Journal category
ISPM-15, heat treatment, IPPC marks and the paperwork behind them.
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The subject
ISPM-15 is a short standard with a small number of clear requirements, and it stops containers constantly. The failures are almost never a misunderstanding of the rule — they are three specific blind spots that recur across every industry we serve.
The first is dunnage: blocking and bracing cut from untreated lumber on a loading dock, which nobody thinks of as packaging and which is the first wood an inspector sees when the doors open. The second is repair: a treated pallet given a new deck board by whoever was cheapest, carrying a mark that still looks perfect and is now a false declaration. The third is the mark itself — missing a facility number, printed rather than branded, or present on only one side.
The articles here cover the standard, how to read a mark, what a compliant treatment record actually contains, and why methyl bromide is finished as a practical option regardless of what the standard still permits.
Recurring figures
Where to start
A field guide. Two minutes per load.
The wood everyone forgets, and the rack that fixes it.
The mark is a claim; the probe trace is the evidence.
Still valid under the standard, still refused at the border.
4 articles
The pallets were compliant. The crate was compliant. The two lengths of untreated 2x4 wedged against the load were not, and they were the first thing the inspector saw.
The mark on the wood is the declaration. The record behind it is the evidence. Most of the time nobody asks for the second one, and then somebody does.
MB is still a valid treatment code under ISPM-15. That is not the same as it being a good idea, and the gap between those two facts is where shipments get held.
The mark has four required elements. I have seen shipments held because one of them was missing and nobody at either end knew what they were looking at.
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