Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service October 20, 2011 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are advising the public of our decision to implement a risk-based sampling approach for the inspection of imported plants for planting. In our previous approach, we inspected 2 percent of consignments of imported plants for planting regardless of previous evidence of the risk posed by the plants for planting. The risk-based sampling and inspection approach will allow us to target high-risk plants for planting for more extensive inspection to help ensure that plants for planting infested with quarantine pests do not enter the United States, while providing a speedier inspection process for lower- risk plants for planting. In addition, for taxa of plants for planting that pose an extremely low risk, we are establishing a Propagative Monitoring and Release Program under which consignments of those taxa will be periodically monitored but not every consignment will be inspected.

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 the importation of Christmas cactus and Easter cactus in growing media from the Netherlands and Denmark.