Inspection and Certification of Establishments, Fishery Products, and Other Marine Ingredients

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 260</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240412-0106]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BH37</RIN> <SUBJECT>Inspection and Certification of Establishments, Fishery Products, and Other Marine Ingredients</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS or Agency), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The NMFS Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce proposes to revise its current implementing regulations to improve the uniformity and reliability of seafood inspection services by adopting recognized best practices for inspection. NMFS has not significantly revised or updated the existing regulations since first issuing them in 1971, though it has modified many operating procedures since implementation of the current regulations. NMFS anticipates that these revisions will benefit the seafood industry by streamlining seafood inspection services and providing improved, more accurate inspection results, as described below. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received by May 28, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments on this action, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2024-0022, may be submitted by either of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submissions:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov/document/NOAA-NMFS-240412-0106,</E> click the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Steven Wilson, Chief, Seafood Inspection Program, Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change. All personal identifying information (for example, name and address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit confidential business information or otherwise sensitive or protected information. NMFS will accept anonymous comments. Enter N/A in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous. Attachments to electronic comments will be accepted in Microsoft Word, Excel, WordPerfect, or Adobe portable document file (PDF) formats only. Written comments regarding the burden-hour estimates or other aspects of the collection-of-information requirements contained in this proposed rule may be submitted to the NMFS Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce and by email to: <E T="03">OIRA_Submission@omb.eop.gov</E> or fax to (202) 395-7285. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Wilson, Chief, Seafood Inspection Program, by email at <E T="03">Steven.Wilson@noaa.gov</E> or by phone at 301-427-8312. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Under the authority of the Agricultural Marketing Act (AMA) of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1621 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), and in accordance with the Reorganization Plan Number 4 of 1970 (84 Stat. 2090), NOAA administers a voluntary Seafood Inspection Program (SIP or Program) which offers inspection and grading services for seafood and other marine products, as well as audit and consultative services to domestic and international processors, importers, and international competent food safety authorities. SIP also authorizes the use of certain marks and shields to processors meeting specific safety, quality, and other program requirements. The existing regulations codified at 50 CFR part 260 have not been significantly revised or updated since NMFS first issued them in 1971, 36 FR 21037 (November 3, 1971), and currently do not reflect the changes in industry practices or the expanding role of SIP since that time. On October 15, 2019, NMFS issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) requesting input from stakeholders and interested parties on focused areas of the Seafood Inspection Program regulations. Based on the eight public comments received and NMFS' overall assessment of the current program, NMFS proposes these comprehensive updates to the existing regulations. NMFS looks forward to receiving comments on the updates and modernizations proposed here. The revisions proposed herein incorporate the significant changes and updates that SIP has already made and those that it still needs to implement to simplify its administrative, inspection, and certification procedures. These changes and updates will lead to increased uniformity of and efficiencies associated with inspections, while retaining the reliability and validity of inspection results. In an effort to minimize costs, streamline operations, and enable updates in a cost-effective and timely fashion, SIP is proposing to remove certain provisions from 50 CFR part 260 and place them in the NMFS Fishery Products Inspection Manual (SIP Manual), which can be found online at <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/seafood-commerce-certification/seafood-inspection-manual.</E> The proposed rule does not change the way SIP currently operates but removes outdated regulatory text, adds relevant text to incorporate current practices, and moves certain provisions to the SIP Manual so that the regulations would both more accurately reflect current industry practices and allow for adaptation to potential changes in technologies and product requirements. NMFS anticipates that these revisions will benefit the seafood industry by clarifying and simplifying the procedures for obtaining seafood inspection services and providing improved, more accurate and consistent inspection results, as compared with the current published regulations. Table 1 below summarizes the proposed rule's impacts on section number and title changes, as well as identifying provisions that would be deleted from the regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">1. Modernize Definitions and Administrative Procedures</HD> With respect to administrative procedures, NMFS proposes to remove specific provisions that are no longer in use, such as the option to request inspection service via telegraph, from the regulatory text. The requirement to request inspection services would be retained, while the specific, detailed procedures for requesting such service would be moved from the regulatory text to the online SIP Manual, where they can more readily be updated and modified as new technologies and procedures are implemented. Putting these strictly procedural matters in the online manual would make implementing cost-neutral and cost-saving procedural changes more timely and efficient for both government and industry. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Definitions</HD> The proposed rule would update definitions in § 260.6 (proposed § 260.2) to reflect the current use and meaning of certain terms used throughout part 260 and in general use in industry. Terms such as “Approved Establishment,” “Fish,” “Fishery Product,” “Marine Ingredient,” “NMFS Fishery Products Inspection Manual (SIP Manual),” “Processing,” and “Product” would be added to align with current SIP policies and procedures, as well as current U.S. Standards for Grades (50 CFR part 261), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) regulations (21 CFR part 123), and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) (21 CFR part 117). Other terms, such as “Deviant,” “Deviation,” and “Plant” would be removed because they are either no longer commonly used in the context of seafood inspection or are more accurately defined in other terms. In general, only terms that pertain specifically to the regulations in this part are defined therein. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Inspection Service and Appeal Inspection</HD> The existing regulations at §§ 260.12-260.41 are out of date and inconsistent with current procedures for requesting inspection services, performance of inspections and product grading activities, issuance of certificates, and appeal of inspection results. The proposed regulations reflect the now-common use of the internet and the online Seafood Inspection Services Portal (online portal) system for requesting SIP inspection services, as well as the use of electronic documents ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> inspection certificates), which the current regulations do not address. The online portal, first deployed in 2008 for inspection services requests and issuance of certificates and reports, enables SIP staff to address the needs of industry in a more timely and consistent manner. Tracking service requests through the online portal system also enables SIP management to better allocate resources to meet the needs of its customers. Public comment on the ANPR supported the increased use of the online portal for requesting all inspection services and continued electronic transfer of records. In addition to the increases in efficiency, the use of the online portal for the generation of official inspection certificates, whether printed on water-marked paper or delivered electronically, has reduced government costs by eliminating the need to print and secure the old carbon-copy controlled certificate books, whereby each inspector or office had to secure a log and retain a copy of each certificate type issued. While the proposed regulations would still allow for inspection services to be requested by fax, the move to the online portal system reduces the cost to seafood businesses by allowing computer access to all services in one account, storing information, reducing the amount of time required to make a request, and eliminating the need to have a separate fax machine, which ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 139k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━