- Industry: Government
- Number of terms: 41534
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
This 1993 law (P.L. 103-62) requires most federal agencies, including USDA , to develop and adhere to new planning, evaluation, and reporting requirements, such as mission statements, 6-year strategic plans, annual performance plans, and annual performance reports. These documents must include explicit goals and objectives, descriptions of how they will be achieved, and establishment of measurable performance indicators to determine success, among other things. Because GPRA requirements must be tied closely to annual budgeting, and because some in Congress have made oversight of the Act a high priority, USDA and its agencies have devoted considerable time and resources to implementation.
Industry:Agriculture
With respect to food and agriculture programs, these laws are designed to encourage the donation of food and grocery products to nonprofit organizations serving the needy by minimizing the risks of legal actions against donors and distributors of the foods. The Model Good Samaritan Food Donation Act was amended and revised in 1996 and renamed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act (P.L. 104-210) in memory of the late Congressman who sponsored and championed Good Samaritan laws. It excludes from civil or criminal liability a person or nonprofit food organization that, in good faith, donates or distributes donated foods for food relief. Protection does not apply to an injury or death resulting from gross neglect or intentional misconduct and does not supersede state or local health regulations.
Industry:Agriculture
Standards published in the Code of Federal Regulations and used by the Food and Drug Administration to ensure the quality of marketed products and that products are produced under sanitary conditions. Any FDA-regulated product can be designated adulterated if the manufacturing methods or facilities for processing do not conform with GMPs. GMPs are developed through a consultative process between the FDA and the affected industry.
Industry:Agriculture
A network of satellites that can be used by ground-based units to precisely determine their location by latitude and longitude. GPS is part of the infrastructure required to operate geographic information systems that are used to practice precision farming.
Industry:Agriculture
Collecting unharvested crops from fields or obtaining unused agricultural products from farmers, processors, or retailers, usually for distribution to food banks and charitable feeding organizations.
Industry:Agriculture
Any compound that kills disease-causing microorganisms. Germicides must be registered by the Environmental Protection Agency as pesticides.
Industry:Agriculture
Computerized systems used to compile, retrieve, analyze, and display spatially referenced data. Farming activities that utilize GIS typically include harvesting, fertilizing, pest control, seeding, and irrigation. Use of GIS is called precision farming.
Industry:Agriculture
All the genetic material in the chromosomes of a particular organism. USDA’s research agencies have a Plant Genome Mapping Program to identify, characterize, and map the position of agriculturally important genes on the chromosomes of plants grown as crops or trees in order to better use these genes for improving the characteristics of the plant (resistance to disease, higher yields, etc.) through breeding.
Industry:Agriculture
A term, currently used most often in international trade discussions, that designates crops that carry new traits that have been inserted through advanced genetic engineering methods (e.g., Flavr Saver tomato, Roundup Ready soybeans, Bt cotton, Bt corn). GMO crops are meeting resistance from some trading partners, particularly the European Union, that are responding in turn to consumer concerns over public health and environmental safety aspects of GMOs. USDA also is being pressured to declare GMOs unacceptable in the proposed National Organic Program. The U.S. scientific community maintains that research shows GMOs to be safe and that the regulatory process for their commercial approval, which includes USDA, Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, is an adequate safeguard against any potential problems.
Industry:Agriculture
A regulatory category created for a group of food additives that were exempted from the more rigorous regulatory requirements for food additives in the 1958 Food Additives Amendment to the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938. A substance was accorded GRAS status, if it was generally recognized by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate its safety, as having been adequately shown through scientific procedures or experience based on common use in food to be safe under the conditions of its intended use.
Industry:Agriculture
