Selling cashew kernels into the United States means satisfying a regulatory system built around the Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP), a rule under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that places legal compliance responsibility on the US importer, not the foreign exporter — but that responsibility flows straight back to the supplier in the form of documentation demands. Understanding how FSVP works, what triggers FDA Import Alerts 23-14 and 99-19, and how Detention Without Physical Examination (DWPE) actually operates gives both sides of a US cashew contract a much clearer picture of why US buyers ask for the specific paperwork they ask for, and why getting it wrong can shut a shipment out of the country entirely.
What the Foreign Supplier Verification Program actually requires
FSVP is a US legal requirement that importers of food — including cashew kernels — verify that their foreign suppliers are producing food in a manner that provides the same level of public health protection as US food-safety standards, before that food enters US commerce. This is a meaningful shift from older, more informal import practices: it’s no longer sufficient for a US buyer to simply trust a supplier’s word or a generic certificate of quality. The importer is legally required to conduct and document a supplier verification process, which in practice usually means hazard analysis, supplier risk evaluation, and ongoing verification activities such as periodic on-site audits, sampling and testing, or review of the supplier’s own food-safety records — with the specific verification method scaled to the risk level FDA associates with the product and the supplier’s track record. Because FSVP legally sits with the importer, an exporter who understands what the importer needs to produce for their own compliance file becomes a far easier, lower-friction supplier to keep buying from.
Import Alert 23-14: mycotoxins in tree nuts
FDA Import Alert 23-14 addresses mycotoxin contamination — including aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, G2, along with other mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON), fumonisins, and ochratoxin A — across tree nut products broadly, and it functions as a standing FDA mechanism for flagging shipments, exporters, or product categories with a documented history of mycotoxin violations. Once a firm or product line is listed under an import alert like 23-14, subsequent shipments from that same listed entity face automatic heightened scrutiny at the US border, independent of whatever testing was done at origin.
Import Alert 99-19: Salmonella
FDA Import Alert 99-19 covers Salmonella contamination and operates on the same underlying mechanism as 23-14: it flags firms, countries, or product categories associated with prior Salmonella detections in FDA testing, triggering automatic increased scrutiny on future shipments tied to that listing. Salmonella risk in tree nuts is a genuinely different hazard pathway from aflatoxin — it’s typically linked to post-harvest handling, cross-contamination, or inadequate heat treatment rather than storage moisture — which is part of why FDA maintains it as a separate alert rather than folding it into the mycotoxin alert.
How Detention Without Physical Examination actually works
Detention Without Physical Examination, commonly abbreviated DWPE, is exactly what it sounds like: FDA detains an incoming shipment at the US border without physically inspecting or testing it, based on the shipment’s association with a listed firm, product, or country under an active import alert like 23-14 or 99-19. This is a significant practical point that catches some exporters off guard — a shipment can be detained under DWPE purely because of its category or its listed origin, without FDA ever testing that specific lot, simply because the underlying alert listing creates a presumption of risk that the importer or exporter then has to actively rebut. Getting a shipment or firm removed from DWPE status typically requires demonstrating, through private laboratory testing and documentation submitted to FDA, that the specific product or firm no longer presents the risk the alert was based on — a process that takes real time and adds real cost, which is exactly why staying off these lists in the first place is far cheaper than getting removed from them after the fact.
What US importers actually ask suppliers for
In practice, a US buyer conducting FSVP due diligence will typically ask a cashew supplier for a combination of current certificates of analysis covering aflatoxin and Salmonella testing on relevant lots, documented food-safety procedures at the processing facility (often referencing a recognised scheme — see Processing-Facility Certifications Compared for how BRCGS, IFS Food, ISO 22000, and FSSC 22000 fit into this picture), records demonstrating consistent moisture and storage control, and increasingly, an accounting of the supplier’s own supply chain traceability back to origin. Because Codex Alimentarius’s Code of Hygienic Practice for Tree Nuts underlies most of these hygienic-practice expectations globally, a supplier whose systems are already aligned with that code has a real head start when a US buyer starts asking FSVP questions. It’s also worth having this documentation ready before it’s requested rather than assembling it reactively under contract-deadline pressure — a prior detention history anywhere in a product category, even one caused by a different exporter entirely, can raise the baseline level of scrutiny new shipments in that category receive, which is a good argument for over-documenting rather than under-documenting as standard practice. For exporters shipping from India specifically, coordinating this documentation with CEPCI’s testing infrastructure is a practical starting point, and comparing US requirements against the parallel EU compliance regime is useful for suppliers serving both markets simultaneously, since the underlying contamination risks (aflatoxin, pathogen control) overlap even though the specific regulatory mechanisms differ.
This page summarises current FDA regulatory mechanisms for general reference and is not a substitute for direct compliance advice from a qualified FSVP consultant or food-safety attorney on a specific shipment, supplier relationship, or import alert listing.