SPSCertificate NZ e-Cert – EU TRACES Practical experiences and outlook for the future

Summary of project Health certificates to the EU issued by NZ e-Cert system XML transfer to TRACES using SPSCertificate XML message structure Consistency and business rules checks in TRACES TRACES certificate reused to create entry document (CVED) Improves data quality, accelerates clearance and helps prevent fraud Started in 2008 – 2009 for certain meat products CEFACT connection since May 2014 covers seafood products CEFACT connection since late January 2015 covers also some (not yet all) meat products

Practical Experiences Get it "95%" working: rather easy Get it "100%" working: more challenging Not difficult, but time-consuming is "wiring" the systems; e.g. review and align ~1500 fish species More complex: finding least common denominator / right abstraction level for correctly identifying establishments of origin

Statistics for 2015 Average around 300 per week (40 – 60 per working day, less during weekends) Very low error count (0 – 2 per day), errors are usually easy to resolve February: 1494 (cloned to CVED: 1148) March: 1820 (cloned to CVED 15/4/2015: 751) 2015 forecast: around 18000

Possible future SPSCertificate areas of improvement based on our experience

Description of consignment Describing the characteristics of the goods: The Health Certificate has several columns, each describing a specific thing (CN code, species, packaging, nature / treatment…) These are represented in the e-Cert message as a number of SPSClassification items that had to be mutually agreed (e.g. how to communicate "frozen", "smoked", "salted" or "farmed game"?) An agreed "animal products code list" could further improve international acceptance of e-Cert and facilitate possible future "international trade single window" implementations

Certification (health statement) element: The TRACES certificate can be printed in any EU language: The health statement must be conveyed in a structured way, to just put text in the XML message is not enough We use IncludedSPSClause items to provide a structured representation of the health statement: They can carry tags, each identifying a part of the generic health statement that applies (like ticking a checkbox); They can carry data that must be provided as part of the health statement, (e.g. a date or a name of a region or a laboratory)

IncludedSPSClause: example E-Cert XML TRACES Web PDF (paper)

SPSExchangedDocument – potential for improvement? Our solution works and is compliant, but is tailored and feels a bit "forced" Can this part of the SPS message be augmented? Can better means to carry structured health statement data be devised? Multi-choice items ("free from diseases  A  B  C")? Mutually exclusive items ("meat / minced meat")? Items to be provided (e.g. a date, country code or region)? Code lists (e.g. diseases)?

Conclusions Our CEFACT exchange took time, but is a success We now move forwards towards digital signature, dematerialisation and wider deployment Opportunities for improving robustness and ease- of-use of SPSCertificate exchange mechanism, making it even more solid for the future: Establish an international "animal products code list" in conjunction with appropriate standard body? Augment element to carry structured health statement?