Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service August 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are reopening the comment period on the draft audit standard developed by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for its Biotechnology Quality Management System pilot project. This action will allow interested persons additional time to prepare and submit comments. The Biotechnology Quality Management System is a voluntary compliance assistance program designed to help stakeholders develop sound management practices, thus enhancing compliance with the regulatory requirements for environmental releases and movements of regulated articles in accordance with 7 CFR part 340.

This is a notice to inform the public of four upcoming meetings to discuss mitigation measures that could be applied to wood packaging material (e.g., crates, dunnage, wooden spools, pallets, packing blocks) used in domestic commerce to decrease the risk of the artificial spread of plant pests such as the emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorned beetle. These and other plant pests that could be transported interstate by wood packaging material pose a serious threat to U.S. agriculture and to natural, cultivated, and urban forests. We will also be holding a meeting in order to solicit public comments and ideas concerning potential strategies for mitigating the risk of artificial spread of plant pests via the movement of firewood.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice announces the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's intention to request an extension of approval of an information collection associated with regulations for tuberculosis testing of imported cattle.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice announces the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's intention to request an extension of approval of an information collection associated with regulations restricting the importation of products of poultry and birds into the United States in order to prevent the introduction of poultry disease.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice announces the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's intention to request an extension of approval of an information collection associated with the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act and regulations.

In a final rule that was published in the Federal Register on April 1, 2009 (74 FR 14710-14719, Docket No. APHIS-2007-0042), and effective on May 1, 2009, we amended the National Poultry Improvement Plan (the Plan) and its auxiliary provisions by providing new or modified sampling and testing procedures for Plan participants and participating flocks. In that final rule, we amended the U.S. Avian Influenza Clean program for multiplier meat-type chicken breeding flocks to require that 15 birds be tested to retain the classification, rather than 30. However, our amendatory instruction accomplishing this change also amended the program to require multiplier spent fowl to be tested within 15 days prior to movement to slaughter, rather than 30 days. We had intended to retain the 30-day requirement. This document corrects that error.