Possession, Use, and Transfer of Select Agents and Toxins; Biennial Review, Technical Amendment

In a final rule that was published in the Federal Register on October 5, 2012, we amended and republished the list of select agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety; reorganized the list of select agents and toxins based on the relative potential of each select agent or toxin to be misused to adversely affect human health (designation of Tier 1); and amended the regulations in order to add definitions and clarify language concerning security, training, biosafety, biocontainment, and incident response. In that final rule, all of our regulatory language was not precisely aligned with that used by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in their parallel select agent regulations published on the same day in the Federal Register. This document corrects inconsistencies in language between the HHS/CDC and USDA/APHIS regulations. We are also correcting an improper term used in those sections of the regulations associated with identification of a viral strain or subspecies that is excluded from the requirements of the regulations, modifying the terms used when a select toxin is excluded from the regulations, clarifying those parts of the regulations that deal with temporary exemptions granted during periods of public health or agricultural emergencies, and adding language to specify that individuals not approved for unescorted access to registered space for activities not related to select agents or toxins (e.g., routine cleaning, maintenance, and repairs) would not have to be continuously escorted by an approved individual so long as those non-approved persons would not be able to gain access to select agents or toxins.