§9203 Evaluation and Research Plan

Summary

At least once every two years, the Secretary of Agriculture must work with the Secretary of Homeland Security and other federal leaders to do three things for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility: check how the facility is performing; create, update every two years, and publish a research plan based on priority risk and threat assessments that covers things like developing veterinary countermeasures for new foreign and transboundary animal diseases, improving testing and diagnostics and evaluating threats and countermeasures for animal and zoonotic diseases, helping with agriculture and food-sector vulnerability checks, filling gaps in federal animal and zoonotic disease research without duplicating existing work, and other uses the Secretary finds appropriate; and send that research plan to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the Senate, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs of the Senate, the Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives, and the Committee on Homeland Security of the House of Representatives. The research plan must be published and submitted in an unclassified form that the public can access, but the submission to Congress may include a classified annex if there is sensitive information.