Requirements for Facilities Transferring or Receiving Select Agents

CDC administers regulations that govern the transfer of certain biological agents and toxins ("select agents"). These regulations require entities that transfer or receive select agents to register with CDC and comply with biosafety standards contained in the Third Edition of the CDC/NIH publication "Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories ("BMBL")." On October 28, 1999, CDC published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("NPRM") seeking both to revise the biosafety standards facilities must follow when handling select agents and to provide new biosecurity standards for such facilities. These new standards are contained in the Fourth Edition of BMBL, which the NPRM proposed to incorporate by reference, thereby replacing the Third Edition. No comments were received in response to this proposal. CDC is therefore amending its regulations to incorporate the Fourth Edition.