USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has advised that as of June 15, 2014, all applications for the China dairy certificate must be created in the Electronic Document Creation System (eDocs). eDocs streamlines the export process and allows exporters the ability to view their certificates online prior to AMS approval. As of June 15, 2014, AMS will no longer accept emailed Word document applications for the China dairy certificate.However, any certificate signed prior to June 15, 2014 from emailed applications will still be accepted in China.

In order to use the eDocs application system, exporters must register for the Electronic Trade Document Exchange (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 and May 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.