Chinese import inspection authorities were invited to California to establish relationships with ABC and learn about almond food safety practices. Here they visit the Port of Oakland with ABC’s Guangwei Huang (front, left), Julie Adams (front, right) and Elizabeth Van Meter (back row, right).
Almond Board of California’s (ABC’s) Vice President, Global Technical and Regulatory Affairs (GTRA) Julie Adams is a creative problem solver who spearheads ABC’s role in protecting market access for California Almonds. As demand for California’s No. 1 specialty crop export has gone up, so have the number and variety of trade issues, particularly with regard to technical barriers, which must be addressed to keep product flowing smoothly into both domestic and overseas markets.
Adams works with ABC’s Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee (TRAC), which grew out of the International Committee when it became clear that regulatory pressures, both in the U.S. and internationally, needed more focused attention and a broader range of expertise.
Technical Barriers
“Many of the trade issues we deal with overseas are based on technical barriers, including issues such as pesticide residues, certification requirements and various standards — these are the kinds of things that come up in a global setting,” Adams said. “Many of these arise very quickly, but take a long time to resolve.”
A prime example is the resolution of the European Union’s Special Measure, in which almonds arriving in a European port were subject to mandatory sampling and testing for aflatoxin because of higher rejections resulting from aflatoxin contamination. In 2007, Adams and her staff started responding to detentions of almond shipments at a number of European ports. There was the immediate need to get the containers of almonds released, but a longer term need to work with the U.S. government here and in Europe, as well as with the European Commission (EC), to address their concerns in a way that would be least disruptive to the almond industry.
Thanks to the good relationships developed with the EC and U.S. government, ABC was able to set up an industry program for uniform sampling and testing using USDA-approved labs for exports to Europe. The EC accepted the Voluntary Aflatoxin Sampling Program (VASP) as a reliable system. “That’s one of the reasons we were then subject to only 5% mandatory controls, when we see a number of other commodities subject to 10, 15, even 20% or more,” she noted.
Since then, TRAC committee members and Adams’ staff have monitored rejections and maintained relationships with EC and U.S. authorities, and in 2014–15, California Almonds went from 5% controls to random checks, and finally, came off mandatory controls completely, the only commodity to ever accomplish that. In 2015, because of the European Union’s confidence in this system, it recognized California Almonds under a pre-export certification (PEC) program — one of only three such commodities that are recognized — in which almonds are subject to fewer than 1% inspections on arrival in Europe.
Other trade barriers that arise can be changes in phytosanitary or food safety requirements, import permits, documentation, pesticide issues, bulk labeling requirements, etc., all of which call upon ABC’s research, technical expertise and the relationship with both regulators and stakeholders in key export markets.
Building Trust
“We try to build solutions that work for both sides,” commented Adams. “Nothing is ever quick, but usually if you can build trust as we did with PEC, you get to a point that is pretty amazing.”
Being a creative problem solver in addressing trade issues includes recognizing that the way you handled something in one country may not work in another country. “It depends on what their concerns are and what is happening in that market that may be driving issues or motivating the regulatory environment,” she said. “You have to put any solution in the context of what that country is looking for. We have established relationships before there were issues, and tried to build confidence in the U.S. system in order to demonstrate why authorities and our customers in other markets can have confidence in what we’re doing. And I think we’ve been pretty successful at that.”
