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Larry Hawkins  (916) 930-5509

STATEMENT BY APHIS ADMINISTRATOR CINDY SMITH ON THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES’ REVIEW OF APHIS’ DRAFT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS TO RECLASSIFY LIGHT BROWN APPLE MOTH AS A NONACTIONABLE PEST

Sept. 14, 2009

“Today, the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NRC) released a report and recommendation on its review of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services’ (APHIS) draft response to two petitions requesting that the agency reclassify the light brown apple moth (LBAM) as a nonactionable/nonreportable pest.  Since LBAM was detected in California in 2007, we have worked cooperatively with the California Department of Food and Agriculture to prevent the pest from spreading and becoming established.

APHIS sought this independent, third-party evaluation of its draft response and asked the NRC’s selected committee of independent subject matter experts to provide us with an objective, technical evaluation.  We greatly appreciate their careful review of the draft response, along with their analysis and critiques to strengthen it.  We are pleased that the NRC’s committee determined that we are within our authority to continue to classify LBAM as quarantine significant/actionable pest.

APHIS has revised its draft response to incorporate the NRC recommendations and is making it available on our Web site.  We will continue to review and analyze the NRC report for opportunities to further develop the economic and scientific evidence in our response to the petitions.  

In the coming weeks, we also plan to publish the draft response in the Federal Register to ensure that the public and all interested parties can formally provide their comments and feedback.  We are very interested in hearing from the stakeholders, the scientific community and the public on this issue.  We will review those comments before making our final decision on LBAM’s quarantine status.”

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