Department of Agriculture May 12, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In a final rule that was published in the Federal Register on October 5, 2012, we amended and republished the list of select agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to animal or plant health, or to animal or plant products; reorganized the list of select agents and toxins based on the relative potential of each select agent or toxin to be misused to adversely affect human, plant, or animal health; and amended the regulations in order to add definitions and clarify language concerning security, training, biosafety, biocontainment, and incident response. In that final rule we neglected to precisely align all of our regulatory language with that used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their regulations and, in some cases, did not align our language in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) regulations concerning plant health and plant products with that concerning animal health and animal products. As APHIS co-administers the select agent regulations with CDC, this document corrects inconsistencies in language between APHIS and CDC regulations. We are also correcting an improper term used in those sections of the regulations associated with identification of a viral strain or subspecies that is excluded from the requirements of the regulations, modifying the terms used when a select toxin is excluded from the regulations, clarifying those parts of the regulations that deal with temporary exemptions granted during periods of agricultural or public health emergencies, and adding language to specify that individuals not approved for access to registered space for activities not related to select agents or toxins (e.g., routine cleaning, maintenance, and repairs) would not have to be continuously escorted by an approved individual so long as those non-approved persons would not be able to gain access to select agents or toxins.