Advice from an expert:
"If you want your products (all foods inc chocolate sea shells and seaweed biscuits – but not sure what classification the US have for Cornish air (but they will have one!)) on sale in the US you will need to prove they comply with all aspects of the US FDA regulations and will probably need to submit to a technical audit on your staff, your premises, your records, your equipment and the origins of your products – before any products you may have shipped, will be allowed into the country.
I’m not an expert but I know folks who jumped through all the hoops and finally decided the changes / costs / charges etc don’t make financially viable sense.
I do know something of the US FDA technical requirements for steam/air retorting and they are different from those here.
The last company I worked with who wanted to sell to the US via mail-order (to avoid freight costs, dock costs and the cost of a US based agent), gave up after someone in the US wrote a negative comment on-line.
I understand the UK products were seen as competition … and I recall it took well over 1 year to get ‘paper approvals’ and they stopped trading in the US after less than 6 months.
My advice – for what it’s worth … is unless you can guarantee selling millions and you can get past the US FDA audits, it will probably be better left alone … even so, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a chance to relax and make ready to ‘conquer the UK’ first … "
[Obviously, at Cornish Canning Co, we do have and keep all the documents we would need for a "technical audit" as it is very much part of UK compliance, but our batches are small, and our ethics are 'eat local', so we just want to preserve our food, for future consumption.]