Lesson 3: Basic Requirements of the U.S. Regulatory System
Topic 4: The Code of Federal Regulations
The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) codifies the rules that agencies publish in the Federal Register. The text in the CFR is the outcome of the rulemaking process.
Objective:
- Describe how the Code of Federal Regulations is compiled from individual rules and the CFR’s relationship to the rulemaking process
When Congress enacts a statute, the results are included in the U.S. Code. The Code is a collection of all the legislation Congress has enacted or modified. When Congress decides to remove provisions from the Code, the Code is updated to reflect the removal. Thus, at any given time, the Code reflects the current state of the law as Congress has established and modified it.
The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) fulfills a similar function for the rules that federal agencies publish. It codifies the rules that agencies publish in the Federal Register. Like the Code, it collects all the rules that have been published, and it is updated when an agency adds, modifies, or removes provisions from the regulations. Regulated parties and regulators alike consult the CFR to determine, among other things, what restrictions apply to the importation of animals, plants, and their products.
The CFR is divided into 50 titles that represent broad areas that are subject to federal regulation. The titles that contain APHIS’ regulations on market access are Title 7 (agriculture) and Title 9 (animals and animal products).
Titles in the CFR are divided into parts. Title 7, part 319 contains the regulations that govern the importation of plants and plant products. Title 9, part 93 contains the regulations on importing live animals, and parts 94 through 96 and part 98 cover various kinds of animal products. The regulations governing requests to change the disease status of a region, and thus achieve market access in some cases, are contained in part 92.
Parts are further divided into subparts, which are themselves divided into sections. The symbol § is commonly used to stand for the word “section.” The part number is listed first, followed by the subpart, and then the section. So “§ 319.37-8″ refers to part 319, subpart 37, section 8, and is read aloud as “section 319, 37, dash 8.”
In the docket used as an example from Regulations.gov in Topic 3 of this lesson, APHIS proposed to amend an existing section (specifically, § 319.56-25) that already allowed the importation of papaya from countries in Central America and Brazil to also allow the importation of papaya from Colombia and Ecuador under similar conditions. In another case, APHIS added a new section to the regulations (specifically, § 319.56-48) specifying the conditions under which baby squash and baby courgettes may be imported from Zambia. All the text in the CFR comes from rules that have been published in the Federal Register.
Once a year, the U.S. government publishes updated print versions of each title of the CFR. APHIS’ titles of the CFR are updated on January 1 of each year, and the printed copies are normally available a few months later. This means that most printed copies of the CFR are out of date as soon as they are printed, since rules are normally published between January and April. The electronic CFR (eCFR), available at www.ecfr.gov, is updated daily and is normally current to within a few days. It also allows for electronic search of the CFR, which the printed copies do not.
Because the CFR collects all the rules published on a given topic, it acts as a centralized resource for the conditions that govern the importation of animals and plants and their products. Either those conditions are contained in the CFR, or the CFR directs the reader to where those conditions can be found. This system means that you can be sure where to find the documents that contain the relevant requirements.
The Code of Federal Regulations contains all of APHIS’ rules on sanitary and phytosanitary issues. It can be accessed in both print and electronic forms.
To continue, select Topic 5 from the Topics menu above or click here.