June 6, 2006

USDA corrects rule over imported animals, products from EU

The US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is correcting a final rule published in the May-19 Federal Register that amended regulations for animals and animal products imported into the US from a region of the EU, according to a release on the APHIS website.

The release said the final rule applied a uniform set of import requirements for classical swine fever to regions consisting of all of 15 member states that comprised the EU prior to its expansion on May 1, 2004.

The rule lists regions of the world that APHIS considers to be free of Classical Swine Fever (CSF). However, several regions recognised by APHIS previously as CSF-free were inadvertently omitted from the list. These regions include the Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, Sonora and Yucatan.

APHIS is correcting the list of CSF-free regions.

APHIS also reworded a section of text that was inadvertently worded differently from the proposed rule, causing another section of text to be removed. The removed text has been reinserted into the final rule and the text that was improperly designated has been corrected, APHIS said.