The White House waited until eight days before Christmas to reveal its new regulatory �reform� plan instructing agencies to review and complete action plans on a regulatory hit list of over 200 suggestions for reversing protections of the public interest, mostly proposed by industry lobbyists.

Shortly before the holidays, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a final version of its proposal to establish government-wide requirements for when and how federal agencies use scientific peer review. The "Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review" makes modest changes to the revised proposal that OMB published April 28, 2004 with only a 30-day comment period. OMB’s announcement did not explain the seven-month delay until just before the holiday season, when many academics, scientists and public interest groups concerned with the policy were away on vacations.

Health and environmental data on thousands of highly produced chemicals will be publicly available as early as next year, according to a status report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency has enlisted industry and environmental organizations to help collect the data as part of the High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge.