Who is the sanitary and phytosanitary authority for exporting agricultural products from Guatemala?

MAGA's Viceministerio de Sanidad Agropecuaria y Regulaciones (VISAR) organizes its site into Animal Health, Plant Health, Food Safety and Phyto-zoogenetics, among other sections. The page of the Plant Health Directorate lists its functions, among them preventing, controlling and eradicating quarantine and economically important plant pests, keeping the register of agricultural inputs and approving export protocols for agricultural products, and registering agricultural production units, and cites as legal basis Ministerial Agreement 112-2018, on issuing export phytosanitary certificates, and 108-2007, on the electronic issuing of prior import permits for animals, plants, their products and by-products and inputs. The Food Safety Directorate controls, monitors and coordinates the safety of unprocessed food of animal and plant origin through the evaluation and supervision of hygiene systems. According to USDA's FAIRS Export Certificate Report (September 2025), VISAR reviews all export certificates and issues import permits for fresh or processed food products; processed foods also go through registration with the Food Control Unit of the Ministry of Health, which issues the import permit for processed food of non-animal origin.