Dominican Republic: Requirements to export to the United States

More and more Dominican companies and producers are exporting fruits and vegetables. However, to start exporting, producers must meet a series of requirements that may vary depending on the country to which they want to ship their products. ADOEXPO, the Dominican Association of Exporters, launched a manual about the technical requirements to export agricultural products to the United States market.

The first step that a person interested in exporting agricultural products must follow is checking with the authorities of the country of destination if the products they intend to export can enter said market, or if they have any phytosanitary restrictions. This process is known as admissibility verification, and ADOEXPO wants to show exporters the steps they must follow to comply with it.

There are also requirements regarding the maximum limit of chemical residues that the food can have, in accordance with marketing agreements, the quality standards and the basic requirements of the Fresh Food Safety regulations, of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

The USDA-APHIS has two kinds of plant quarantine regulations: prohibitive and restrictive regulations. The prohibitive regulations do not allow the entry of products that are subject to the attack of pests for which there is no treatment that guarantees their total elimination. Restrictive regulations allow the entry of products that are in treatment or that have an inspection requirement. The process to identify whether or not a product can enter the market is known as eligibility verification.

To know if your product is admissible, you must follow an indispensable step:

The first step to export to the United States, for example, is to verify if the fresh agricultural product exporters intend to ship there can enter that country, according to the Federal Insecticides, Fungicides and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registers all pesticides applied to products marketed in the US, and establishes the maximum residue limits in domestic and imported foods.

This information can be obtained in a database at https://www.globalmrl.com/home/. To access the information, people must register, create an account and complete, through an email, the registration process. After having registered, one can search for the Maximum Residue Limits allowed, either by product (chemical element), by item (fruit or vegetable of interest), or by market of interest. Select the country of origin and verify if the product is on the list and what requirements it must comply with in order to enter a market; for example, a hydrothermal treatment, as in the case of mango, or simply port inspection of the products.

To see the manual, click here.