Flowers, produce and seafood through Miami International

Why so much of it lands here

Miami International finished 2025 as the number one airport in the United States for total freight, its sixth record year in a row. For perishables the concentration is sharper than the general numbers suggest: CBP counted 89 percent of US cut flower imports coming through Miami, although that figure is from 2018 and we have not found a newer one solid enough to quote.

The reason is boring and durable. Miami is a short widebody flight from the growing regions of Colombia and Ecuador, and decades of that traffic built the cold storage, the handlers and the inspection capacity around it. Freight goes where the cold chain already is.

What that means for you is double edged. The inspectors here see your commodity every single day, so nothing about it is strange to them. They also see every way the paperwork goes wrong, so a thin document gets no benefit of the doubt.

The filing that stops more shipments than customs does

If it is food, and produce and seafood both are, FDA wants prior notice before it arrives. This is separate from the customs entry, it has its own deadlines, and a perfect entry does not help a shipment that failed here.

The deadlines are set in 21 CFR 1.279 and they run by how the food travels: two hours before arrival by road, four hours by rail, four hours by air, eight hours by water. For international mail the rule is different in kind rather than degree, and prior notice has to be submitted before the food is sent to the United States at all.

Now the part that catches careful people. Prior notice is not considered submitted when you press send. It counts when FDA confirms it and issues a confirmation number, and the deadline is measured against that confirmation. A filing sitting unconfirmed twenty minutes before a flight lands is a filing that has not happened.

There is a ceiling on filing early, too. Through ABI and ACE you may file up to 30 calendar days before anticipated arrival, and through FDA's own interface up to 15.

What APHIS actually requires for cut flowers

Here is the thing most people believe and the regulation does not say. The common assumption is that every box of imported cut flowers needs a phytosanitary certificate from the country it left.

What 7 CFR 319.74-2 requires of all cut flowers is inspection at the first port of arrival. That one applies across the board. The phytosanitary certificate requirement is narrower: it attaches to the genera that host chrysanthemum white rust, not to cut flowers as a category.

This is worth getting right in both directions. Buying certificates you do not need costs money and adds days at origin. Missing one you do need costs you the shipment. Which side of the line your flowers fall on depends on the genus and the origin, so it is a question to settle before the box is packed rather than after it lands.

The cold chain is its own clock

A dry container sitting an extra day is an invoice. A pallet of flowers sitting an extra day can be worthless, and no amount of arguing afterwards makes it saleable again.

So the order of operations matters more here than anywhere else in this trade. The entry goes in before arrival, prior notice goes in with confirmation in hand, and somebody watches for a hold rather than discovering one the next morning. Everything that can be done before the aircraft lands should already be done when it does.