Methods
The exercise focused primarily on the years 2018 and 2019, but also evaluated data from 2015 to 2019. Information on the type and quantity of soy-based feed ingredients and their specific POE was obtained at the International Trade Commission Harmonized Tariff Schedule website (www.hs.usitc.gov), a publicly available website that provides a transaction of specific trade commodities between the US and its international trading partners. In the website database, each trade commodity was identified by a specific 10-digit code known as the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS), which was used for determining tariff classifications for all goods imported into the United States. Each commodity was classified based on the product’s name, use, and the material type, resulting in over 17,000 unique classification code numbers. Importing countries selected for inclusion in the analysis were obtained from the 43 ASFV-positive countries listed on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) ASFV Watch List (Appendix A). These countries, spread across Asia, Africa, and Europe, have been determined high-risk areas for potential ASFV contamination of feed (Barr 2019). Specific queries on eight specific HTS codes pertaining to soy-based feed ingredients and the 43 countries were designed on the USITC website to create a comprehensive analysis which provided information on country of origin, quantity of product, year of entry, and POE into the US for each HTS code. Data were exported into Microsoft Excel and filtered into pivot tables to answer a series of questions:
  1. What are the types of soy-based products that enter the US from the 43 ASFV-positive countries?
  2. Across the 43 ASFV-positive countries, where do most of the soy-based products come from?
  3. What POE receive these high-risk imports?
  4. Do POE for soy-based products change over time?