7 U.S.C. § 8914 — Agriculture and food defense

(a) Definitions — This subsection defines terms used in the section: "animal" and "pest" borrow meanings from other listed sections; a "disease or pest of concern" is a transboundary or established disease or pest likely to seriously threaten the food and agriculture system enough to justify prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery efforts; an "established disease" is one that either threatens to become established in the U.S. or already has, as the Secretary defines it, and needs ongoing management; a "high-consequence plant transboundary disease" is a plant disease or pest from outside the U.S. that the Secretary decides is especially serious; "plant" borrows its meaning from another section; a "plant health management strategy" is a plan to control and wipe out a plant disease or pest outbreak, such as through chemical control, surveillance, diagnostic tools, and existing resistant seeds; a "transboundary disease" is a plant or animal disease or pest found in one or more other countries, including ones that started or arrived in the U.S.; and "veterinary countermeasure" borrows its meaning from another section. (b) Disease or Pest of Concern Response Planning (1) The Secretary must (A) create a list of diseases or pests of concern by building a process to gather expert opinions and evidence, and reviewing all available evidence — including classified information — and (B) update that list regularly. (2) Response plans: (A) The Secretary, working with federal, state, regional, and local officials, must develop one or more comprehensive strategic response plans for the listed diseases or pests. (B) The Secretary must give states or regions information to help them create their own response plan — describing, as appropriate, (i) how federal, state, tribal, and local governments and industry partners should interact and what roles they play, (ii) decision-making tools covering when to use veterinary countermeasures, plant health strategies, key resources, and when to shift from responding to an outbreak to managing an ongoing disease, (iii) performance measures to track readiness, run practice exercises, and keep improving the plan over time (including guiding future research), and (iv) regular updates based on exercises or new risk information. (3) The Secretary must help coordinate exercising these plans with other federal, state, regional, or local officials, as described in a related section. (c) National Plant Diagnostic Network (1) The Secretary must create a National Plant Diagnostic Network within USDA to monitor and diagnose plant health threats from diseases or pests of concern. (2) This Network must: (A) improve awareness, surveillance, quick identification, communication, warning, and diagnosis of plant health threats; (B) coordinate with USDA agencies and state agencies working on plant health; (C) set diagnostic lab standards; (D) create regional hubs across the country to support diagnostic labs for their region's crops and plants; and (E) build a national record-keeping system for existing and newly emerging diseases and pests. (3) Head of network: (A) The Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture leads the Network. (B) That head must (i) coordinate with land-grant colleges and universities to carry out the Network's requirements, including through cooperative agreements, (ii) partner with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on plant health regulation and inspection, and (iii) coordinate with other federal agencies, including sharing surveillance information. (4) The Secretary must try to set up cooperative agreements with land-grant colleges and universities that have the right skills and experience with plant diseases and pests of concern. (5) In addition to funding authorized elsewhere, Congress authorized $15,000,000 for each fiscal year from 2019 through 2023 for this Network. (d) National Plant Disease Recovery System (1) The Secretary must create a National Plant Disease Recovery System within USDA to do long-range strategic planning for recovering from serious plant diseases that come from outside the U.S. (2) This System must: (A) coordinate with the response plans for diseases or pests of concern; (B) make long-range plans to start future research on high-consequence plant transboundary diseases; (C) build research plans for long-term recovery; (D) plan to identify and use disease-resistant genetic material — specific genotypes, cultivars, breeding lines, and similar resources — to stabilize or improve crops; and (E) keep a watch list of high-consequence plant transboundary diseases to guide the long-range research plans in (B).