Apparent new meat and veggie restrictions when coming to USA from Canada

[scross]

We crossed from Ganges BC into WA today. Started the US CBP Roam app and then got a call from US Customs in Friday Harbor (which is not too unusual) to complete the clearance.
We try to declare everything every time we clear Customs. This time we mentioned several things that put us on the naughty list that were the same things we crossed the boarder with last September without issue.
Chicken! And eggs! These are now a no-no even if frozen solid and originally purchased in the USA. Last year frozen chicken was ok to cross. Now chicken has to be fully cooked to be ok
Chopped up apples with no core or seeds were ok last year. Not now - I guess because we had removed the farm I’d stickers on the skins.
De-seeded bell peppers sliced into small chunks? Nope, not now! Same for tomatoes of any kind from any place in any condition except fully cooked.
The new Agricultural rules went into effect in October 2025 and Customs seems to be VERY serious about enforcement. We got off with a tutorial and warning since we had declared the bad items we had onboard. Here’s the new doc. I wish they could push these changes out to us so we wouldn’t be caught by surprise!
PS: Entry to Canada using Nexus clearance last week was polite, professional and quick as we have come to expect most of the time.

 

[gswearin]

Very helpful. I tend to only pay attention northbound!

 

[Jesperjo]

The U.S. has always been more restrictive than Canada. I thought Eggs were banned last year too.

I found that using AI to solve this problem was by far the easiest. A week or so ago I posted a prompt here that allows you use an LLM to generate your list, but then I realized it was probably easier to memorialize it on my site, so here it is: https://www.outofoffice.living/2026/06/using-ai-to-figure-out-food-rules-when.html.

This helped us a lot when we were figuring out the rules.

 

[brtnstrns]

When we came back across from Poet's Cove last weekend, the USCBP agent asked very specifically if we had any "Canadian poultry". We had brought eggs up from the US, so I responded with "we do not have any Canadian poultry" and that seemed to suffice...

One thing that did catch us off guard is the CDC dog import form. Had no idea that was a thing as it wasn't brought up last year.

We're also Nexus as of a few months ago and it seems to have definitely been worth the hassle.

 

[Jesperjo]

Did they actually ask about the dog import form? We have gone across probably thirty times since they instituted that requirement 18 months or two years ago. I think once they asked us if we had it. We said yes, and they told us to go ahead then. They didn’t want to see it. Once we asked if they wanted it and the border patrol person said “That’s a CDC thing. It’s not my problem.”

 

[brtnstrns]

Did they actually ask about the dog import form? We have gone across probably thirty times since they instituted that requirement 18 months or two years ago. I think once they asked us if we had it. We said yes, and they told us to go ahead then. They didn’t want to see it. Once we asked if they wanted it and the border patrol person said “That’s a CDC thing. It’s not my problem.”

This was all over the phone, but yeah they asked about the dog import form. He was polite and mostly just being informative (renew every 6 months), but it was probably pretty clear to him that we had no idea that was a requirement now.