National Poultry Improvement Plan and Auxiliary Provisions

<RULE> 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We are amending the regulations governing the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP). These amendments, 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 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> Effective October 30, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dr. Elena Behnke, 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. On June 11, 2024, we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 49107-49118, Docket No. APHIS-2022-0056) a proposal  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> to amend the regulations by updating and clarifying several provisions, including those concerning NPIP participation, voting requirements, testing procedures, and standards. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  To view the proposed rule, supporting documents, and the comments we received go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Enter APHIS-2022-0056 in the Search field. </FTNT> We solicited comments concerning our proposal for 60 days ending August 12, 2024. We received eight comments by that date. The comments were from three private citizens, a State department of agriculture, an organization representing turkey production within the United States, an organization representing egg production within the United States, an organization representing State agricultural interests, and an industry group. Two commenters supported the rule, and one was generally opposed. Other commenters did not articulate an opinion regarding the rule overall but commented on various provisions. We discuss the comments that we received below, by topic. <HD SOURCE="HD1">General Opposition</HD> One commenter asserted that the proposed rule is excessive, would prove impracticable for domestic producers, and would result in greater importation of foreign poultry products. The commenter provided no evidence in support of these contentions. The provisions of the proposed rule were largely voluntary and were advanced by the industry itself at the NPIP's 2022 National Plan Conference as being in the industry's best interests. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comment Regarding Alternative Requirements for Breeders</HD> One commenter suggested that a number of certifications for breeders were cost-prohibitive for small-scale rare and exhibition bird breeders. Specifically, the commenter stated that it could adhere to the testing requirements for U.S. Pullorum Typhoid (PT) clean status, but other certifications for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) involved cost-prohibitive testing. However, the commenter stated that it had a “closed flock,” that did not augment the flocks through external additions but solely through on-site farm breeding. Based on its understanding of the relevant data, the commenter stated that there was little evidence of vertical transmission of HPAI from hatching eggs to adult birds in such closed production systems. The commenter inquired if we would consider regulatory revisions to clarify that small-scale rare and exhibition bird hatching eggs present a low risk of HPAI transmission. The commenter claimed difficulty obtaining testing materials due to limited availability from a single manufacturer. The commenter suggested adding regulations that offer options that allow more flexibility when the supply of testing materials is low to reduce breeder burden. The only prerequisite for NPIP participation is the Pullorum Typhoid (PT) Clean classification. Additional classifications such as HPAI testing and its related costs are voluntary. With regard to the regulatory revisions suggested by the commenter, § 147.44 of the regulations sets forth a submission process for proposed changes to the regulations. Under the terms of that section, under ordinary circumstances, proposals for changes to the regulations should go through the Biennial Conference for consideration, and should be submitted at least 150 days prior to the meeting, with allowance for proposals submitted closer to the date of the meeting to be entertained. Outside of this process, the NPIP General Conference Committee (GCC) may recommend changes to the regulations when postponing the changes until the next Biennial Conference would seriously impair the operation of NPIP. APHIS may initiate changes of our own accord if we determine them to be necessary and in the public interest. We do not consider it in the public interest to obviate the process set forth in § 147.44 of the regulations to initiate the changes suggested by the commenter. As a result, we encourage the commenter to submit the suggested changes through the process set forth in § 147.44 of the regulations. The commenter also stated that online marketplaces were functioning as a means of circumventing regulations governing the shipment of hatching eggs. This concern is outside the scope of the regulations and the jurisdiction of NPIP. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments Regarding Biosecurity Plans</HD> 9 CFR part 56 contains our regulations governing the payment of indemnity for low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI). The regulations currently require States to maintain initial State response and containment plans (ISRCPs) in order for producers in the State to be eligible for indemnity and/or compensation for 100 percent of eligible costs under the regulations. The regulations further require that each ISRCP must contain a minimum biosecurity plan to be followed by all producers in the State. In our proposed rule, we proposed to clarify that the biosecurity plan is not required for producers below size thresholds for inclusion in the NPIP. However, we also proposed revising the ISRCP requirements to require States to determine that the biosecurity plans are in place and being followed and to require States to audit the plans to ensure that the plans are in compliance with the NPIP Program Standards. Two commenters addressed our proposed requirement to have States ensure that biosecurity plans are in place and being followed. First, they suggested voluntary versus mandatory biosecurity plans for flocks in ISRCP due to the lack of resources to enforce such requirements. Although we understand the limited resources noted by the commenters, as we stated in the proposed rule, the regulations already require that ISRCPs include a minimum biosecurity plan followed by all poultry producers. Our proposed regulatory revisions were to ensure that this existing ISRCP requirement, which has been in effect since 2006, is, in fact, being carried out and producers in the State are in fact following the minimum biosecurity plan. As we noted in the 2006 interim rule that established the requirement (71 FR 56302-56333, Docket No. APHIS-2005-0109), producer biosecurity plans are a necessary component for APHIS to have confidence that a State is fully capable of determining whether H5/H7 LPAI is present in flocks that participate in NPIP within the State and taking action to respond to any outbreaks of LPAI that may occur within the State. While APHIS is committed to working with Official State Agencies (OSAs) to lessen enforcement burden, the above comments suggest States were not enforcing the requirement. This underscores, rather than undermines, the need for the regulatory revisions in the proposed rule. One commenter expressed concerns regarding farm auditing of biosecurity plans. The commenter inquired about provisions for situations ( <E T="03">e.g.</E> outbreaks, lack of resources, etc.) when conducting on-site farm audits would not be possible. We acknowledge that historically, biosecurity audits for both HPAI and LPAI have been paper-based, and evaluated a producer's biosecurity plans against the biosecurity principles contained in NPIP Program Standard E at least once every two years in order to review documentation and ensure biosecurity complianc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 51k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━