National Poultry Improvement Plan and Auxiliary Provisions

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>9 CFR Parts 56, 145, 146, and 147</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. APHIS-2022-0056]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0579-AE74</RIN> <SUBJECT>National Poultry Improvement Plan and Auxiliary Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, USDA. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We are proposing to amend the regulations governing the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP). These amendments would, among other things, condition indemnity for low pathogenicity avian influenza on adherence to biosecurity plans, clarify existing provisions of the regulations, fix editorial errors, and align the regulations more closely with current producer practices. These proposed changes were voted on and approved by the voting delegates at the NPIP's 2022 National Plan Conference. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will consider all comments that we receive on or before August 12, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments by either of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Enter APHIS-2022-0056 in the Search field. Select the Documents tab, then select the Comment button in the list of documents. • <E T="03">Postal Mail/Commercial Delivery:</E> Send your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2022-0056, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road, Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. Supporting documents and any comments we receive on this docket may be viewed at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or in our reading room, which is located in room 1620 of the USDA South Building, 14th Street and Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC. Normal reading room hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays. To be sure someone is there to help you, please call (202) 7997039 before coming. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dr. Elena Behnke, DVM, Senior Coordinator, National Poultry Improvement Plan, VS, APHIS, USDA, 1506 Klondike Road, Suite 301, Conyers, GA 30094-5104; (770) 922-3496. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP, also referred to below as “the Plan”) is a cooperative Federal-State-industry mechanism for controlling certain poultry diseases. The Plan consists of a variety of programs intended to prevent and control poultry diseases. Participation in all Plan programs is voluntary, but breeding flocks, hatcheries, and dealers must first qualify as “U.S. Pullorum-Typhoid Clean” as a condition for participating in the other Plan programs. The Plan identifies States, independent flocks, hatcheries, dealers, and slaughter plants that meet certain disease control standards specified in the Plan's various programs. As a result, customers can buy poultry that has tested clean of certain diseases or that has been produced under disease-prevention conditions. The regulations in 9 CFR parts 56, 145, 146, and 147 (referred to below as the regulations) contain the provisions of the Plan. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) amends these provisions from time to time to incorporate new scientific information and technologies within the Plan, and to ensure the plan reflects changes to the poultry industry itself. The changes we are proposing, which are discussed below, were approved by the voting delegates at the Plan's 2022 Biennial Conference. Participants and voting delegates at the Biennial Conference represented the poultry industry, flock owners, breeders, hatchery men, slaughter plants, poultry veterinarians, diagnostic laboratory personnel, Official State Agencies from cooperating States, and other poultry industry affiliates. In this document, we first discuss editorial oversights from the last rulemaking to update the NPIP regulations that we are proposing to correct in this proposed rule. Then, we address the other proposals, in the order in which they would appear in the regulations. Finally, we discuss proposed changes to the Program Standards document that accompanies the regulations and provides guidance on their application. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Editorial Oversights From the Previous Rulemaking</HD> On October 5, 2020, we published a final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (85 FR 62559-62572, Docket No. APHIS-2018-0062)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> that codified changes to the regulations that were voted on and approved by the voting delegates at the NPIP's 2018 National Plan Conference. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  To view the final rule, go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> and enter APHIS-2018-0062 in the Search field. </FTNT> Among the changes to the regulations in that October 2020 final rule were revisions to the regulations in part 56, which govern the payment of indemnity for low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI). As one of these revisions, we intended to revise references to cleaning and disinfection for LPAI to “virus elimination” throughout part 56, or otherwise add the term “virus elimination” after references to cleaning and disinfection. As we stated in the proposed rule on which the October 2020 final rule was based, “virus elimination” is the term used in many foreign countries for cleaning and disinfection measures conducted to destroy or eliminate all LPAI virus on an affected premises, and we wished to underscore the restrictive sense in which cleaning and disinfection was being used in the regulations in part 56. However, while we updated the terminology in several sections in part 56, we inadvertently overlooked instances in §§ 56.3 and 56.5 in which the terminology was not updated. We propose to add references to virus elimination in these two sections. In the October 2020 final rule, we added provisions throughout the regulations for a U.S. Newcastle Disease Clean classification. Our intent was to indicate that, for that classification, a minimum of 30 birds per flock must test negative using an approved test at intervals of 90 days, or, alternatively, a sample of fewer than 30 birds may be tested, and found negative, at any one time if all pens are equally represented and a total of 30 birds is tested within each 90-day period, and, regardless of which of the two foregoing testing options is chosen, during each 90-day period, all primary spent fowl, up to a maximum of 30, must test negative within 21 days prior to movement. However, due to the punctuation used for these provisions, they could be construed to mean that primary spent fowl testing is optional depending on the flock testing protocol used. This was not our intent, and we are revising the Newcastle Disease Clean classification provisions throughout the NPIP regulations to align them with our intent. In the October 2020 final rule, we added a subpart J to part 145 of the regulations, which added testing regimes, terminology, and programs specifically designed for the game bird industry. However, in several instances where sections or subparts are listed within the regulations, we inadvertently neglected to update the lists to include references to this new subpart J. We are correcting this oversight throughout part 145. In adding subpart J to part 145, we stated, in paragraph (e) of § 145.102, that it was recommended that gallinaceous flocks that participate in the plan and waterfowl be kept separate. However, our definition of the term <E T="03">game bird</E> in § 145.101 indicated that it was limited to domesticated fowl; this would preclude a producer who has waterfowl on the same premises from participating under the regulations in subpart J. We are revising paragraph (e) to clarify that gallinaceous flocks and waterfowl may not be raised on the same premises, and, if they are, they must be registered under subpart E of part 145 instead. This subpart contains provisions of the plan specifically designed for producers of hobbyist poultry, exhibition poultry, and raised-for-release waterfowl. In § 145.103 of subpart J, we included a typographical error in which the word “Typhoid” was misspelled “Typhid.” We are correcting this misspelling. Subpart E of part 146 of the regulations contains definitions and requirements for Plan participants within the game bird, commercial waterfowl, and raised-for-release waterfowl industries who produce meat- or egg-type flocks. In the proposed rule on which the October 2020 final rule was based, we proposed to update the terminology in subpart E to match other subparts within part 146 by replacing the term “commercial” with “egg/meat-type.” However, we neglected to make corresponding changes to §§ 146.3, 146.6, and 146.9, which contain references to the types of commercial flocks that may participate in the plan under the provisions in part 146. We also neglected to make a similar harmonizing change in paragraph (a)(9) of § 147.46. We are correcting these oversights by harmonizing the language accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Revisions to Part 56</HD> As we mentioned above, the regulations in part 56 govern the payment of indemnity for LPAI. Section 56.1 contains definitions of terms used within that part. We are proposing several revisions to this section. First, we are proposing to add a definition of the <E T="03">National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) Program Standards.</E> As we do in § 145.1 of the NPIP regulations, we propose to define the term as “A document that contains tests and sanitation procedures approved by the Administrator pursuant to § 147.53 of this chapter.” Also consistent with that definition in § 145.1, the proposed definition would further specify how the Program Standard ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 74k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━