User Fees: Agricultural Quarantine and Inspection Services; Technical Amendment

Document 2025-15539 is a Final Rule published by the Department of Agriculture in the Federal Register on August 15, 2025, with an effective date of August 15, 2025. On May 7, 2024, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service published in the Federal Register a final rule amending the user fee regulations associated with the agricultural quarantine and inspection (AQI) program. The final rule went into effect on October 1, 2024, with the exception of the removal of an exemption from paying the AQI user fee for commercial aircraft with 64 or fewer seats meeting certain conditions. The removal of the exemption would have taken effect on April 1, 2025. On March 21, 2025, we published a notice in the Federal Register delaying the effective date of the removal of the exemption from paying the AQI user fee for small commercial passenger aircraft, until June 2, 2025, and requesting information. As a result of the comments we received on that notice, we decided to delay implementation of the removal of the exemption indefinitely. However, as a result of an editorial error, the exemption had already been removed from the regulations. In this document, we are amending the regulations to restore the exemption from paying the AQI user fee for commercial aircraft with 64 or fewer seats meeting certain conditions. View the original at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/15/2025-15539/user-fees-agricultural-quarantine-and-inspection-services-technical-amendment.

No. Document 2025-15539 is not classified as economically significant under Executive Order 12866. Economically significant rules require OIRA review and are estimated to have impacts of $100 million or more per year.