FDA Certification Number for Imports into U.S.

Hi all,

This is my first post. Thank you for all supports beforehand.

I will be importing snack boxes from Turkey into U.S. To be exact I will be sending 25 boxes each containing 20 snacks to Amazon's US FBA fulfillment center. The shipment is quite small and honestly amateurish.

The manufacturer of each individual snacks is FDA approved as I can verify on FDA's website. However, I am not able to obtain FDA Registration number of the firm. This created a problem because all commercial cargo firms asked me to provide this information for them to be able to accept my delivery.

Nevertheless, I have gone ahead to issue prior notification on my own via "Prior Notice System Interface" and realized that it allows me to choose "Reason the registration number is not provided", then "Unable to determine the registration number of the producer", which practically means that I do not have to provide FDA registration number but the publicly available information such as the address name and trademark of the manufacturer. 

Am I correct here? Is it really possible to isse the notification in this way? Otherwise, I will not be able to realize the shipment with commercial carriers and will choose our national post service whose service is not reliable but they somehow accept food deliveries without asking FDA registration number. I guess they assume the delivery as personal and not commercial. What risks do you see under this latter case?

P.S. Cargo firms claim that there is no such option. I am attaching the screenshots for your reference.

Many thanks 

Every facility that sells food into the US must be registered with FDA.  The FDA registration numbers are not public information, so you will need to get them from the manufacturer. (Side note: FDA does not "approve" manufacturers; they only require firms to register, so that they know who is selling product; the registration gives FDA the authority to inspect the facility.)

The option to declare "Unable to determine the registration number of the producer" on the Prior Notice is relevant if you are sending product into the US for personal consumption, a gift, or other non-commercial purposes.  It is prohibited to sell products in the US interstate commerce from facilities that have not registered with FDA. This could put the manufacturer on Import Alert and would definitely cause problems for the US importer as well.

I strongly suggest you contact the manufacturer directly to obtain their registration numbers and then report them on your Prior Notice.

Check out the Q&A for Prior Notice from the FDA's website. https://www.fda.gov/...n/UCM505851.pdf