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72507

Rules and Regulations
Federal Register Vol. 86, No. 243
Wednesday, December 22, 2021

This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER
contains regulatory documents having general applicability and legal effect, most of which are keyed to and codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, which is published under 50 titles pursuant to 44 U.S.C. 1510.
The Code of Federal Regulations is sold by the Superintendent of Documents.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Agricultural Marketing Service 7 CFR Part 1280

RIN 0581AC06

Lamb Promotion, Research, and Information Order; Activity Changes Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA.
ACTION: Final rule.
AGENCY:

This rulemaking revises the Lamb Promotion, Research, and Information Order Order, requiring market agencies e.g., commission merchant, auction market, livestock market in the business of receiving lambs to collect and remit on behalf of the producer, feeder, or seedstock producer, the live-weight assessment on ovine animals sold and the priceper-head assessment owed by the first handler when lambs are sold through these channels. Market agencies are required to remit the full assessment to the American Lamb Board also known as the Lamb, Promotion, Research, and Information Board Board when ovine animals are sold. This rulemaking includes technical amendments to the Order, correcting references to assessment rates that were inadvertently not updated during the previous amendment to the Order.

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SUMMARY:

16:01 Dec 21, 2021

Effective date: January 21, 2022.
Delayed enforcement date:
Enforcement of the market agency assessment remittance procedures is delayed until March 22, 2022.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Jason Julian, Agricultural Marketing Specialist, Research and Promotion Division, Livestock and Poultry Program, AMS, USDA; Telephone: 202
7312149; or Email: jason.julian@
usda.gov.
Under the Order 7 CFR part 1280, which became effective April 11, 2002, the Board administers a nationally coordinated program of research, development, and promotion activities designed to strengthen the position of, and to develop and expand the markets for, ovine animals and ovine products. The program is financed by producers, feeders, and seedstock producers i.e., producers who pay an assessment of seven-tenths of a cent $0.007 per pound on all live lambs sold.
Additionally, first handlers or exporters, pay $0.42 per head on ovine animals purchased for slaughter.
The Order currently mandates that assessments be collected from producers or feeders for the sale of live lambs, and that the assessment be forwarded to the subsequent purchaser if applicable until remitted by a first handler or exporter. That first handler or exporter is responsible for submitting both the producer or feeders assessment and the first handler or exporters assessment and volume report to the Board. The collection process is known as a passthrough assessment. Since the initial Order was established, industry markets have evolved; non-traditional first handlers, such as ethnic processors butcher shops and farmers market
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processors now participate to a larger degree in the purchasing and processing of lamb and lamb products. However, based on information about lamb sales from market agencies, the Board believes many non-traditional first handlers are not remitting assessments, as required by the Order. The Board, in turn, is not capturing all assessments paid by producers and feeders. Over the years, Board staff has worked to collect the owed lamb assessments from the nontraditional buyers, with limited success.
On January 23, 2019, the Board approved a motion to request the Secretary of Agriculture Secretary amend the assessment collection procedures and update corresponding sections of the Order. The revisions to the assessment collection procedures require market agencies to collect the full assessment, including the first handler assessment portion, for remittance to the Board. The assessment collection change only impacts lambs sold through market agencies. Other modes of sale, such as traditional markets e.g., first handler purchases from a producer or feeder, independent of a market agency will continue to use the pass-through assessment collection process. Examples 1 and 2 below show the current assessment collection processes when lambs are sold through a market agency:
Example 1Existing Procedures Producer sells lambs at market agency to a first handler: The producer pays the assessment to the market agency who passes the assessment through to the first handler. The first handler remits the live-weight LW and price-per-head PH assessments to the Board along with a Remittance Report form. This example is depicted in Figure 1.
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