The USDA announced in a press release that, “The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced plans to dramatically streamline and improve several programmatic processes, including the Agency’s processes for conducting risk assessments and rulemaking. Last week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack highlighted improvements to a host of USDA programs and processes, including to the risk assessments and rulemaking process, being made to help farmers, ranchers and businesses continue to drive America’s productive agricultural economy.”

“APHIS reviewed its risk assessment and rulemaking processes in response to trading partners’ requests to ship new plants, animals and products to the United States. APHIS found that by streamlining the drafting and risk assessments, improving project management and tracking, and assigning deadlines to specific steps in the process, the agency can expect to see dramatic improvements, including time-saving of more than 70 percent.”

Posted 11/20/2011