To comply with the National Performance Review (NPR) directive to achieve regulatory reform, the Department of Agriculture is continuing an important project to eliminate unnecessary regulations and improve those remaining by making them easier to understand and more user friendly. To date, the Department's review and revision effort has resulted in actions on over 60 percent of our NPR commitment to regulatory reform. When the results are fully implemented, the Department will have eliminated or reinvented 81 percent of its regulatory holdings in the CFR.
Positive changes resulting from regulatory actions proposed as well as completed by the Department will reach into every corner of the country and, both directly and indirectly, touch the lives of most Americans. Those programs that offer support to specific rural and urban segments of the economy are being simplified so that persons who qualify for assistance, or some other form of participation, will find less burdensome rules. Yet high standards will be set for efficient and effective program management that makes the best use of taxpayer dollars. Farmers, ranchers, and others involved in U.S. agriculture will find significant changes in all aspects of regulations that govern their interaction with the Department and its programs. Farm credit, a mainstay of the Nation's rural economy, will be significantly streamlined by the merger of cumbersome loan-making regulations with forms and certifications simplified to facilitate the application process. The Department is undertaking a number of actions in the regulation of commodities that will increase efficiency, improve customer service, reduce intervention in markets, and allow States to assume greater responsibility in controlling the spread of plant pests or disease. The Department is also improving the regulations that serve rural communities. Several changes are being made in the rural housing programs. Nutrition programs are also being strengthened, their efficiency improved, and their integrity enhanced through regulatory reform. In the area of food safety, the Department has undertaken a significant reinvention of all policies and relationships with industry and the public. There are several important reinvention plans in the natural resources and conservation area.
Reducing Paperwork Burden on Farmers
The Department has made substantial progress under the guidance of the Chief Information Officer in implementing the goal of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 to reduce the burden of information collection on the public by 25 percent by 1999. Further reductions will result from program changes, improved efficiency in the collection and management of information, and adjustments in the burden.
The Department established a Paperwork Reduction Implementation Team (PRIT), under the guidance of the Food and Agriculture Council, based on direction from the Secretary of Agriculture, to create a plan to reduce the paperwork burden on farmers. The PRIT has developed a USDA Paperwork Reduction Framework--a set of standards and guidelines for the Service Center agencies. Agencies and other teams will use the framework in their execution of their paperwork reduction initiatives.
Simultaneously, the PRIT, working with the Service Center agencies, continue ongoing initiatives to reduce burden as quickly as possible. These agencies are working together through business process reengineering initiatives to address customer needs by integrating Agency processes to streamline information collected from the farmer. This will eliminate redundant data collection, provide direct access to benefit and eligibility information, and reduce and simplify the number of regulations and forms.
The Role of Regulations
The programs of the Department are diverse and far reaching, as are the regulations that attend their delivery. Regulations codify how the Department will conduct its business, including the specifics of access to, and eligibility for, USDA programs. Regulations also specify the behavior of State and local governments, private industry, businesses, and individuals that is necessary to comply with their provisions. The diversity in purpose and outreach of our programs contributes significantly to the USDA being at or near the top of the list of departments that produce the largest number of regulations annually. These regulations range from nutrition standards for the school lunch program, to natural resource and environmental measures governing national forest usage and soil conservation, to regulations protecting American agribusiness (the largest dollar value contributor to exports) from the ravages of domestic or foreign plant or animal pestilence and they extend from farm to supermarket to ensure the safety, quality, and availability of the Nation's food supply. Many regulations function in a dynamic environment which requires their periodic modification. The factors determining various entitlement, eligibility, and administrative criteria often change from year to year. Therefore, many significant regulations must be revised annually to reflect changes in economic and market benchmarks. Almost all legislation that affects departmental programs has accompanying regulatory needs, often with a significant impact. The Farm Bill of 1996, Public Law 104-127, has considerable regulatory consequences. This key legislation affects most agencies of USDA and will result in the addition of new programs, the deletion of others, and modification to still others.
Administration Guidance--USDA Response
In developing and implementing regulations, the Department has been guided by the regulatory principles and philosophy set forth by the President in Executive Order 12866 ``Regulatory Planning and Review.'' As prescribed in the Order, the USDA is committed to ``promulgate only those regulations that are required by law, are necessary to interpret the law, or are made necessary by compelling public need.'' When considering a rulemaking action, the Department will assess the costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives, including the alternative of not regulating. Our analysis will consider the costs and benefits of both quantifiable and qualitative measures and opt for approaches that maximize net benefits.
Major Regulatory Priorities
Five agencies are represented in this regulatory plan. They include the Farm Service Agency, the Food and Nutrition Service, the Forest Service, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, and the Risk Management Agency.
This document represents summary information on prospective significant regulations as called for in Executive Order 12866. A brief comment on each of the five agencies appears below, which summarizes the Agency mission and its key regulatory priorities. The Agency summaries are followed by the regulatory plan entries.
Farm Service Agency
Mission: The Farm Service Agency (FSA) administers contract commodity, conservation, farm loan, commodity purchase, and emergency loan programs, as prescribed by various statutes, in order to support farming certainty and flexibility while ensuring compliance with farm conservation and wetland protection requirements and to assist owners and operators of farms and ranches to conserve and enhance soil, water, and related natural resources.
Priorities: FSA's priority for 1999 will be to continue to implement these programs with emphasis on enhanced service to our customers.
The most significant FSA regulations are those that operate the contract commodity programs and farm loans. The farm programs were significantly changed by the 1996 Farm Bill. The Farm Bill instituted the contract commodity programs, which utilize production flexibility contracts and marketing assistance loans in place of the deficiency payments and production adjustment of past programs. The contracts removed the link between income support payments and farm prices by providing for seven annual fixed but declining payments. FSA's farm loan programs make and guarantee loans to family farmers and ranchers to purchase farm land and finance agricultural production. While the contract commodity and farm loan programs have significant economic impact, they are driven by specific statutory requirements. Therefore, they are noted here to acknowledge their significance in the overall USDA regulatory plan, but are not further listed in the body of the plan which appears below.
In addition to its normal program operations, FSA has initiated a business process reengineering project to streamline its farm loanmaking and servicing regulations and reduce the information collection burden associated with the programs. FSA plans to reduce the number of CFR parts containing its farm loan program regulations by approximately 70 percent. In addition, FSA hopes to achieve a significant reduction in the total number of CFR pages by removing administrative provisions and internal policy and eliminating duplicative material. Furthermore, FSA intends to improve the clarity of the farm loan program regulations by following the guidelines established in the President's Plain Language in Government Writing Initiative. Current plans are to publish as a final rule the first revised CFR part, containing the guaranteed loanmaking and servicing requirements, in December 1998.
Food and Nutrition Service
Mission: The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) provides children and needy families better access to food and a more healthful diet through food assistance programs and comprehensive nutrition education efforts.
Priorities: In addition to responding to provisions of legislation authorizing its programs and recent welfare reform provisions, FNS has established broad strategic policy goals aimed at improving the nutritional well being of its clients and improving program integrity. These goals are:
¤ Healthful diets for school-age children. The two major programs serving this goal are the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP). This goal reflects the Agency's recognition of its national health and nutrition education responsibilities for school-age children.
¤ Enhanced food and nutrition security for low-income Americans. This goal represents both the continuation of the Food Stamp Program's traditional role in providing food assistance, as well as improving program administration to meet future challenges. Welfare reform legislation modified the eligibility criteria for food stamp benefits, increased State design options, and maintained the overall mission to provide food and nutrition security for low-income Americans participating in the program.
¤ Improved nutritional status and health of low-income women, infants, and children. This goal reflects the mission of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). It emphasizes nutrition education, healthy infant feeding practices, and positive health outcomes while seeking to enhance program efficiency and integrity.
¤ Improved nutritional status of childen in day-care settings. FNS seeks to improve the nutritional quality of meals served under its Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), program access for children from low-income families, and program integrity.
¤ Low-income children consume nutritious lunches when school meals are not available. Through its Summer Food Service Program, FNS seeks to extend its commitment to children from low-income households during summer months when school meals are not available.
¤ Improved quality of food distribution commodities and service. FNS continues its support for agricultural markets with an emphasis on more healthful commodities and improved program efficiency through automation, reduced Federal and State inventories, and timely deliveries in its food distribution. It also takes the lead in USDA's gleaning intitiative for foods used in the FNS feeding and food distribution programs.
Forest Service
Mission: The mission of the Forest Service is to sustain the health, productivity, and diversity of the Nation's forest and rangelands to meet the needs of present and future generations. This includes protecting and managing the National Forest and Grasslands; providing technical and financial assistance to States, communities, and private forest landowners; and developing and providing scientific and technical assistance and scientific exchanges in support of international forest and range conservation.
Priorities: The President's environmental program includes incorporation of the principles of ecosystem management in natural resource planning for all units of the National Forest System. In support of that effort, proposed regulations will be published governing how future changes in direction will be made and how those changes will be documented. Guided by the recommendations of a recently chartered Committee of Scientists, the regulation also will streamline planning and update planning procedures and requirements to reflect Agency and public experience gained over the last 15 years. Emphasis will be placed on assessing ecosystem health through ecoregional and watershed-level assessments. The rule also will strengthen public participation opportunities in planning, as well as give greater emphasis to interaction and dialog with Federal, State, local, and Indian tribal governments.
Food Safety and Inspection Service
Mission: The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for ensuring the Nation's meat, poultry, and egg products are safe, wholesome, and properly packaged and labeled.
Priorities: FSIS is continuing its comprehensive review of its existing regulations in light of the July 25, 1996, final rule, ``Pathogen Reduction; Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) Systems,'' requiring that official meat and poultry establishments develop and implement HACCP, a science-based process control system for food safety. Establishments are responsible for developing and implementing HACCP plans incorporating the controls they have determined are necessary and appropriate to produce safe products. HACCP places the responsibility for food safety firmly on meat and poultry establishments but enables them to tailor their control systems to the needs of particular plants and processes and to take advantage of the latest technological innovations.
FSIS must revise its existing regulations to be consistent with HACCP principles; many are ``command-and-control'' regulations, prescribing the exact means establishments must use to ensure the safety of their products. Some specify, for example, precise cooking time-and-temperature combinations. Further, many of these regulations require prior approval of equipment and procedures by FSIS, thereby assigning the Agency responsibility for the means used by establishments to comply with the regulations. As a general matter, command-and-control regulations are incompatible with HACCP because they deprive plants of the flexibility to innovate and undercut the clear delineation of responsibility for food safety. Therefore, to prepare for the implementation of HACCP, FSIS is conducting a thorough review of its current regulations and, to the maximum extent possible, converting its command-and-control regulations to performance standards. Some of the Agency's recent and planned initiatives, both to convert command-and-control regulations to performance standards and to generally streamline and simplify the regulations, follow:
¤ FSIS is converting to performance standards the current regulations governing the production of cooked beef products, uncured meat patties, and certain poultry products.
¤ FSIS has proposed streamlining, consolidating, and making consistent with HACCP the rules of practice regarding suspension and withdrawal of inspection.
¤ FSIS has proposed to consolidate the sanitation regulations into a single part of the Code of Federal Regulations applicable to both meat and poultry establishments, eliminate unnecessary differences between the meat and poultry sanitation requirements, and convert many of the highly prescriptive requirements to performance standards.
¤ FSIS will be proposing to remove most requirements pertaining to partial quality control programs.
Risk Management Agency
Mission: The Risk Management Agency (RMA) provides and supports cost-effective means of managing risk for agricultural producers in order to improve the economic stability of agriculture.
Priorities: RMA's priority for 1999 will be to strengthen the safety net for agricultural producers through sound risk management programs and education by:
¤ Developing new programs and improving existing programs to ensure producers have economically sound risk management tools available to meet their needs;
¤ Promoting a risk management education effort to increase producers' awareness and effective utilization of risk management tools;
¤ Fostering a better public-private partnership with the crop insurance industry to facilitate the delivery of actuarially sound and affordable risk management products to the Nation's farmers;
¤ Providing reinsurance in circumstances where private crop insurance companies cannot accept excessive program risk; and
¤ Improving existing management programs to ensure wise management and protection of taxpayer funds.