A Certificate to a Foreign Government. A Certificate of Free Sale. An FSIS export certificate. A phytosanitary certificate. A CHED. A GACC registration number. They sound interchangeable. They are not — they come from different agencies, half of them may not apply to your product at all, and requesting the wrong one costs you weeks and a buyer.
Free. No card, no call. 11 questions, and your document list writes itself.
Exportable is the document file for food leaving the United States: what you prepare, what your importer handles, and what only the destination authority can decide. Every requirement cited to its official source.
Which direction are you shipping? · ¿En qué dirección exportas?
A U.S. facility can be subject to FDA registration and manufacturing rules. That registration is not an approval of the food and it is not an international health certificate. No foreign authority accepts it as one, and handing it over when a buyer asks for a health certificate reads as inexperience.
FSVP, Prior Notice and the U.S. agent are inbound mechanisms — they govern food coming into the United States. They are not documents of a U.S. export. Putting them in your file tells your buyer you have not done this before. (If foreign food enters the U.S. first and is then re-exported, that entry phase is a separate review.)
The certificate is the last step, not the first. Confirm the product is admissible in that country and that your plant is eligible — then request the certificate, in the model and with the content the destination actually accepts. A free-sale certificate or a COA does not automatically replace an official health certificate.
Get this wrong in one direction and you pay for certificates nobody asked for. Get it wrong in the other and your container sits at the port while two people work out who should have filed what.
There is no single "export certificate". The agency depends on what the food is — and asking the wrong one is the most common reason an exporter loses two weeks.
| Your product | Who issues the certificate |
|---|---|
| Conventional FDA foods | FDA — Certificate to a Foreign Government, where the product is eligible and the destination accepts it. FDA also issues a Certificate of Exportability for products following that specific legal export route. |
| Supplements and special-use foods | FDA — Certificate of Free Sale, for the categories FDA lists. Don't apply that name to every conventional food. |
| Meat, poultry and egg products | USDA FSIS — official certificate plus the destination market's annexes. Check that both establishment and product are eligible. |
| Fish and seafood | NOAA, depending on destination. For species under another authority, confirm which one. |
| Dairy | USDA AMS — sanitary certification and listing requirements, where the market demands them. |
| Plants and regulated plant products | USDA APHIS — phytosanitary certificate, with the additional declarations and treatments the destination requires. |
Sources: FDA Food Export Certificates; USDA FSIS Import & Export Library; NOAA seafood export services; USDA AMS dairy exports; USDA APHIS plant and animal product export certificates. Verified October 2026.
The commercial and transport documents, one by one: who prepares each, when it is genuinely required, and when it is only your buyer or their bank asking. Plus the EEI/AES question answered properly — including when an exemption applies.
Twenty-plus markets across Europe, Asia, the Gulf, Africa, Oceania and the Americas. For each one: what you prepare, what your importer handles, and the sentence that tells you where the rule actually bites.
FDA, FSIS, APHIS, AMS, NOAA. Which certificate exists, for which product, and how to request it in the model the destination accepts — so you stop ordering paperwork that gets rejected on arrival.
Five checkpoints, from before you quote to after release. What has to be true at each one, so nothing gets discovered at the port.
And the Country + Product Worksheet. Eleven answers — destination and port of entry, tariff classification, real country of manufacture, plant and its approvals, ingredients and animal-origin percentages, process, presentation, end use, importer of record, shipment terms, and any organic / halal / kosher claim.
Fill it in once and your document list writes itself, with a responsible party, an accepted model, a lead time and a validity date against every line. That is the difference between guessing and knowing.
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GACC Decree 280 has been in force since 1 June 2026, replacing Decree 248. If your manufacturer registration path was built under 248, confirm the category, the plant and the route — self-registration or official recommendation — under the regime in force now.
And a point that catches people out: a CIFER registration does not replace the certificates each individual shipment needs. They are two different things, and having one does not get you the other.
The 11 answers that decide every document on your shipment — plus the five checkpoints, from before you quote to after release. Answer them and you'll know what to prepare, what your importer owes, and what still needs confirming. In your inbox in a minute, free.
Done. Here's your checklist.
Keep it. You'll use the same 11 questions on every new country and every new product.
Already know several answers are missing? The full package tells you how to close each one. See it here.
Exportable is written by Mathias Kronenberg, from Quito, Ecuador. I work in export business development — commercial packages for food distributors, bilingual catalogues, buyer contact — and I spent the past year building the document file for food moving between the Americas and the United States. This package is that same work turned around: what leaves the U.S., and what the authority on the other end actually requires.
Why that matters to you: I have sat on the receiving end of these certificates. I know which ones a destination authority rejects, and why — usually because the content or the model is wrong, not because the document is missing.
Every regulatory statement here is cited to its official source — FDA, USDA FSIS, APHIS, AMS, NOAA, Census/ITA, and the destination authority itself — and carries the date it was checked. Fifty-two sources in the current edition.
This is practical guidance and a set of templates. It is not legal, customs or regulatory advice, and it does not replace your customs broker, your freight forwarder, or the competent authority at destination. Confirm current requirements and any emergency sanitary measures before you ship.