Shelled Almonds and Almonds in the Shell; Grade Standards

This final rule revises the United States Standards for Grades of Shelled Almonds and the United States Standards for Grades of Almonds in the Shell. The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), in cooperation with the almond industry and other interested parties, develops and revises standards of quality, condition, quantity, grade, and packaging in order to facilitate commerce by providing buyers, sellers, and quality assurance personnel uniform language and criteria for describing various levels of quality and condition as valued in the marketplace. The revision will change the foreign material tolerances; the tolerance for live insects inside the shell; remove the language ``appearance of the lot'' from all definitions in the standards; combine tolerances for chipping and scratching and split and broken in the U.S. Standard Sheller Run grade; revise current definitions; and add new definitions.