APHIS Significant Guidance Documents

In order to increase the quality and transparency of agency guidance practices and to comply with OMB's "Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices" published in the Federal Register on January 25, 2007 (72 FR 3432–3440), APHIS is providing the information below on its significant guidance documents. The term ‘‘guidance document’’ means an agency statement of general applicability and future effect, other than a regulatory action, that sets forth a policy on a statutory, regulatory or technical issue or an interpretation of a statutory or regulatory issue.  A discussion of this definition and various types of guidance documents and other background information is available at the following sites:

• OMB Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices
• Implementation of Executive Order 13422 (amending Executive Order 12866)
  and the OMB Bulletin on Good Guidance Practices

Contact Information

Members of the public who wish to request that the agency issue, reconsider, modify, or rescind a significant guidance document, or to complain that the agency is not following the procedures in OMB's Bulletin or is improperly treating a significant guidance document as a binding requirement, may do so by sending an email to Good_Guidance_Comments@aphis.usda.gov

Or by mailing a letter to the following office:

Guidance Officer
Policy and Program Development
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
4700 River Road, Unit 20
Riverdale, MD 20737-1230

Additionally, you may submit comments through www.regulations.gov on new or revised significant guidance documents open for comment as indicated in the chart below.

This agency effort and OMB's Bulletin is intended to improve the internal management of the Executive Branch and is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, against the United States, its agencies or other entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

Significant Guidance Documents

APHIS Policy on Responding to the Low-Level Presence of Regulated Genetically Engineered Plant Materials (Issued March 29, 2007)

• This guidance describes how APHIS evaluates and responds to incidents in which regulated genetically engineered plant material becomes mixed at low levels with commercial seeds and grain.
  

Animal Care Policy Manual (Issued April 1997, Revised July 17, 2007)

• Guidance developed primarily for USDA's Animal Care field inspectors, and provided to the regulated community, which clarifies, interprets, and/or provides examples of how to comply with an existing Animal Welfare Act regulation or standard.
• Animal Care is currently reviewing this guidance and welcomes suggestions for revising it. You may submit comments until November 16, 2007 at www.regulations.gov.