[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 31, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E35-E36]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ARTICLE ON FOOD SAFETY

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 31, 2006

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call your attention to 
the following article on food safety, which I submit for the Record, 
written by my constituent, Richard Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore is the 
President and CEO of the GIC Group. Mr. Gilmore's article addresses the 
issue of food safety. 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.

                  [From Barron's Online, Nov. 7, 2005]

                       Get Ready for Health Wars

                           (By Rick Gilmore)

       It's not easy to fight a war when the weapons could be 
     candy bars or milk, and if the battlegrounds are in Halloween 
     candy baskets or dairy farms. And if we ever do master these 
     theaters of warfare, we'll have to prepare for other modes of 
     transmission for pathogens, such as fruit and vegetable 
     juices, canned foods, pastas and other grain-based foods, 
     chicken and fish.
       As bad as the chances of a pandemic disease may be, the 
     possibilities for a deliberate attack on our food chain are 
     endless. And worse: They are likely because the weapons are 
     immediately accessible, require minimal training, are cheap 
     to produce and offer high kill ratios of innocent citizenry.
       Even before 9/11, our government had been thinking about 
     these ugly scenarios. Multiple scientific studies model and 
     quantify the human impact of the deliberate release of a 
     toxin at a dairy farm or a pathogen in a major city. A 
     theoretical study on milk said a terrorist needs to add only 
     10 grams of botulism toxin to a truck-full of milk to get 
     400,000 casualties. An aerosol-generated attack of anthrax 
     sprayed with the prevailing wind could affect as much as 35% 
     of the nearby population within three days, with a case 
     fatality rate as high as 70%.
       Governments and the private sector most certainly are 
     attempting to build their own territorial defenses, sometimes 
     more effectively than in others. The Australian method of 
     dealing with candy bars allegedly contaminated with a 
     pesticide was to recall all the affected Mars and Snickers 
     bars, crush them, and dispose of them with a deep burial. The 
     U.K. government detected a carcinogenic food coloring in a 
     Worcestershire sauce ingredient, and it notified consumers 
     and withdrew the product from the shelves. Unfortunately, it 
     did not promptly notify other states in the European Union, 
     violating Europe's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed.
       Such accidents are probably impossible to stop. We also 
     cannot eradicate avian flu if it threatens us, but our combat 
     strategy has many weaknesses. President Bush outlined a new 
     plan to spend $7.1 billion to stockpile medications like 
     Tamiflu and Relenza to combat an outbreak. The country 
     expects to have four million doses on hand by Jan. 1, but the 
     World Health Organization recommends stockpiling doses for at 
     least 25% of the population--73 million Americans.
       Whatever our country's plans, problems abound. Roche has 
     made it clear that it is already back-ordered more than a 
     year on Tamiflu, and researchers are concerned that there 
     won't be enough antiviral medicine available to blunt the 
     global onslaught of a possible pandemic. A pandemic triggered 
     by a mutated H5N1 virus, moreover, may not be affected by 
     antiviral drugs or any of the vaccines currently in 
     development. Bush belatedly supported efforts to develop 
     cell-based vaccines that can be produced much faster than 
     today's vaccines, but discoveries don't come on timetables.
       The BioShield Act of 2004 was passed to address just the 
     kind of threat we face with avian flu. It sets out to 
     accomplish three goals: speed the Food and Drug 
     Administration's approval of drugs and vaccines to counter a 
     bioterror attack; create incentives for companies to develop 
     new products through government-guaranteed purchases of 
     pharmaceuticals and biologics; and secure long-term 
     stockpiles of such products in case of an outbreak. Despite 
     the fanfare of the program, progress has been slow, primarily 
     because of underfunding and uncertainties regarding liability 
     insurance and intellectual property protection.
       When it comes to our defense system against bioterrorism, 
     the whole nation is still held hostage. Each leg of the 
     stool--preparedness, surveillance and protection--is wobbly 
     at the moment.
       We're planning for an attack within our borders and have 
     placed minimal attention on what occurs outside them, despite 
     the internationalization of our food system. Food ingredients 
     are imported from around the world and exported to consumers 
     and corporate affiliates worldwide. Kansas and the Punjab are 
     part of the same food chain.
       Staple food items now travel a minimum of 1,400 miles from 
     farm to table. And yet, we have a system in place under the 
     FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that focuses on 
     U.S. registrations, port notifications and reporting for 
     American-based food companies. Although we seek information 
     on foreign food companies selling and distributing to U.S. 
     companies, the data do not go back to the point of origin. 
     Even here at home we exclude farms, including aquaculture, 
     from any reporting requirements, though on-farm crops are the 
     most likely targets to serve as carriers for the best-known 
     pathogens--stem rust for cereals, Southern corn-leaf blight, 
     rice blast, potato blight and citrus canker. The European 
     Union takes a more thorough approach to traceability, 
     including every link in the food chain from farm to table.
       By adhering to a territorial defense strategy, we are 
     leaving ourselves and our trading partners vulnerable when it 
     comes to exports. Right now, a contaminated food item from 
     the U.S. could be exported to another country without our 
     knowledge and without warning to the foreign buyer. European 
     export certification is compulsory unless specifically 
     exempted by the importing country.
       Another vulnerability: The pathogen itself. Studying likely 
     pathogens that might be used in an attack is somewhat like 
     finding a needle in a haystack. USDA is now funding

[[Page E36]]

     research centers to deal with plant diseases and zoonoses, 
     which are pathogens transmitted from animals to humans. 
     Still, the focus is on the usual suspects, and not enough on 
     new pathogens, many of which can be developed cheaply by 
     slightly altering the original virus strain.
       We have learned the hard way that one terrorist cell can 
     inflict more human and economic damage than we can protect at 
     a given time. Congress and the Bush administration are 
     addressing the issue, but haven't created a safer food 
     environment. The system in place is a labyrinth of 
     bureaucratic federal regulations that reflect yesterday's 
     assumptions, not future possibilities. Federal funding for 
     state activities has fallen short of their target, and state 
     enforcement capabilities are not uniformly satisfactory. For 
     industry, duplication of regulatory-agency requirements is 
     costly and confounding, particularly for small and medium-
     size companies. Despite two years' worth of warnings of an 
     avian-flu pandemic, drug companies still lack liability 
     protection to launch and distribute new vaccines.
       Closing the loopholes is not a matter of fine tuning 
     because the holes are too wide to close. At home, we need to 
     look to new genomic research that will determine how to 
     develop crops that are resistant to a full range of 
     pathogens. Internationally, there is an urgent need for 
     greater coordination of research and information. No system 
     can be failsafe when it comes to bioterrorism, but we can 
     reshape the one we have today to be more effective.

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