Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service December 13, 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are proposing to amend the regulations pertaining to the importation of horses to establish standards for the approval of permanent, privately owned quarantine facilities for horses. We are taking this action because demand for quarantine services for horses exceeds the space available at existing facilities. This proposed rule replaces a previously published proposed rule, which we are withdrawing as part of this document, that contained substantially different restrictions on ownership and substantially different requirements for the physical plant, operating procedures, and compliance date. We believe that allowing imported horses to be quarantined in permanent, privately owned quarantine facilities that meet these newly proposed criteria would facilitate the importation of horses while continuing to protect against the introduction of communicable diseases of horses.