Soils Import Permit

The ARF is a USDA Permitted Soil Quarantine facility. We have a permit renewed every five years that allows ARF researchers to bring foreign soils into the United States for research purposes. The organisms contained in these quarantine soils must be prevented from entering the surrounding environment either through discard of soils or by escaping via the sink drains or the fume hood.

All soils from overseas as well as Hawaii and US territories like Puerto Rico are subject to soil permitting. Soils from some parts of the United States are also subject to these restrictions. The US domestic areas subject to regulation include much of the US south-east as well as select other areas (see map: Soil Movement Regulations) as well as Curry County, Oregon.

Hand-carrying of soils is more complex than shipping soils directly to the ARF. A declaration form must be completed and the supervisor of the port of entry must be contacted 30 days prior to the date of import. An online list of Ports of Entry is available.

Instructions relating to working with Quarantined Soils are available online.

Non-faculty should begin by filling out a Permission to Import Soils form (.Doc / .PDF) and acquire an ARF affiliated faculty member's endorsement signature. Please acquire this permission two weeks prior to importing the soil or sediment samples.

When soils are brought into our facility each sample must be assigned a Soils ID Number in the format SS#-Year-Number. A digital version of the Soils import log is available as an Excel table or Word document in order to facilitate the import process.

Our contact at the US Dept of Agriculture is Anthony Jackson (916-930-5536, anthony.s.jackson@aphis.usda.gov). There is additional information online at
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/permits/index.shtml
If you have further questions about the soils importing process contacting the ARF Lab Manager

Other USDA Soil Quarantine Facilities at UC Berkeley (last update: Nov 2009)