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Notices
Federal Register Vol. 86, No. 157
Wednesday, August 18, 2021

This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER
contains documents other than rules or proposed rules that are applicable to the public. Notices of hearings and investigations, committee meetings, agency decisions and rulings, delegations of authority, filing of petitions and applications and agency statements of organization and functions are examples of documents appearing in this section.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Docket No. APHIS20180078

Decision To Revise the Requirements for the Importation of Fresh Citrus Fruit From Australia Into the Continental United States Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, USDA.
ACTION: Notice.
AGENCY:

We are advising the public of our decision to revise the requirements for the importation of citrus from Australia in order to authorize the importation into the continental United States of citrus from additional areas of production. Based on the findings of a pest risk analysis, which we made available to the public for review and comment through a previous notice, we have determined that the application of one or more designated phytosanitary measures will be sufficient to mitigate the risks of introducing or disseminating plant pests or noxious weeds via the importation of citrus from these additional authorized areas of production in Australia.
DATES: The articles covered by this notification may be authorized for importation under the revised requirements beginning August 18, 2021.
SUMMARY:

Mr.
Tony Roman, Senior Regulatory Policy Specialist, Regulatory Coordination and Compliance, PPQ, APHIS, 4700 River Road, Unit 133, Riverdale, MD 20737
1231; 301 8512242.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Background Under the regulations in Subpart L
Fruits and Vegetables 7 CFR 319.56
1 through 319.5612, referred to below as the regulations, the Animal and
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Plant Health Inspection Service APHIS
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture USDA prohibits or restricts the importation of fruits and vegetables into the United States from certain parts of the world to prevent plant pests from being introduced into and spread within the United States.
Section 319.564 of the regulations provides the requirements for authorizing the importation of fruits and vegetables into the United States, and it revises existing requirements for the importation of fruits and vegetables.
Paragraph c of that section provides that the name and origin of all fruits and vegetables authorized importation into the United States, as well as their importation requirements, are listed on the internet in APHIS Fruits and Vegetables Import Requirements database, or FAVIR https
epermits.aphis.usda.gov/manual. It also provides that, if the Administrator of APHIS determines that any of the phytosanitary measures required for the importation of a particular fruit or vegetable are no longer necessary to reasonably mitigate the plant risk posed by the fruit or vegetable, APHIS will publish a notice in the Federal Register making its pest risk documentation and determination available for public comment.
In accordance with that process, we published a notice 1 in the Federal Register on December 17, 2020 85 FR
8186981871, Docket No. APHIS2018
0078, in which we announced the availability, for review and comment, of a pest risk analysis that evaluated the risks associated with the importation into the United States of citrus from three additional areas of Australia: The inland region of Queensland, the regions that compose Western Australia, and the shires of Bourke and Narromine within New South Wales District. The pest risk analysis consisted of a pest risk assessment PRA identifying pests of quarantine significance that could follow the pathway of importation of citrus from these regions of Australia into the United States and a commodity import evaluation document CIED, a type of risk management document, that identified phytosanitary measures to be applied to that commodity to mitigate the pest risk. The national plant 1 To view the notice, the PRA, CIED, and the comments we received, go to www.regulations.gov.
Enter APHIS20180078 in the Search field.

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protection organization NPPO of Australia also asked us to reevaluate whether Epiphyas postvittana light brown apple moth, also known as LBAM could follow the pathway of citrus fruit from Australia into the United States. Currently, consignments of citrus fruit imported from Australia must be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate with an additional declaration stating that the fruit in the consignment was subject to phytosanitary measures to ensure the consignment is free of LBAM. As a result of this reevaluation, we found that LBAM does not follow the pathway of citrus fruit from Australia into the United States, and we announced our intention to remove the additional declaration requirement. This change would affect both the currently authorized importations of citrus fruit from Australia and the importations from the additional production areas authorized by this notice.
We solicited comments on the notice for 60 days ending February 16, 2021.
We received seven comments by that date. They were from producers, exporters, researchers, and representatives of State and foreign governments. Three of the commenters supported authorizing citrus imports from the additional regions of Australia as described in the notice and supporting documents. One commenter supported authorizing these imports with some revisions to the PRA. Two commenters opposed authorizing these imports. The commenters also raised a number of questions and concerns about the pest risk assessment and the conditions under which citrus could be imported from these additional regions in Australia.
Pest Risk Assessment The PRA and CIED that we prepared in response to the Government of Australias request evaluated the pest risk associated with the importation of citrus fruit from the inland region of Queensland, the regions that compose Western Australia, and the shires of Bourke and Narromine within New South Wales District into the continental United States. However, in our previous notice we mistakenly did not specify that the PRA and CIED only evaluated the risk to the continental United States. In this notice we are clarifying that permits for importation of
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