USDA needed/customs in San Juan airport?

I asked on the the Puerto Rico board about airport general info and was told that before you can check in with your airline, you must have a USDA sticker on your luggage. I thought I read somewhere on these boards that since your last cruise port is St. Thomas you do not have to go through the agriculture check. Can anyone clarify?

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I don't know but its not a big deal. At SJU when you get out of your cab, there's a scale where you can weigh your luggage before checking it and the scanner is outside the building. My luggage was run through, they put something on it, I didn't pay attention to what they were doing, and then I took my suitcase to another line to check it and airport security scanned it again. So I assume the first time was USDA, don't know for sure as I wasn't paying attention. I was at the airport by 9:15 am and there were no lines. This was in January 2008 so things may have changed since then

We haven't been to SJU for the last couple of years, but as long as you kept your cruiseline tags on your luggage, it wasn't necessary to go through the agricultural screening.

I have read on here that if you pull off the tags from the cruise, you will have to do the screening. Perhaps someone who has sailed more recently can tell you.

We had the experience that Katie described. We took off our cruise luggage tags just before we checked in with the airline this summer. The ticket agent told us to put them back on the luggage as proof that it had been inspected. I was glad that we hadn't discarded the tags!

If you are coming to the airport directly from the cruise ship and leave your debarkation tags on, you don't have to go through the agriculture inspection. If you stay a few days, post-cruise, it's still no hassle, you just bring your bags and they run them through the machine and put the stickers on them and then you can check them with your airline.

I think maybe you are thinking about the fact that you won't have to go through immigration in San Juan if you stopped in St. Thomas the day before.

You can however skip the USDA inspection at the airport if you are flying home the day your cruise ends AND you leave your cruise tags on your bags.

Dec. 13 Continental check in sent us back to go through USDA even though we had just got off the ship and had =X= baggage tags. Also USDA at that terminal was inside.