[Senate Hearing 108-491]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-491
AGROTERRORISM: THE THREAT TO AMERICA'S BREADBASKET
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 19, 2003
__________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Tim Raducha-Grace, Professional Staff Member
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Beth M. Grossman, Minority Counsel
Amy B. Newhouse, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Akaka................................................ 3
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 8
Senator Durbin............................................... 25
WITNESSES
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Hon. James M. Talent, a U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri.. 5
Thomas McGinn, NCDA&CS, North Carolina Assistant State
Veterinarian, Department of Agriculture........................ 9
Peter Chalk, Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation, Santa Barbara
Office......................................................... 14
Colleen O'Keefe, D.V.M., M.S., Illinois Department of Agriculture 17
Hon. Penrose Albright, Assistant Secretary for Science and
Technology, Department of Homeland Security.................... 32
Lester M. Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D., Deputy Commissioner, Food and
Drug Administration............................................ 37
Charles Lambert, Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and
Regulatory Programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture,
accompanied by Merle Pierson, Deputy Under Secretary for Food
Safety, U.S. Department of Agriculture......................... 39
Alphabetical List of Wistnesses
Albright, Penrose:
Testimony.................................................... 32
Prepared Statement........................................... 88
Chalk, Peter:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared Statement........................................... 73
Crawford, Lester M., D.V.M., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 37
Prepared Statement........................................... 96
Lambert, Charles:
Testimony.................................................... 39
Prepared Statement........................................... 117
McGinn, Thomas, NCDA&CS:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared Statement with an atachment......................... 58
O'Keefe, Colleen, D.V.M., M.S.:
Testimony.................................................... 17
Prepared Statement........................................... 83
Talent, Hon. James M.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared Statement........................................... 53
APPENDIX
``Executive Summary--Stripe Rust of Wheat,'' by Dr. H.F.
Schwartz, Colorado State University, 11/18/03.................. 128
``Bioterrorism--A Threat to Agriculture and the Food Supply,''
Lawrence J. Dyckman, Director, Natural Resources and
Environment, prepared statement................................ 130
Questions and Responses for the Record submitted by Senator Akaka
for:
Dr. Peter Chalk.............................................. 147
Dr. Penrose Albright......................................... 151
Dr. Lester Crawford, from Amit K. Sachdev, Associate
Commissioner for Legislation, Food and Drug Administration,
Department of Health and Human Services.................... 153
Dr. Charles Lambert.......................................... 156
Chart submitted by Chairman Collins entitled ``Terrorists'
Interest in Agroterrorism''.................................... 160
Chart submitted by Chairman Collins entitled ``30 Agencies
Involved in Possible Foot and Mouth Disease Outbreak''......... 161
``The Midwest Alliance for Agroterrorism Countermeasures,'' by
Abner W. Womack, University of Missouri, Co-Director of the
Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, prepared
statement...................................................... 162
AGROTERRORISM: THE THREAT TO AMERICA'S BREADBASKET
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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Akaka, Durbin, and Lautenberg.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. Good morning. The Committee will come to
order.
Today, the Governmental Affairs Committee will examine the
vulnerability of America's agriculture and food industry to
terrorist attacks, what our Nation must do to defend against
agroterrorism, and how prepared we are to respond to such an
attack.
In the war on terrorism, the fields and pastures of
America's farmland might seem at first to have nothing in
common with the towers of the World Trade Center or our busy
seaports. In fact, however, they are merely different
manifestations of the same high priority target, the American
economy. Even as he celebrated the toppling of the pillars of
our economic power in the videotape released shortly after
September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden urged his followers to hit
hard the American economy at its heart and core.
Nothing is more at the heart and core of our economy than
our agriculture and food industry. It is a $1 trillion economic
sector that creates one-sixth of our gross national product.
One in eight Americans works in this sector. It is a sprawling
industry that encompasses a half-billion acres of croplands,
thousands of feedlots, countless processing plants, warehouses,
research facilities, and factories for ingredients, ready-to-
eat foods, and packaging, as well as the distribution network
that brings food from around the Nation and around the world
into the neighborhood markets and restaurants via virtually
every mode of transportation.
Hundreds of pages of U.S. agricultural documents recovered
from the al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan early last year are a
strong indication that terrorists recognize that our
agriculture and food industry provides tempting targets.
According to a new RAND Corporation report, which will be
released at today's hearing, the industry's size, scope, and
productivity, combined with our lack of preparedness, offer a
great many points of attack. Among our witnesses today will be
the report's author, Dr. Peter Chalk, a noted expert in
biowarfare.
Al Qaeda's interest in agriculture is not limited to
studying documents. These killers have practical, hands-on
knowledge. A CIA report released in May confirmed that the
September 11 hijackers expressed interest in crop dusting
aircraft, an effective and remarkably simple way to spread
biological agents, including plant and animal diseases, over
large areas.
We have also learned from the CIA that Osama bin Laden
himself has considerable knowledge of agriculture. He
controlled sunflower and corn markets in the Sudan in the mid-
1990's and may have used his farms to train terrorist
operatives.\1\
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\1\ Chart entitled ``Terrorists' Interest in Agroterrorism,''
appears in the Appendix on page 160.
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This horrific page is from The Poisoner's Handbook, an
underground pamphlet published here in the United States that
provides detailed instructions on how to make powerful plant,
animal, and human poisons from easily obtained ingredients and
how to disseminate them. It was found in Afghanistan in the
hands of a group known to support al Qaeda.
Last spring, a Saudi cleric who supports al Qaeda and has
since been arrested issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, that
justified the use of chemical and biological weapons, including
weapons that destroy tillage and stock.
To appreciate the potential impact of agroterrorism,
consider the economic and social impacts of naturally occurring
events of agricultural disease outbreaks. Here are just three
examples.
The 1997 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Taiwan had
an immediate cost to farmers of $4 billion. The estimated cost
to date of trade embargoes is $15 billion. The 2001 outbreak of
foot and mouth disease in Great Britain cost $1.6 billion in
compensation to farmers. The lost revenue to tourism, a
manifestation of the psychological impact, is estimated at $4
billion.
The 2002 outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease in California
led to huge economic losses for poultry farmers and the
quarantine of 46,000 square miles. Included in this area was
the U.S. Army National Training Center at Fort Irwin.
But to call these three cases naturally occurring ignores
an important point. Each was caused by human error, by
carelessness, by a lapse in security. In Taiwan, it was one
infected pig imported from Hong Kong. In Britain, it was one
batch of infected feed at one farm. In California, it was one
infected rooster smuggled across the border from Mexico. The
ease with which terrorists could replicate these events is
alarming.
Since September 11, we have done much to make our Nation
more secure. Nevertheless, much of America remains unprotected.
A vital sector remains largely unguarded and an attack could be
devastating.
As we will hear today, an attack upon just one segment of
the food supply could cripple our economy, require geographic
quarantines, cause massive social upheaval, and, of course,
produce illness and death.
To prevent a future attack, we must first understand the
danger. The RAND report describes the threats and
vulnerabilities and explores the likely outcomes of a possible
agroterrorist attack. It is a call to action.
Understanding current Federal efforts to prevent and
respond to a terrorist attack will help us understand what we
need to do to better address our vulnerabilities. Therefore, we
will also hear testimony today from representatives of the
Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration,
and the Department of Homeland Security, who will outline
existing efforts and capabilities as well as what we must do to
deter, detect, and respond effectively in the event of an
attack.
As the chart to my left shows,\1\ should there be an
attack, more than 30 agencies may be involved. This is an
example of the 30 agencies that would be involved in the event
of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. We must make sure
that the efforts of these 30 agencies are effectively
coordinated and that the Federal Government has a plan. After
all, the impact of an ineffective Federal response could be
devastating.
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\1\ Chart entitled ``30 Agencies Involved in Possible Foot and
Mouth Disease Outbreak,'' appears in the Appendix on page 161.
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According to the National Defense University, even a
limited outbreak of foot and mouth disease on just ten farms
could have a $2 billion financial impact and wide-ranging
effects on society, including the impairment of military
deployment and readiness. These simulations are based upon the
research of Dr. Thomas McGinn, who will also testify before us
today.
Congress has not held a hearing devoted to agroterrorism
since 1999, 2 years before the September 11 attacks on our
Nation. That is not to say that no work has been done on this
issue since that time. In addition to the work of the Federal
departments and agencies represented today, Senator Roberts,
who held the 1999 hearing, worked with me to help write the
food safety provisions included in the Bioterrorism Act.
Senator Durbin has worked hard to raise awareness of food
safety vulnerabilities. And my distinguished colleague Senator
Akaka, perhaps more than any other Senator, has worked toward
legislative solutions to our Nation's vulnerabilities to
possible agroterrorist attacks. Our first witness today,
Senator Talent, has also been an outstanding leader in this
effort as the chair of the Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee
on Marketing, Inspection, and Product Promotion.
I look forward to working with Senator Talent as well as
with the Members of this Committee to make sure that this
aspect of homeland security receives the attention and the
resources it deserves. We must join together on a bipartisan
basis to address this growing threat before it reaches our
soil.
I would now turn to Senator Akaka for his opening
statement. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I also
want to welcome Senator Talent and to tell him that I will be
willing to work with him on this issue.
Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, for scheduling this
hearing today which is so important to our country.
Agroterrorism is an important subject that receives too little
attention. Perhaps it is easier to talk about terrorists
attacking people than about terrorists attacking animals or
grain production. Unfortunately, the two threats cannot be
separated. To attack the Nation's food supply is to attack all
of us directly.
After September 11, the President placed agriculture on the
list of critical infrastructures that need to be protected from
a terrorist attack. Since then, USDA has moved to improve its
preparedness, prevention, and response efforts in the event of
an agroterrorist attack.
We are being warned that America must do more to protect
the U.S. agricultural resources. Despite the warnings about the
vulnerability, as expressed by the Chairman, of this important
sector of our country, our response has been woefully
inadequate.
The Partnership for Public Service recently issued a study
that examined the Federal Government's ability to defend
against a bioterrorist attack. The Partnership report found
that Federal agencies responsible for safeguarding our
agriculture would face crushing burdens if our food and water
supplies were contaminated.
The General Accounting Office issued three reports in the
past year examining food processing security, foot and mouth
disease, and mad cow disease. The GAO report and others suggest
that we have a long way to go to prevent and prepare for an
attack on our agriculture.
An unclassified CIA report released this month warns that
advances in biotechnology have the potential to create a much
more dangerous biological warfare threat. We must be mindful
that any techniques that can be used to develop new bioweapons
can be applied to developing threats to our agriculture.
The vulnerability of America's agriculture has long
concerned me. When I served on the House Agriculture
Appropriations Subcommittee, I supported the USDA's Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service, which plays a critical role in
protecting our borders and farms from agricultural pests and
diseases, a critical mission for my home State of Hawaii.
As a U.S. Senator, I continue to be concerned about this
problem. In the 107th Congress, I introduced legislation to
enhance agricultural security in the United States.
Unfortunately, that bill was not considered during the last
Congress and I again introduced legislation to address the
shortcomings in agricultural security preparedness. My two
bills, S. 427, the Agriculture Security Assistance Act, and S.
430, the Agriculture Security Preparedness Act, focus on the
need to increase coordination in confronting the threat to
America's agriculture industry.
The two measures provide for better funding and better
coordinated response and defense to an agroterrorism attack.
The first bill is primarily aimed at assisting States and
communities in responding to threats to the agriculture
industry. The legislation authorizes funds for communities and
States to increase their ability to handle a crisis. It also
encourages animal health professionals to participate in
community emergency planning activities to assist farmers in
strengthening their defenses against a terrorist threat.
The second measure will enable better interagency
coordination within the Federal Government. The legislation
establishes senior-level liaisons in the Departments of
Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to coordinate
with the USDA on agricultural disease, emergency management,
and response. Also, the bill requires DHS and USDA to work with
the Department of Transportation to address the risks
associated with transporting animals, plants, and people
between and around farms.
No one disputes the saying that an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure. The Nation's capability to counter
agroterrorism is increasing. However, the central importance of
agriculture to our country suggests greater efforts are needed.
The consequences of a lack of preparedness could be quite
high. My two bills will help our Nation act now so that a
future agroterrorist attack can be avoided or quickly responded
to before the damage to lives or livestock is too great.
I look forward to our witnesses this morning and look
forward to a productive discussion. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
I know that our first witness is on a very tight schedule
this morning so I am going to call upon him for his statement
and then come back and turn to Senator Lautenberg for his
opening remarks, if that is acceptable to the Senator from New
Jersey.
Senator Lautenberg. Yes.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
It is with great pleasure that I now introduce my esteemed
colleague, Senator Jim Talent of Missouri. Senator Talent is
the Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on
Marketing, Inspection, and Product Promotion, which has
jurisdiction over the Department of Agriculture's Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service. He represents a leading State
in agriculture production and his commitment and leadership in
protecting our Nation's food supply is a real asset not only to
his State, but to our entire Nation. Senator Talent, we are
glad to have you here today.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JAMES M. TALENT,\1\ A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF MISSOURI
Senator Talent. I am very grateful to be here. Thank you,
and the Ranking Member Senator Akaka, and thanks to Senator
Lautenberg also for allowing me to go first. In return, I am
going to be as brief as I can be.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Talent appears in the
Appendix on page 53.
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I want to start off by thanking you for holding this
hearing. We really are past due, I think, in holding another
hearing on this important issue. We need to raise the
visibility of the question of food security. Contrary to what
some of us believe, without thinking about it, food doesn't
come from a grocery store. It comes from the ranches in the
West. It comes from the farms in the Midwest. It comes from the
potato farms in Maine, Madam Chairman, and it is vulnerable to
attack at all different levels of the production chain.
I want to thank you for allowing me to address the
Committee. I am the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the
Agriculture Committee that has jurisdiction over marketing,
inspection, and product promotion, and therefore over this
issue.
I do think it is important at the outset of the hearing,
and since I am the first witness, maybe I can do it, to provide
some notes of reassurance to consumers. We do have the safest
and the most abundant and the most affordable food supply in
the world. That was true before September 11. I think it is
still true.
But what we are all recognizing here is that a system that
was designed to protect against incompetence or unintentional
mistakes that might allow pests or disease into the system is
not necessarily designed as well as it should be to protect
against an intentional attack. We have begun that transition in
the last several years, but we need to make certain that we
complete it and complete it as soon as possible because the
stakes, as you have pointed out, Madam Chairman, are huge.
Apart from the threat to safety, which is, of course, the
No. 1 thing, the diseases introduced in the system can and have
affected people.
There is also a tremendous threat to the economy, and one
gets the sense that is really what the terrorists are after.
They want to spread fear and a lack of confidence in the food
system. Agriculture sales account for 13 percent of the GNP.
They are nearly one-sixth of all jobs in the United States. Of
course, in the Midwest, where I am from, they loom as an even
greater proportion of the economy in Missouri and the States
around Missouri, and you have detailed, I think very well,
Madam Chairman, what happens when there is an outbreak of some
kind of food-related disease.
Canada's beef prices have declined 50 percent since BSE was
discovered there. You have talked about the effect of swine
fever in the Netherlands, foot and mouth disease in Taiwan,
foot and mouth disease in the European Union. We all know the
impact of BSE in Britain, and not just on the beef business
there, but also on the tourist business.
And this is why it is so crucial to Missouri, Madam
Chairman, because our two biggest parts of the economy are
agriculture, agribusiness, and tourism. An outbreak of BSE or
FMD or something like that in Missouri or anywhere near it
would have a devastating impact, or could have a devastating
impact on the economy, depending on how prepared we are and how
quickly we act, and that is really what the hearing is about.
The experts in this, and you are going to have them here, I
am not going to try and anticipate what they are going to say,
but they talk about the importance of things like geography. We
all know that livestock in particular tends to be raised in
close quarters. There are certain parts of the country that are
responsible for most of the livestock production and so the
diseases tend to spread quickly because the animals are close
together.
That emphasizes the importance of timing. We need to
anticipate where this is most likely to occur. We need to have
protocols in place so that we have confidence, we detect these
diseases quickly and respond as quickly as possible. It took
the Europeans 2 weeks to discover FMD in their domestic
livestock and that is too much.
The producers, as you know, Madam Chairman, are already
cooperating. It is their job to stay in touch with their herds
and their cattle and their pork. They know what is going on
there and they will participate and are participating in
protocols with public health agencies, with veterinarians, with
law enforcement, so we can count on them, anyway, to do their
part of the work.
What strategy should we use? I can't emphasize enough in
your deliberations, Madam Chairman, and we are going to do this
in the Agriculture Committee, the importance of cooperation and
partnerships and established protocols. That graph that you put
up is really a pretty damning graph. There are all these
agencies that are involved in it. That is probably too many. At
the very least, we have to be certain that they have protocols
in place, they know how they are to work together to prevent
this and respond quickly if and when it happens. We don't want
this to be some kind of fire drill, when the alarm goes off,
where they are all running around doing the same thing, and I
am certain that is what your hearing will look into.
I want to, in closing, point out some of the good work that
we are doing in Missouri. I have written testimony I would like
to submit for the record if I could, Madam Chairman----
Chairman Collins. Without objection.
Senator Talent [continuing]. By Dr. Ab Womack, who is the
Co-Director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research
Institute at the University of Missouri.\1\ If there is
anything, and there is a lot going on good in agriculture in
Missouri, Ab Womack knows about it. I would encourage you,
Madam Chairman and staff, to consider him a ready resource if
you want advice about this.
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\1\ Prepared statement by Dr. Ab Womack appears in the Appendix on
page 162.
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We have established an alliance at the University of
Missouri and we are already partnering with producers, with
life sciences--we have a lot of life science research centers
in Missouri anyway--public health agencies, law enforcement,
becoming a kind of center for developing protocols to deal with
this and prevent it and address it quickly if and when it
occurs, and hopeful of being able to work at the university
with the Department of Homeland Security in the future to try
and prevent this.
We have a big stake in Missouri, a big stake in the
Midwest, but everybody in the country does. I am glad you are
holding this hearing to raise the visibility and the importance
of this and I am sure a lot of good is going to come out of it.
Thank you again. I thank again my friend from New Jersey
for allowing me to go first.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much for your testimony. I
know I speak for all the Members of this Committee when I say
that we look forward to working with you on solutions.
Senator Talent. I have talked with Senator Cochran and he
is, of course, extremely interested in this and I expect we can
move ahead together on it. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Senator Lautenberg. Madam Chairman, before Senator Talent
leaves, I received my basic training in Missouri, in the Ozark
Mountains, and as I dug a foxhole there with mighty strokes of
a very sharp pickaxe, I couldn't get anywhere and I am
delighted to hear that Missouri has something else besides
that. [Laughter.]
Senator Talent. Well, Senator, you were undoubtedly in Fort
Leonard Wood, and if you dig at Fort Leonard Wood, you will hit
rock. It is one of the reasons the Army has established that.
It sort of beefs up our recruits. [Laughter.]
But you go a little further south and east and you get to
the foothills, some of the best farmland in the country, and
then you go north and west. We have a lot of interesting places
in Missouri. I am glad you were there, Senator. Come any time.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator, and Senator
Lautenberg, thank you for your courtesy in letting our witness
proceed before your opening remarks.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG
Senator Lautenberg. I was pleased to do that, Madam
Chairman, because I am grateful that you are examining this
subject, that we have a chance to take a look at it today.
In the last few years, we have worked so hard to reduce the
country's vulnerability to terrorist attacks, and it is a
paradox when you think about it, that we now are moving to
organically-produced products because we want to rid ourselves
even of the slightest taint of a chemical or materials that
might interfere with the purity of the product. And here we
are, recognizing how vulnerable we all are to an attack on our
agriculture, on our food supply.
Unfortunately, our food chain from production to processing
to distribution and consumption presents an all too easy target
for those who want to harm America, and few targets have the
impact that one could conceive as that coming from our food
supply, something unknown that takes time to discover and then
the time involved in reaching a large group of people in a
given area, possibly a huge group if things go as one could
imagine.
As one of our witnesses today, Dr. McGinn of North
Carolina's Department of Agriculture has put it, our food
supply provides a big bullseye to some terrorists. Though
people may not realize it, we actually have agriculture in my
State, despite it's being densely populated--the most densely
populated State in the country--we are referred to as the
``Garden State'' and there is a reason for that. New Jersey was
a place of wonderful gardens and food production, and even
though we are so crowded, we still today have nearly 10,000
farms. Most of these are family farms. They cover about 800,000
acres, and 800,000 acres in New Jersey, when you don't have a
lot of acreage to spare, is quite significant.
We produce fruit, vegetables, some corn, milk, greenhouse
and other specialty crops and we are the Nation's second
leading producer of blueberries and the fourth leading producer
of cranberries in the country. Agriculture contributes $800
million a year to New Jersey's economy, and yet for 2003, we
have received only $146,000 for plant and animal disease
response and surveillance and the Counterterrorism Food Safety
and Security Program.
This compares rather poorly with other States. If you
compare our population sizes, this sum by no means represents a
proportionate ratio.
So given the size of our industry and our proximity to some
of the biggest most vulnerable markets in the country, the
poultry food safety funding that we receive is of concern to
all of us in New Jersey. One of the things I would like to
hear, Madam Chairman, this morning is how we assess threats to
our food safety, how we allocated Federal resources to respond
to these threats.
Again, I congratulate you for holding this hearing. It is
more than overdue. I will be anxious to hear what the witnesses
have to say and look forward to the outcome of this hearing.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
I would now like to call our second panel of witnesses
forward. Our witnesses on this panel will provide an overview
of agroterrorism by outlining the range of threats to our food
chain, the vulnerability terrorists could exploit, and the
economic, social, and public health consequences of such an
attack.
Dr. Tom McGinn is the North Carolina Department of
Agriculture's Assistant State Veterinarian and its Director of
Emergency Preparedness. Dr. McGinn has worked with the National
Defense University on computer simulations that illustrate the
effects of attacks on various segments of the agriculture and
food industry.
Dr. Peter Chalk is a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation
and is the author of a new report that I mentioned in my
opening statement that is entitled, ``Hitting America's Soft
Underbelly.'' It offers an enlightening assessment of our
exposure to agroterrorism and makes several important policy
recommendations.
Colleen O'Keefe joins us from the Illinois Department of
Agriculture, where she is Division Manager of Food Safety and
Animal Protection. Ms. O'Keefe will describe the Partnership
for Security in Agriculture, an initiative among eight
Midwestern States to develop a response plan.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today,
and Dr. McGinn, we will start with your testimony. I understand
that you have a PowerPoint presentation that you are going to
use.
TESTIMONY OF THOMAS McGINN, NCDA&CS,\1\ NORTH CAROLINA
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Dr. McGinn. Thank you. I just also want to add that I am
the President of the State Animal Response Team for North
Carolina. That is 42 organizations in a public-private
partnership to respond to any animal in any disaster anywhere
in North Carolina using the Incident Command System. So it is a
public-private partnership on our State level and also on our
country level. I am also Deputy Team Leader for VMAT-3, which
is part of the National Disaster Medical System. So I am
deployed both for State and national animal disasters.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. McGinn with an attachment appears
in the Appendix on page 58.
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Chairman Collins. You have a lot of experience and that is
one reason we were so eager to have you testify this morning.
Dr. McGinn. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be with
you today.
I would like to start out by saying that the intentional
use of a weapon of mass destruction against agriculture is
agroterrorism, and what I would like to share with you today is
how agriculture is both the perfect target and the perfect
weapon. I am going to share with you some simulations that
demonstrate the need for us to harness the resources and the
energies of all aspects of government as well as public and
private partnerships and the citizens of our country for the
protection of our food.
I mentioned that agriculture is the perfect weapon. It is
easily obtained. It is easily creating fear. It has collateral
destruction, will destroy our food, and the persons that would
actually use a biological event against terrorists are not
harmed by it. It has been around since the beginning of
history. The history of biological warfare says that warring
nations seek to destroy the food producing capability of their
enemies. So you can see why it would be a perfect weapon.
You have already mentioned that it is a perfect target. It
is the largest single sector in our U.S. economy and it
contributes $12 billion to the balance of trade.
Also, information discovered from Afghanistan illustrates
that al Qaeda is interested in using these weapons against us.
My next slide will be a simulation that demonstrates the
intentional introduction of foot and mouth disease into
multiple locations in our country. In the lower left corner,
you will see the days as they go forward and the States that
are infected during each day, and then you will see the arrows
that will go across the slide, indicating the spread of the
disease. So you see Day One is the first day of infection. What
you will see here is that by Day Five, we are already in 23
States, and that Day Five is the first day that the disease is
detected. So it is subclinical. It cannot be seen until Day
Five and then it is in 23 States.
By Day Eight, it is in 29 States, and then we would
probably be in a position where there will be a national stop
movement declared. The national stop movement would result
ultimately in an estimated destruction of over 23 million
animals.
This disease also is infectious to meat and dairy products,
so not only would the stopping of the movement of animals
occur, but also then there would have to be restrictions on the
movement of food, as well.
So imagine what would be going on at this point in time as
this sort of scenario occurs and the capabilities of these 30
organizations to respond to something that is already in 20 to
30 States before we have the capability of detecting it with
current technologies. Imagine if such a disease was also a
zoonotic disease, a disease that could affect humans, as well,
and the kinds of concerns and frustrations that we would be
experiencing and the effects on our economy that would occur.
With this scenario, every day that can be saved,
particularly early on, is a reduction in millions of lost
animals and billions of dollars saved to our economy. So the
earlier we can detect this and the quicker we can respond, the
more effective we would be at preventing this kind of a
destruction.
If you look at the model I just shared with you and
calculated the number of people that would be needed to respond
to such an emergency, what we have done is sat down and added
up all the people for decon, for permitting, for treatment, and
for disposal of animals, for feeding and all these sorts of
things, and come up with a total number of over 700,000 people
would be needed at the maximum number of people at the greatest
level of outbreak in our country.
Seven-hundred-thousand people--our Nation is not prepared
to be able to respond with that kind of response. Therefore, we
need statutory authority that requires the training and
exercising on the county level, the State level, and the
national level to be able to get the organizations that you
have shared with us earlier to be in a coordinated and
integrated capabilities to respond to this kind of an outbreak.
First responders, not only in the agricultural area but
also as it relates to law enforcement, as it relates to fire,
emergency medical services, all will be pressed into service in
a situation like this, as well as the National Guard and the
military.
I also believe that this total number of people, that this
demonstrates the need for having the ability to have State and
county animal response teams, much like we have volunteer fire
departments that already exist in our country.
That was a simulation that I showed you last on an
intentional introduction into the food production area. This is
an intentional introduction of two pathogens into the food
processing area. What this demonstrates, and you will see the
days as it moves forward over on the right of this particular
slide, on December 1, an introduction of two pathogens at the
processing level in multiple sites. Again, it could be several
sites or they could have actual delivery into many sites at one
time. Obviously, the more sites they deliver to, the quicker
these sorts of pathogens will spread throughout our country.
This slide demonstrates the number of sick people, the
number in the ICUs and dead people that would result from the
distribution of infectious material from these processing
plants into single, just into single grocery stores and
restaurants throughout our country.
Imagine the fear that would result from such an intentional
introduction. Such a biological attack would create signs, both
gastric, respiratory, and neurological. Anybody who is sick
with any kind of a disease, whether it is flu or an allergy or
whatever, or just a simple stomach virus, would think that they
were infected, as well. This would overload our public health
system and the confidence in the country's ability to respond.
Our government's ability to respond would be called into
question and fear would be widespread.
We have become a Nation concerned about receiving anthrax
in our mailboxes. Imagine what it would be like to be a Nation
concerned about opening our refrigerators and anthrax being in
our refrigerators, as well.
Another method that terrorists could use would be the
introduction of a pathogen into the quality control system.
Imagine they just intentionally introduced it into a food
sample or into a diagnostic laboratory. Our country would not
even have to be infected with the disease. They just put an
infectious material into the laboratory system and then the
appearance of an infectious disease in our country would then
exist.
And imagine the confidence that we would lose, or the
people of our country would lose, in our system even with such
an introduction. Our inability to validate the movement of
animals and product would cause further loss of confidence in
the public as we would deal with these sorts of introductions
within the quality control systems.
Imagine people purchasing products from other countries,
not because they had a preference for taste, but because they
were scared that it might be infected with some substance.
The protection of our food supply, therefore, is central to
our culture and central to our government's stability. As
consumers, we are looking for government agencies to speak with
one voice. We are looking for them to actually give us the
roles and responsibilities that they will undertake, the roles
and responsibilities of the private sector, and then of the
citizens themselves.
We were looking for funding on the State level to actually
do the sorts of things that can't be done on the national level
to actually determine what our vulnerabilities are and how
they, in fact, reduce some of the risk associated from what
these simulations detect.
Our country is looking at these 30 organizations that you
shared to stand on the walls of a fort to protect food security
arm in arm, not to be in the bunkhouse arguing over which
particular agency is going to defend which section of the wall.
Here are the issues that we are addressing tangibly in
North Carolina. These are things that we are currently doing to
address the concerns.
The first one, detection and surveillance. You can see our
education programs are critical, educating consumers, building
resilience within the consumers as part of what we must be
about. Instead of fear, we have got to instill confidence and
resilience. Having an integrated human and animal alert
system--this is something that we are pioneering in North
Carolina with public health, emergency management, and the
State Bureau of Investigation as well as the FBI.
And automated remote sensing capabilities. We have got to
be able to detect earlier these sorts of pathogens. If we can
see them before they are clinical, then we are going to again
save millions of lives--millions of lives in terms of animals
and billions of dollars.
And then containment and eradication, the ability to force
multiply. The 700,000 people I shared with you earlier, we have
got to train right down to the local level. These are the
people that are going to be responding, not some group of folks
coming in quickly from a national capability.
Increased technology, such as vaccines. We are going to
have to expand our vaccine capabilities, our pharmaceutical
capabilities. The Strategic National Stockpile is a very good
place to actually expand that capability and to roll that
capability out, as well.
And increase our laboratory capacity. If you take the same
scenarios and look at what the costs are, how much laboratory
capacity is needed, then we start to see the kinds of
vulnerabilities that we are currently challenged to have in
place.
Data management, a national multi-hazard GIS geographic
information system. We have got to be able to know where these
farms are and where these processing facilities are and how
they move product long before we get involved in such an
attack. Trying to determine where these places are located
during an attack takes weeks to months and we don't have the
luxury, as you can see, of any days to do these sorts of
things.
Advancing livestock modeling capabilities. We have got to
be able to put economic numbers associated with these models
and we are very diligently trying to determine what kind of
intervention strategies we need to do to return to normalcy in
terms of production and processing, and also what are the costs
associated with these intervention strategies.
And finally, vulnerability assessment and risk reduction
capabilities. We have got a food security program that is
looking all the way from the raw ingredients through the
producers, processing, distribution, and all the way to the
retail and strengthening the chain, every link in that chain,
in terms of what are the vulnerabilities. We do not know like
we need to know what these vulnerabilities are. We do have a
food safety culture, an excellent food safety culture in this
country. We have got to develop a food security culture and
this is a program that we are pioneering with AFDO, NASDA, and
ASTHO in North Carolina.
Continuity of operation programs are critical on the
national level, but also right down to the processor and the
food level.
And then lastly, statutory terrorism training and
exercising, much like what is done in the areas for
radiological events. It is required. It needs to be required,
and that would actually encourage the integration of these
different agencies to work together.
We need Federal guidance. We need Federal leadership and
Federal resources. We have got to be able to do that on a
central basis and on a decentralized basis. The integration and
coordination is essential.
There is funding that has been put forward in our State and
all the other States that I have seen for law enforcement and
for public health, for hospitals, targeted funding.
Agriculture, as you can see from these simulations, is part
of the critical infrastructure of our country and similar
funding directed, targeted at the protection of our food
security coming down through Homeland Security, ODP, through
specific agencies with deliverables associated with that will
ensure the consumers of our country and the confidence that
they have had up until now will continue forward as we face the
kinds of threats we will be facing in the future.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you
today.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Doctor, for an
excellent presentation. When you were showing how quickly
disease would spread, I was reminded of the ``Dark Winter''
exercise that tested what the spread and reaction would be to a
deliberate contamination with smallpox. These simulations are
very similar with the rapidity with which the disease spreads
and the public reaction. So thank you for sharing your
simulations.
Dr. McGinn. It does also point out that within so many
States, that it is a homeland security issue. It is not a State
by State issue.
Chairman Collins. That is a good point, as well.
Dr. Chalk, thank you for being with us and please proceed
with your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF PETER CHALK, POLICY ANALYST,\1\ RAND CORPORATION
Dr. Chalk. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for the opportunity
to testify on this important subject.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Chalk appears in the Appendix on
page 73.
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Over the past decade, the United States has devoted
considerable resources to upgrading homeland security in the
context of improving our response contingencies against attacks
against critical infrastructure in the country. While many gaps
remain, this emphasis on preparedness and response has led to
the development of at least nascent command structures that now
have begun to span the ambit of potential terrorist attacks
from conventional bombings right through to more exotic
chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological incidents.
Agriculture, however, is one area that has received
relatively little attention in this regard, particularly with
respect to accurate threat assessments and consequence
management procedures. Indeed, the sect was only included as a
specific component of U.S. National Counterterrorist Strategy
following al Qaeda's attacks on September 11.
The purpose of my testimony today is to expand the debate
on homeland security by looking at some of the vulnerabilities
that are inherent in agriculture and the capabilities that
would be required to exploit those vulnerabilities.
A few words about the importance of agriculture. It is
absolutely essential to the economic well-being of the United
States. Although farming directly employs less than 3 percent
of Americans, one in eight Americans actually are employed in
an industry that is either directly or indirectly supported by
food production.
Cattle and dairy farmers alone earn between $50 and $54
billion a year through meat and dairy sales, while roughly $50
billion a year is raised through agricultural exports. At the
time of the 2001 attacks, agriculture constituted 9.7 percent
of the gross domestic product of the United States, generating
cash receipts in excess of $991 billion.
Unfortunately, given this economic importance, agriculture,
the inherent nature of agriculture does remain vulnerable to
disruption and sabotage, both naturally occurring and
deliberate. A number of factors account for this.
Agriculture is both a large and intensive industry in the
United States. Most dairies in the country can be expected to
house at least 1,500 lactating cows at any one time, with the
larger facilities housing upwards of 10,000 animals. And as we
have heard, unlike human beings, these herds tend to be in very
concentrated populations and are reared and bred in close
proximity to one another. An outbreak of a contagious disease
at any one of these facilities, particularly if it was airborne
in character, would be very difficult to contain and could
quite easily necessitate the wholesale eradication of all
exposed animals, which is both technically and financially
demanding.
U.S. livestock has also reportedly become increasingly
disease-prone as a result of husbandry changes that have been
designed to elevate the volume, quality, and quantity of meat
production or to meet the specific requirements of individual
vendors. Biotechnic modifications have reportedly increased the
stress levels of exposed animals, which has, in turn, lowered
their natural tolerance to disease while at the same time
increased the volume of bacteria that they could be expected to
shed in the event of an infection.
There is also insufficient farm and biosecurity
surveillance. Farmers in the United States have tended not to
think about a deliberate attack against their facilities, much
less actively planned to prevent one. Farms have, as a result,
evolved as relatively open affairs, seldom incorporating
concerted means to prevent unauthorized access or intrusion.
Food processing facilities also lack uniform biosecurity
measures, particularly those that have proliferated at the
medium to lower end of the production spectrum. Thousands of
these facilities exist across the country, exhibiting uneven
standards of internal quality control, questionable
biosurveillance, and transient, largely unscreened workforces.
Entry-exit controls are not always adequate and may not
actually be practiced at all, and even basic measures, such as
the padlocking of warehouses, may not be practiced.
There is also an inefficient passive disease reporting
system in the United States. Responsibility for the early
identification of a disease necessarily rests with the
agricultural producers, but this is being hampered by the lack
of clear communication channels between producers and
regulators and reportedly also by an unwillingness on the part
of farmers to quickly report disease outbreaks for fear that
this could lead to uncompensated destruction of their
livestock.
Finally, there is inappropriate training of veterinarians
to recognize and treat foreign animal diseases. In part, this
reflects the lower number of people actually entering into
veterinarian science and also the preference choices of those
that do, many of whom now tend to focus on domesticated animals
because that is where the money is. Fewer and fewer people are
actually focusing on large-scale husbandry.
Now, although vulnerability does not equate to risk and
there are few reported actual incidents of terrorists employing
biological agents against agriculture, a realistic potential
for such a contingency certainly exists. Indeed, what makes the
vulnerabilities in agriculture so worrying is that the
capabilities that are required to exploit those vulnerabilities
are not significant and certainly far less significant than
those that would be required to carry out a mass attack against
humans using biological agents.
At least four factors account for this. First, there are a
large number of potential pathogens from which to choose, with
at least 15 Class A agents being identified as having the
ability to severely disrupt or affect animal populations. Most
of these diseases are environmentally hardy and many are not
routinely vaccinated against in the United States.
Second, many foreign animal diseases cannot be transmitted
to human beings. This means there is no requirement on the part
of the perpetrator to have an advanced understanding of animal
disease science nor is there any need for elaborate containment
procedures or personal protective equipment in the preparation
of the agent.
Third, if the objective is human death, the farm-to-table
food continuum offers a low-tech yet highly conducive mechanism
for the transport and dissemination of bacteria and toxins,
such as salmonella, E. coli, and botulism. Developments in the
farm-to-table food continuum have greatly increased the
potential number of entry points for these contaminants, which
has greatly augmented the technical ease of actually carrying
out an orchestrated foodborne attack.
Finally, animal diseases can be quickly spread to affect
large herds over wide geographic areas. That reflects both the
intensive nature of farming in the United States as well as the
increased disease susceptibility of animals. There is, in other
words, no obstacle of weaponization. I would like to stress
that, because weaponization is often cited as the most
important barrier that needs to be overcome in terms of
actually weaponizing biological agents and one of the major
factors that has so far prevented sub-state use and escalation
to that level.
The ramifications of a concerted attack against the food
chain would be far-reaching and they could quite easily extend
beyond the immediate agricultural sector to affect other
segments of society. We would have mass economic disruption,
generating costs that would be expected to cross at least three
levels. You would have direct costs associated with containment
and eradication procedures. You would have indirect costs
associated with losses that accrue to industries that are
either directly or indirectly supported by agriculture, as well
as compensation paid to farmers. Finally, there would be
international costs in the form of protective embargoes imposed
by major trading partners that were seeking to protect the
viability of their own agricultural sectors.
You would also get loss of political support and confidence
in government. A successful bio attack against livestock would
undoubtedly encourage people to lose safety in the confidence
of the food supply and they could possibly lead them to
question the effectiveness of existing bio preparedness
measures in general. The actual mechanics of dealing with a bio
attack against agriculture could also be a trigger for mass
public criticism, particularly in the event of a mass
euthanization of exposed animals.
The United Kingdom foot and mouth disease outbreak provides
a glaring example of just how far these effects can go. There,
there were firebreaker operations that involved the eradication
of non-disease-showing but susceptible animals in so-called
firebreaker operations. That generated opposition not only
amongst affected farmers, but animal rights advocates and
eventually the public in general.
Finally, you could quite easily get social effects,
particularly if a zoonotic disease became entrenched in the
United States and was passed from animals to humans and human
deaths actually occurred. Terrorists could use this to their
advantage to create an atmosphere of fear and collapse without
actually having to carry out concerted direct attacks against
humans and accept all that entails in terms of attracting mass
government reprisals and potentially a loss of support.
Despite the ease by which agricultural terrorism can be
carried out and the potential ramifications of such a scenario,
I don't think that it is likely to constitute a primary form of
terrorist aggression. This is because acts, while significant,
are delayed. They lack a single point of reference for the
media to latch onto and to emphasize. They are probably going
to be viewed as too dry in comparison to more conventional
attacks, such as a bombing campaign.
However, I think that attacks against agriculture could
certainly emerge as a favored secondary form of terrorist
aggression that is designed to further entrench and augment the
general social disruption and upheaval generated by a more
conventional terrorist bombing. The mere ability to employ
cheap and unsophisticated means to target a State's economic
base while at the same time possibly overwhelm its public
management infrastructure gives agroterrorism considerable
utility in terms of cost-benefit payoffs that would be of
particular interest to any sub-state group that is faced with
overcoming significant power of symmetry, such as al Qaeda.
And I will finish off by saying that one must remember that
bin Laden has specifically exhorted the use of biological
agents against the United States in whatever manner possible
and part of his strategy now is very definitely focusing on
destroying the economic underbelly of the United States as he
sees that as the principal anchor that is sustaining what he
views as the demonic Western-dominated system across the globe.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. O'Keefe.
TESTIMONY OF COLLEEN O'KEEFE, D.M.V, M.S.,\1\ ILLINOIS
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Dr. O'Keefe. Thank you, Madam Chairman and distinguished
Members, for inviting me. My point will be at a State level
where we are with the region.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. O'Keefe appears in the Appendix
on page 83.
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Illinois has $7.5 billion in farm income, and $1.4 billion
of that is livestock cash receipts. So we see agroterrorism as
a very valid problem. With the ease of travel and the presence
of biological agents worldwide--we have O'Hare as an
international stop point--foreign animal disease in Illinois
would be a major problem because it would stop the movement of
interstate, intrastate animals, and then as our previous people
have said, would cause great economic problem.
And then there is the problem with consumer confidence.
What meat products would be available would become
prohibitively expensive and then the consumer confidence as to
whether they would even choose to eat it.
Presently in Illinois, we have an Emergency Animal Disease
and Animals in Disaster Annex with our Illinois State Emergency
Management and this allows the Department of Agriculture access
to our other State agencies. We have a plan with the Illinois
Department of Nuclear Safety for animals and plants in the case
of a nuclear disaster.
Our most current initiatives have occurred this spring when
we are trying to get down to the first responder level, which
is the people who will be the ones that will initially notify
us of these outbreaks. We started with general meetings, trying
to notify veterinarians of their roles as first responders. In
October, we had our first informational meeting for
veterinarians to bring them up to date on foreign animal
diseases and to find out what their willingness will be to help
us as a first responder.
We will also be carrying this down to the producer level in
the future. The training of the producers as first responders
is something that we feel is very important. We are hoping to
start getting emergency animal disease and animal in disaster
plans next to the county emergency response plans and we hope
to have regional and county veterinary response teams
available.
So we have a fairly general overall State process, but that
doesn't get us to the point where we need, which is down to the
producer and veterinary level.
In putting together our State plan, we started this
actually in 1998. In 2002, it was recognized that this is not a
State issue, this is a regional issue, and then a Central
States Animal Emergency Coordinating Council was formed through
the effort of Illinois. The Departments of Agriculture and
Emergency Management in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky,
Missouri, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and the USDA came together
to look at the issues at a regional level and in that report,
there were several findings that came out that I think are
important to bring out.
The overall goal of the regional plan was to enhance
communication. Initially, it wasn't even known how one State
would notify another State of a possible foreign animal
disease. It is down to that basic level. So these are issues
that we needed to look at.
We need to work together towards a common system of
tracking and monitoring animal movements. Illinois alone
imports and exports 360,000 head of swine, cattle, sheep, and
goats per month--that is Illinois--and the rest of these
States, you can probably multiply that by each State, and some
States, probably Iowa, even more.
The States with appropriate mapping technology and data
collection are the exception rather than the rule. We need to
have the USDA implement an electronic system to track livestock
movements.
The post-outbreak livestock movement protocol is critical.
We have talked about the stoppage of infected animals to
prevent the further infection, but at some point, we have to be
able to facilitate the normal marketing of animals also,
animals that are healthy and unexposed, to try to minimize the
economic damage that will occur.
We need to know what the government's indemnity plan would
be before the emergency arises, and there is a disposal issue
of animals that have been infected. This has to be done ahead
of time because the numbers involved are huge.
There are multiple agencies involved. No one Department of
Agriculture can possibly cope with an infection. So we have
private organizations and associations and all the agencies
involved, and so training and testing is critical that we
continue that.
Those were the resolutions that were made. Earlier this
year, a multi-State partnership in resource sharing has been
organized to continue with this criteria. The partner States at
this point are Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota,
Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
This partnership has the goal to determine where the State
needs lie and what States can and should be doing together to
strengthen our agricultural security and programs, and what
they have done at this point is we have three work groups that
are rapidly working. We have a State-to-Federal work group
which is trying to strengthen our State and Federal bonds. We
have a State-to-State work group that addresses the issue of
interstate threat communication, joint planning and exercise,
and livestock movement, quarantine, and crop security.
The cooperative resource sharing group is trying to address
services and resources that can be shared across State borders.
We presently have an Emergency Management Assistance Compact,
and what this does is allows for licensees from one State to
work in another State in an emergency situation. So that is
important, that we learn to use that to share veterinary
emergency response teams and State animal health employees. We
need to share our laboratory resources. We need to learn to
share planning and educational materials.
The State needs--while Illinois is doing really well, we
have several critical shortages, our staffing, for one. Our
State, and our State is not alone in this, is doing our
emergency management with three people who are working half-
time on this.
Our State laboratories, both the animal disease laboratory
and our agricultural product laboratory, are always needing
equipment. I am sure you hear that all the time. But it is
important that we have the most current equipment so we can
have the most rapid diagnosis of disease possible because that
is what makes the differences in slowing down the economic
devastation. And we need to have equipment that will keep our
staffs safe.
The other thing is the State labs are not at this time
allowed to test for foreign animal diseases and if we had an
outbreak, the only place it is allowed to test is Plum Island,
and that system would rapidly become overwhelmed and what would
happen is that it would cause a delay in diagnosis and
containment and that is a critical need that we have.
We need help with the technology of just simply mapping
where our livestock are, where the slaughter facilities are,
warehouses are, this type of thing. We need to be able to look
at the land to determine where we can set up disposal
capabilities.
And the other thing we need is we need to be able to
continue training and exercising all of these groups that are
managing together. We need to have a very good rapport with the
Federal Government. We can't do this without Federal help, both
on a basis of, in Illinois, we can quarantine animals but we
cannot cause their euthanasia or the disposal of them without a
very lengthy process, not counting the fact that we simply do
not have the money. And so we need the Federal Government to
step in and declare emergency so that we have the capabilities
of getting animals disposed of to stop this disease. So working
with the Federal Government is critical to any foreign animal
disease and I truly hope that I never have to use any of what I
have in plan implemented here. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Dr. O'Keefe.
Dr. McGinn, I want to pick up on a point that Dr. O'Keefe
made about the tracking of livestock. From your presentation,
it is evident that the speed with which a localized outbreak of
foot and mouth disease could accelerate into a national
catastrophe is truly alarming. It also is evident that it would
be relatively easy for an agroterrorist to create such an
outbreak and then just let it naturally spread on its own.
It is my understanding that the phenomenon is driven in
large part by the widespread industry practice of moving
animals throughout the country to save on the costs throughout
the production phase. I am told that in the beef industry, for
example, that 80 percent of the animals pass through 2 percent
of our feedlots. I was astounded to learn that.
Are these movements sufficiently tracked so that livestock
coming from farms that are infected could be identified and
isolated? Explain a little bit more to us what the process
would be if you discover an outbreak. You pointed out that it
would take several days before it became evident. How difficult
would it be to trace back to the farm where there may have been
an intentional contamination?
Dr. McGinn. The consumers want us to be able to do that
instantaneously, and in order for them to have confidence in
our ability to actually contain these contagious agents that
move so rapidly across our country, we are going to have to
improve our system.
You heard Dr. O'Keefe from Illinois say that they move 300-
plus thousand animals per month. We move, just out of our
State, close to 200,000 head every week and millions of poultry
every week, as well. Millions of poultry and close to 200,000
livestock animals move out of our State each week. It is an
incredible network, not only of live animals but also of
products within the food chain, not unlike the Internet.
To protect this network is going to require not just
protection around certain facilities, but the entire network
itself. That is why the critical infrastructure of
transportation is also important, as well as agriculture. In
order to be able to actually protect this network, we have to
know where it is, and if we are spending in some of the
exercises that I have participated in weeks trying to find the
farms that could have actually been exposed to a disease, the
disease is continuing to move on. You never--it is like a fire
that is out of control. We never actually get ahead of the fire
because we don't know where the fire is and we are always
behind the curve trying to contain the spread of this virus.
These viruses don't sleep at night. They move in our
transportation networks.
Consequently, we have got to have a national multi-hazard
geographic information system. We have got to do this not just
for livestock, but also every aspect of the food chain, and not
just on the animal side--for plants, pesticides, fertilizers,
all the areas of agriculture. We have got to look at every area
and have all the different hazards which could possibly be
affected identified.
This takes some additional work at this point in time. We
have the safest food system in the world. Terrorists are
causing us to make it even safer and the development of this
national capability to actually track these movements is a
critical component of what we need.
Chairman Collins. We talked mostly about attacks on
livestock, but intelligence reports tell us that terrorist
groups are also targeting the various parts of the food chain
as potential means of spreading disease and toxins. I would
like each of you to comment on the vulnerabilities of our food
chain aside from the livestock issue which we have talked
about, and we will start with you, Dr. McGinn.
Dr. McGinn. As I was mentioning, fertilizers are used as
bombs. Pesticides, as well, we have heard about their use as a
terrorist activity. The plant pathogens, as well, and the
destruction that can be done from plant pathogens is enormous.
We have got to look at each aspect of the food chain from
the raw ingredients through the production and processing and
distribution up to the retail level and carefully look at the
vulnerabilities and then put in place some vulnerability
reduction strategies that look at it as a network or as a chain
instead of just as an individual commodity along that chain.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Chalk.
Dr. Chalk. Yes. I agree that one has to look at the entire
food production process in assessing vulnerabilities. With
respect to crops, there are definite vulnerabilities vis-a-vis
a seed growing stock for the subsequent growing season.
With respect to food processing facilities, I think most of
my attention focuses on the smallest scale production plants
that exist across the country because it is at this point that
biosecurity and surveillance tends to be least uniform, and in
many of these facilities, there is not an adequate system of
tracking the dissemination of products that actually go from
the plant itself through the distribution chain to supermarkets
and so forth, so that would be very difficult to actually trace
back a contaminated product once it becomes apparent, which is
a problem.
The one saving grace is that these smaller facilities
actually have a smaller cachement area. The larger food
processing facilities, if one could actually orchestrate an
attack within those companies, that would be the one that would
actually have major run-on effects in terms of public health.
But fortunately, food buyer security surveillance at those
facilities is of a far higher standard.
Chairman Collins. Dr. O'Keefe.
Dr. O'Keefe. When I was preparing for this speech, my
expertise is in animals and so I polled other members of my
Department of Agriculture on the issues of feed, seeds, and
fertilizer security. Our response is we have done a risk
assessment, but that is about it, and the reason being is that
we feel that the animal terrorism is the main thrust of what
would be economically important, and so we have chosen to put
our limited resources and people into that area.
However, we recognize that this is not the only one and
that is our next issue to look at, is attempting to come up
with some rational plan to help with this.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Dr. McGinn, you stated in your written testimony that the
United States, and this surprised me, lacks the capability to
produce vaccines to combat foreign animal diseases, such as
foot and mouth disease, and would have to rely upon Great
Britain in this case for our vaccine supply in the event of an
outbreak.
I wonder, does it make sense to rely on another country for
this vaccine? Could you describe the resources that would be
required to develop it in the United States?
Dr. McGinn. Senator Collins mentioned earlier Dark Winter
and that scenario that really helped us see the need to get
smallpox vaccine back as a way of protecting our country. If
you look at these types of scenarios that we are sharing today,
obviously, we have got to expand our ability to have the kinds
of vaccines that we need to protect our food producing
capabilities.
Foot and mouth disease is a very complex vaccine that in
order to be able to make it in such a way that we would have it
on the shelf and ready to cover all different types of
infection is a challenging thing to do. So what really needs to
happen is looking at the different potential biological weapons
that could be used against livestock and then determining what
those costs would be for the development of those vaccines and
then going ahead and targeting some dollars to accomplish the
ability for us to be able to contain an outbreak quickly with
the use of vaccines that could be available.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Chalk, I know you work in California, as
well, as here in Virginia. In your testimony, you cited the
outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease in California chickens in
2002. Can you walk us through the successes and failures in the
Federal, State, and local agencies and their response to this
outbreak?
Dr. Chalk. Well, with respect to the poultry industry, I
would argue that contingency measures are higher simply because
there have been more referenced disease outbreaks at these
facilities. There tends to be a higher awareness of the need
for biosecurity and consideration of biosurveillance in terms
of people coming on and leaving the premises, all of which
tends to result in more effective recognition and rapid
treatment, which tends to mean that although a large number of
animals and flocks would be destroyed, that the disease itself
doesn't spread.
The problem is that you can't extrapolate that experience
to the general agricultural industry at large because the
referent examples aren't there. The referent experience isn't
there. And I would say that if one was to equate the relative
success of containment and eradication procedures vis-a-vis
poultry compared to, say, swine herds or beef stocks, that the
former would be far higher. But that is simply because it is of
a smaller scale. You are not dealing with large-scale animals.
And also, the visual impacts are not going to attract the same
sort of media attention in terms of euthanization and
eradication.
But certainly, the problem with the poultry industry is
that diseases that affect birds do spread very quickly and
these populations are incredibly concentrated in nature. So it
is highly vulnerable in that extent, but at the same time, that
vulnerability has bred more concerted security preparedness
measures. And certainly our experience in California when we
have looked at the biosecurity measures at poultry farms is of
a far higher standard. So to that extent, it is a positive, if
you would like.
Senator Akaka. Yes. As you can tell, I am interested in the
communication and response in these efforts. Dr. O'Keefe, in
your testimony, you make a series of recommendations for ways
in which Federal agencies can aid State and local governments
to prevent and respond to an outbreak of foreign animal
diseases. I think you implied that the communication is not
that great. Can you comment on your experience working with
Federal agencies? For example, do you feel that there is
adequate communication between the Illinois Department of
Agriculture and the Federal agencies and that they are
responsive to State and local needs?
Dr. O'Keefe. The lack of communication, I think, is more on
a State-to-State basis, just learning who we have to talk to in
each State, because various States have different structures.
So that is it.
As far as working with the Federal level, the Federal
veterinarians that we deal with in the State of Illinois have
been exceptional as far as working with us, training with us,
helping us set up our plans. So in that respect, it has gone
well. Beyond that, I really couldn't comment.
But as far as working with the Federal veterinarians, of
course, the major problem is the shortage of the numbers
involved and that is a problem. But we do get along fairly
well, at least in Illinois, with our Federal veterinarians. The
communication problem is more State-to-State in trying to get
the right language together and who to talk to and how to
organize, because obviously these emergencies aren't going to
recognize State boundaries.
Senator Akaka. Thank you for your responses, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg.
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Is there not a network, a database that veterinarians, Dr.
O'Keefe, can access for epidemic-type conditions?
Dr. O'Keefe. If I understand you, if we see an outbreak, is
that what you are saying?
Senator Lautenberg. Of a highly contagious disease.
Dr. O'Keefe. Actually, there is a protocol of notifying the
State veterinarian here in Illinois and then the State
veterinarian notifies the Federal veterinarian in charge.
Senator Lautenberg. So all veterinarians, because they are
licensed professionals, know how to----
Dr. O'Keefe. Well, actually, that was one of the issues--
when we did the first responder meeting--that we had to bring
up, is that we are not taught, we haven't been taught how to--
what do you do when you see a possible disease situation? Who
do you call? It never has been an issue prior to this so it is
not well----
Senator Lautenberg. Yes.
Dr. O'Keefe. In fact, we have made up magnets that we are
just spreading everywhere, to producers and to veterinarians,
that exactly give the protocols of who to call.
Senator Lautenberg. Without oversimplifying, I mean, this
is something certainly that looks like the first level thing to
do----
Dr. O'Keefe. Right. Well, that is what I said.
Senator Lautenberg [continuing]. If you detect foot and
mouth or swine cholera, that kind of thing, since you do have a
professional population that is largely in touch with those
places where you might see evidence of these diseases.
You said, also, Dr. O'Keefe, something that I was curious
about. Were you describing a complicated array of things that
prevent you from euthanizing livestock?
Dr. O'Keefe. Illinois statute says that we offer them an
indemnity. If they choose to say--I say their cow is worth $50
and they say their cow is worth $75, then it has to go to an
arbitrator before we can do anything and that is how our
statute is set up for the destruction of animals. And so,
obviously, we don't have time for that in an outbreak
situation.
Senator Lautenberg. So it becomes the first stage of an
economic issue.
Dr. O'Keefe. Correct.
Senator Lautenberg. And also, do you not have repositories
where these diseased carcasses can be disposed?
Dr. O'Keefe. No. The number of animals that you are talking
about, if you are talking about pigs and cattle, there is no
place that can set up for that, and that is one of the areas
that we are presently actively pursuing, is we need to have set
up ahead of time a method of disposal. In England, I think
everybody saw the burning carcasses. I mean, sadly, that is one
possibility. There are other ways. But they can't go to
renderers because of the possibility of infection, so we have
to come up with--and burial is another possibility. However,
EPA may not look on burial sites as being a possibility.
Senator Lautenberg. If we can find a place. We really
haven't identified a fully safe repository for spent nuclear
waste----
Dr. O'Keefe. Well, and we don't want to transport these
animals very far because of the infection.
Senator Lautenberg. I remembered about a trip I took to the
Soviet Union right after Chernobyl, months later, maybe a year,
and I went into a supermarket, just as part of a review of what
was taking place, and I saw signs advertising the fact that
these items have been radiated as a result of the explosion
there, and people bought it. They were cheaper, and they knew
that it was cheaper in price. The same thing with meats. I was
stunned, but when people are desperate, they do all kinds of
things.
I am not suggesting that we set up a system to accommodate
that, not at all, but Dr. Chalk and also Dr. McGinn, if the
mission was to scare us into activity, it sure scared us. Now,
the response is the problem, because of the enormous cost that
might be involved in preparing for these contingencies.
You said something, Dr. Chalk, about that kind of attack
not having the same visibility as a conventional bombing attack
or something like that, but the amount of harm that it could do
is far greater than anything except a nuclear bomb might do in
one fell swoop.
So I, frankly, sit here a little bit overwhelmed by the
potential, that we know exists. I think there was a time,
because Senator Collins, our Chairperson, referred to al Qaeda
manuals that were found. Do you believe that these couple years
later after September 11 that al Qaeda still might have that as
a target in mind, an attack on a food supply?
Dr. Chalk. I think there are a number of things here.
Certainly, if one takes at face value the assertions of bin
Laden about economic warfare, a certainly viable method of
undermining the economic resource base of the United States is
through agriculture. And one also has to take into account that
even if a disease was contained, the possibilities of
recurrences are always there, especially if something like foot
and mouth getting out of the agricultural population into the
wildlife population. If those sorts of scenarios happen, then
you have got a very difficult problem.
If we look at the U.K. experience, for instance, although
the eradication of foot and mouth disease has been declared,
residual outbreaks continue to take place, which is still
having an economic impact on the country.
The other aspect to bear in mind is that al Qaeda is very
definitely interested in biowarfare. We know that from written
statements. We know that from verbal statements. The problem
with biowarfare against human beings is that it is one thing to
want to do it. It is an entirely different thing to actually
weaponize agents to kill large numbers of people to make a mass
impact. You can have a psychological impact, but it is much
more difficult to have a mass physical impact.
With bioattacks against agriculture, the very nature of the
fact that the animals themselves are the weapons, means you
don't have to weaponize the agent. In addition, the mere fact
that you can handle disease agents with little or no risk of
latent or accidental infection, and the possibility that the
general population may not understand that certain diseases are
not transmissible to humans, all of these factors bear into the
fact that attacks against agriculture are easy to do, will
spread quickly, will definitely have an economic impact, and
quite possibly have a very significant psychological impact--if
one is looking at what terrorists aim to do, objective of
disorienting society and undermining the support pillars that
give any society strength.
Agroterrorism in that sense is a viable option,
particularly when you take into account its cost-benefit
analysis. And one must remember that terrorists, like bodies of
running water, always choose the course of least resistance.
Senator Lautenberg. Madam Chairman, I will conclude, but I
commend you for holding this hearing and for helping us to
understand what the dimension of agro-terrorism could be. I
will leave it to you to direct us how to solve this problem.
Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. Senator Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Madam Chairman, thanks for this hearing. I
might tell you that I think this is historic in that after
September 11, I was asked to go to a briefing, a classified
briefing, from our intelligence agencies about agroterrorism. I
was the only one in the room. There weren't a lot of Senators
clamoring to get in at that point. A lot of other things were
on our minds. But it was frightening. I haven't spoken about it
since publicly because of some of the concerns I have had, and
I am glad that you are making this a public issue. We have to
face it.
You brought together a great panel here and another great
panel to follow on. I want to quickly thank Dr. O'Keefe for
being here from my home town. Her family and she have been
friends for years and years and I thank her for joining us.
Two things I would note here. We start off by saying to
State and local agencies, get your act together here. Face the
reality of food security. And yet, as you have noted at the
outset of this hearing, we don't have our act together in
Washington by a long shot. You have noted some 30 different
agencies that might be involved in a possible foot and mouth
disease outbreak. We have 13 different Federal agencies that
are responsible for food inspection, 35 different laws, 70
different committees and subcommittees of jurisdiction.
We don't have our act together. We are not taking this as
seriously as we should. The next panel will represent three of
those Federal agencies, not all of them, but the three major
ones, but it is an indication that we haven't really taken this
admonition to heart here in Washington and we should.
Let me try to explore two scenarios in the brief time that
I have here, and let me first go to, and this is troubling in a
respect to talk about it, but I think we have to and I think
they have been alluded to. Virtually every agricultural State
in the Nation has a State fair. Ours does, a huge gathering of
people from rural areas and livestock, the best to come to be
shown. As a youngster and as a father raising kids, we used to
like to walk our kids, come take a look at the cows and the
sheep and the horses and everything that is there. It was just
a wonderful feeling. It is a great part of growing up in
Illinois.
And yet when you think now in terms of our discussion, this
is an experience that we have to reassess. Dr. Chalk, you talk
about the weaponization of foot and mouth disease and I think
what you say is that it is doable. A person could find a way to
spread this disease. If that is the case, let me ask you this.
What is the incubation period for foot and mouth disease?
Dr. Chalk. Well, Dr. McGinn was----
Senator Durbin. Or Dr. McGinn, whoever.
Dr. McGinn. Three to 5 days was the accepted length of
time. That is why a terrorist could actually put it on a
handkerchief, bring it into our country from any country that
has foot and mouth disease in the world, just put it on a
handkerchief, bring it in, and infect at multiple sites. We
can't see the disease. The virus is actually spreading, but
then in about 4 to 5 days----
Senator Durbin. If you exposed livestock before they are
being shipped back to the farm at a State fair, you would have
dispersed this disease across the State. Frankly and sadly, in
an efficient way, it would move across the State. That is a
reality and would have a terrible damaging economic impact. How
do we cope with that? How do we deal with that?
Now let me go to the next area, food processing, which
concerns me a great deal. In fact, Madam Chairman, I asked the
General Accounting Office to do a study this year on food
processing security. We talk about safety, but what about
security? And what they found when it came to the security
aspects which we have discussed here are troubling.
They went to the two major agencies, Food and Drug
Administration and USDA, who are represented today, and they
concluded, the GAO, that neither agency believes it has the
authority to regulate all aspects of security. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture believes the statutes cannot be
interpreted to authorize the regulation of security measures
that are not associated with the immediate food processing
environment. As a result, USDA does not believe it has the
authority to require food processors to adopt measures to
ensure security outside the premises, such as installing
fences, or to require that food processors conduct employee
background checks.
So now we have moved beyond the livestock to the processing
part of it and we don't have the current authority to deal with
security on the ground. Instead, we deal with something known
as voluntary guidelines, and excuse me, but I don't think that
is good enough. It might have been good enough dealing with the
problems of the 19th Century. It is not good enough in dealing
with the problems of the 21st Century.
[The prepared statement of Senator Durbin follows:]
OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Good morning.
Thank you, Madam Chairman for holding this hearing on a topic that
potentially impacts the life of every American. I would also like to
welcome one of our witnesses and a life-long resident of Illinois, Dr.
Colleen O'Keefe from the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Agriculture's contribution to our Gross Domestic Product is over
one trillion dollars per year--one sixth of our GDP. And although only
3 percent of Americans are directly involved with farming, one out of
eight (1/8) Americans are employed in an occupation that is directly
supported by food and fiber production. Additionally, agricultural
exports are the largest positive contributor to the United States'
trade balance.
An act of agricultural terrorism or a naturally occurring
agricultural catastrophe would have immediate effects on our economy
and could threaten our national security. Public health and animal
health could be compromised and public confidence in our institutions
would be shaken. How long these effects would last depends on our
readiness to respond.
We have concentrated on many aspects of national security but have
taken much more limited action to address agricultural and food
security. There are many steps in the process that brings food from
farm fields to grocers' shelves and each step may be susceptible to
tampering. Possible targets could include field crops, farm animals,
food in the processing and distribution chain, market-ready food,
storage facilities, wholesale and retail outlets, transportation
systems and research institutions.
Because of consolidation within the agricultural sector and
vertical integration of our food production and distribution systems,
one well-placed and well-timed attack could disrupt a considerable
portion of our food chain.
We should develop an integrated strategy that includes specific,
relevant and measurable goals for preparedness, surveillance, response
and recovery.
We cannot assume we are prepared for agricultural catastrophes if
we have not established clear roles for Federal, State and local
authorities and integrated those roles into the overall homeland
security plan.
We cannot presume to have effective surveillance unless we develop
adequate laboratory capacity and the ability to quickly transfer
samples and results.
We cannot pretend to have an adequate response unless we can
predict patterns of disease dispersion and address economic, social,
trade, diplomatic, legal and even military options after an outbreak.
Communication is basic to our preparedness, surveillance, response
and recovery, from local farmers to international trade partners. We
must communicate effectively among and between agencies, with our trade
partners and especially with the agricultural community that is so
critical to our own individual well-being and the well-being of our
entire country.
Madam Chairman, right now there are too many variables in our
approach to intentional or naturally occurring agricultural disasters.
In the last Congress, I introduced legislation to combine the 13
different Federal agencies that have jurisdiction over food safety into
one Food Safety Administration. A single food agency would serve as an
efficient and coherent system dedicated to securing our Nation's food
supply and ultimately our public health and economic strength. I am
making improvements to that legislation and plan to re-introduce it
early in the next session.
In closing, I would like to cite the 2002 report, ``Agricultural
Bioterrorism: A Federal Strategy to Meet the Threat'' from the National
Defense University. The paper concludes, ``An aggressive, well-
coordinated effort to combat agricultural bioterrorism will strengthen
partnerships and improve coordination among agencies and organizations
with responsibilities, programs, and capabilities to address a
significant national threat. Perhaps, because the threat is more
focused and manageable than other potential threats against the
Nation's infrastructures, an effective, well-coordinated program may
provide a model for other counterterrorism efforts.''
Madam Chairman, I would suggest that now is the time to build that
model program.
Thank you, Madam Chairman. I look forward to hearing from today's
witnesses about their agencies' food security efforts at the State and
national levels.
Senator Durbin. And so I would like to ask each of you, in
the short time remaining here, if you could comment briefly. Do
you feel that consolidating our efforts in Washington is also
essential to making certain that we deal with food security in
a responsible fashion so that you in State and local venues
have someone you can work with who really looks at the depth
and breadth of the challenge that faces us? Dr. McGinn.
Dr. McGinn. Absolutely. I think if you look at the
scenarios that we have shared today and the one you just
mentioned about the State fairs, this was in Scientific
American that that very scenario had been discussed, and the
Scientific American said these sorts of scenarios are out there
and having a Federal plan that coordinates all the agencies and
requiring these Federal agencies to come up with that plan
within a certain length of time, and then that sets a standard
or a set of roles and responsibilities that they would
undertake and then, in like fashion, requiring the States to
follow that sort of plan to be able to address these
intentional attacks is very much necessary at this point in
time.
To do that takes some resources. If you look at the
scenario with smallpox and human health, what you saw is the
CDC grants that came forward with a tremendous amount of
resources to the States. They focus on different areas,
training, exercising, pharmaceuticals, communications. They
have all these different focus areas and very much feel like
that in order to get this coordinated effort on the national
level and on the State level, we have got to have the plans. We
need deadlines to get those out there, but the dollars have to
come to both levels to actually build the capabilities,
targeted dollars, a large number of dollars, sustainable
dollars that had not yet been put into this whole process.
So a plan is great, but building capability in addition to
that plan, both of those need to be on a time line and funded
in order to address these sorts of things.
Senator Durbin. Thank you. Dr. Chalk or Dr. O'Keefe?
Dr. Chalk. I absolutely agree. One needs to have a plan to
ensure against duplication of effort, cross-jurisdictional
jealousies, turf wars that inevitably arise in terms of
mandates. It is all very well to have plans, but those plans
need to be directed and coordinated in a single fashion to
prevent the proliferation of ad hoc initiatives that seek to
address specific contingencies in an individual basis. And as
we have seen in various other areas of counterterrorism, that
is not a viable way of actually dealing with this threat.
One also has to look at the agricultural and food industry
in a holistic fashion. As you say, it definitely does need to
include the food production part of the industry and those
sorts of modalities need to be factored in in terms of setting
predetermined standards that should be instituted across the
board. So I would fundamentally support those sorts of efforts.
Senator Durbin. Dr. O'Keefe.
Dr. O'Keefe. I agree with everything they said. I can't
speak on a Federal level. That is not my expertise. But on the
State level, we run into this all the time, whether public
health has an issue or is it Department of Agriculture, and
we--what our mandate is and what their mandate is are sometimes
not the same and we can see a problem but not be able to deal
with it and have to turn it over to another agency and there is
a lot of time gap sometimes in getting it done. So assuming
that they are both the same is a critical need legislatively.
Senator Durbin. Madam Chairman, I thank you. I thank the
panel. I would just say to you, every time I bring this issue
up, the lobbyists get nervous and their feet start shuffling
and they are thinking, oh my God, he is going to take away my
job. He is talking about combining some existing agency into a
new agency and I represent the group that is comfortable with
an existing agency. Don't change things. Don't rock the boat.
And the same thing is true up here on Capitol Hill with
Members of Congress who jealously guard their jurisdiction.
They don't want to give it up. And then you get downtown, and
frankly, the only people who favor consolidation of food safety
and security are either people who are not in the government or
people retired from the government. As soon as they arrive and
they are on the government payroll, in political positions
usually, oh, they have just resisted night and day. We can't
afford this anymore. Agroterrorism, I think, ought to be the
wake-up call here, that we can do a much better job, and thank
you for alerting us.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Durbin.
We will do one final round of questions for this panel,
limited to 4 minutes each.
Dr. McGinn, one consequence that you have explored of an
outbreak would be an impact potentially on military training
and deployment. This consequence is something that I think most
of us hadn't even thought of as a possible consequence of
agroterrorism. Could you expand on your earlier comments and
tell us a little bit about your concerns in that area and any
suggestions you might have?
Dr. McGinn. Gladly. In the scenario we shared earlier, you
can see all the arrows going across all the different States,
but within those States then what occurs is multiple
quarantined areas that will be popping up simultaneously. You
could have 500 to 1,000 farming facilities or processing
facilities under quarantine at one time.
This will create a restriction in movement that is very
significant to the military, but also to anybody moving any
sort of goods through, whether it is a research facility that
has to move products, moving computers from one place to the
next. Any sort of movements then become gummed up in the works,
so to speak.
So the military would be an example. They have got to be
able to mobilize very quickly and deploy extremely quickly and
so any sort of way that they would have to be dealing with
these quarantined facilities would be a great challenge to
them. They would also be restricted in where they could land
and actually set up and stage in other countries. When other
countries have had foot and animal diseases in their country,
infectious organisms, we would not allow them to come and
exercise in our country because of fear that those transports
and those personnel might bring some of these infectious
diseases into our country. So we have already set a precedence
that says we don't want those sorts of diseases coming into our
country, so we would then in like fashion if a terrorist used
such an organism against us, then we would have a difficult
time being able to deploy to other countries, as well.
So this whole issue of the massive number of quarantines
associated, as we saw in the U.K., you had people leave their
homes with their children so they could go to school and they
actually left where they lived for long periods in time so as
to get outside of quarantine areas.
So the challenge associated with any kind of biological
event, whether it is directed at animals or directed at people,
becomes this whole issue of restriction in movement and
obviously it has a great impact on our ability of our military
to do what it needs to do to protect us, as well.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. I think that helps us
understand that the consequences of an outbreak of animal
disease are far-reaching when it actually would have an impact
on military readiness and the ability to deploy troops.
Dr. O'Keefe, one of our witnesses on the next panel will
talk about the Federal Government's efforts to train State
officials. For example, the Department of Agriculture's APHIS
sponsored 2-week training seminars three times in 2001 for
veterinarians in all 50 States. Could you give us your
assessment of Federal efforts to assist State officials through
education and training to increase the level of preparedness?
Dr. O'Keefe. We have at this point four trained
veterinarians for the foreign animal disease diagnosticians,
which is critical to the point of diagnosing quickly whether or
not this is a risk or not.
As far as the other levels go, when seminars have been made
available, we have sent staff. At this point, we always need
more training, but the level we are at right now is adequate.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Chalk, just one final
question for you. We know that some nations, including the
former Soviet Union, experimented extensively with crop and
livestock diseases as weapons. Should we be concerned about the
dissemination of that research to terrorist groups and to
nations that sponsor terrorism, and if so, do you have any
suggestions for how we can address that potential threat?
Dr. Chalk. Yes, you are quite correct. The former Soviet
Union, Iraq, and South Africa, are all countries that have--and
the United States, for that matter--are all countries that have
included agricultural components in their weapons of mass
destruction biological programs.
There is certainly a potential for that research to be
disseminated by rogue scientists, by individuals seeking to
make a quick buck, particularly from the Soviet Union, in
exactly the same fashion as the concern exists vis-a-vis
scientists who have been involved in the human side of the
biological programs.
I guess the fundamental way of dealing with that is to
provide incentives for the scientists in the countries
concerned not to do that in terms of providing viable income
and employment opportunities and redirecting their efforts
towards the development of sustainable vaccines to deal with
things like foot and mouth disease. And certainly the
technological expertise in those countries exists whereby one
could tap into that and actually use it as a positive resource
as opposed to a potential negative threat.
On the State side, the one thing I would like to stress is
that when it is argued that we are always dealing in scenarios
when it comes to agroterrorism, I have only come up with two
documented cases of the sub-state use of biological weapons
deliberately as a political strategy against livestock.
The mere fact that nation states have recognized its
utility as a viable offensive weapon, as a form of asymmetric
warfare, should be of concern, not only in terms of
understanding its potential utility, but in many cases sub-
state actors will seek to replicate what the state actor is
doing, and that is certainly true of the terrorism method. So
it is important that we understand the dynamics of how States
have seen agroterrorism and we understand the potential
dissemination of those lessons, of those implications down to
the sub-state level.
Luckily, though, with respect to the former Soviet Union,
with respect to Iraq, and certainly with respect to South
Africa, there has been a voluntary curtailment of the bio
weapons programs in general. So that has mitigated that threat.
But the fact is, the knowledge is out there. It is still there
and we need to be aware of that.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would like to
ask for comments from our witnesses either now or for the
record on my legislation, S. 427, which is the Agriculture
Security Assistance Act, and also S. 430, which is the
Agriculture Security Preparedness Act. These bills increase
coordination in confronting threats in the agriculture
industry. I crafted this to maximize the benefits for our
country and would like for you to look at it and to make
comments on it. That is my question, and because of time, I
would like to have it for the record.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
I want to thank this excellent panel for your testimony
today. There is one final point that at least two of you raised
that I want to highlight, and that is that an individual who is
intent upon creating an attack of agroterrorism does not
necessarily put himself at risk and that makes agroterrorism
much more tempting, in many ways.
For example, someone who is dealing with anthrax has to
worry about contaminating himself. By contrast, someone who is
seeking to create an outbreak of foot and mouth disease does
not have to worry about ``catching'' the disease, and that
seems to be the case with many of the pathogens that you have
identified as potential vehicles for causing an agroterrorist
attack.
I think that makes the challenge that much more difficult
and I want to thank you all for the work that you are doing in
this area and for giving the panel a better understanding of
the challenges our Nation faces. Thank you.
I would now like to call our final panel forward. It
consists of representatives of the Department of Homeland
Security, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department
of Agriculture. These are the three agencies that are most
responsible for agroterrorism preparedness and response.
Dr. Penrose Albright is the Assistant Secretary for Science
and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security. The
Science and Technology Directorate heads the Department's
agroterrorism prevention and response efforts and oversees the
Plum Island Animal Disease Center, our first line of defense
against foreign animal disease.
Dr. Lester Crawford is the Deputy Commissioner for the Food
and Drug Administration. Two entities within the FDA, the
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and the Office of
Regulatory Affairs play significant roles in FDA's efforts to
prevent and respond to an attack upon our food supply.
Dr. Charles Lambert is Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing
and Regulatory Programs at the Department of Agriculture. Dr.
Lambert's responsibilities include the management of the Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service, the principal Federal
agency for preventing and responding to outbreaks of diseases
and pests. APHIS also monitors foreign animal and plant health
and maintains a surveillance system aimed at rapidly detecting
and diagnosing outbreaks of exotic diseases in the United
States. He is accompanied by Dr. Merle Pierson, Deputy Under
Secretary for Food Safety.
I want to thank you all for being here today and for your
patience in waiting through the testimony of the other
witnesses.
Dr. Albright, it is a great pleasure to welcome you back to
the Committee. We were very pleased to confirm you earlier this
year and we look forward to hearing your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF HON. PENROSE ALBRIGHT,\1\ ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Albright. Thank you, Chairman Collins and Senator
Akaka. I am pleased to appear before you today to report on the
progress the Science and Technology Directorate of the
Department of Homeland Security is making in the areas of
prevention, protection, response, and recovery to acts of
agroterrorism against the American people.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Albright appears in the Appendix
on page 88.
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The Department's mission is to protect America from
terrorist threats or strikes, including those directed at
agriculture and food. The Science and Technology Directorate
serves as the primary research and development arm of the
Department of Homeland Security and its priority is to find
technology solutions to meet pressing homeland security
challenges.
S&T is specifically tasked with marshaling the intellectual
capital of the engineering and scientific communities to
develop fresh and effective approaches to safeguard the
American public. The Science and Technology Directorate
collaborates with APHIS and with USDA's Agricultural Research
Service, or ARS, on research at the Plum Island Animal Disease
Center, which on June 1 of this year became part of the
Department of Homeland Security as mandated by the Homeland
Security Act.
In its planning, the Science and Technology Directorate has
been guided by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, current
threat assessments, our understanding of existing capabilities
or those that can be anticipated in the near term, and by the
priorities outlined in the President's National Strategy for
Homeland Security. In short, we are shaping the Directorate to
serve as the Department's hub for research and development for
countering the spectrum of threats against the United States
and its people.
The Department and the Directorate must consider and
address a number of factors in its approach to protecting the
agricultural infrastructure. You heard a lot of the issues from
the prior witnesses.
The U.S. agricultural and food system is a large nationwide
system of production, processing, and distribution. The
opportunities both geographically and within the system for
intentional introduction of biological agents introduces
considerable complexity in securing these critical components
of the national infrastructure.
The historical approach to keeping foreign animal diseases,
such as foot and mouth disease, out of the continental United
States has been to secure and protect our borders against the
unintentional introduction of animals carrying such diseases.
The bioterrorism event, on the other hand, would be the result
of the intentional introduction of one or more biological
agents at multiple locations within our borders simultaneously.
Therefore, we have a need to clearly understand the scope and
scale of this challenge and to develop a national strategy and
the necessary tools to prevent, detect, respond, and recover
from such potential events.
Through their research and regulatory programs, the USDA
and the Food and Drug Administration provide the foundation for
national agricultural, animal, and plant health and for public
health. The USDA has established programs on foreign animal
diseases and their pathogens, diseases of domestic animals and
their pathogens, vectors and reservoirs of animal and human
disease pathogens, plant crop diseases and their pathogens, and
food safety. The FDA also has a very strong research program to
address food safety and security concerns.
Thus, our strategy in the Science and Technology
Directorate is designed to overlay protection from agricultural
terrorism onto this very excellent foundation.
Two of the four high-consequence biological scenarios that
have been guiding the Science and Technology Directorate's
planning for its research programs, in fact, address major
concerns in agriculture and food, specifically, the deliberate
introduction of foot and mouth disease into the United States
and the results of a classified food security scenario that we
also use in our planning purposes.
We expect that the lessons learned from a thorough analysis
of these initial two Department of Homeland Security biological
scenarios will provide a valuable perspective and framework for
our planning in collaboration with our USDA and FDA partners
and will serve to guide the development of initial scenarios in
agriculture and food safety.
Let me now say a few words about one of our key concerns,
which is foot and mouth disease. Foot and mouth disease virus
infects cloven footed animals, such as cattle, swine, sheep,
and deer, and is one of the most infectious biological agents
known. It is not infectious to humans.
The United States has been free from foot and mouth disease
since 1929. As the isolation and manipulation of the foot and
mouth disease virus requires fairly low to medium-range
technology, this pathogen is a potentially high consequence if
intentionally introduced to U.S. livestock.
Research on the intact FMD virus is currently restricted to
the Plum Island Animal Disease Center just off of Long Island.
At Plum Island, the research program led by ARS and the
diagnostic program conducted by APHIS are, in fact, unique.
Therefore, Plum Island is recognized as a critical national
asset that is essential for protecting the U.S. livestock that
is vital to the Nation's economy and food supply.
We are currently developing a collaborative strategy for
the operations and research programs on Plum Island with our
colleagues at APHIS and ARS and with the customers and
stakeholders representing key industry groups. This strategic
planning includes, first, a 60-day study of facilities and the
security status and requirements of Plum Island; coordination
of the Plum Island program with the National Biodefense
Analysis and Countermeasures Center, or NBAC, that the Science
and Technology Directorate has created at the Fort Detrick
Biodefense Campus. NBAC is dedicated to protecting health and
agriculture by advancing the scientific community's knowledge
of bioterrorism events and vulnerabilities.
We are also performing an end-to-end analysis of the R&D
requirements for a comprehensive program on foot and mouth
disease, including identification of research and technology
gaps and milestones for deployment of diagnostics, vaccines,
and antivirals over a 1-, 3-, and 5-year set of time frames,
along with the associated needs for facilities, staffing, and
funding required to support this research and development
activity.
This is just but a part of a joint DHS-USDA comprehensive
national strategy for foreign animal disease with an emphasis
on foot and mouth disease which must be reported to Congress in
January as required by the fiscal year 2004 appropriations
language.
The joint USDA-DHS Comprehensive National Strategy for
Foreign Animal Diseases in general includes the drafting of a
technology development roadmap. The roadmap includes the
identification of major technology requirements and gaps with
major milestones during the short, mid, and long terms in the
following areas. Development, and if cost effective, deployment
of a prototype surveillance capability along with development
of outbreak response plans; development at MBAC of a forensics
capability for agroterrorism threats; development and
characterization of a strain and sample archive for the various
diseases at issue; development of rapid detection
capabilities--you heard from prior witnesses the importance of
that--and also the development of rapid and new assays; and the
development of new adjutants, antivirals, immune stimulators,
and novel vaccines. These activities are significant new
investments to enhance the national capacity to respond to
agroterrorism.
Consistent with that roadmap, currently within the Science
and Technology Directorate, our initiatives and activities in
agricultural security include, as mentioned earlier, in the
context of foot and mouth disease, we are conducting end-to-end
systems studies to fully understand the scope and requirements
for foreign animal disease and food security scenarios in
general. This includes the development and exercising of model
simulations and tabletop exercise to explore the
epidemiological and economic consequences and tradeoffs that
follow policy and crisis management decisions associated with
these scenarios.
We are developing key enabling technologies and tools, such
as, again, rapid assays and diagnostics, to prevent, detect,
respond, and recover from the intentional or unintentional
introduction of biological agents into the national agriculture
and food systems. I should say that this is part of the much
larger effort that we are conducting that is also applying
these technologies to human health issues, as well. They apply
equally across the board.
We are developing key enabling technologies and tools, such
as a detection and surveillance system that is known as the
Biowatch Program that is currently deployed in 31 cities across
the Nation for human health purposes in agricultural scenarios.
We are performing end-to-end systems studies with USDA and
FDA on food security to specify, design, and guide development
of detection surveillance systems at critical nodes in the food
production systems.
And we have awarded contracts through our recent
solicitations with the Technical Support Working Group for new
detection technologies for biological agents, for example,
botulinum toxin.
We are also conducting through the Homeland Security
Advanced Research Projects Agency a broad agency announcement
for more advanced capabilities in this specific arena, and we
are also funding long-range research at our national labs
specifically in those areas.
We will also be establishing university-based Homeland
Security Centers of Excellence dedicated to agriculture and
food safety in fiscal year 2004.
We have also heard from prior witnesses about the need for
trained researchers in this area. We have within the Department
of Homeland Security a scholars and fellows program that
supports undergraduate and graduate students in areas of
interest to homeland security. There were a number, in our
first class of fellows and scholars, of people engaged in
biological research and I was told prior to the hearing that
specifically one of them is a veterinary doctor who intends to
perform her research at Plum Island on foreign animal diseases,
so we are adding to that capability.
We have further collaborations with S&T. Between S&T and
USDA include, as I mentioned earlier, a Plum Island interagency
agreement that provides for the DHS operations and maintenance
of the facility. Also, to make sure that we are fully
coordinating our foreign animal disease programs in
collaboration with ARS and APHIS and to include bioforensic
analysis to support attribution of agroterrorism events. We are
conducting joint R&D programs on FMD diagnostics and also
assisting APHIS in its support for the foot and mouth disease
vaccine bank and foreign animal disease training and
diagnostics capabilities up at Plum Island.
As I mentioned earlier and as required by our
appropriations language, we are developing with USDA a national
agricultural biosecurity research and development strategy to
be delivered in January 2004, and, of course, under Section
302.2 of the Homeland Security Act, we are required to develop
a broad national strategy for homeland security research and
development activities. And, of course, we are working closely
with USDA and with FDA on the development of the relevant
sections of that strategy.
So in conclusion, the Science and Technology Directorate is
leveraging its programmatic and research strengths and
establishing working relationships with the key Federal
biodefense agencies to complement the technology base and
research capabilities available at USDA and FDA laboratories
and also land grant universities. The collaboration between S&T
and USDA on the operations and research programs at Plum Island
and MBAC will continue to be a major programmatic and
operational focus in fiscal year 2004 and beyond. The systems
studies in fiscal year 2004 in foreign animal disease and food
security scenarios will further define the research
requirements for our strategy and budget in fiscal year 2005
and beyond.
While the Directorate has made significant early progress
in the areas of protecting the Nation from acts of
agroterrorism, challenges remain and we have a great deal of
work before us. But we are confident that we are moving in the
right direction with our current collaborative strategy with
USDA, FDA, and other stakeholders and our plans to
systematically fortify the vulnerabilities in agricultural
infrastructure and protect it from threats and attacks.
Chairman Collins, this concludes my prepared remarks and I
will be happy to take any questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Crawford.
TESTIMONY OF LESTER M. CRAWFORD, D.V.M., Ph.D.,\1\ DEPUTY
COMMISSIONER, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
Dr. Crawford. Thank you. Senator Collins and Members of the
Committee, I am Les Crawford, Deputy Commissioner of the Food
and Drug Administration. I am pleased to be here today with my
colleagues from Agriculture and also from Homeland Security.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Crawford appears in the Appendix
on page 96.
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FDA appreciates the opportunity to discuss our food
counterterrorism activities. I will first briefly describe
FDA's food safety and security responsibilities. Then I will
discuss FDA's ten-point program for ensuring the safety and
security of the Nation's food supply. The plan includes FDA's
recent actions to implement the Public Health Security and
Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. I am told,
Senator Collins, that you named it that, but we call it the
Bioterrorism Act. I would like to thank you for your leadership
role in the enactment of this landmark legislation.
FDA's food safety and security responsibilities. First, we
are the Federal agency that regulates 80 percent of the
Nation's food supply, everything we eat except for meat,
poultry, and certain egg products, which are regulated by our
partners at USDA. Our responsibility extends to live food
animals and animal feed.
Food safety and food security continue to be top priorities
for this administration. In our food safety and security
efforts, FDA has many partners, Federal and State agencies,
academia, and industry. We are working closely with our Federal
partners, such as USDA, Department of Homeland Security,
Homeland Security Council at the White House, and the
Department of State, as well as with law enforcement and
intelligence gathering agencies.
I also want to emphasize our close working relationships
with our sister public health agency, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, also the Customs and Border Protection
Agency within the Department of Homeland Security, and with the
Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service in USDA.
On July 23, Commissioner McClellan of FDA issued a report
to HHS Secretary Thompson entitled, ``Ensuring the Safety and
Security of the Nation's Food Supply.'' The report outlines a
comprehensive ten-point program to protect the safety and
security of our food supply. I will briefly describe some of
the program areas.
First, a stronger FDA. Thanks to bipartisan Congressional
support, the fiscal year 2002 supplemental included
counterterrorism funds for FDA. This enabled our agency to hire
over 800 employees, 655 of whom were hired as additional field
personnel. Six-hundred-and-thirty-five were hired to address
food safety and security issues, primarily at the border.
Imports--the volume of imported food shipments has been
rising steadily in recent years. It has increased about five-
fold since the passage of the World Trade Organization Treaty.
With the additional field employees, we have expanded FDA's
presence at ports of entry, increased surveillance of imported
foods, increased domestic inspections, and enhanced our
laboratory analysis capacity.
Implementation of the Bioterrorism Act. Title 3 of the
Bioterrorism Act provided the Secretary of Health and Human
Services with new authorities to protect the Nation's food
supply against the threat of intentional contamination and
other food-related emergencies. These new authorities will
improve our ability to act quickly in responding to a
threatened or actual terrorist attack, as well as other food-
related emergencies.
The agency has been working hard to implement this law
effectively and efficiently. On October 10 of this year, we
published two interim final regulations to implement Section
305, Registration of Food Facilities, and Section 307, Prior
Notice of Imported Food Shipments. We have also published
proposed regulations to implement Section 303, the
Administrative Detention section, and Section 306, Maintenance
and Inspection of Records for Foods.
The interim final rule on registration requires domestic
and foreign facilities that manufacture or process, pack, or
hold food for human or animal consumption in the United States
to register with FDA. FDA will have, for the first time, a
complete roster of foreign and domestic food facilities. In the
event of a potential or actual terrorist incident or an
outbreak of foodborne illness, the registration information
will enable FDA to quickly identify and locate the facilities
that may be affected. We expect up to 420,000 facilities to
register under this requirement.
The Bioterrorism Act requires facilities to register by
December 12, 2003. FDA's electronic registration system became
operational on October 16, giving facilities time to register
by the statutory deadline. We wish to encourage facilities to
go ahead and submit their registrations and not wait until the
deadline. As of yesterday afternoon, over 55,000 facilities had
registered. We encourage people to hurry up and do that. It is
very easily done off our website. We have a section in the
upper right-hand corner which enables you to do it
electronically in about 15 minutes.
The interim final regulation on prior notice requires the
submission to FDA of prior notice of food, including animal
feed, that is imported or offered for import into the United
States. This advance information would allow FDA, working
closely with CBP, to more effectively target inspections to
ensure the safety of imported foods.
I would like to mention a few of our other program
activities, if I may. FDA has issued guidance on the security
measures the food industry may take to minimize the risk that
food will be subject to tampering or other malicious, criminal,
or terrorist actions. We have conducted extensive scientific
vulnerability assessments of different categories of food,
determining the most serious risk of intentional contamination
with different biological or chemical agents during various
stages of food production and distribution.
FDA has established an Office of Crisis Management to
coordinate the preparedness and emergency response activities
within FDA and with our Federal, State, and local counterparts.
To increase laboratory surge capacity, FDA has worked in close
collaboration with CDC and USDA FSIS to expand the laboratory
response network by establishing the Food Emergency Response
Network, or FERN, to include a substantial number of
counterterrorism laboratories capable of analyzing foods for
agents of concern. FDA has embarked on an ambitious research
agenda throughout the agency to address potential terrorist
threats.
In conclusion, through the new authorities in the
Bioterrorism Act and the measures outlined in the ten-point
plan, we are making tremendous progress in our ability to
ensure the safety and security of the Nation's food supply.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss FDA's
food safety and security activities and I would be more than
pleased to respond to any questions or comments. Thank you very
much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Lambert.
TESTIMONY OF CHARLES LAMBERT, \1\ DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR
MARKETING AND REGULATORY PROGRAMS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE, ACCOMPANIED BY MERLE PIERSON, DEPUTY UNDER
SECRETARY FOR FOOD SAFETY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Dr. Lambert. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Mr. Akaka. Thank
you for the opportunity to speak with you on behalf of USDA
about agroterrorism and our efforts to prevent and respond to a
possible attack.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Lambert appears in the Appendix
on page 117.
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Many agencies within USDA have been working to address this
issue. Today, my comments will focus only on the work at the
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and at the
Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). APHIS is under the
jurisdiction of Marketing and Regulatory Programs, and Dr.
Merle Pierson will be available to answer additional questions
and explore topics that I introduce in the food safety area.
APHIS's mission is to protect the health and value of
American agriculture and natural resources. To accomplish this
mission, APHIS has a safeguarding system in place to prevent
introductions of foreign agricultural pests and diseases. APHIS
also has operational response mechanisms to contain and
eradicate a pest or disease should an introduction occur.
Since September 11, 2001, APHIS has heightened its already
vigilant efforts to prevent foreign agricultural pests and
diseases from entering the United States, either intentionally
or unintentionally. APHIS has undertaken numerous measures to
bolster its infrastructure. More than ever, APHIS is confident
in its ability to detect and respond to the accidental or
intentional introduction of animal and plant pests and diseases
to ensure that America's food supply is protected and remains
prosperous.
Events over the past 2 years have led APHIS to increase its
networks of partners and better share information with
cooperators. In any emergency or situation, the better prepared
both with information and with training everyone is the more
effective the response will be.
USDA realizes that there can never be enough people
involved in safeguarding activities. We are actively working
with stakeholder organizations, including the National
Association of State Departments of Agriculture, U.S. Animal
Health Association, the North American Plant Protection
Organization, university systems, and county extension agents
and others to maximize collective efforts to safeguard against
potential introduction of foreign plant and animal pathogens.
APHIS has held foreign animal disease awareness training
seminars for State and Federal veterinarians from all 50 States
to enhance preparedness for introduction of foreign animal
diseases, to improve communications, and strengthen cooperative
partnerships.
APHIS also conducts yearly emergency preparedness satellite
seminars to share vital information with veterinarian
practitioners on how to identify and respond to an animal
health emergency. More than 1,700 Federal and State veterinary
officials and emergency planners, military representatives, and
veterinarian college students and professors have participated.
Working with our Federal counterparts is essential. In the
event of an agroterror attack, the Department of Homeland
Security and APHIS will work as partners to safeguard America's
food and agricultural resources. DHS will lead the team of
first responders to contain and manage the threat, while APHIS
provides crucial scientific and diagnostic expertise. This
expertise will be critical in managing a potential disease
outbreak as well as assisting efforts to find those responsible
for a terrorist attack. In preparation, APHIS has established a
liaison at DHS responsible for ensuring that agroterrorist
response information is included in first responder training.
APHIS has also entered into interagency agreements with
other government agencies so that we can benefit from open
source intelligence gathering on potential threats to U.S.
agriculture and participate in the evaluation of newly
developed rapid diagnostic equipment.
Pest and disease detection is a critical component of our
safeguarding system. Of the 2002 homeland security supplemental
funding, $20.6 million went to facility and equipment upgrades
at a network of animal and plant laboratories around the
country. This investment has enhanced our diagnostic and
response capability.
APHIS's safeguarding, intradiction, and trade compliance
team is working in partnership with DHS and State and local law
enforcement agencies to mitigate the risk of smuggled
commodities. In addition, APHIS monitors pests and diseases
overseas and has implemented the Offshore Pest Information
System to monitor and document changes in distribution and
outbreak status of specific pests and diseases in their
countries of origin.
APHIS currently has 64 Foreign Service officials stationed
in 26 countries on six continents. These officials work closely
with their foreign counterparts to collect information and help
focus our safeguarding efforts. It is important that we remain
prepared for the introduction of a foreign animal or plant
disease, whether introduction is intentional or unintentional.
One of the most important developments in increasing the
effectiveness of our emergency response is implementation of
the National Interagency Incident Management System to ensure
that the entire U.S. Government has a single comprehensive
approach to incident management. This unified approach
facilitates coordination among various agencies and
jurisdictions and has been used widely in the emergency
management community, including at USDA's Forest Service when
they are responding to fires. APHIS has already put this model
to use with great success in combatting an outbreak of poultry
exotic Newcastle disease in the Southwestern United States.
APHIS also has opened a state-of-the-art emergency
operations center which serves as the national command and
coordination center for APHIS emergency programs. The center
houses 40 or more personnel and operates around the clock in
emergency.
The Food Safety Inspection Service is the USDA agency
responsible for ensuring that the Nation's meat, poultry, and
egg products are safe, secure, wholesome, and accurately
labeled. Each day, FSIS has more than 7,600 inspectors and
veterinarians in more than 6,000 Federal meat, poultry, and egg
product plants and at ports of entry to prevent, detect, and
respond to food-related emergencies.
FSIS has undertaken a number of initiatives to protect
meat, poultry, and egg products from the potential of a
terrorist attack. The newly created Office of Food Security and
Emergency Preparedness serves as the centralized office within
FSIS for food security issues. OFSEP interacts closely with
USDA's Homeland Security Council and represents the agency on
all food security matters throughout the Federal Government, as
well as in State and local activities.
FSIS collaborates and coordinates closely with its State
partners, including the Association of Food and Drug Officials,
the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and
the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture to
ensure an effective prevention and response program.
Both APHIS and FSIS receive threat information and written
reports from the intelligence community to update the
Department on terrorist attacks relative to food and
agriculture. This intelligence allows APHIS and FSIS to
prioritize responses based upon both perceived vulnerability
and what is known of the terrorist threat.
The White House Homeland Security Council has recognized
the need for a coordinated approach to food security matters
and has assembled an interagency food working group to consider
policy issues related to protecting the food supply and
minimizing it as a target for terrorist activity. The working
group has representatives from 12 Federal agencies, including
FSIS.
In addition to its partnerships with the White House and
Federal agencies, in April 2003, FSIS signed a memorandum of
agreement with the Surgeon General and Public Health Service
that allows more commissioned Corps officers to be detailed to
the agency. These officers will assist in preventing foodborne
illness and help FSIS respond to foodborne outbreaks when they
occur, as well as assisting in the agency's homeland security
efforts.
In fiscal year 2003, FSIS undertook many new initiatives as
well as strengthened its existing infrastructure to enhance the
ability to detect any potential intentional threat to the food
supply. FSIS has also strengthened its controls to protect the
public from the entry of contaminated food from abroad.
As part of FSIS initiatives to better develop its workforce
to respond to potential terrorist attack, employee directives
were issued last March to instruct in-plant and laboratory
personnel on how to respond when the Homeland Security Advisory
System threat level moves to orange or red.
In March 2003, as Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the
Federal Government initiated Operation Liberty Shield to
increase security and readiness in the United States. During
this time, FSIS implemented activities to focus efforts at
preventing food and agroterrorism.
FSIS, as well as FDA and APHIS, was selected to participate
within a multi-department international trade data system in
2004. This new initiative will establish a single automated
system for sharing data on inspection and certification of
products entering the United States and it will provide
commercial enterprises with a single source for interaction
with the various agencies that regulate imports. This new
system will eliminate duplication, increase security, and
reduce costs to the government.
In fiscal year 2003, FSIS laboratories expanded their
capability to test for non-traditional microbial, chemical, and
radiological threat agents and increase their surge capacity.
In addition, construction is underway on a biosecurity Level 3
laboratory that will enable FSIS to conduct analyses on a
larger range of potential bioterrorism agents. Construction
should be completed in December.
The strong working relationships that USDA has with the
other Federal agencies and with State and local governments and
industry, as broadly defined from the production through
processing sector to the individual food companies, is vital to
our efforts to safeguard U.S. agriculture. Preserving
traditional relationships and building new ones, such as with
DHS, will strengthen our efforts.
I assure you that USDA remains committed to our biosecurity
and emergency preparedness activities, to ensuring the
continued good health and value of U.S. agriculture. Thank you,
and I look forward to responding to your questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Dr. Lambert.
Dr. McGinn painted a striking picture of how fast an
outbreak of foot and mouth disease could spread in our country.
In fact, I wish I could superimpose his map on top of the chart
that I have just asked to be displayed about the number of
agencies that possibly would be involved in a foot and mouth
disease outbreak.
Each of your agencies is obviously involved and are among
the key players, but we know that more than 30 agencies
potentially would be involved were there an outbreak of foot
and mouth disease. That raises concerns in my mind about
whether the Federal Government has an integrated, effective
plan for dealing with an outbreak such as of foot and mouth
disease or other foreign animal disease. It is my understanding
that before the new Department of Homeland Security was
created, that USDA was taking the lead in developing a Federal
emergency response plan for an outbreak of foot and mouth
disease or other highly contagious disease.
Mr. Lambert, I would ask you first, what is the status of
that plan?
Dr. Lambert. First, I would like to say that the data that
Dr. McGinn presented, we have seen. They have actually been the
basis for simulated exercises that have been conducted. In
September 2000, seven deputy secretaries from across the
government, the intelligence community, and State and local
governments conducted a simulation that was shown in Dr.
McGinn's data, and since that time, APHIS has also conducted a
simulated exercise that showed the multiple introductions of
animal pathogens. Then FDA and FSIS have simulated or conducted
an exercise on the intentional pathogen release in the food
supply that Dr. McGinn showed.
We do have--the FEMA exercise has been transferred to the
Department of Homeland Security. In the event of a terrorist
attack, they would become the first responders. APHIS would
provide the technical expertise that we have within the
Department in a coordinated effort to arrest and contain that
disease.
Chairman Collins. But are you familiar with the plan that
USDA had begun to develop prior to the creation of the new
Department? Did the work for that plan get transferred to DHS
or is the Department of Agriculture still playing the lead
role?
Dr. Lambert. We are both working in that area. In the event
of an outbreak, USDA would respond. We would coordinate and
communicate closely with the Department of Homeland Security.
If terrorist or purposeful introduction was indicated, then DHS
would take the lead in the investigative efforts of that
investigation with APHIS supplying the----
Chairman Collins. Has the plan, though, been completed? Are
you familiar with what I am referring to?
Dr. Lambert. The plan is in place, and yes, we do have a
response plan----
Chairman Collins. It is completed?
Dr. Lambert. Yes.
Chairman Collins. OK. Dr. Albright, do you view DHS as
being the lead agency in the event of an outbreak? My concern,
I think, is obvious. When you have this many agencies involved,
it just raises questions about whether there is going to be
confusion, whether everyone understands the role played by
individual agencies, whether anyone is coordinating the
response as a whole, and we know from Dr. McGinn's testimony
that time is absolutely of the essence and we can't afford any
confusion or lost time.
Mr. Albright. Yes. I think, first, one point that ought to
be made is that if there was an unintentional outbreak of foot
and mouth disease, if this was just a standard agricultural
health and safety exercise, essentially, that chart would still
be in play. There have been response plans in place for a very
long time that USDA has operated that provided for a
coordination of all these different agencies and the marshaling
of the resources necessary to respond to an unintentional
outbreak.
I think what has changed, of course, what you have alluded
to is that with the passage of the Homeland Security Act of
2002, that we now have a new Department that is charged with
the responsibility of coordinating and responding to the
deliberate introduction of these kinds of pathogens or, for
that matter, to almost anything affecting our critical
infrastructure.
So I think it is certainly the case that with the advent of
the new Department, that a lot of the prior Presidential
decision directives, for example, that were associated with the
various coordination activities that existed prior to the
establishment of the Department need to be revisited, and they
have been revisited and they are being updated to reflect first
the post-September 11 environment and to also reflect the
statutory responsibilities of the Secretary of Homeland
Security.
So yes, I think it is fair to say that the Department takes
these responsibilities seriously. We are, as Dr. Lambert
described, we are working very closely with USDA. They are
obviously the subject matter experts in a lot of this, and
working closely with, for that matter, FDA and other agencies
to develop these response plans.
Do I believe that we necessarily--I mean, are we in a
position yet to respond to the kinds of scenarios, for example,
that you saw Dr. McGinn describing? I guess I can't say that
that is necessarily the case yet. Clearly, there are
technological issues involved. He pointed out, for example,
that a lot of the issues surrounding such an outbreak just have
to do with the incubation period of this and the fact that you
have multiple sites being introduced all over the country. So
clearly, there are tools that need to be developed and put in
place before you could mount as effective a response as you
would like.
Chairman Collins. The RAND report includes six specific
recommendations for a more aggressive and coordinated strategy
to secure the agriculture and food sector against an
agroterrorist attack. Specifically, the RAND report calls for,
first, a comprehensive needs analysis to determine the
appropriate investment requirements for the emergency
management infrastructure; second, an increase in the number of
State and local personnel who can identify and treat foreign
animal diseases, such as foot and mouth; third, it calls for
coordinated and standardized links between the U.S.
agricultural and intelligence communities; fourth, enhancing
the law enforcement community's ability to determine whether
disease outbreaks are deliberate or whether they are naturally
occurring; fifth, improving the effectiveness of disease
reporting systems; and finally, the need for an improved
surveillance quality control and emergency response measures at
food processing and packing plants.
Dr. Crawford, I would like to start with you and get the
opinion of all the witnesses of those recommendations.
Dr. Crawford. I think those are sound recommendations and
we have taken them very seriously. Most of these were well
underway before the advent of the report. However, the report
strengthened our resolve and also gave us a good means of
communication not only with the public, but with the Congress
to close the gaps.
One thing that was particularly important that I believe we
have done successfully is to establish viable links with the
intelligence community. That required, as you would know, all
of us that are in authority in FDA to receive the proper
security clearances and also to be linked up so that we could
get daily briefings on the possibility of threats, etc. That
has been accomplished and is working very well. We have
certainly profited from this in our planning, and also, it is
useful for us to have these kinds of clearances so that we can
be involved in White House working groups and other trans-
departmental groups that are dealing with these problems. So
that was, I think, a very positive benefit of it.
And the rest of it was proceeding apace. I think they were
excellent suggestions and they have served as a benchmark for
this ten-point program that I mentioned, actually.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Lambert, your judgment of
these recomendations.
Dr. Lambert. Thank you. I would concur that these are very
sound recommendations and we are moving to implement them and
have moved to implement them. With respect to the intelligence,
as my comments indicated, we do both at APHIS and FSIS receive
these intelligence reports and they serve as the basis, along
with other information from our animal health and foreign
officers, information officers, to help guide and focus our
efforts.
Chairman Collins. And Dr. Albright.
Mr. Albright. I think they are probably consistent with
other reports. For example, the National Academy of Sciences
has done quite a bit of work in this area and has made
essentially the same kinds of recommendations. We would agree
with them.
In terms of needs assessment, as I mentioned in my
statement, we are focusing our efforts around specific
scenarios that actually allow us to identify the bottlenecks
and where we actually--what the gaps are and where we need to
actually focus our efforts to better respond to these kinds of
outbreaks. So yes.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Dr. Lambert, according to a recent GAO report, the Plum
Island Animal Disease Center is taking unnecessary risks with
the pathogen protection and is vulnerable to security breaches.
Plum Island is the only U.S. facility capable of responding to
an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
In addition, the Washington Post reported last week that
the Federal Government had failed to meet the November 12
deadline that requires security reviews of U.S. laboratories
and scientists under the Public Health Security and
Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. Reading
that article makes me feel extremely troubled about this. What
is USDA doing to ensure these security reviews are completed
more quickly?
Dr. Lambert. USDA had an outside independent agency conduct
a security assessment at Plum Island in November 2001 and we
worked with that independent agency to develop risk management
approach to improve security on Plum Island. We have invested
about $860,000 in security upgrades, even before September 11.
Since that time, we have invested another $1.4 million of
security countermeasures. Additional security guards were hired
at Plum Island at a cost of nearly $1 million in fiscal year
2002 and nearly $1.4 million in fiscal year 2004.
So measures have been taken to strengthen security at Plum
Island, and I would add that recently, Plum Island did pass
inspection as a select agent location. So we feel that
additional measures have been taken.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Lambert, concern has been expressed by
Members of Congress and farmers, as well, about the
implications of the merger of the three border inspection
agencies into what is being called the ``one face at the
border'' initiative at the Department of Homeland Security. The
consolidation, some feel, means that agriculture specialists
are no longer present at primary border inspections. Officers
with only basic agricultural training are now responsible for
detecting suspicious animal and plant products. It seems
questionable whether these officers have adequate training to
know what to look for, especially since they are responsible
for usually immigration and customs-related inspections.
What is being done to ensure that qualified staff are
protecting all aspects of our borders, and are they receiving
specialized training?
Dr. Lambert. Yes, Senator. We have heard some of the same
concerns. Essentially, the 2,600 positions that were
agricultural inspectors at APHIS prior to the transfer of those
positions early this year to Homeland Security, essentially,
those same people are there. They have agricultural training.
They have the same basis of that training.
We are working to continue that. APHIS has closely
coordinated with Homeland Security to assure that we have
people at the border that have agricultural expertise. APHIS is
closely involved in the training of those people and in the
policy decisions that they enact.
Another way to look at that is that now we have nearly
4,000 port inspectors that all have some agricultural exposure,
as well. So we have added people from INS and Customs that can
participate and watch for agricultural pathogens, in addition.
So it cuts both ways. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Lambert, last month, the House
Agriculture Committee approved a bill to create a disaster
response team within USDA. The mission of the team would
facilitate financial relief for local farmers and ranchers in
the event of a crisis. Can you discuss what role USDA sees for
itself in local security enhancements, such as prevention and
detection of agricultural attack?
Dr. Lambert. We currently at APHIS have an indemnification
program for producers who have livestock that need to be
euthanized due to a disease outbreak. We think that is a part
of our emergency declaration authority and the ability to
reimburse producers for loss. We think that is important
because knowing that they will not suffer these losses, or
knowing that there is a potential for indemnification, that
producers will be more willing to report an outbreak and to do
that in a timely manner, and that is, as has been indicated,
very critical to our ability to get the disease contained and
eradicated.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Lambert, let me go back and ask you to
clarify your response to my first question. When are the
security reviews going to be completed for the other affected
U.S. laboratories?
Dr. Lambert. We have 75 provisional approvals and three
that have been denied and we will continue to accept and review
additional applications as they become available.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
As I learn more about this issue, I am struck by the number
of points at which an agroterrorist attack could occur. If you
look at the vulnerabilities of the system, it starts at the
farm to our feedlots, even State fairs, and processing plants.
There are so many different points of possible attack.
Before we can develop effective measures to improve the
security of our farms and food supply, we need to do, it seems
to me, a better job of identifying our vulnerabilities. I would
like to know to what extent have your departments undertaken
vulnerability assessments for the entire agricultural and food
industry sector, and we will start with you, Dr. Albright.
Mr. Albright. For the entire sector, I can't argue for the
entire sector. We certainly have leveraged extensive efforts
that I know USDA and FDA conducted in doing vulnerability
assessments.
We, too, as I mentioned earlier, have been working closely
through the Food Security Working Group with FDA and USDA and
through various activities conducted by the White House. As we
look at our defense posture in general, we have been
leveraging, as I said, existing vulnerability assessments and
also conducting additional ones based, as I said a moment ago,
on some of the scenarios that we have been focusing our
attention on in order to better inform response plans,
investments, and that sort of thing.
So I don't think we can say we have looked at the entire
sector, but we have certainly been looking at pieces of it.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Crawford.
Dr. Crawford. Yes. What we have done in collaboration with
the two other departments represented here and also the White
House Homeland Security Council, we have looked at the products
that FDA regulates and we have evaluated the probabilities of
them being used as a vehicle for terrorism in the United
States. We have done threat and vulnerability assessments so as
to identify those that are most likely, both in terms of the
efficacy or effectiveness of an attack through this particular
product, if you will, and second, the damage that could be done
if it was used as a vehicle.
As a result of that, we have identified those that are most
likely. We have identified how this would be done and what we
could do to interdict or contravene this from happening in
terms of how FDA does its business. We have even looked forward
to how this country might recover from such an attack.
We have briefed these two departments on the most likely
concerns, also the White House and other departments that have
concerns of food safety and also terrorism, including the
intelligence community and the science infrastructure of the
U.S. Government. We would be pleased, and I think this should
be done, so it is not just an offer, it is a plea, that we are
able to give you this particular presentation, also, and
whoever of your colleagues and of your staff that could receive
the information because we would be very willing to--you can
understand that I can't do that here, but if we may, we would
like to, once you reflect on it, would like to schedule such a
debriefing.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. I will take you up on that.
Dr. Lambert.
Dr. Lambert. Yes. USDA APHIS has also conducted
vulnerability assessments in both the animal and plant side. As
Dr. Crawford indicated, those are classified, but we would be
willing to participate in that briefing or independently to
inform you in the appropriate manner.
With respect to the critical infrastructure of
vulnerability assessment, we are coordinating closely with DHS
to identify and define those critical infrastructures and then
proceed with the assessment.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Lambert, let me do a follow-up with
you. I understand that FSIS, as opposed to APHIS--we have a lot
of acronyms flying around here today--has completed a risk
analysis of the food supply from farm to table, but that the
risk assessment did not include an analysis of security
measures at food processing and packing plants. I am told that
the reason for that is that FSIS concluded that determined
terrorists could overcome those security measures. That is not
very comforting, I might add.
The General Accounting Office has criticized this
conclusion and I must say I tend to agree with GAO. What is the
justification for conducting a risk assessment but essentially
downplaying or ignoring preventative measures that food
processors and packers are taking. Is USDA suggesting that
processors and packers shouldn't take security measures because
they won't be effective? I mean, that is a pretty chilling
conclusion to draw.
Dr. Lambert. Madam Chairman, with your permission, I would
defer the question to my counterpart at FSIS and have him
respond.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Pierson.
Dr. Pierson. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I might mention
that the FSIS has conducted vulnerability assessments in the
food system and, of course, identified high-risk commodities,
threat agents, sites, etc. I join with Dr. Crawford in saying
we would be very happy to brief you on this classified
information that we have.
Specifically to your concern area, we are, in fact, now
conducting that assessment and taking those factors into
consideration that you mentioned. We think that it is something
that must be included in an assessment.
Chairman Collins. But was there a conclusion reached by
FSIS that security precautions at processing and packing plants
would not be effective in deterring determined terrorists? This
seemed to be GAO's criticism.
Dr. Pierson. I think to make that as a broad criticism
would be a little difficult to make. There certainly can be
cracks in the system, and we, for example, do provide security
guidelines to small and very small corporations. I might also
mention that our 7,600 inspectors who are there daily at the
over 6,000 plants that are in existence have special training
in food security issues and they can be of assistance in terms
of identifying those gaps. But definitely, we are taking
further consideration of how we can enhance protections in the
food processing operations.
Chairman Collins. I will provide you with the GAO finding
that I am referring to, but just for the record, I am going to
quote directly from GAO's report. It is a letter that was
included by FSIS's Administrator Gary McKee, who was responding
to the criticism by GAO. FSIS said, ``FSIS made the assumption
that plant security measures could be overcome by a determined
terrorist and that certain commodities or processes could be
more at risk than others to an attack. Security measures could
lessen the risk, but the risk would still exist.''
I am concerned if we are essentially writing off one point
of vulnerability because we think the challenge is to great to
secure these plants. I am concerned about the message that may
send. Do you have a further comment on this letter?
Dr. Pierson. I could comment further that what is being
identified is worst case scenarios, too, and scenarios where
the ``what if'' situations, what if those security measures
were overcome, what would be the results, also.
Chairman Collins. But, of course, worst case scenarios are
exactly what we have to plan for.
Dr. Pierson. That is exactly right.
Chairman Collins. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
I have a question for Dr. Crawford. As you are aware, over
the past few months, there has been an outbreak of hepatitis A
in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and just last week in
Pennsylvania. According to the CDC, this represents the largest
foodborne outbreak of hepatitis A in United States history. The
initial cases were traced back to green onions originating in
Mexico and it is strongly suggested that the Pennsylvania
outbreak has a similar source.
Next month, as you mentioned in your testimony, the FDA is
scheduled to begin enforcement of two new regulations that will
require domestic and foreign food processing facilities to
register with the agency. The regulations will also require the
prior notification of any food products being imported to the
United States. The FDA is also planning to require all
companies involved in the food supply system to keep detailed
records of the origin of food products that they handle.
How would the hepatitis A outbreak have been prevented or
handled differently had FDA's new security measures been in
place?
Dr. Crawford. Well, as I mentioned in my oral statement,
the Bioterrorism Act, as we call it, does give us new
authorities that, frankly, FDA has been seeking for many years.
We now have the requirement to have food establishments not
only in this country but elsewhere in the world that want to
trade with the United States to register with us. We can
require the registration. If they are not registered, then they
may not do business with the United States either internally or
externally. That, frankly, is something we have never had.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, it was useful for
the government to do an inventory of food establishments and
other establishments that FDA regulated as we tried to grapple
with the possibility of further terrorist attacks following the
anthrax outbreak. At that time, we did not have the authority
nor did we have a list of who we were having to regulate. Now,
you may ask, how could this be? Well, that is democracy in
action. We didn't have it.
But because of the leadership of Senator Collins and you
and this Committee and others, as I mentioned earlier, and
Secretary Thompson, we now have that authority. So registration
is something that is going to definitely happen as of December
12.
The other thing we can do which speaks to this problem, as
you know, we previously had difficulty with cantaloupes coming
from Mexico, and then during the time I was Acting
Commissioner, we found it advisable, necessary, and in order to
protect the public health, we banned the shipment of
cantaloupes from Mexico. We still have that authority to do
that. We also have the authority to debar those companies that
send contaminated food to the United States. If we go through
the debarment process, they may not ever ship food again to
this country.
We also for the first time can detain food that comes into
the United States, which is something that we are doing with
respect to the green onions that you mentioned.
And then finally, we require that a country or an entity
wanting to ship food to the United States has to give us notice
that it is coming. Before the advent of the Bioterrorism Act,
it was like us standing at the border like the catcher in the
rye, trying to figure out where to deploy our resources and
what to do with the minimal authorities we had. Now, we have
the authority to police the food supply and we are very much at
FDA looking forward to December 12, when we go forward and do
this, we think, better. It not only makes us better in terms of
bioterrorism prevention, but in essential food safety.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for that response. This
is what we are looking for and I am glad to hear that. Thank
you very much, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
I want to thank this panel for their testimony and also for
their efforts to make our food supply safer and to guard
against an agroterrorism attack. The expertise and insight of
all of our witnesses today have been extremely helpful to the
Committee and shed much needed light on an aspect of homeland
security that I believe has not received the attention that it
deserves.
We are all very proud of having the safest food supply in
the world, but that doesn't mean that we are somehow immune
from an attack on our food supply. We know that terrorists such
as Osama bin Laden have repeatedly stated their intention to
cause economic harm and massive social upheaval, not to mention
deaths and illness. When you look at the low-tech nature of so
much of the agriculture industry, it is a tempting target, a
real invitation to those who would do us harm.
So I think there is an awful lot of work that needs to be
done here. I look forward to following up and appreciate the
offer for the classified briefings, as well. But I would also
ask each of the witnesses that we have heard from today to
provide the Committee with any recommendations for further
changes in laws that you may think would give you the tools
that you need. I think the Bioterrorism Act was a great step
forward, but I suspect as you delve further into this area with
your planning that you are going to find that there are some
gaps in authority.
We have talked, for example, today about the lack of a
system for tracking livestock easily. Those kinds of
recommendations may just be handled through administrative
regulations, but they also may warrant some changes in laws. So
I would invite your participation in that process, as well.
Finally, I want to thank Senator Akaka who has been a real
leader in this area with the bills that he has introduced, as
well, and I look forward to working with him.
I would be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge the hard
work of my staff in putting together this hearing.
So thank you all for being here today. The record of this
hearing will be kept open for 15 days for the submission of
additional statements or questions and the hearing is now
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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