Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service July 19, 2011 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This is a notice to inform the public of the topics on the agenda for an upcoming meeting of the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Animal Health. The meeting is organized by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to discuss matters of animal health.

We are proposing to amend the regulations governing the importation of animals and animal products by recognizing 25 Member States of the European Union as the APHIS-defined European Union poultry trade region and adding it to the list of regions we consider to be free of Newcastle disease. We are taking this action based on a risk evaluation that we prepared in which we determined that the proposed region meets our requirements for being considered free of Newcastle disease. We also determined that the region meets our requirements for being considered free of highly pathogenic avian influenza. In addition, we are proposing to establish requirements governing the importation of live birds and poultry, including hatching eggs, and poultry meat and products from the APHIS-defined European Union poultry trade region, and to update avian disease terms and definitions. These actions would facilitate the importation of live birds and poultry, and poultry meat and products, from the APHIS- defined European Union poultry trade region while protecting the United States from communicable avian diseases.