Department of Agriculture May 11, 2011 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are advising the public that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has received a petition from Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc., seeking a determination of nonregulated status for cotton designated as event COT67B, which has been genetically engineered to express a protein to protect cotton plants from lepidopteran insect damage. The petition has been submitted in accordance with our regulations concerning the introduction of certain genetically engineered organisms and products. We are soliciting comments on whether this genetically engineered cotton is likely to pose a plant pest risk. We are making available for public comment the Syngenta petition, our plant pest risk assessment, and our draft environmental assessment for the proposed determination of nonregulated status.

We are adopting as a final rule, with one change, an interim rule that amended the plum pox virus (PPV) regulations by removing portions of Adams County, PA, from the list of quarantined areas and by adding portions of Niagara, Orleans, and Wayne Counties, NY, to the list of quarantined areas and restricted the interstate movement of regulated articles from these quarantined areas. The interim rule was necessary to prevent the spread of PPV from the quarantined areas of New York to uninfected areas of the United States and to relieve restrictions in Pennsylvania that are no longer necessary.