AMS Fruit and Vegetable Program’s Specialty Crops Inspection (SCI) Division offers a broad range of product certification and acceptance services for canned, frozen, and dehydrated fruits, vegetables, and related products. These services can be tailored to meet specific requirements and can include quality assurance monitoring as well as expert product grading and certification. Evaluations can be based on official U.S. grade standards, Commercial Item Descriptions (CID), or on processor or buyer quality and condition requirements. These user fee services are available upon request to anyone who has a financial interest in these commodities.

The service can check overall production quality, augmenting a processor’s quality control programs. We can also provide an impartial evaluation of final product quality. Several approved grade and inspection marks can be included on the processor’s label. Processors must meet certain contract requirements before this service is implemented and the use of approved grade marks can be authorized.

The service can be used to determine if final products or production operations meet the buyer’s requirements. This can be done by officially sampling and grading the final product and issuing an inspection certificate recognized as prima facie evidence in U.S. courts, or by monitoring and evaluating the supplier’s quality assurance and production operations.

An Applicant should complete the Application for Inspection (form FV-356) and submit the document to their local USDA, AMS, FV, Specialty Crops Inspection (SCI) Division Office.

The Application for Inspection can be found here (PDF).

Instructions for completion of the Application for Inspection (PDF).

Information on SCI Division services is continued on the next page.