APHIS Proposes New Standards for Recognizing Foreign 'Compartment' Animal Disease Status

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing new standards that would allow it to recognize “compartments” for animal disease status in foreign countries. The standards would ”closely parallel” procedures for recognizing the disease status of regions in foreign countries for the purposes of setting import restrictions on livestock. Compartmentalization, as recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health, “is a procedure that a country may implement to define and manage animal subpopulations of distinct health status and under common biosecurity management within its territory,” APHIS said. “Compartmentalization is distinct from regionalization, which involves the recognition of geographical zones of a country that can be identified and characterized by their level of risk for different diseases, but the two are not mutually exclusive.” Comments are due June 3.