Section III of the HTSUS

Thank you for joining us for our series on classification. Last Monday, we explored the articles contained in Section II of the HTSUS. Today, we will study the various commodities covered in Section III of the HTSUS. Having a good general knowledge of the products covered in each Section and Chapter will expedite the classification process and improve accuracy of your classifications.

Answer to Section II Question
0813.20.2000
NY A87809
http://rulings.cbp.gov/index.asp?ru=a87809&qu=NY+A87809&vw=detail


Section III is one of four sections that contains only one chapter. Chapter 15 contains products of animal or vegetable fats such as lard, fish oils, olive oil, coconut oils and other vegetable oils. Products of this chapter must comply with FDA requirements and may be subject to quotas. Since Chapter 15 covers both animal and vegetable fats, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to add it under Section I covering animal products or Section II covering vegetable products. Here is a question for our readers. Why couldn’t all of the animal fat have been included somewhere in Section I and all of the vegetable fat included in Section II?

Question
Classify a product described as California Corn Oil which is to be used as household cooking oil. The corn oil is 100% pure and was transformed into an edible oil by a special process which includes bleaching and deodorization.

Join us next week for the answer to this week’s classification question and a discussion of Section IV of the HTSUS. If there are any specific commodities or sections of the HTSUS that you would like to see discussed in this series, please feel free to post a comment or send your suggestions to wizard@boskage.com