Classification of Foreign-Growth Cotton

The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is amending regulations pertaining to administrative and operational procedures for the classification of foreign-growth cotton. In anticipation that cotton merchants may want to use AMS cotton quality determinations to establish foreign-growth cotton as tenderable against the World Cotton futures contract offered by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), representatives of the U.S. cotton industry and ICE formally requested that AMS make any regulatory amendments necessary to better accommodate the classification of foreign-growth cotton. Consequently, AMS seeks to clarify the existing language, update the terms and practices described to comply with today's industry norms and current cotton classification technologies, and establish procedural safeguards to the classification process for foreign-growth cotton that promote accuracy.