[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E329-E330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FOOD SAFETY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 2005

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call your attention to 
the following article, which I submit for the Record, written by my 
constituent, Richard Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore is the President and CEO of 
the GIC Group. The GIC Group combines experience and strength in 
research, analysis, and marketing with financial services and asset 
management. It offers this expertise to the agribusiness and 
biotechnology industries to help businesses gain access to global and 
domestic markets, to add value to current agribusiness activities, and 
to identify new markets.
  Upon leaving the Bush Administration, former Secretary of Health and 
Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson stated that protecting the 
safety of the American food supply should be a top priority. Mr. 
Gilmore's article addresses that issue. While I may not agree with all 
of Mr. Gilmore's proposals, I recommend this article to every citizen 
interested in the integrity of the food supply chain and the safety of 
the food we consume every day.

                     U.S. Food Safety Under Siege?

                          (By Richard Gilmore)

       When it comes to the prospect of an agro-terrorist attack--
     the use of biological agents against crops, livestock, 
     poultry and fish--US agriculture has rolled out the welcome 
     mat. Integration and consolidation in the industry widen the 
     potential impact of any single attack. Internationalization 
     of the food chain offers limitless possibilities for human 
     consumption contagions, as well as economic and political 
     instabilities. To combat and anticipate potential attacks to 
     the US food chain, greater effort should be placed on 
     designing new disease-resistant varieties of plants and 
     livestock on the basis of genomic information. Stricter 
     regulations and enforcement capabilities should be introduced 
     not only at our borders but at the point of origin where food 
     is grown, procured for processed for domestic consumption 
     within the United States. At the same time, the United States 
     must develop a comprehensive preparedness and prevention 
     strategy of international proportions in close coordination 
     with our trading partners and the private sector.


               changes in food production and regulation

       The US strategy of protection for the food system, as 
     mapped out in the Homeland Security Presidential Directive/
     HSPD-9 of January 30, 2004, presupposes that in striving to 
     protect production, processing, food storage and delivery 
     systems within US territory, a credible line of defense will 
     be created to protect the food chain and encourage a thriving 
     agricultural economy. In fact, US agriculture has undergone 
     dramatic change. For crops, `farm to fork' no longer is 
     confined to a regionally based agricultural system, but now 
     encompasses a highly integrated and consolidated global 
     undertaking. For livestock, `hoof to home' now takes on a new 
     meaning that includes a high concentration of production, 
     specialization of calf operations, long distance shipping and 
     massive feedlots averaging thousands of head marketed per 
     facility, for both domestic and international consumption. 
     These commercial developments have resulted in previously 
     unimaginable production and handling efficiencies in domestic 
     and export markets.
       In 2001, over 70% of processed food in the United States 
     was purchased from other countries, representing almost 30% 
     of final gross product. Fifteen of the top 25 food and 
     beverage companies in the global market are US owned, 
     accounting for about 10% of the global market. US 
     multinational companies account for roughly 6.5%. With 
     greater consolidation on a global scale, interaffiliate 
     trades account for an increasing portion of the value of the 
     food chain. Like other nations, the United States is moving 
     from self-sufficiency to an increasing dependence on other 
     countries for its food supply.
       At the same time, the US regulatory infrastructure for food 
     safety is still a work in progress and is hobbled by 
     overdependence on the private sector and underdependence on 
     international cooperation. Whether it is a matter of 
     detection, surveillance or information flow, the US 
     government is currently dependent on the private sector for 
     cooperation and support. To share information, government and 
     industry have established the Food and Agriculture 
     Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC; Washington, 
     DC, USA), which includes key industry association 
     representatives, especially from the processed food and feed 
     sectors.
       The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 sets up tracking mechanisms 
     whose effectiveness depends on industry self-reporting. New 
     food import regulations issued by the US Food and Drug 
     Administration (FDA; Rockville, MD, USA) now require prior 
     notification of eight hours for goods arriving by ship, four 
     hours by rail or air and two hours by road. This dependence 
     on the private sector is burdensome for companies and both 
     insufficient and unreliable for ensuring the public's food 
     safety concerns.
       Current regulations have evolved since last December, after 
     a reality check of the US government's enforcement 
     capabilities along with industry's feedback and support. The 
     initial regulations failed on both counts and the prospects 
     for the latest regulations remain uncertain. FDA and the 
     Customs & Border Protection Agency (Washington, DC, USA) 
     still have not adequately funded the enforcement 
     infrastructure nor trained personnel to ensure statistically 
     random, uniform inspections under the new prenotification 
     time frames. Industry is called upon to fill the breach but 
     is still relatively unprepared, with insufficient esource 
     commitment to comply fully with the latest regulations.
       There remains a remarkable lack of consultation, joint 
     surveillance and shared research with trading partners 
     worldwide. Whether grits or pasta, the US diet still thrives 
     on an international food supply chain. Similarly, food 
     protection and terrorist prevention have to be 
     internationalized, particularly given the advances that 
     continental-wide Europe and Japan have achieved in this 
     regard.


                              the threats

       Although no precedent exists for an agroterrorist attack on 
     the food chain, the dire consequences of natural outbreaks 
     provide a glimpse of the potential damage that could be 
     wrought. The scale of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) 
     outbreaks in Taiwan in 1997 and in the UK in 2001 or the 
     bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic in the United 
     Kingdom from 1996 to 2002 was more devastating than previous 
     epidemics because of the size and structure of modern 
     agricultural production. Taiwan was forced to slaughter more 
     than 8 million pigs and suspend its exports. In the United 
     Kingdom, 4.2 million animals were destroyed in 2001 and 2002, 
     with devastating economic consequences. The cost to Taiwan, a 
     major supplier to Japan, was estimated to be over $20

[[Page E330]]

     billion. In the United Kingdom, direct compensation payments 
     alone amounted to approximately $9.6 billion. Because of two 
     major outbreaks of BSE, the United Kingdom slaughtered 
     approximately 5.8 million head of cattle (30 months or 
     older), with an impact of up to $8 billion for the 2000-2001 
     occurrence alone. The 2003 Dutch outbreak of H7N7, a very 
     pathogenic strain of avian influenza virus, resulted in the 
     necessary culling of over 28 million birds out of a total of 
     100 million. These numbers pale in comparison to the 
     estimates for a terrorist-induced pathogen release at the 
     heart of the international food chain. The range is 
     astonishing, from almost $7 billion due to a contagion of 
     Asiatic citrus canker on Florida's citrus fruit alone to $27 
     billion in trade losses for FMD.
       An array of pathogens could be introduced easily and 
     effectively with assurance of widespread health, economic and 
     political impacts. For livestock, the prime candidates are 
     FMD and African swine fever (ASF). FMD is particularly 
     attractive from a terrorist standpoint because it is a highly 
     contagious viral infection with a morbidity rate of 100% in 
     cattle. ASF is equally effective.
       Next on the list are the zoonotic diseases, which offer a 
     different strategy: using animals to infect humans. 
     Brucellosis, though not fatal, results in chronic disease; 
     some paramyxoviruses can be passed through direct contact 
     with animals and feature a mortality rate in humans of 36%; 
     certain arboviruses, such as Japanese encephalitis virus, 
     which is spread by insect vectors, and cutaneous forms of 
     anthrax could be readily introduced in the United States. 
     Animal hides, an import item to the US, are a common carrier 
     of anthrax spores that can be readily inhaled and prove fatal 
     for humans.
       When it comes to crop pathogens, the list is equally long 
     and ominous: stem rust for cereals and wheat, southern corn 
     leaf blight, rice blast, potato blight, citrus canker and 
     several nonspecific plant pathogens. Although not 
     transmittable to humans, these pathogens would cut a wide and 
     devastating swath in crop production.
       It takes relatively few dollars and little imagination to 
     introduce these deadly pathogens. Just like a crop duster or 
     even hand spray pumps, aerosol would be an effective means to 
     introduce the crop pathogen of choice on plants. A terrorist 
     could also rely on cross border winds or water systems to 
     carry a harmful pathogen from another country into the United 
     States. For animals, the options could be somewhat more 
     imaginative, such as dusting a turkey's feathers with a 
     pathogen agent and then filling small bomblets with the 
     feathers to explode over a targeted area, mushrooming 
     contamination as the feathers drift with the wind to such 
     likely targets as a high density avian population.


                     Economic and political impact

       Any agro-terrorist attack on the food chain would create 
     marked economic instability and losses due to dislocational, 
     trade and health effects. Every bushel of wheat, corn or 
     soybeans (all staple food and feed items) in addition to beef 
     carcasses and pork bellies, has a futures contract written in 
     Chicago and on other exchanges in Europe, Asia and Latin 
     America. These contracts are all written on margin positions, 
     meaning that the financial losses on unfulfilled contracts 
     would be a multiple of the contract itself. Apart from 
     stocks, losses could be incurred as a result of the 
     following: loss of business for freight-forwarding companies, 
     cancellations of ocean freight, rail and truck hauls; 
     insurance claims on cargoes; and abrogation of contracts up 
     and down the food chain.
       With only a partial and untested `Bioshield' system in 
     place, one likely scenario is that US politicians would adopt 
     a unilateral response to what is an international problem in 
     the face of a bioterrorist attack. Whether it's cross-border 
     winds or the globalization of our food chain, the fact 
     remains that much of our own vulnerability rests with 
     imported pathogens. The US cannot seal off its territory 
     from these pathogens. By attempting to do so, the 
     government would make matters worse in the absence of 
     uniform international security and surveillance systems.
       The appropriate counter-terrorist response requires a 
     global security system for sharing research, findings and 
     coordinating strategies with trading partners where the 
     United States sources and sells much of its food. Present 
     policies risk the kind of economic repercussions experienced 
     with Japan in the aftermath of the three-day soybean embargo 
     imposed by the United States in 1973, which became a major 
     shoku in Japan's economic history. Concern over food 
     security, rooted in the soybean embargo, inspired the first 
     and ultimate line of defense in Japan's resistance to 
     liberalizing international trade rules for the agricultural 
     sector.


                             Counterattacks

       The first priority to combat these threats is to invest in 
     the creation of pathogen-resistant crops through genetic 
     engineering. The National Plant Genome Initiative 
     (Washington, DC, USA) is an international collaboration 
     between academia and the private sector to build a plant 
     genome research infrastructure targeted at sequencing model 
     plant species and therefore identifying genes associated with 
     disease resistance. Together with information concerning 
     large-animal genomes--the cattle genome is anticipated soon--
     genomic information can be applied to develop new strains of 
     plants and livestock resistant to animal and plant pathogens 
     likely to be used by terrorists. The US Department of 
     Agriculture's (Washington, DC, USA) newly sponsored research 
     centers and other joint government and private sector 
     initiatives inside and outside the United States could also 
     contribute to the search for resistant strains of livestock. 
     In addition, short-term virus testing and monitoring measures 
     can be adopted to address the problem of increased 
     susceptibility of livestock to disease due to changes in 
     cattle feeding and meatpacking. The discovery earlier in 2004 
     of a BSE-infected Holstein cow in the United States 
     demonstrated that the monitoring and surveillance system in 
     place is insufficient for rapid detection purposes.
       There is also an immediate need for a stronger set of 
     regulations that feature comprehensive coordination of 
     research, detection and surveillance on both national and 
     international fronts. Private industry partners in this 
     undertaking must be treated equitably and fairly with a 
     greater effort to broaden industry representation. The 
     easiest step that can be taken to strengthen US defenses is 
     to initiate and fund an intensive personnel training program 
     to meet CBPA (Customs and Border Protection Agency) and FDA's 
     ambitious program benchmarks for field operations, including 
     port inspections, staffing and personal training, and 
     industry registrations. We still lack uniform and consistent 
     enforcement standards for industry and government agencies. 
     Although that is the 15-year goal of the Automated Commercial 
     Environment (ACE) run by the US Customs, nothing in place can 
     accommodate different information and reporting systems in 
     both the government and the private sector.
       Longer term measures should include accelerated research 
     programs and an integration and internationalization of 
     policy planning and enforcement. Although the target is to 
     create a practical system of defense for the US food chain, 
     new endeavors to foil terrorists also can result in a broader 
     international system of preparedness. Lifting the siege is 
     the first step.

                          ____________________