Agricultural Bioterrorism Protection Act of 2002; Biennial Review and Republication of the Select Agent and Toxin List; Delay of Compliance Date for Newly Registered Entities

In a final rule published in the Federal Register on October 16, 2008 (73 FR 61325-61332, Docket No. APHIS-2007-0033), and effective November 17, 2008, we amended and republished the list of select agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to animal or plant health, or to animal or plant products, thus implementing the findings of the second biennial review of that list. Among other changes, we changed the entry for "Newcastle disease virus (velogenic)" to read "virulent Newcastle disease virus," thus including some non-velogenic strains of Newcastle disease virus as select agents. The final rule set the compliance date for entities that were newly required to register as entities possessing select agents or toxins as April 14, 2009. Since the publication of the final rule, we have been notified of entities that use virulent Newcastle disease virus and that have not previously been registered. This notice informs the public that we are extending the compliance date for new registrants to July 13, 2009, to give us additional time to determine how best to regulate those entities.