Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service April 25, 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are proposing to restructure our regulations governing the importation of plants for planting. In the proposed structure, restrictions on the importation of specific types of plants for planting would no longer be found in the regulations, but instead would be found in the Plants for Planting Manual. We would change those restrictions after taking public comment through notices published in the Federal Register. As part of this restructuring, we would group together restrictions in the plants for planting regulations that apply to the importation of most or all plants for planting, and we would add general requirements for the development of integrated pest risk management measures that we would use to mitigate the risk associated with the importation of a specific type of plants for planting. We would also amend our foreign quarantine regulations to remove various provisions regarding the importation of specific types of plants for planting that are not currently subject to the general plants for planting regulations; these provisions would also be found in the Plants for Planting Manual. This action would not make any major changes to the restrictions that currently apply to the importation of plants for planting. These changes would make restrictions on the importation of specific types of plants for planting easier for readers to find and less cumbersome for us to change.