Department of Agriculture June 27, 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is announcing the availability of final guidance for federally inspected establishments in the selection of commercial and private microbiological testing laboratories. FSIS has posted this policy guidance on its Web page https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/ topics/regulatory-compliance/compliance-guides-index. FSIS encourages establishments that prepare meat, poultry, or processed egg products to consider the criteria in the guidance in selecting commercial or private microbiological testing laboratories and in determining the laboratories' capability to produce accurate and reliable results. Regulated establishments are required to introduce into commerce only meat, poultry, or processed egg products that are safe and not adulterated or misbranded. Establishments that select laboratories that do not apply appropriate testing methods or maintain effective Quality Control or Quality Assurance (QC/QA) practices may not receive reliable or useful test results and thus run the risk of not being aware that the food that they have produced is unsafe.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) is seeking comments from all interested individuals and organizations on the extension with a revision of a currently approved information collection associated with the Power of Attorney. This information collection is used to support the FSA, Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) and Risk Management Agency (RMA) in conducting business and accepting signatures on documents from individuals acting on behalf of other individuals or entities.

This final rule increases the fees for voluntary Federal dairy grading and inspection services. The fees will increase 10 percent effective August 2013 and an additional 10 percent effective February 2014. The fees applicable to European Union Health Certification Program derogation requests are unchanged. Dairy grading and inspection services are voluntary and are financed in their entirety through user fees assessed to participants using the program. Despite the adoption of technologies that have improved services, additional changes in operations that enhanced efficiencies, and reduced employee numbers, increases in salaries, technology investments, and general inflation have more than offset savings resulting in the need to increase fees. AMS estimates the fee increase will result in an overall cost increase to the industry of less than $0.0004 per pound of dairy product graded.