PPQ examines and certifies agricultural 
products as free of plant pests and 
diseases. 
foreign plants and plant products 
offered for reexport. Under 
direction from Congress, PPQ 
charges a user fee for issuing 
phytosanitary certificates. These 
fees cover the costs of providing 
certification services, and export- 
ers must pay at the time the 
certificate is issued. 
Because of the sheer quantity of 
certificates that PPQ issues— 
paperwork for more than 300,000 
shipments each year—and 
because many countries have 
vastly different entry requirements 
for agricultural products, PPQ 
developed a data base to track the 
phytosanitary requirements for 
each country. This data base, 
called EXCERPT, allows PPQ 
officers, State and county officials, 
and members of the agricultural 
industry to access export informa- 
tion. If a U.S. exporter wanted to 
send grain to Mexico, for example, 
accessing the EXCERPT data 
base would reveal that a U.S. 
phytosanitary certificate anda 
Mexican import permit are both 
required before the wheat leaves 
this country. The same exporter 
would also be able to find out that 
there is no specific certification 
needed to ship fruit for consump- 
tion to Hong Kong. 
The EXCERPT data base also lists 
the status of endangered plant 
species, commodities that are not 
eligible to be exported to specific 
countries, and any changes in 
other countries’ entry require- 
ments. EXCERPT identifies ports 
that are authorized to certify for 
export those endangered and 
threatened plants protected by 
CITES. For example, PPQ officials 
at San Francisco, a CITES- 
approved port, can certify endan- 
gered cacti for export. 
With the availability of such 
extensive export information, U.S. 
exporters usually run into few 
complications with trade. However, 
in cases where U.S. goods arrive 
at a foreign nation and are denied 
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