTDE page. (Note: exporters are considered document owners.) Once training is completed, exporters may begin using eDocs.

Any dairy exporters that are already registered for eTDE and attended the training for the EU certificates last summer do not need to attend this additional training and may begin using the eDocs China application immediately.Details on the eDocs option are now included in Volume 2 of the USDEC Export Guide for China.

Dairy products destined for feed use in China must still be accompanied by the APHIS VS 16-4 certificate. There are no immediate plans to integrate the APHIS certificates into eTDE.

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

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