Protecting The Food Chain

Peter Chalk, a bioterrorism expert at RAND, describes agro-terrorism as "the deliberate introduction of a disease agent, either against livestock or into the food chain, for purposes of undermining stability and/or generating fear." Some Americans could be poisoned by contaminated food, but the potential loss of confidence in the safety of U.S.-produced food and the domestic and international chaos that could cause appear to be an even bigger threat.

The most immediate issue appears to be the security of the Agriculture Department's laboratories that conduct research on animal disease. The anthrax strain that caused outbreaks of the disease in Florida, New York and Washington was identified many years ago at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has noted that he has fought for years with only modest success to convince congressional appropriators to upgrade the Ames facility and secure it. After the first anthrax-related death in Florida in October, Gov. Tom Vilsack, D-Iowa, called out the National Guard to increase security at the facility.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., has introduced a bill to spend $3.5 billion over 10 years to modernize and provide security for Agriculture Department research labs, including the Ames facility and one on Plum Island off the coast of New York, where research on infectious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease is conducted. The Roberts bill would also make grants to academic institutions to perform research on animal and plant diseases, develop vaccines and create a system of rapid response to agro-terrorism attacks. There is also the question of the adequacy of food safety inspections and coordination among the various agencies that have responsibility for food safety and the overall anti-bioterrorism effort. Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Elsa Murano has told Congress that both Agriculture, which inspects meat and poultry, and the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects most other foods, are well represented in White House meetings. But Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who oversees the FDA, has told Congress he lacks the personnel and authority to inspect imported food and protect U.S. consumers from intentionally contaminated products.

"Am I satisfied with the inspections we're doing? No," Thompson told Congress in October. "I am more fearful about this than anything else."

House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member John Dingell, D-Mich., has introduced a bill to increase border inspections of imported food and develop tests that would show within 60 minutes whether food had been contaminated with microbes or pesticides. Senate Governmental Affairs Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has renewed his call to merge the food safety functions now split among 12 agencies into a single food agency, but food processors and manufacturers still oppose the reorganization.

Chalk says he favors consolidating food safety operations in one agency because Americans would be more likely to report problems if there was a single agency to call, but he also raises many agro-terrorism issues that neither Congress nor the executive branch has discussed publicly. Chalk says American farm animals are more susceptible than in the past to disease. Animals are given steroids to increase the volume and quality of meat production, and are no longer vaccinated against certain lethal and highly contagious diseases. Many are kept so close together in dairies and feeding operations that disease can spread quickly. Chalk says it would be unrealistic to try to reverse such trends in large feeding operations, but that the operators of such facilities should be required to submit biosecurity plans to federal or state authorities and report on what they would do if the food under their control were intentionally contaminated.

But industry officials are likely to view such requirements as over-regulation. Bernadette Dunham, a lobbyist with the American Veterinary Medical Association, says there are neither state nor federal laws requiring food companies to take security measures. Both Dunham and Chalk say the poultry industry, which raises animals in buildings, has the strictest security, but Dunham acknowledges that the practices vary dramatically within the agricultural sector.

Chalk recommends more involvement of local and state veterinarians in Agriculture's emergency management system and "better coordinated and more standardized links" between U.S. agricultural agencies and criminal justice and intelligence services. Farmers, he says, need an insurance plan to compensate them in the event of a major agricultural disaster and to encourage them to report outbreaks quickly without fear of economic losses. These actions would improve American agricultural security, Chalk says. But he adds, "I don't think you could ever have a 100 percent secure agricultural system in the same way you could not have a 100 percent secure city."