FOOD SUPPLY - Congress trying to guard

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Thursday October 25 6:30 PM ET

Congress Trying to Guard Food Supply

By PHILIP BRASHER, AP Farm Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - After attacks from the air and the mail, officials worry the nation's food supply could be next. The government considers the most likely targets to be fruits and vegetables that people eat raw, and cattle that could be infected with fast-spreading foot-and-mouth disease.

To deter potential terrorists, Congress is considering proposals to hire hundreds of new food inspectors and lab technicians and empower the government to seize or recall tainted products and inspect food makers' records.

The Agriculture Department has put veterinarians on alert and wants more guards to protect its labs around the country that work with food pathogens.

``Food security can no longer be separated from our national security,'' Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday.

Terrorists could poison a limited amount of food and still ``create a general atmosphere of fear and anxiety without actually having to carry out indiscriminate civilian-oriented attacks,'' Peter Chalk of the Rand Corp. think tank recently told Congress.

Fresh produce may be the food most vulnerable to attack because it's often eaten raw and is subject to little inspection. The only known terrorist attack on U.S. food occurred in the 1980s, when a cult in Oregon contaminated salad bars with salmonella bacteria.

There are dozens of labs that work with pathogens, but terrorists wouldn't necessarily need to get their bacteria there. Salmonella can be found on supermarket chicken and grown in a lab. A strain of E. coli is commonly found in cattle manure.

But it would take a lot of bacteria to contaminate food, and some bugs are dangerous primarily to people who are sick or old, said Susan Sumner, an authority on food safety at Virginia Tech.

``You could pour it on stuff in the supermarket. But if your goal is to disrupt the economy and make a lot of people sick, you're not going to do it that way,'' she said.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, meeting with Republican lawmakers Thursday, assured them the food supply is safe.

``We have been looking at where the critical points are and taking all the precautions that we can in dealing with the private sector,'' she said.

Her biggest concern, she said, is that terrorists would contaminate a big feedlot with the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease. It's harmless to humans but it could be devastating economically. This year's outbreak in Britain forced the slaughter of nearly 4 million animals.

The virus is not found in the United States outside of a high-security Agriculture Department lab in New York, so a terrorist would have to bring it into the country, possibly in contaminated meat.

The Bush administration has asked Congress for $106 million in emergency spending for food and agriculture security.

FDA wants to hire 410 new inspectors, lab specialists and other personnel to check fruits, vegetables and other products, primarily imports, and buy additional equipment to detect pathogens. FDA currently inspects just 1 percent of imports. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., is proposing a $3.1 billion biosecurity plan that will exceed the administration's request for food safety, aides said.

``There are clear gaps in food regulation that would certainly give the opportunity for intentionally contaminated food to be shipped widely around the U.S,'' said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. ``Food moves quickly and is consumed quickly so in a short amount of time it can cause a significant outbreak.''

For consumers, the best defense against such bioterrorism is to cook foods properly, or at least to peel or wash them, said Michael Doyle, a food safety expert at the University of Georgia.

``Good food handling practices are to be considered all the time, but more so today,'' he said. ``We as consumers do have a lot of control over the safety of the food we eat in that we can cook food.''

The threat of bioterrorism has renewed a push in Congress by Durbin and others to consolidate the government's food inspection system, now divided between FDA and the Agriculture Department.

FDA, which is responsible for safeguarding nearly all foods other than meat and poultry, has 750 inspectors to check 55,000 food plants. USDA has 10 times as many inspectors for just 6,000 facilities.

``The U.S., more by luck than design, has not experienced a major agricultural or food-related disaster in recent memory,'' Chalk said.

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-- Anonymous, October 25, 2001

Answers

Wednesday October 24, 8:52 PM

EU mulls potential terror threat to Europe's food supply

BRUSSELS, Oct 24 (AFP) -

While the world's attention is riveted by the spread of anthrax by mail, EU experts are tackling an even more sinister scenario -- a terrorist strike on the foods that Europeans eat.

Meetings this week of specialist committees better known for tackling mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease will be delving into the risks that bio-terrorism could pose to Europe's crops and livestock.

"The intention is to begin a process for the urgent review of our present defense systems against any potential bio-terrorism attack in the areas of animal and food production," EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne has said.

Speaking to EU farm ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Byrne raised the specter of herds being infected with contagious viruses, or crops being sprayed with harmful chemicals.

While insisting that he did not want to be alarmist, Byrne said he has already pursued "this very sensitive dossier" with US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and with health ministers in most of the 15 EU member states.

"This is all part of the process of reviewing the level of preparedness in the EU against such threats, both at the level of the member states and at the community level," he said.

Discussing the risks this week is the Standing Veterinary Committee, a blue-ribbon panel of top vets from each of the EU member states whose scientific advice is closely listened to by EU farm ministers.

It played a key role in Europe's reponse to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain earlier this year, and with the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- mad cow disease -- to human health.

The lesser-known Standing Committee on Foodstuffs is also reviewing the bio-terrorism question this week, Byrne said.

"The experience of recent years with foot and mouth disease and classical swine fever highlights the huge damage which can result from the introduction of viruses against which our animal population is vulnerable," Byrne said.

"Food production and distribution systems have also shown their potential vulnerability," he said. "We cannot ignore these warning signs."

Simon Whitby, a research fellow at Bradford University's peace studies department who has written about bioterrorism and agriculture, said an attack on farms was unlikely to go unnoticed for very long.

Industrialized economies, he said in a telephone interview Wednesday, already have sophisticated procedures in place to constantly monitor the quality of produce going into the food chain.

"But in terms of economic impact, it would be devastating" if just a small-scale attack took place, as it would rattle public confidence in the food supply and wreak havoc in the farming industry, Whitby said.

"It's most certainly a serious concern for governments," he said.

Last week in Washington, Veneman announced that the Bush administration was asking Congress for 45.2 million dollars for "biosecurity" programs in the wake of the September 22 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2001


Ok, to guard my farm you can send me a really nice looking rugged man about 6ft, with a good body that can ride a horse and rope a cow, unattached of course, about 45-55, seldom drinks, doesn't smoke, .........

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2001

And you think if we found one of them, we'd send him away??? Davidddddddd!!! Look out, Beckie's feeling frisky again!

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2001

"Her biggest concern, she said, is that terrorists would contaminate a big feedlot with the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease."

Since this didn't happen last year, I don't believe it was in the works and I can't take it seriously as a terrorist concern.

(And, no, I won't deny that my freezer is full just in case...)

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2001


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