2017-20239. Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review; Comment Request; Recordkeeping and Records Access Requirements for Food Facilities

AGENCY:

Food and Drug Administration, HHS.

ACTION:

Notice.

SUMMARY:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing that a proposed collection of information has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

DATES:

Fax written comments on the collection of information by October 23, 2017.

ADDRESSES:

To ensure that comments on the information collection are received, OMB recommends that written comments be faxed to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OMB, Attn: FDA Desk Officer, Fax: [phone], or emailed to [e-mail]. All comments should be identified with the OMB control number 0910-0560. Also include the FDA docket number found in brackets in the heading of this document.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Ila S. Mizrachi, Office of Operations, Food and Drug Administration, Three White Flint North, 10A-12M, 11601 Landsdown St., North Bethesda, MD 20852, 301-796-7726, [e-mail].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

In compliance with 44 U.S.C. 3507, FDA has submitted the following proposed collection of information to OMB for review and clearance.

Recordkeeping and Records Access Requirements for Food Facilities—21 CFR 1.337, 1.345, and 1.352

OMB Control Number 0910-0560—Extension

The Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (the Bioterrorism Act) added section 414 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the FD&C Act) (21 U.S.C. 350c), which requires that persons who manufacture, process, pack, hold, receive, distribute, transport, or import food in the United States establish and maintain records identifying the immediate previous sources and immediate subsequent recipients of food. Sections 1.326 through 1.363 of our regulations (21 CFR 1.326 through 1.363) set forth the requirements for recordkeeping and records access. The requirement to establish and maintain records improves our ability to respond to, and further contain, threats of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals from accidental or deliberate contamination of food.

Information maintained under these regulations will help us identify and locate quickly contaminated or potentially contaminated food and inform the appropriate individuals and food facilities of specific terrorist threats. Our regulations require that records for non-transporters include the name and full contact information of sources, recipients, and transporters; an adequate description of the food, including the quantity and packaging; and the receipt and shipping dates (§§ 1.337 and 1.345). Required records for transporters include the names of consignor and consignee, points of origin and destination, date of shipment, number of packages, description of freight, route of movement and name of each carrier participating in the transportation, and transfer points through which shipment moved (§ 1.352). Existing records may be used if they contain all of the required information and are retained for the required time period.

Section 101 of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) (Pub. L. 111-353) amended section 414(a) of the FD&C Act and expanded our access to records. Specifically, FSMA expanded our access to records beyond records relating to the specific suspect article of food to records relating to any other article of food that we reasonably believe is likely to be affected in a similar manner. In addition, we can access records if we believe that there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to an article of food, and any other article of food that we reasonably believe is likely to be affected in a similar manner, will cause serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals. To gain access to these records, our officer or employee must present appropriate credentials and a written notice, at reasonable times and within reasonable limits and in a reasonable manner.

On February 23, 2012, we issued an interim final rule in the Federal Register (77 FR 10658) (the 2012 IFR) amending § 1.361 to be consistent with the current statutory language in section 414(a) of the FD&C Act, as amended by section 101 of FSMA. In the 2012 IFR, we concluded that the information collection provisions of § 1.361 were exempt from OMB review under 44 U.S.C. 3518(c)(1)(B)(ii) and 5 CFR 1320.4(a)(2) as collections of information obtained during the conduct of a civil action to which the United States or any official or agency thereof is a party, or during the conduct of an administrative action, investigation, or audit involving an agency against specific individuals or entities (77 FR 10658 at 10661). The interim final rule was made final, without change, on April 4, 2014 (79 FR 18799). The regulations at 5 CFR 1320.3(c) provide that the exception in 5 CFR 1320.4(a)(2) applies during the entire course of the investigation, audit, or action, but only after a case file or equivalent is opened with respect to a particular party. Such a case file would be opened as part of the request to access records under § 1.361. Accordingly, we have not included an estimate of burden hours associated with § 1.361 in table 1.

Description of Respondents: Persons that manufacture, process, pack, hold, receive, distribute, transport, or import food in the United States are required to establish and maintain records, including persons that engage in both interstate and intrastate commerce.

In the Federal Register of June 14, 2017 (82 FR 27263), FDA published a 60-day notice requesting public comment on the proposed collection of information. FDA received one comment. The comment was supportive of the information collection but requested that FDA coordinate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. FDA addresses issues regarding duplication of information collection in question 4 of the Agency's supporting statement.

FDA estimates the burden of this collection of information as follows:

Table 1—Estimated Annual Recordkeeping Burden ¹

21 CFR section	Number of recordkeepers	Number of records per recordkeeper	Total annual records	Average burden per recordkeeping	Total hours
1.337, 1.345, and 1.352 (Records maintenance)	379,493	1	379,493	13.228	5,020,000
1.337, 1.345, and 1.352 (Learning for new firms)	18,975	1	18,975	4.790	90,890
Total					5,110,890
1 There are no capital costs or operating and maintenance costs associated with this collection of information.

This estimate is based on our estimate of the number of facilities affected by the final rule entitled “Establishment and Maintenance of Records Under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002,” published in the Federal Register of December 9, 2004 (69 FR 71562 at 71650). With regard to records maintenance, we estimate that approximately 379,493 facilities will spend 13.228 hours collecting, recording, and checking for accuracy the limited amount of additional information required by the regulations, for a total of 5,020,000 hours annually. In addition, we estimate that new firms entering the affected businesses will incur a burden from learning the regulatory requirements and understanding the records required for compliance. In this regard, we estimate the number of new firms entering the affected businesses to be 5 percent of 379,493, or 18,975 firms. Thus, we estimate that approximately 18,975 facilities will spend 4.790 hours learning about the recordkeeping and records access requirements, for a total of 90,890 hours annually. We estimate that approximately the same number of firms (18,975) will exit the affected businesses in any given year, resulting in no growth in the number of total firms reported on line 1 of table 1. Therefore, the total annual recordkeeping burden is estimated to be 5,110,890 hours.

Dated: September 15, 2017.

Anna K. Abram,

Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Planning, Legislation, and Analysis.