proposed rule lists of regions classified with respect to certain animal diseases and states approved to receive certain imported horses docket no. aphis-2009-0035 the animal and plant health inspection service is proposing to remove lists of regions classified with respect to certain animal diseases and pests from our animal and animal product import regulations and instead post them to the animal and plant health inspection services aphis website. the regulations would provide the web address and would explain aphis criteria and process for adding a region to or removing a region from each of the lists. the technical criteria aphis uses to evaluate whether a region should be added to or removed from a list would not change. we are also proposing to remove lists of states approved to receive horses imported from foreign regions where we consider contagious equine metritis to exist and instead post approved states to our web site. the criteria for approving a state would not change. the proposed action would allow more timely changes to the lists. this should be particularly useful when a region must be added to a list of regions affected with a disease. aphis considers a disease to exist in a region when we receive reports of an outbreak of the disease in the region from veterinary officials of the national government of the region and or the world organization for animal health the oie or from another source that the administrator determines to be reliable e.g. aphis inspectors based in foreign countries. as now when aphis determines that a disease is present in a region and presents a potential threat to animal health in the united states we would take immediate action to restrict imports from that region. we would no longer need to follow that action with an interim rule in the federal register to change text in the regulations. instead we would immediately list the region on the aphis web site and announce the listing through a notice rather than a rule in the federal register. the notice would provide an opportunity for public comment