7 CFR Part 301: Regulated Articles, Permits, and APHIS Penalties

7 CFR Part 301 is the federal regulation that lets the U.S. Department of Agriculture quarantine areas where dangerous plant pests or diseases have been detected and restrict the movement of anything that could spread them. If you are inside a quarantine zone and want to move a regulated article out, you need a federal certificate or a limited permit, and you need it before the shipment leaves. Ignore the rule and you can face civil penalties over $453,000 per violation, up to five years in prison for commercial movement, and on-the-spot seizure of your cargo.¹

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) enforces Part 301 under authority from the Plant Protection Act, 7 U.S.C. 7701–7786. Each major pest gets its own subpart with rules written around the biology of that specific threat.

Who Has to Follow These Rules

Everyone. Part 301 is not written only for commercial agriculture. Growers, shippers, nurseries, and lumber yards are covered, and so are individuals moving household goods, packing a car, or mailing a package. Load patio furniture onto a moving truck inside a spongy moth quarantine and the rules apply to you the same way they apply to a nursery shipping thousands of seedlings. Federal inspectors and cooperating state officials monitor compliance at ports, along transit corridors, and at highway checkpoints near quarantine boundaries.

What Counts as a Regulated Article

Each subpart defines its own list, but the categories that appear most often across quarantines are:

Firewood and logs, one of the most common ways people accidentally carry pests across quarantine lines.
Nursery stock, including houseplants and tree seedlings, with occasional carve-outs for seeds and bulbs depending on the subpart.
Soil and growing media, which can hide nematodes, fungal spores, and insect pupae.
Wood products such as green lumber, bark chips, mulch, stumps, and wood debris from host trees.
Decorative greenery like wreaths and garlands made from host plants.
Outdoor household items, including patio furniture and recreational vehicles stored outdoors in a spongy moth zone.

An inspector can also designate any other article as regulated on a case-by-case basis if it presents a risk of spreading a quarantined pest.¹ The regulation defines “plant pest” broadly to cover any living stage of insects, mites, nematodes, snails, bacteria, fungi, parasitic plants, viruses, or similar organisms that can injure plants.²

Federally Quarantined Pests to Know

Four pests account for most of the questions APHIS fields from businesses and homeowners.

Spongy Moth

The spongy moth defoliates hardwood forests and shade trees. Subpart E restricts nursery stock, Christmas trees, outdoor household articles, and even mobile homes leaving quarantined areas unless they have been inspected or treated.²

Asian Longhorned Beetle

The larvae bore deep into hardwood trees, so infestations are invisible from the outside. Subpart H restricts firewood, green lumber, logs, stumps, nursery stock, and wood debris from quarantine zones.³ Eradication often requires cutting down every host tree within a defined radius of an infestation.

Citrus Greening

Also called Huanglongbing, this bacterial disease is spread by the Asian citrus psyllid and eventually kills the tree. Subpart N restricts citrus plants, plant parts, soil, and other articles capable of carrying the pathogen out of affected areas.²

Spotted Lanternfly (State Rules, Not Federal)

The spotted lanternfly has spread to 19 states and Washington, D.C., but there is no federal quarantine for it. APHIS works with state and tribal partners, and quarantine zones are set at the state level.⁴ If you are moving goods out of a lanternfly-affected area, check your state department of agriculture’s rules rather than Part 301.

The Paperwork You Need Before Moving Anything

Two documents authorize movement out of a quarantine zone:

A certificate (PPQ Form 540) is issued when the article fully meets the conditions for movement, meaning it has been inspected, treated, or otherwise confirmed to be pest-free.¹
A limited permit (PPQ Form 530) is issued when the article does not fully qualify for a certificate but can be moved safely under specific conditions, such as traveling only to a designated facility for treatment or processing.⁵

Both forms require the scientific name of the organism or article, the exact origin address, the destination, the consignee’s name, and details of any treatments applied, including chemical, temperature, duration, and concentration where relevant.¹

APHIS now processes permit applications through its eFile portal. The older ePermits system stopped accepting new applications on September 30, 2022. Permits originally issued through ePermits stay valid until they expire, but APHIS does not migrate that data, so you will need to submit a fresh application in eFile when the old permit runs out.⁶ For domestic quarantine certificates on one-time shipments, many shippers still work through their local APHIS office or a cooperating state plant regulatory official.

Getting Inspected

Before a certificate or limited permit is issued, an inspector has to physically verify that the articles are eligible for movement. Contact a federal APHIS inspector or an authorized state official to arrange a site visit, and plan ahead: during peak shipping season for nurseries in spring and firewood in fall, wait times stretch.

The inspector examines the articles and reviews any treatment records. If everything checks out, the inspector signs the certificate or permit. If something looks off, the inspector can pull samples for laboratory analysis, which adds days or weeks. No amount of paperwork substitutes for the physical verification step. An “inspector” under Part 301 includes any APHIS employee and any other individual the APHIS Administrator authorizes, which in practice often means state agriculture department employees operating under cooperative agreements.³

Compliance Agreements for Frequent Shippers

Nurseries, lumber yards, and other businesses that ship regulated articles regularly can enter a compliance agreement with APHIS. Once an inspector has determined that a business’s articles are eligible, someone operating under a compliance agreement can issue certificates and limited permits for their own shipments without waiting for an inspector to visit every time.¹

The trade-off is rigorous record-keeping and possible audits. Nurseries under Phytophthora ramorum compliance agreements, for example, must keep records of all incoming and outgoing plant shipments for at least 24 months and produce them for inspectors on request. APHIS can cancel a compliance agreement if the business falls short, which strips the authority to self-certify and can trigger enforcement on any articles that moved during the noncompliance period.

Moving the Shipment

With an authorized certificate or permit in hand, the document must be securely attached to the outside of the shipping container. Alternatively, it can be attached to the waybill or other shipping paperwork, as long as the regulated articles are adequately described on it. Either way, the carrier must deliver the certificate or permit to the consignee at the destination.⁷

Agricultural inspectors at highway checkpoints and destination facilities will look for the paperwork. If you cannot produce a valid document, the shipment can be seized and the articles destroyed on the spot. Keep a copy for yourself; the original travels with the cargo.

When the Rules Change Overnight: Emergency Federal Orders

Not every quarantine goes through the full federal rulemaking process. When a new pest is detected and the threat is urgent, APHIS can issue a Federal Order, a legally binding directive that takes effect immediately, without notice and comment.⁸ Federal Orders stay in force until APHIS revises them with another order or publishes a formal rule.

The authority comes from 7 U.S.C. 7715, which lets the Secretary declare an extraordinary emergency when a pest is new to or not widely distributed within the United States and state-level measures are insufficient. Before acting in a state, the Secretary must consult with the governor, issue a public announcement, and file a statement in the Federal Register, though in time-sensitive situations the filing can follow up to 10 business days after the action begins.⁹ Practically, this means the quarantine map you checked last week can change without warning.

Penalties for Violations

Civil Fines

Civil penalties are adjusted for inflation annually. Under the most recent adjustments:¹⁰

Individuals face up to $90,708 per violation. An individual who moves regulated articles not for monetary gain has a lower cap of $1,813 for a first offense.
Businesses and other entities face up to $453,537 per violation.
All violations in a single proceeding are capped at $728,765, or $1,457,528 if any of them was willful.

Alternatively, the penalty can be twice the gross gain or gross loss from the violation, whichever is greater. For a commercial shipper who knowingly moves infested nursery stock worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, that multiplier can outrun the per-violation caps.

Criminal Charges

Knowing violations carry criminal consequences under two tiers. A person who knowingly violates any provision of the Plant Protection Act, or who forges or misuses a certificate or permit, faces fines and up to one year in prison. Anyone who knowingly moves a plant, pest, or regulated article for distribution or sale in violation of the Act faces up to five years in prison.¹¹ The five-year tier is what catches commercial operators off guard. A truckload of uncertified citrus trees delivered to a garden center is a potential felony, not a paperwork infraction.

If APHIS Denies Your Permit or Seizes Your Shipment

If APHIS denies a permit application or revokes an existing permit, you have 10 business days from receiving the notice to appeal in writing. Your appeal must lay out all the facts and reasons the decision was wrong. APHIS responds in writing. The denial or revocation stays in effect while the appeal is pending, so you cannot move the articles in the meantime.¹²

If the shipment has already been physically seized, you have 35 days from the seizure notice and two mutually exclusive options. You can file a petition for remission asking the USDA Solicitor to release the property; the petition must identify the seized property, document your ownership interest, and present facts justifying release. Or you can file a claim within the same 35-day window to move the matter into federal court, which ends the administrative track and puts you into litigation against the Department of Justice.¹³ Choose the wrong path or miss the deadline and you forfeit your rights.

Compensation If Your Plants Are Destroyed

The Plant Protection Act does not provide a straightforward indemnity program for destroyed plants. Under 7 U.S.C. 7716, you can sue the United States for just compensation, but only if you can prove the destruction was not authorized under the Act.¹⁴ If the destruction was lawfully ordered under a quarantine or emergency action, this remedy does not apply.

Some APHIS eradication programs have historically offered cost-sharing or voluntary compensation, but those depend on the specific pest program and available Congressional funding rather than any guaranteed statutory right. A lawsuit under 7 U.S.C. 7716 must be filed within one year of the destruction in a federal district court where the owner resides or does business.

Checking Whether You Are in a Quarantine Area

APHIS maintains quarantine maps and area descriptions for each regulated pest on its website, updated as new detections occur or areas are released. Your state department of agriculture is also worth calling, and it is the right contact for state-managed pests like the spotted lanternfly.⁴

If you find something that looks like a quarantined pest, egg masses on outdoor furniture, unusual boring damage in a tree, or discolored citrus fruit, APHIS runs a “Hungry Pests” reporting program through its website.¹⁵ Reporting a find does not expose you to penalties. Failing to report and then moving potentially infested materials does.

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eCFR. 7 CFR Part 301 – Domestic Quarantine Notices
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Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. 7 CFR Part 301 – Domestic Quarantine Notices
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eCFR. 7 CFR 301.51-1 – Definitions
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Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Spotted Lanternfly
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Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Imported Fire Ant Program Manual
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Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. APHIS eFile
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eCFR. 7 CFR 301.80-7 – Attachment and Disposition of Certificates or Permits
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Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Import Federal Orders
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 7 USC 7715 – Declaration of Extraordinary Emergency and Resulting Authorities
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eCFR. 7 CFR Part 3 Subpart I – Adjusted Civil Monetary Penalties
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 7 USC 7734 – Penalties for Violation
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eCFR. 7 CFR 322.15 – APHIS Review of Permit Applications; Denial or Revocation of Permits
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Federal Register. Seizure and Forfeiture Procedures
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 7 USC 7716 – Recovery of Compensation for Unauthorized Activities
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Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. APHIS Home