 Hi, my name is Will Cusey and I'm the Small Business Ombudsman at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. I'm joined today by Arthur Laceak in the CPSC Office of Import Surveillance. And today we're jointly going to talk about certification requirements and the e-filing initiative. Now just a couple of things to mention before we get started. There should be a handout in your system of the slide deck. If you're not seeing that handout of a PDF of the slides, we will let us know and we'll make sure to send that to you in an email after the webinar. Please feel free to submit questions in writing through the Questions tab in your GoToWebinar interface. And one of my colleagues would be on hand to either answer those questions in writing as we move along, or we'll pass them along to Arthur and myself to answer out loud for the entire audience at the end of the webinar. And the session is being recorded. We will put it up on our CPSC YouTube channel. If there's anyone you know of that missed out or wasn't able to join us live today, please feel free to let them know. And we will make that link available within a few days after this webinar. Okay, the presentation agenda for my section of the presentation today, part one on CPSC certification requirements. A background on certificates is going to be where we start first, kind of the legal foundations for certification. And then moving along to who must issue a certificate, who's the responsible party, and then when is the certificate required. Next we'll move on to how often you have to update your certificate, including how often you have to test your products to produce that certificate. And then how do you make your certificates available? How and when is that required? And then I'll end my section with a walkthrough of each required element. There are seven elements required in a certificate. And I will walk through each one and provide some additional explanation. Okay, background of certificates, the foundation for certificates comes from section 14 of the Consumer Product Safety Act. The big takeaway here is that manufacturers and importers of consumer products that are subject to one of CPSC's product safety rules under the CPSA, which is our main statute, or a similar rule enforced by the commission, must certify that their products are compliant in a certificate of conformity. So that would take one of two forms depending on what kind of product or products you're working with. Children's products would need to be certified in a CPC or a children's product certificate, and general use products, or sometimes we call them non-children's products, would want to be certified in a general certificate of conformity or a GCC. So what are the regulatory foundations here? So we started with section 14 of the statute, and then from there, these regulations were issued by the commission. We're going to be focusing primarily on 16 CFR Part 1110 today, where we're talking about all the in-depth information for a certificate of compliance and what is required there. But two other really important regulations to be aware of is 1107 and 1109. So 1107, you have periodic testing requirements, material change testing, all the record keeping requirements, really important to know how long you're supposed to keep this information. That's all in 1107. 1109 is the component part testing and certification rule, which also has a significant section related to composite testing. So if you composite testing for those that you don't know is where you have testing of like materials that might be differently colored, and the lab will test them together, typically in groups of three. This can save you a huge amount of money, especially if you have a lot of colorations to test. Sometimes people have something like 30 or 40 different colors to test. This could shrink your testing costs and make it more efficient for the lab to do that testing for you. Really in-depth information we have on all of these requirements can be found at cpsc.gov.com. And in the handout section, in the handouts, all of these red underlined areas, those are clickable links. And so when you get the handouts and the PDF, all of those links will be clickable for you, so you'll be able to check those out when you get the handout. Okay, just a general overview of certificates. They are required for the importation or distribution or sale of regulated consumer products under cpsc jurisdiction into the United States. It is certifying compliance with those requirements as we already talked about. And the certificates include in a broad sense, the product description, the safety regulations that are being certified, and then some identifying information about where and when the product was made, where and when the product was tested. The certificate must be in English and it must be legible. It can be bilingual or multilingual. You can put it in as many languages as you want, but at a minimum it has to be English first. Okay, so who must issue a certificate? Who is the responsible party? So I put manufacturer in quotes here because manufacturer is actually defined in our statute in the consumer product safety act to include domestic manufacturers as well as importers. So a lot of people come to me and they're confused when they read about manufacturers and they're the importer. When we say manufacturer, usually most of the time we're referring to, if it's a domestic manufacturing situation, or if it's a foreign manufacturing situation, we're referring to the importer. And that is who would be responsible for issuing that certificate. Also really, really important to note as well that it is the responsibility of the manufacturer importer to be the one that is issuing the certificate. You might get help from a testing lab or some other entity to assist you, but it has to be issued by your company, the company that's responsible for these products. So it can't be coming from some other entity. If you're getting certificate information as part of the component part certification, then you have to utilize that as part of your finished product certificate. You're not just submitting someone else's certificate without anything else, you're incorporating that information into your finished product certificate. Okay, products that require a CPC. So we'll start with products that require a CPC and then products that require a GCC. So for CPCs, really the whole slide can actually just be boiled down into the first three words and that first bullet, all children's products. All children's products are required to have a CPC. Even if there is no actual testing required for that children's product, there are scenarios, we'll get into that in a little bit. There are some examples of commonly asked about children's products. But the big takeaway here is that every single children's product under CPCs jurisdiction. So not all children's products in a colloquial sense would be under our jurisdiction, but everything under our purview would require a CPC. And if you're not sure about what rules and requirements would trigger third party testing and certification, this clickable link, you can also Google search that phrase and it'll come right up for you. So that means rules requiring third party testing in a children's product certificate on cpsc.gov gives you the entire list of requirements that need to be accounted for in a CPC. Okay, how often what are we doing with testing for children's products? Just a quick overview here. We're not spending a ton of time going super in depth on testing requirements. We're mostly staying at the certification level, but you really can't talk about certification, especially for children's products without at least touching on testing requirements. In general, all children's products under CPCs jurisdiction must be tested at a CPSC accepted third party laboratory. And you can find those laboratories by going to CPSC.gov forward slash lab search, and that will give you the fullest of laboratories and you can narrow that search by region by testing scope. I might be making a product that doesn't require testing even though it is a children's product. One example that I can cite to you just over the phone here is baby blanket that is just 100% fabric. And there's no adornments, no paint, no snaps, no zip or something like that. It's just plain fabric textile blanket. That product, the only applicable requirement would be for total lead content and under 16 CFR 1500.91, the commission has determined that textile material would not need lead testing. And so then that would be subject to that determination. And so the end result would be a certificate that details the total lead content provision in element two. We'll get to this later. And then the 1500.91 determination in section six, and that would basically be the entirety of the compliance related information for that product. So there are circumstances when no testing is required. I did want to call that out. I also want to call up before I move on small batch manufacturing. There are some instances when small batch manufacturers may be provided third party testing relief. They would still have to produce a certificate though that is not exempt you from the production of a certificate. It doesn't exempt you from the tracking label requirements. Those are common questions we get. Okay, now we did children's. What about generally used products or non children's products. So everything is all these bullets here. These are all the rules requiring a GCC. If it's not on this list. If your product is not, let me rephrase if your product is not subject to a requirement on this list, then it would not need a GCC. It's that simple. Now, we're not just looking at the reason why I say requirements and not products is because there are. There are some listed here that are just products, but there are other categories that are broader than that. You have the CNPPA requirements, you have PPPA requirements. Those are much broader catch all category, which includes a lot of different possible products. So it's better to think about it as rules that are that are requiring a GCC and not products that need a GCC just to clarify that. There are certain products under CPSC's jurisdiction that would not need a GCC by virtue of the type of rule it is or how it's been quantified. And you can see some more information in this blue box here. And I'll get into this and more on the next slide as to what types of requirements are not needed in a certificate. But if you want to see all this information, we have another page here rules requiring a GCC is also available online. Check that out. We update it as new rules are passed. We update both this page and the CPC version with new information. So that's always staying current for you. Okay, so I alluded to this already requirements not needed in a certificate. Permanent tracking information is not required to be accounted for in a CPC. And this is just for children's products. You might have someone review your tracking label for you. If you're not sure if it's compliance, some labs offer that service. It is not required for you to purchase that service that review from a laboratory as part of your overall testing. And as such, you would not need to account for it in your CPC. Same thing with consumer registration cards. It's just a compliance requirements on a testing or certification requirement. So there is sometimes a difference between requirements that are just compliance and requirements where testing and certification are required to prove compliance. There's kind of two different things there. Additionally, precautionary labeling requirements under the FHSA, I believe it's 2P on the FHSA would not be required. More information on the FHSA at our website or helpful information there. On product certification, there are some narrow circumstances, but I didn't want to move forward without addressing it. The best example here is the upholstered furniture requirement under 16 CFR part 1640 where the statute requiring this rule that we passed is specifically carves out and exempts to section 14 certificate requirements that we covered earlier. So in this case, if you're dealing with general use furniture, you may not need a GCC. But if your upholstered furniture is painted, as we can go back one slide here, you can see in the middle there it says paints and similar surface coatings do require a GCC. So if you have painted upholstered furniture that would still need a GCC for the paint, but not for the upholstered furniture. And the same thing is true with children's products. If you're making it an upholstered chair for children, you would still have to produce a CPC for that product as a whole. It just wouldn't, you wouldn't be certifying to upholstered furniture in the CPC. The certification requirement is just a label in this case. Okay, I alluded to testing intervals and updating certificates earlier. There are periodic testing requirements for children's products. Generally speaking, despite what the regulation says, the overwhelming majority of products require annual testing every 12 months on new batches of products that are being produced. So it's really important to keep in mind. And so when you do that interval testing, when you're doing that periodic testing, you would have to update your certificate at that point. I also recommend for folks that are doing general use products, even though it's generally speaking, not required for most instances. There are some specific carbouts where there is interval testing needed. I do still recommend for general use products that you come up with a reasonable testing plan that does include a regular periodic testing intervals that makes sense for what kind of products you're dealing with. It's really important here in this note at the bottom is clear in saying that you must ensure that your consumer product complies with applicable requirements at all times, regardless of the testing intervals. So that's really important that you have to have a high degree of assurance of compliance at all times that's expected of you. So if your product is being inspected at the port upon entry, if your product is being under subject to an investigation, that is the expectation that we will have for your product. The other thing I want to touch on before I move on, I kind of skipped over it is material change testing. And so it is required for children's products and it's recommended for general use products. But for children's products, it could be a situation where let's say it's a children's shirt and it has a button and the button halfway through your year, six months after you did your initial testing, you're like, you know what, we don't like this button anymore. Or maybe you were forced to make a change. And so then you would retest that button. You would reissue your certificate. You would pair that with your existing testing, maybe for flammability. And then that would be a new certificate with all that combined information. Or you might be in a circumstance where you maybe change some integral mechanical component of a children's toy that might necessitate retesting the entire product. So it really depends. Material change testing really depends what type of change has been done as to how much additional testing is needed. Okay, what about the availability of certificates? How does that work? Certificates must be created before importing into U.S. interstate commerce. Certificates must quote unquote accompany each product or shipment of products covered by the same certificate. The reason why I put it in quotes is because there's some issues around, does it need to physically accompany? What about electronic accompaniment? So electronic accompaniment is allowed. And the next slide is going to cover that. Additionally, a copy of the certificate must be quote unquote furnished to each distributor or retailer of the product. You are not required to provide it to the ultimate consumer. That is your choice. If you wish to do that, you're not required to publish it publicly. In any way, that would be your choice to do that. And a copy of the certificate, this is really important. A copy of the certificate must be made available to the CPSC and or U.S. Customs and Border Protection within 24 hours upon its request. So that's really important with the 24 hours because I'm seeing some people that were kind of late maybe tardy and submitting that and they're going to get in trouble for that. So it's really important as soon as you get that request, you submit that information right away. Electronic certification. So electronic certificates do satisfy the company and furniture requirements. And they must be reasonably accessible via website URL or other electronic means such as email. The example in the regulation just list website URL, but that is an example. It is not an exhaustive list of what is allowed. So email is acceptable for that purpose as well. It must be created before the shipment or first distribution. That's really important to stress that again. And it must contain a date of creation or last modification. So you wanted to have creation dates on your certificates. That's really important to be doing that. Okay, the seven elements required in a CPC or a GCC and I'll run through these and then I'll hand you over to Arthur and he'll do his e-filing update for you. I'm not going to read them on this slide. I'm going to go through them one by one here. Element number one is a description of the product products covered by the certificate. You want to be describing it in enough detail so that it's distinguishable from maybe other certificates. Additionally, you can combine products into one certificate. Generally speaking, though, you want to be doing very similar products into one certificate. So you don't want to be combining clothing and toys, which have radically different testing requirements into one certificate. That doesn't really make sense. More like if you have a whole series of children's sleepwear items where the only distinction is the dye is different. It's not really affecting compliance. Listing all of those kind of different sizes in different coloration versions of essentially what is one product is absolutely acceptable and encouraged to minimize paperwork burden. We don't want 100 certificates for every single size and color. That is not what we want. Element two, citation to each CPSC product safety rule to which the product is being certified. I did do an example here, which will also marry up with some information later when I get to it. And this would be for a children's article of clothing with painted metal snaps. These would be the three citations that would be applicable to you. It is possible, though, that you might be subject to an exemption or determination. The textile could be subject to a flammability exemption under 16 CFR 16 10.1 D, which is very commonly cited for folks making clothing. And for your total lead content, while the metal snaps and the substrate of the mail snaps are subject to that total lead content requirement. The textile in a lot of cases would be subject to the determination that the commission's made saying you don't need to test textiles for lead under 16 CFR 1500 point 91. I do include those citations later. So you can see those and how that would work in a real certificate. And then the paint on the snaps would be subject to this other lead testing requirements 16 CFR part 1303. Okay, element three, identification of the importer or domestic manufacturer certifying compliance of the products. The one thing I want to make super crystal clear here is that the importer certifying or issuing the certificate does not need to be physically located or have a physical address located within the United States. So I know for a fact, lots of Canadians are registered to be the official and formal importers of record for their products in the United States. And that they are able to issue the certificate and that is perfectly fine. And so there's been a lot of confusion on that point over the years, just wanted to make that super crystal clear for folks that you do not have to be physically located in the United States as the importer of record to issue that certificate. Contact information for the individual maintaining the records of the test results. This can theoretically be anyone. There's no stipulation as to what has to be. However, if you are subject to an investigation or you're being a part of an intensive examination review at the ports, your test report needs to be as readily available as your certificate that you're passing along. So if the person you listed here is not easily reachable, then that could be a problem for you. So you want to make sure whoever's listed here as the as the owner of the test results that they are responsible and are aware that they have that obligation. If we need to contact them that they submit that information immediately. That's just really important to keep in mind. Tate in place where this product was manufactured. I would say this linking up back to the period our tester requirements we were talking about earlier. What I would recommend is that as you are producing additional batches that are falling under the initial certification this product. You want to read my opinion this is what I would do you reissue the certificate with the additional date of production. And for that new batch that's being covered by that initial testing date up until the point at which you have to retest periodically and reissue a certificate. This is mostly for CPCs at this point, not so much for general use products. But for CPCs, I think it's really important to marry up all those different batches that are coming under that specific test reports. It's clear for investigators it's clear for yourself so you can keep track really important to make sure that's happening. So that's the main point I want to say here is just to make sure those dates and places are clearly indicated. Provide the dates in place places maybe when the product was tested for compliance with the consumer product safety rule so could be multiple testing labs depending on how you do it. Maybe you're partially relying on component part certification partially relying on your own testing that you've had done in that case there might be two or even three dates listed that all marry up with a compliant product. There's no limit on that as long as it all works towards your finished end product. Additionally, this is where you want to place any legal exemptions determinations exceptions to support your overall product compliance. And these are the citations I mentioned earlier 1500.91 and 16 10.1 D. Those are very commonly cited for children's apparel a lot of apparel items are are using those two citations and their certificates. And again that's mostly for CPCs GCCs. Generally you're not you're not dealing with exemptions that frequently. It's mostly just a matter of citing originally in section two and then whatever applicable testing is is being indicated here. Elm and number seven is calling out the laboratory itself so again if you're doing multiple labs to get to a compliant whole your listing every single one here with the information required. Additionally for CPCs only register small batch manufacturers must include their registration number. Provided by CPC this is helpful because if you are relying on testing done at a non CPC accepted laboratory. Then that information is immediately known to the investigator the person reviewing your certificate. Or if you are relying on maybe first party testing or written statement of assurance as a small batch manufacturer. Then all that information is made clear and we can double check that you are in fact a registered small batch manufacturer to be able to take advantage of those things. So that's really important to keep in mind for the for any of the small batch folks. So this is the end of my portion. Of the webinar here just a couple of things before I hand it over to Arthur. This is my name, my title, my contact information. If you have additional questions. If you want to stay up to date on any upcoming SBO webinars or any kind of the we also aggregate all of the commission rule makings and other events happening with CPSC. If you go to CPSC.gov for slash email you can sign up for business education alerts we send them out about once a month. This webinar every other webinar that we produce is available on the CPSC YouTube business education playlist. So if you have that handout handy. You can click that CPSC webinar series link and it will bring you right there and within a few days this one will be up there as well. I didn't call this out earlier but the regulatory robot tool is a phenomenal resource if you're not sure of what requirements apply to your product use that tool. And it will tell you the entire universe of applicable requirements that could be in place for your product. And lastly, the CPSC business education portal within CPSC.gov is has a wealth of information as well we keep adding to it all the time. And so now I'm going to change the slide I'm going to hand it over to Arthur. Alright, thank you will and thank you to everyone joining us today. So the second half of this presentation I will cover e filing which is a new initiative at CPSC. So this initiative is to enable importers of regulated consumer products to file electronically or e file with us customs and border protection certain data elements from certificates via a partner government agency message site. So in short, this is this will be a new requirements in the future. Where you will take your certificate and transmit the data from the certificate with assistance from your broker via CBP. And so it's an addition to the entry documents that you provide us. So for quite the first question, why are we doing this. So currently CPSC staff only asked for a certificate once a product has been identified for exam and cannot use that certificate data in risk assessment and targeting. So once we're making this complete, which we expect to finalize at the end of 2024. So well over a year from now, importers of regulated consumer products will electronically files certain certificate compliance data with CPSC with their entry documents. So brief history in 2008 the consumer product safety act requires importers to test and certify children's and other general use products and provide certificates. This is essentially what will explain to you in his half of the presentation. The same statute, however, gave us the authority to require the electronic filing of certificate data and we've been taking steps to reach that point and which again we're going to finalize by the end of next year. In 2013 we published a proposed rule that would among things require the electronic filing of the certificate data. In 2016 we conducted an alpha pilot with eight imported participants that tested the message set and a product registry, which I'll explain later. So this test made us confident that we could collect the data electronically. The next year we conducted a certificate study to analyze risk of certain data elements and how that relates to substantial hazards of the product and we found significant correlations between a substantial violation of a product and certain certificate data elements or even the absence of a certificate at the time of import. Lastly in 2020 the commission approved of our plan to conduct the beta pilot, which I will be conducting this fall. We're currently in the process IT development and testing and this beta pilot will have up to 50 participants and will be for six months to really test out the e filing system. So this is a more precise deadline for what has occurred in the past year and what will continue until the next year. So starting last fall we began IT development of the e filing system and throughout the winter we received a reiterate feedback from our participants. These are importers and their brokers who provided feedback on the IT system. And in the spring we conducted the development of the PGA message set with help of CBP. In this summer we are conducting initial testing and volunteer onboarding into the e filing system. So for the fall, starting this October, we would begin the beta pilot. And we will run for six months until the spring of 2024. At that point we will finalize the pilot. E filing would become a voluntary process and we will ask for feedback and comments on our rule, which we will finalize at the end of 24. So by that point, e filing will become a requirement. As you can see there's still plenty of time and we will have plenty of resources to help every comporter onboard into the e filing system and teach them how to file electronically. So this beta pilot as I said will begin in the fall of 23 and it will include up to 50 volunteers and allow for more entry lines than the alpha pilot test. So this will give us the opportunities to develop tests and implement processes and procedures for e filing of imported regulated consumer products. So when you e file you have two options. The first option, which is the preferred option is to use a product registry. This will be a database that will be maintained by CPSC. So you as an importer will pre-file your certificate data in the registry and then at the time of import your broker will file the product registry ID into ACE, which is CBP system for collecting the entry data. And that data is transmitted to CPSC, which we use for risk assessment. The advantage of this process is if you bring repeatedly bring in the same product using the same certificate, you could reference that certificate over and over again and file a shorter message. So in the long run it would be quicker to file that data into ACE. The other option is just to submit all certificate data at the time of entry. This has a disadvantage though because you cannot reuse the data that you previously transmitted. So if you bring in the same product you would have to retransmit the certificate data. But this could be most useful for just in time shipments when you don't have time to access the registry or you're just bringing in a one-off shipment and you don't really need to store that data. The next few slides I'm going to give you a preview of how the product registry looks. So as I showed on the previous slide that is the database help be maintained by CPSC and where you as an importer could pre-file your certificate data. The registry is a web-based application that would be very user-friendly. We worked collaboratively with many individuals from industry and they provided feedback step by step. They've seen the same screenshots. They've been able right now to test the system and they're providing us consistent feedback in order to make this registry and the filing system a process that is very user-friendly for any importer. So this first screen it would be your business account for your company which includes your company information, account administrators and product collections at the bottom. So these product collections are where you store your certificate data. You could have multiple product collections where you could organize your certificate data as you wish. And each product collection you could assign different users to each one so you're able to maintain permissions on who has access to which data. This registry will allow you also to invite your broker or other third parties to collaborate on your behalf and there will be extensive permissions capabilities. So as I mentioned you could provide one broker access to one collection, another broker access to a second collection and they won't see the other, the other, each other's collections. To add a product in a collection you see a user interface such as this where you have three screens and you would notice that these are the same fields that Will has mentioned before. So you provide information for product. In this case you would have to provide an ID so we're able to identify the certificate and then a product description on the testing page. You'll be providing the lab information on this. Let me take a step back though on this page. You also provide the manufacturing information and lastly you would attest to the validity of the certificate. And once you submit your certificate, you could go back to your account and see your products listed in this format and so each line is a separate certificate where you can see the product name, version, the trade brand name. And when you select the dropdown, you get to see even more information that you entered for the products such as the testing details and manufacturing details. The product collection, excuse me, the registry will have features where you could edit, copy, certificate. So it's very user friendly for you to be able to manage your certificate data. And as I mentioned before, you can invite other users and provide them different permissions so you can invite users from your company to have full access as you would. Or you can invite other third party users from other third parties and give them in different roles with limited permissions and they have access to only certain certain product collections. So the benefits by providing valid certificate data, you should expect to see a reduction in your risk score, which would mean may result in reduced whole times and fewer exams at the port, which would result, reduce cost to the importer. We are really focused on using the certificate data to go after shipments that have substantial violations so we're going to reduce, so we're going to, which would result in fewer holds to check for certificates. And so we would, the holds would be more likely to perform for substantial violations rather than for certificates. As certificate data will be provided ahead of time. As the process is now, the certificates are provided only upon request, which involves a cargo to be held, and then the request to be made. By reversing that, we're able to confirm the certificate validity beforehand, and only place holds on shipments that we think, which we believe there's a high risk of a substantial violation. And so these fewer holds may result in reduced costs to the importer. So, thank you for participating. I'll hand it back to Will. Thank you, Arthur. Let's see if any questions have come in here. One question coming in you may have already addressed, but I'll just ask it anyways for the for e filing, will there be a way to upload multiple items at once, where they all have to be hand keyed one by one. Yeah, so we are building features for bulk upload and an API connection that I haven't shown a screenshot of that because that's still currently in development, but it will be tested in the pilot and rolled out during the permanent implementation. So, in the end, you have three ways to provide that data on the registry either using the UI, uploading using a CSV file or uploading be an API. Great. Thank you, Arthur. And before I let everyone go today, here is all of our contact information again. Here's Arthur's contact along with his supervised superiors and the office of import surveillance. Here is our information again. We really appreciate you joining us today. If you have any questions about any of this information, anything about how certification works today right now, what you have to do to issue a certificate. Please get in touch with me or get in touch with the small business office. If you have questions about e filing in the future and what might be to come and please send all that information to Arthur, all those questions to Arthur. He does want to engage with you. He does want to interface with you if you have questions. Thank you again. We really appreciate you joining us today and look out for an email in the coming days with the recording and that will be on the YouTube channel as well. Thank you so much. Bye bye.