SIP is the competent authority of the United States for official export certification of fishery products. The official export health certificates, as defined by Codex Alimentarius, are documents issued by a competent authority of an exporting country in accordance with the requirements of an importing country to enter products into commerce. SIP must have integrity in our certification process to have the certificates continue to be accepted for global commerce.
In recent years, SIP was notified by those destination countries of fishmeal products for export certification. Official certification requirements for these products now include statements regarding the freedom of ruminant proteins in the consignment. SIP and the National Seafood inspection Lab agreed to issue the certificates if the firms were identified as only producing fishery products, and third-party testing was done for each consignment prior to export.
Beginning July 1, 2022, Approved Establishments under the Seafood Inspection Program must now have samples tested during the routine audit sampling for ruminant proteins by the NOAA National Seafood Inspection Lab. All AEs will have samples run one year for this program verification at additional cost to the firms in the lab testing. The additional cost will be $50 on top of the testing regiment already provided by NSIL.
This AE sampling and testing will allow for both SIP and the NSIL to issue standard certification with these health attestations on the processing controls without additional 3rd party testing requested for most destination country documentation. For countries with specific attestation concerns for each certificate on product (e.g., EU), NSIL will also add the ruminant protein test requirement for each certification. One sample will be chosen out of the sample sets to represent the consignment. This will add an additional $50 to the current regiment of testing costs for these exports.
All buyer and supplier agreements for purchase specification remain unaffected by this service. This certification is designed to meet governmental agreements and is not intended to replace the commerce agreements in place by the exporters and importers. Please contact the NSIL for updates on fishmeal product exports and certification requests.