§9203 Evaluation and research plan

Summary

The Secretary of Agriculture must, at least every two years, work with the Secretary of Homeland Security and other federal agency leaders to do three things. First, review how the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility is performing. Second, create, update every two years, and publish a research plan for the facility based on priority risk and threat assessments. That plan covers several goals, including developing veterinary countermeasures for new foreign and transboundary animal diseases, improving testing, diagnostics, threat detection, and vulnerability assessments for animal and zoonotic diseases, helping the agriculture and food sectors with vulnerability work, filling gaps in federal animal and zoonotic disease research without duplicating other efforts, and other uses the Secretary approves. Third, send the plan to the Senate Committees on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and to the House Committees on Agriculture and on Homeland Security. The research plan must be published and submitted to Congress in an unclassified, public form. A separate classified annex can be included if there is sensitive information.