Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review; Comment Request; Preparing a Claim of Categorical Exclusion or an Environmental Assessment for Submission to the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

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 December 21, 2016.

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: 202-395-7285, or emailed to oira_submission@omb.eop.gov. All comments should be identified with the OMB control number 0910-0541. Also include the FDA docket number found in brackets in the heading of this document.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

FDA PRA Staff, Office of Operations, Food and Drug Administration, Three White Flint North, 10A63, 11601 Landsdown St., North Bethesda, MD 20852, PRAStaff@fda.hhs.gov.

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.

Preparing a Claim of Categorical Exclusion or an Environmental Assessment for Submission to the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition—OMB Control Number 0910-0541—Extension

As an integral part of its decision making process, we are obligated under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) to consider the environmental impact of our actions, including allowing notifications for food contact substances to become effective and approving food additive petitions, color additive petitions, GRAS affirmation petitions, requests for exemption from regulation as a food additive, and actions on certain food labeling citizen petitions, nutrient content claims petitions, and health claims petitions. In 1997, we amended our regulations in part 25 (21 CFR part 25) to provide for categorical exclusions for additional classes of actions that do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment (62 FR 40570, July 29, 1997). As a result of that rulemaking, we no longer routinely require submission of information about the manufacturing and production of our regulated articles. We also have eliminated the previously required Environmental Assessment (EA) and abbreviated EA formats from the amended regulations. Instead, we have provided guidance that contains sample formats to help industry submit a claim of categorical exclusion or an EA to the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). The guidance document entitled “Preparing a Claim of Categorical Exclusion or an Environmental Assessment for Submission to the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition” identifies, interprets, and clarifies existing requirements imposed by statute and regulation, consistent with the Council on Environmental Quality regulations (40 CFR 1507.3). It consists of recommendations that do not themselves create requirements; rather, they are explanatory guidance for our own procedures in order to ensure full compliance with the purposes and provisions of NEPA.

The guidance provides information to assist in the preparation of claims of categorical exclusion and EAs for submission to CFSAN. The following questions are covered in this guidance: (1) What types of industry-initiated actions are subject to a claim of categorical exclusion? (2) What must a claim of categorical exclusion include by regulation? (3) What is an EA? (4) When is an EA required by regulation and what format should be used? (5) What are extraordinary circumstances? and (6) What suggestions does CFSAN have for preparing an EA? Although CFSAN encourages industry to use the EA formats described in the guidance because standardized documentation submitted by industry increases the efficiency of the review process, alternative approaches may be used if these approaches satisfy the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations. We are requesting the extension of OMB approval for the information collection provisions in the guidance.

Description of Respondents: The likely respondents include businesses engaged in the manufacture or sale of food, food ingredients, and substances used in materials that come into contact with food.

In the Federal Register of August 25, 2016 (81 FR 58517), FDA published a 60-day notice requesting public comment on the proposed collection of information. No comments were received.

We estimate the burden of this collection of information as follows:

The estimates for respondents and numbers of responses are based on the annualized numbers of petitions and notifications qualifying for categorical exclusions listed under § 25.32(i) and (q) that the Agency has received in the past 3 years. Please note that, in the past 3 years, there have been no submissions that requested an action that would have been subject to the categorical exclusion in § 25.32(o). To avoid counting this burden as zero, we have estimated the burden for this categorical exclusion at one respondent making one submission a year for a total of one annual submission. The burden for submitting a categorical exclusion is captured under § 25.15(a) and (d).

To calculate the estimate for the hours per response values, we assumed that the information requested in this guidance for each of these three categorical exclusions is readily available to the submitter. For the information requested for the exclusion in § 25.32(i), we expect that submitter will need to gather information from appropriate persons in the submitter's company and prepare this information for attachment to the claim for categorical exclusion. We believe that this effort should take no longer than 8 hours per submission. For the information requested for the categorical exclusions in § 25.32(o) and (q), the submitters will almost always merely need to copy existing documentation and attach it to the claim for categorical exclusion. We believe that collecting this information should also take no longer than 8 hours per submission.

For the information requested for the environmental assessments in § 25.40(a) and (c), we believe that submitters will submit an average of 57 environmental assessments annually. We estimate that each submitter will prepare an EA within 3 weeks (120 hours) and revise the EA based on Agency comments (between 40 to 60 hours), for a total preparation time of 180 hours. The burden relating to this collection has been previously approved under OMB control number 0910-0322, “Environmental Impact Consideration—21 CFR part 25”. Upon approval of this collection of information by OMB, FDA will revise OMB control number 0910-0322 to remove the annual reporting burden for categorical exclusions and environmental assessment requests related to food additive petitions, color additive petitions, requests for exemption from regulation as a food additive, and submission of a food contact notification for a food contact substance. The future burden for categorical exclusion or environmental assessments for these requests will be captured under OMB control number 0910-0541, this collection of information.