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30–234 PDF 2006

S. HRG. 109–619

BIO-SECURITY COORDINATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH, NUTRITION, AND 

GENERAL LEGISLATION

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, 

NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

January 9, 2006

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.agriculture.senate.gov 

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia, Chairman 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi 

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri 

CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming 

RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

MICHEAL D. CRAPO, Idaho 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

KENT CONRAD, North Dakota 

MAX BAUCUS, Montana 

BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas 

DEBBIE A. STABENOW, Michigan 

E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

KEN SALAZAR, Colorado

MARTHA SCOTT POINDEXTER, Majority Staff Director 

DAVID L. JOHNSON, Majority Chief Counsel 

STEVEN MEEKS, Majority Legislative Director 

ROBERT E. STURM, Chief Clerk 

MARK HALVERSON, Minority Staff Director 

(II) 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

HEARING(S):

BIO-SECURITY COORDINATION ........................................................................ 01

Monday, January 9, 2006

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS 

Santoruma, Hon. Rick, a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Chairman, Subcommittee on Research, Nutrition, and General Legislation ........................... 01

Conner Hon. Charles, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, USDA, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 04

WITNESSES 

Panel I - Government Officials 

Conner, Hon. Charles Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, USDA, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 04

Azar, Alex M. II, Esquire, Deputy Secretary, Health and Human Services, 

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 06

Wolff, Dennis, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania .............................................................................................. 09

Panel II - Research Institutions 

Goldstein, Bernard D. Dr., Professor, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburg, Pittburg, Pennsylvania ..................................................... 19

Smith, Gary Dr., Professor of Veterinary Medicine, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania ...................................................................................................................... 17

Steel, Robert Dean, College of Agriculture Sciences at Penn State University, 

University Park, Pennsylvania ........................................................................... 15

Panel III - Private Industry 

Adams, James, President, Wenger Feeds, Rheems, Pennsylvania ...................... 23

Gardner, Lew, Dairy Producer, Galeton, Pennsylvania ....................................... 27

Masser, Keith, President, Pennsylvania Cooperative Potato Growers, Sacramento, Pennsylvania ........................................................................................ 28

Peechatka, Walt, Executive Vice President, PennAg Industries, Harrisburg, 

Pennsylvania ........................................................................................................ 25

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Conner Hon. Charles ........................................................................................ 36

Adams, James ................................................................................................... 117

Azar, Alex M. II ................................................................................................ 65

Gardner, Lew .................................................................................................... 125

Goldstein, Bernard D. Dr. ................................................................................ 114

Masser, Keith .................................................................................................... 131

Page

IV

PREPARED STATEMENTS—Continued

Peechatka, Walt ................................................................................................ 122

Smith, Gary Dr ................................................................................................. 108

Steele, Robert .................................................................................................... 102

Wolff, Dennis .................................................................................................... 97

DOCUMENT(S) SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Statement by Shaffer, Carl T., Pennsylvania Farm Bureau President ....... 134

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

Harkin, Hon. Tom ............................................................................................ 138

(1)

BIO-SECURITY COORDINATION 

MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2006

U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH, NUTRITION, AND GENERAL

LEGISLATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION AND FORESTRY, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:15 p.m. in the 

Farm Show Complex, 2300 North Cameron Street, Harrisburg, 

Pennsylvania, Hon. Rick Santorum, chairman of the subcommittee, 

presiding. 

Present or submitting a statement: Senator Santorum. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF RICK SANTORUMA, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM PENNSYLVANIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTE ON RESEARCH, NUTRITION, AND GENERAL LEGISLATION, COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY 

Senator SANTORUM. Good afternoon. Let me thank everybody for 

attending here this afternoon, and I particularly want to thank the 

panelists who are here with us today. We have got three great panels to hear about the state of agriculture in the area of biosecurity. 

It is a very important time to be talking about that. There has certainly been a lot reported in the press about concerns with terrorism, as well as concerns with just the natural infections that 

come and that could affect our food supply, and to have a discussion as Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Research and 

Nutrition—this is an area of jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee. It is something that we have had hearings on in Washington, and we wanted to take the opportunity, with the focal point 

on agriculture here in Pennsylvania with the Farm Show, to talk 

about its impact on Pennsylvania and the impact on agriculture in 

this State and on our economy, generally. 

I know our good Secretary, Secretary Wolff, is here, and certainly, as I often do sing the praises of Pennsylvania agriculture 

and talk about its importance to the economy of this Commonwealth, it is our No. 1 industry and we are very proud of that. Anybody walking into the halls today can see it and say it is a very 

important industry and one that has a lot of folks participating in 

it. 

It has been a great interest of mine. I am very proud to say that 

I was the first United States Senator on the Agriculture Committee 

from Pennsylvania since—almost 100 years ago was the last Pennsylvania Senator on the Agriculture Committee. I always like to 

say that you can tell our lack of representation has had its telltale 

2

signs in agriculture policy, which has been written principally by 

folks representing the Midwest and the Southern States, and it is 

important to have folks with a different point of view who represent States like Pennsylvania, as the Secretary will tell you, 

which is as diverse a State agriculturally as maybe any State in 

the country. 

We have great diversity, but as a result of that, there is not—

like there are from other States—folks who are locked into particular crops to make sure that those particular crops are taken 

care of, as we see in various States around the country. Agriculture 

policy has been drafted to sort of take care of some of these Corn 

States, Wheat States, Cotton States, Rice States, as opposed to us, 

which is sort of an Everything State, if you will. So having that 

voice on the committee is important and having the cooperation 

that I certainly have gotten from the producer community here in 

Pennsylvania has been vital to that. We have accomplished a lot 

of things for Northeastern agriculture over the past several years, 

not the least of which is just recently where we were able, although 

it is not quite done yet, to keep the MILC payments in place. This 

was, I must tell you, a hard-fought battle, and I thank the Secretary. I know that he went to work in talking to other Secretaries 

of Agriculture in the region. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SANTORUM. We were able to take a program that was 

scheduled to expire last year, and as a result of a lot of hard work 

and teamwork, we were able to put that extension in place. It has 

not yet passed. It has passed the Senate in a conference report, and 

we anticipate the House passing it relatively soon this year. So 

those payments will be available hopefully very, very soon, but that 

is a major success. It sets us up for a farm bill where that program 

is on the table for discussion, for the dairy program. 

I will tell you that I have worked in a lot of legislative areas in 

the past, in a whole variety of areas in agriculture and outside of 

agriculture, and I cannot think of any tougher area to legislate 

than dairy policy. It is as regional and as specific to a region of the 

State as any policy, and we are going to have a battle, I’m just 

warning everybody, to be able to maintain this program. The MILC 

program, as Senator Kohl and I were the authors of—Senator Kohl 

from Wisconsin—we were able to put a team together and get that 

done, but I will tell you that there are folks from the West and the 

South in particular who would like to see that program go away. 

As you know, that program is beneficial to smaller farms, although 

every dairy farm benefits from it. It is beneficial to smaller farms 

because it is a limit on—it only pays up to a certain limit of production and so the bigger farmers do not care as much about it. 

They care about the price support program, which is based on 

Class III milk as opposed to MILC payments, which are more beneficial to those of us who produce a lot of fluid milk. So it is going 

to be that kind of battle that we are going to be engaged in, not 

just in milk, but in a whole variety of issues coming up with the 

farm bill. 

One of the issues that—I know the Secretary has been here, 

Chuck Conner, who is here representing the Secretary today, was 

up at Penn State last year to do a listening session on the farm 

3

bill. I have been doing the same thing, traveling the State, trying 

to get feedback. It is going to be a monumental year. We have got 

a big issue coming up in 2007 next year with the farm bill coming 

forward, and I certainly hope that I am in a position as the No. 

3 leader in the Senate, hopefully No. 2 by next year, to be able to 

influence that policy and working to make sure that Pennsylvania’s 

agriculture interests, whether the work that we have done on specialty crops, the work that we have done on crop insurance, a 

whole host of other things, farmland protection, all of those things 

we were able to get in previous farm bills as a member of the Agriculture Committee and as a member of leadership, and I just want 

to assure you that we will certainly do all we can to make sure that 

interest of Northeastern agriculture—and when I say Northeastern, I don’t mean northeastern Pennsylvania, I mean the 

Northeastern U.S.—are represented on a committee that does not 

have too many of us. Senator Leahy and I are the only two, and 

certainly he and I do not necessarily see eye to eye on a lot of 

things, but we do on several agriculture programs, milk being one 

of them. So I just wanted to give you a little backdrop of why we 

are holding these hearings. 

One of the other issues we are going to be dealing with are 

issues of biosecurity. We have done some things that are important 

in this bill. In one of the bills that we passed at the end of the 

year, we were able to pass several billion dollars in money for a 

Presidential initiative on avian influenza, which is not as much, 

candidly, as we wanted. We wanted to pass $7 billion. I think we 

got three-point—yes, three-point-something. I do not remember the 

exact number, roughly half of what the President suggested. We 

will probably go back and have to work to get the rest, but it is 

vitally important and we will hear discussions today about how we 

deal with this potential pandemic for us, as well as the impact that 

it will have on agriculture and our food security. So those are 

issues that we are dealing with now, but we will be dealing with 

on a more comprehensive basis when we look at the farm bill. 

Let me stop and turn it over to the folks who are the experts in 

agriculture. I just try to listen to the experts and do my best to try 

to represent the folks here in Pennsylvania, but we have three gentleman who are here representing—two from the Federal Government, one who is well-known to the folks here in Pennsylvania. As 

I mentioned several times, Secretary Wolff is here, but I also want 

to introduce Chuck Conner, who is the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. 

One of the things I found out, just for those who do not know, 

the shorter the title you have in a department, the more important 

you are, just so you understand that. So when you are talking to 

the Under Deputy Secretary in Charge of, you are way down the 

list. If you are the Secretary, you are the big guy. If you the Deputy 

Secretary, you are the second-biggest guy. Then you get into Under 

Secretary, but Deputy Secretary, that is a good title to have. That 

means you are very important, and Chuck is here. I had a chance 

to know and work with Chuck as he was the lead staff person, the 

staff director, on the Senate Agriculture Committee. It is good to 

have you here, Chuck. Thank you for being here. 

4

Alex Azar, who is the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human 

Services—another one of those short titles, which means that Alex 

is a person with great responsibility at the Department of Health 

and Human Services. I want to thank both of those gentlemen for 

attending, as well as you, Mr. Secretary. Again, thank you for your 

attendance. 

Chuck, why don’t you start off our testimony. 

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES CONNER, DEPUTY SECRETARY 

OF AGRICULTURE, USDA, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. CONNER. Well, Chairman Santorum, thank you for holding 

this hearing today—is my mike on? 

Senator SANTORUM. I do not think so. Try the top. Look at the 

top. See if it is on. 

Mr. CONNER. Is that on now, Mr. Chairman? 

Senator SANTORUM. Yes, it is on now. 

Mr. CONNER. OK. Thank you. Chairman Santorum, again thank 

you very much for holding this hearing. On behalf of the Department of Agriculture and the Bush administration, I just want to 

thank you for your leadership on this issue. I also thank you, as 

I have observed for many, many years your advocacy on behalf of 

Northeast agriculture as it benefits the State of Pennsylvania, and 

I commend you for that. 

As you know, Mr. Chairman, biosecurity is an issue that we take 

very, very seriously at the USDA, and we appreciate your efforts 

to highlight its importance to our Nation. As you are also aware, 

I testified before the full Agriculture Committee in July of 2005, on 

food and agriculture security issues. My testimony today should 

provide an important update on that information, and it also 

should include more discussion of the Federal-State collaborative 

research efforts, and, of course, Mr. Chairman, I will submit my 

full statement for the record for you and summarize those remarks. 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you. 

Mr. CONNER. USDA considers food and agriculture biosecurity 

issues essential to its mission. The success of USDA’s efforts is dependent upon a coordinated work of a broad range of Federal, 

State, local and private sector partners. Let me begin by putting 

the importance of agriculture into some perspective for you. Agricultural exports, as you know, accounted for $62.4 billion in fiscal 

year 2005, and we are expected to reach record high dollar values 

of $64 billion in 2006, with agricultural trade, of course, being a 

very positive addition to our balance of payments and trade. Agricultural imports, as well, provide significant value, over $57 billion 

in 2005. Our Nation’s food and agricultural system contributes approximately $1.24 trillion, over 12 percent, to our gross domestic 

product, and we are directly responsible for employing 17 percent 

of our Nation’s workforce. We are an important sector indeed, certainly important to the State of Pennsylvania. 

We face many challenges in protecting this important infrastructure. The agricultural industry is particularly concerned about security because diseases and pathogens, whether they occur naturally or are unintentionally introduced or are intentionally delivered, do not respect geopolitical borders. While the interconnected 

nature of the global food system contributes to our own economic 

5

strength by improving production and marketing efficiency and 

providing timely responses to our consumers, our integrated system 

is also challenged in the event of an attack or natural disease outbreak. Products in this country move very, very quickly from State 

to State and from Nation to Nation. A pest, a disease or another 

agent can spread just as quickly. 

Since September 11, 2001, USDA has made great strides in expanding our mission to better address food and agricultural security. We believe that the threat to agriculture is indeed very real. 

The department has been working closely with its Federal, State 

and local government partners, as well as with industry stakeholders, to address these concerns using a sector-wide strategy 

based upon White House guidance. My written testimony highlights the advances that the department is making to implement 

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7, Critical Infrastructure 

Identification, Prioritization and Protection, and, of course, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 9, Defense of the United States 

Agriculture and Food. 

USDA has worked in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security and are active partners in the Department of Health 

and Human Services Food and Drug Administration to ensure that 

we develop a coordinated approach for protecting the food and agricultural sector. Central to this effort, Mr. Chairman, is our collaboration with the private sector for infrastructure protection and to 

create an overarching framework and unique plans for protecting 

key assets and resources. 

We have worked with Federal, State, local and private sector 

participants to establish avenues for sharing sensitive information, 

new policies, best practices and, of course, vulnerability assessments. We have formed two counsels, one for government, one for 

the private sector. The Food and Agriculture Government Coordinating Council is led jointly by the Department of Homeland Security, USDA and FDA, and includes Federal, State and local officials. The private sector council, called the Food and Agriculture 

Sector Coordination Council, represents a table-to-farm continuum. 

The two counsels meet quarterly and regularly hold individual and 

joint calls to discuss issues of mutual interest, such as sector vulnerability assessments and Federal research and development 

plans, in which, of course, you have a strong interest. 

Preparation, research, surveillance and response are all integral 

parts to our ability to respond to biosecurity threats, whether they 

are related to intentional acts of terrorism or the unintentional introduction of agents, pests or disease. The Federal Government, 

State and local governments and private stakeholders must be 

partners in those efforts if we are to fully achieve security. I am 

pleased to report to you today that we are indeed partners in this 

effort and are making great headway. Our integrated Federal-State 

system of collecting information and samples to detect diseases, 

utilizing state-of-the-art laboratory networks to test samples and 

jointly analyzing data, shows the benefits of our collaboration. 

Through this system, we are able to anticipate new and emerging 

threats and to quickly eliminate and contain already identified existing threats. I am confident that all of us here today are united 

in our belief that biosecurity for food and agriculture is a paraVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:11 Oct 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30234.TXT TOSHD PsN: LAVERN
6

mount issue that must be addressed with sound science and sound 

policy decisions. The department looks forward very much to continuing to work with this committee in a continuing effort to develop programs and initiatives to help enhance the security of our 

Nation’s agriculture and food systems through collaborative efforts 

between Federal and State institutions. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my oral remarks and at the appropriate time I would be happy to take any questions that you may 

have for the Department of Agriculture. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Conner can be viewed in the appendix on page 36.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. Conner. 

Mr. Azar? 

STATEMENT OF ALEX M. AZAR, II, ESQUIRE, DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. AZAR. Good afternoon, Chairman Santorum. I am Alex Azar, 

Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Health and 

Human Services, of which the Food and Drug Administration is a 

part. Thank you very much for holding these hearings on these 

critical issues and thank you very much for your important and ongoing leadership in the agriculture and food safety areas, areas of 

fundamental importance for us at HHS. I have a more complete 

statement that I have submitted for the record, but would like to 

just summarize some of the points. 

I note that we are on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Farm 

Show Complex, which is the largest agricultural event in America, 

and this is, of course, a fit setting for today’s hearings, and I appreciate this opportunity for us to be able to discuss our food 

counterterrorism activities. As a Johnstown, Pennsylvania native, 

I am also very pleased to be back in the State of my birth. 

Before I address the main subject of my testimony, I am pleased to tell you that last week Secretary Leavitt announced $100 million 

in emergency contingency fund to States, Tribes and Territories 

that will help families in need pay their heating and energy bills 

this winter. We are also making 100 percent of the State’s remaining block grant funds available, which amounts to $633 million, for 

a combined total of $733 million in low-income heating and cooling 

assistance. Pennsylvania’s share of that release was almost $7.7 

million. 

On the subject of today’s testimony, under the President’s National Response Plan, HHS is responsible for leading the Federal 

public health efforts to ensure an integrated and focused national 

effort to anticipate and respond to emerging biological and other 

weapons threats. HHS is also the principal Federal agency responsible for coordinating all Federal level assets activated to support 

and augment the State and local medical and public health response to any mass casualty events. Within HHS, the Centers for 

Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services 

Administration and the National Institutes of Health play key roles 

in our overall counterterrorism activities. For example, CDC operates HHS’s Strategic National Stockpile, which contains large 

quantity of medicines and medical supplies for use in the event of 

7

a public health emergency. NIH is taking the lead role in the development of medical countermeasures to a biological attack. 

The Food and Drug Administration in HHS is the Federal agency 

that regulates everything we eat except meat, poultry and processed egg products, which are regulated by our partners at USDA. 

FDA’s responsibility also extends to live animals and animal feed, 

and FDA is responsible for ensuring that human drugs, human biological products, medical devices and radiological products, as well 

as veterinary drugs, are safe and effective and that cosmetics are 

safe. 

In the past few years, HHS has done a great deal to enhance the 

safety and security of the food supply of the United States. Food 

safety and food defense continue to be top priorities for the administration. A terrorist attack on the food supply could have both severe public health and economic consequences while damaging the 

public’s confidence in the food we eat. The changes in food safety 

and defense that we have been implementing in the last few years 

are the most fundamental enhancements in our food safety and defense activities in many years. FDA has worked with food safety 

agencies, as well as with law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies and with industry, to significantly strengthen the 

Nation’s food safety system across the entire distribution chain, 

from farm to table, to better protect our food supply against deliberate and accidental threats. This cooperation has resulted in 

greater awareness of vulnerabilities, the creation of more effective 

prevention programs, new surveillance systems and faster outbreak 

response capabilities. 

One byproduct of these efforts, in collaboration between the Federal, State and local governments, as well as the private sector, is 

guidance that we have been able to publish for industry, a copy of 

which I have today, which is the guidance that the FDA issued for 

dairy farmers and dairy producers to ensure the safety of America’s 

dairy products. FDA is working closely with the Department of 

Homeland Security and other Federal agencies to implement the 

President’s Homeland Security Presidential Directives, as Secretary Conner said. The President has issued HSPDs 7, 8 and 9, 

which identify critical infrastructures, improve response planning 

and establish a national policy to defend the agriculture and food 

systems against terrorist attacks, major disasters and other emergencies. Over the past 3 years, FDA and HHS have also been implementing the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2002. The Bioterrorism Act provided the Secretary of 

HHS with significant new authorities to protect the Nation’s food 

supply against the threat of intentional contamination and other 

food-related emergencies. These authorities improve our ability to 

act quickly in responding to a threatened attack, as well as other 

food-related emergencies. 

I would like to mention just a few of those provisions. Section 

305 of the Bioterrorism Act requires registration of foreign and domestic food facilities that manufacture, process, pack or hold food 

for consumption by humans or animals in the U.S. With this provision, FDA has for the first time ever a roster of foreign and domestic food facilities that provide food for American consumers. In the 

event of an emergency, the registration information will help FDA 

8

quickly identify, locate and notify the facilities that may be affected. 

Section 307 requires the submission to FDA of prior notice of 

feed, including animal feed, that is offered for import into the 

United States. This advance information allows the FDA, working 

closely with the Customs and Border Patrol, to more effectively target inspections at the border to ensure the safety of imported foods 

before they move into the United States. 

Section 306 authorizes FDA to have access to certain records 

when the agency has a reasonable belief that an article of food is 

adulterated and presents a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals. This enhances FDA’s 

ability to track and contain foods that pose a threat to American 

consumers from accidental or deliberate contamination of food. 

I would like to briefly mention a few other program activities. 

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. To increase 

laboratory research capacity, FDA has worked closely in collaboration with FSIS at USDA to establish the Food Emergency Response 

Network, to include a substantial number of laboratories capable of 

analyzing foods for agents of concern. 

We have also conducted extensive scientific vulnerability assessments of different categories of food, determining the most serious 

risks of intentional contamination with different biological or chemical agents during various stages of food production and distribution. We also have an ambitious research agenda to address potential terrorist threats. I would also be remiss, Mr. Chairman, if I did 

not mention the efforts underway in the administration and at 

HHS with regard to avian influenza. Secretary Mike Leavitt has 

made influenza pandemic planning and preparedness a top priority, and we thank you very much for your leadership in securing 

through Congress the passage of the first year’s funding, the full 

funding for the first year, of the President’s proposal for pandemic 

avian influenza preparedness, and I look forward to working with 

you together to secure the funding for the following 2 years so that 

we can complete the ambitious agenda we have laid out to get this 

country better prepared for a possible pandemic influenza outbreak. 

Through the Influenza Preparedness Task Force that Secretary 

Leavitt has chartered, the FDA and other agencies within HHS are 

working together to prepare the U.S. for this potential threat to the 

health of our Nation. We are also working closely with other Federal, State, local and private sector entities to ensure close collaboration. Because pandemic influenza viruses will emerge in part or 

wholly from among animal influenza viruses, such as birds, it is 

critical for human and animal health authorities to closely coordinate their activities, such as surveillance, to share relevant information as quickly and transparently as possible. In that connection, HHS collaborates with USDA and the Department of Interior 

in critical partnerships for domestic preparedness for a possible 

avian influenza outbreak here in the United States. Early detection 

will be the key to allowing the United States to having the most 

9

up-to-date and reliable information that will help us save animal 

and human lives. 

In conclusion, HHS is making significant progress in its ability 

to ensure the safety of the food supply due to the enhancements 

being made by FDA and other agencies and due to the close coordination between Federal and State food safety, public health, law 

enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies. The U.S. food 

safety and defense system is stronger than ever before. Although 

we are better prepared than ever before, we are continuously working to improve our ability to prevent, detect and respond to terrorist threats. 

Thank you very much for this opportunity to discuss our 

counterterrorism activities with you to protect the American food 

supply, and I would be pleased to respond to any of your questions 

at the appropriate time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Azar can be viewd in the appendix on page 65.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. Azar. 

Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. 

STATEMENT OF DENNIS WOLFF, SECRETARY, PENNSYLVANIA 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. WOLFF. Thank you, Senator. On behalf of the Pennsylvania 

Department of Agriculture, as well as the entire agriculture community in Pennsylvania, we want to thank you for choosing the 

largest indoor livestock exposition in the United States, the 90th 

Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show, as your venue for these hearings 

today. As mentioned earlier, agriculture is such a huge economic 

driver here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, representing 

around $4.5 billion of farm gate revenue, and when you do the multiplier on that it has an impact of over $40 billion in Pennsylvania. 

It also represents one out of every seven jobs here in the Commonwealth. 

Agriculture in Pennsylvania is very diverse. We have everything 

from Christmas tree farms to mushroom growers, to the largest 

growing hardwood industry in Pennsylvania, as well as we have a 

huge livestock component, and therein lies some of our concerns as 

it relates to bioterrorism and the concerns as to why we need a 

good system in place here in Pennsylvania. 

Under Governor Rendell’s direction, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in 2003 was included as part of the Homeland 

Security and Domestic Preparedness Assessment and Strategic 

Planning Program. We were only one of six States in the United 

States that included agriculture in this plan and this program. 

This truly reflects the Commonwealth’s commitment to agriculture 

biosecurity prevention, as well as response and recovery programs 

that we feel we need in place here in Pennsylvania. 

Pennsylvania has invested in and implemented several new programs to improve our biosecurity systems. The funds that were 

used from PEMA and USDA were used to update our information 

system between the two laboratories here in Pennsylvania. Also, it 

was used to update our premise data base so that all the farms in 

Pennsylvania will be listed on a GIS map so that we can effectively 

10

and expediently carry out any actions we need to do in case of an 

outbreak within our livestock industry here in Pennsylvania. 

We also used funds from Health and CDC to rebuild our food 

safety inspection system. We call it the Garrison System. It is realtime information. It is a good, consolidated system throughout 

Pennsylvania that really helps us do a much better job in working 

with all the restaurants in Pennsylvania that we inspect, as well 

as the food processing centers in Pennsylvania, which makes sure 

that everything is not only, in fact, being properly handled, but if 

there is an outbreak, it is an immediate flag so that we know that 

we have got a problem, something outside of the ordinary challenges that our food safety inspectors may need to deal with. 

We have also developed the PASART program. This came from 

funds from Homeland Security and PEMA once again. It is to train 

local volunteers to develop a local and State plan as it relates to 

animal emergencies, and, in fact, Joel Hersh, who is our Executive 

Director, is working with USDA to help develop a national response plan with a similar type of mission. 

We recently conducted a tabletop exercise for an avian influenza 

outbreak, and that was with our partners at Penn State, the University of Pennsylvania, the Department of Health, PEMA, the 

FBI, USDA and PennAg industries, so we had all our stakeholders 

at the table to look up both our strengths and our weaknesses so 

that we can do a better job in terms of responding to an outbreak 

if we had one here. 

Governor Rendell recently approved construction for a BSL–3 lab 

here at the Harrisburg laboratory, which will give us the capabilities of handling samples that are more sensitive and are also—certainly in helping protect our staff that works with those samples. 

So what else do we need? We still have some needs here in Pennsylvania to make us even a better State in terms of being prepared. 

We feel that our plant industry is something that really can be upgraded in terms of dealing with a timely response to issues such 

as what rust, corn leaf blight or plum pox. 

We think that the BSL–3 laboratory capability should be included in our other two diagnostic labs. Here in Pennsylvania, we 

have three laboratories. We have one here in Harrisburg, one at 

the University of Pennsylvania and one at Penn State University. 

Only one of those three labs is going to have the BSL–3 capacity. 

We think we need funding for more personal protective gear as it 

deals with issues such as an outbreak of H5N1 in our poultry industry. 

We also think that we should have more funds in terms of research and development as it relates, in particular, to agriculture 

and domestic preparedness. I hope this gives you some idea of some 

of the programs that we have here in Pennsylvania, as well as 

some of our additional needs. I would like to thank you for being 

here today, and we hope you enjoyed the 90th Farm Show. I will 

also be submitting written testimony and be glad to answer questions when the time is appropriate. 

[The prepared statement of Secretary Wolff can be viewed inthe 

appendix on page 97.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I appreciate that. 

I am curious. You mentioned your tabletop exercise. First off, can 

11

you tell me, with respect to avian influenza and the outbreak, can 

you tell me some of the lessons learned from that exercise? And 

then I will see if you guys can tell me whether you are doing similar kinds of exercises and what you are learning. 

Mr. WOLFF. I think the tabletop exercise really helped us understand that we need better personal protective gear. For example——

Senator SANTORUM. For whom? 

Mr. WOLFF. That is exactly the point. We had PEMA at the table 

and we had the Department of Agriculture at the table. So if you 

have an outbreak of H5N1 in a large poultry operation, who goes 

in and depopulates the birds? Do you ask PEMA to go in and depopulate the birds or do you ask the Department of Agriculture to 

go in, and who has the equipment and the expertise to do it? Well, 

as it turns out, PEMA has the equipment and the Department of 

Agriculture has the expertise. Therefore, we did not have people 

trained to be able to go in and depopulate a large poultry population if they had H5N1—lesson well-learned, something you think 

that would really jump right out at you, but until you do the tabletop exercise and start to delegate those responsibilities, it becomes 

obvious where your shortcomings are—better communications in 

working together, notifying the agencies, who has authority, what 

are the legal authorities? If you are going to depopulate a farm, 

who is going to sign off on that and say, ‘‘You have the authority 

to remove $1 million worth of birds from this farming operation’’? 

So they are the kind of issues that become obvious, that we need 

to have a better plan and more details as we work through this 

process so that we are, in fact, prepared if we were to have an outbreak of H5N1. 

Senator SANTORUM. OK, Chuck, who has the legal authority and 

why does PEMA have the equipment and USDA have the knowledge? 

Mr. CONNER. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am not General Counsel for 

the Department of Agriculture, I am the Deputy Secretary, but I 

will tell you that when it comes to issues of eradication and control, 

the Department of Agriculture has a lot of experience in the State 

of Pennsylvania and a lot of other States, and we believe we have 

full legal authority to take the actions that are necessary to control 

and eradicate the disease. That is not a statement going forward. 

That is a statement I think we have demonstrated a number of 

times in the past as we have successfully eradicated low-pathogen 

avian flu in a number of circumstances, including the State of 

Pennsylvania, some high-pathogen H5N2 circumstances, as well, 

that could have been more challenging, were successfully controlled 

and eradicated, as well. So we stand, I think, pretty well on our 

legal authority to do this. 

Having said that, I think the Secretary of Agriculture for your 

State makes a very good point in terms of the need for full cooperation. It is absolutely essential when you have a situation develop 

like this, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture are not the 

only people on the ground. Obviously, we collaborate greatly with 

local people, the local laboratories that are there to do the testing. 

These are the types of areas I think where we feel like we have 

made tremendous progress in the last 3 years, is that coordination 

12

effort which is so essential for rapid response to these circumstances. 

If you have got a particular product in question that is being 

tested at a State laboratory, there is no time for the results to sit 

around and to wait, and perhaps that might have been possible before, but with the relationships we have developed with private sector, but particularly the State laboratories, implementing them into 

our laboratory network, those types of things I just do not believe 

were possible going forward. We will know quickly when there is 

a problem. We will be prepared to move quickly, and, of course, 

that is absolutely key to a successful eradication effort, is getting 

it quickly. 

As I noted in my oral testimony, the agriculture and food system 

we live in has food and product moving very, very rapidly, and that 

is to our benefit, but at the same time that is our challenge in 

terms of eradication because we must get hold of this product-toproduct question before it gets fully into commerce. 

Senator SANTORUM. The Secretary has talked about a simulation 

that he did. Are you folks doing simulations? Is maybe HHS, in 

particular, doing simulations with respect to avian flu, or are you 

doing it on the bird side? I know you might be doing it on the 

human side. Now that this outbreak is potentially present with us, 

what are you doing with it? 

Mr. CONNER. At the Department of Agriculture—let me just say 

the dates. We can get you the precise dates and the information, 

but we had a major simulation exercise. I believe the title of it was 

Crimson Sky, I believe, about 2 years ago, and in that particular 

circumstance foot and mouth disease was the problem. The exercise 

was highly successful. You mentioned specifically avian flu. As you 

know, Mr. Chairman, the White House held an important simulation exercise to review our multi-agency and White House response 

in an avian flu outbreak. The Department of Agriculture played a 

very, very active role in that, as did the Department of Health and 

Human Services, and we are continuing a lessons-learned process 

in that exercise, as well. The Department of Agriculture, as I know 

other agencies do, do have additional exercise-type activities 

planned going forward so that we absolutely——

Senator SANTORUM. From the lessons learned, can you talk about 

any particular holes and anything that we in Congress may be able 

to help you with? 

Mr. CONNER. I think from our standpoint communication and coordination are always the first step in that process. As Secretary 

Azar pointed out, just between our two agencies there are a number of areas of shared jurisdiction. Some of the jurisdictional lines, 

you sit back and you wonder how did that jurisdictional line end 

up where he has feed, we have meat, we have poultry, he has food 

products—those kinds of situations. Regardless of where those lines 

are drawn, we need to work together, and whether it is coordination activities, sharing information, although I think the lesson 

learned—what you learn in these exercises—is that need. Going beyond that, though, again, as I pointed out earlier, I think the 

progress that we need to continue to focus on is not just among our 

agencies, but reaching down to the State and, in this case, even the 

private sector for those vulnerability assessments so that we are 

13

not just sitting back, waiting on the event, but we are identifying 

where they are likely to occur and how they are likely to occur and 

take preventative mitigation measures hopefully before that happens. 

Mr. AZAR. That is what I think one of the critical lessons learned 

coming out of the tabletop that the White House organized for the 

Cabinet members before the holidays on avian flu—pointed out the 

importance that, when it comes to preparing for a pandemic avian 

influenza outbreak in the United States, this cannot be the Federal 

Government alone. This is too big. If we look at just comparing an 

avian influenza pandemic in the United States to something as 

devastating as Hurricane Katrina, and compare the differences between them, Katrina, as horrible as it was, was confined in region 

and duration. A pandemic influenza outbreak would be nationwide 

by definition, with outbreaks occurring in multiple cities at the 

same time, and it would not last a couple of days. It would last for 

months, possibly 18 months. We do not quite know. 

This is something that would bring every part of the American 

economy to bear, the Federal Government, State, local, private sector, all coming together to work on it. And that is why, coming out 

of this tabletop, the President directed Secretary Leavitt to convene 

pandemic influenza preparedness summits in every single State, 

and so right now HHS is working with USDA and the Department 

of Homeland Security and the Department of Interior. We are convening with Governors in every State pandemic summits where we 

go through what should State plans include, what types of industry 

ought to be at the table, how can everybody prepare for an avian 

outbreak, and importantly our request that every single State exercise those plans. A plan on a shelf is not useful. It has to be exercised. It is only when you actually run through it that you can 

identify the holes in it and the flow of information, learning, for instance, the importance of public communications and the accuracy 

and timeliness of communications to the public during any type of 

public health emergency. 

Senator SANTORUM. Since we are on the topic of avian influenza, 

I know there are news reports today about deaths in Turkey. Do 

you have any update on that? 

Mr. CONNER. Senator, I do not, and I do not know whether Alex 

does, as well. I read the same news clips as you probably did this 

morning with regard to the family, the one family, in particular, 

that had direct contact with the handling of the birds, and I have 

not gotten an additional update since early this morning. 

Mr. AZAR. The latest information that I have—and it was going 

to be updated actually this afternoon with some more recent information from the World Health Organization—is that so far the 

cases that have been identified, as Secretary Conner mentioned, 

appear to have been ones where transmission would have been as 

a result of close, repeated, proximate handling of poultry, but we 

still need to continue to look into this. So at the moment it does 

not appear that the cases that have been identified so far are the 

result of efficient human-to-human spread of the avian influenza 

virus, but we do still need to work with the Turkish authorities 

and the World Health Organization to get all of the facts on the 

ground there before we state anything conclusively. 

14

Senator SANTORUM. Mr. Secretary? 

Mr. WOLFF. Well, I think that is kind of an interesting point, 

that as H5N1 starts to be spread through migratory birds, they feel 

that is how our greatest vulnerability of it infecting the poultry 

population in the United States could occur. It would basically go 

up through Asia and then come through Alaska, and then come 

down through Canada and infect the poultry flocks in the United 

States. So that is really why we feel that it is just so critical to 

have a good surveillance program in place, as well as a good response plan that, unfortunately here in Pennsylvania, has not been 

on the shelf, because we have exercised it a number of times. Fortunately, it has not been H5N1. It has been a low-pathogen—actually a non-reportable type of avian flu in every case. So we are very 

pleased that we have not had to deal with an H5N1, but the real 

threat for a pandemic in the United States obviously is that if it 

comes into the migratory birds, into the poultry population, then 

it can actually mutate to the point where it can be human-tohuman population—is one of the ways that a pandemic could happen in the United States. But more likely the way it would happen 

would be that mutation would take place in another country and 

someone would travel to the United States, and then it would start 

to spread that way. But having said that, it really does, I think, 

come to the point as to how important it is to have funds in place 

to make sure that there are good surveillance programs out there 

for the domestic poultry population and have good response plans 

in order to be able to contain that if we were to have the H5N1 

in our poultry industry here in the United States. 

Senator SANTORUM. Are you satisfied that there are funds available for such surveillance? 

Mr. CONNER. We are, Chairman Santorum, and are so because 

of your good work and the good work of the Congress in recently 

passing the supplemental request that Secretary Azar mentioned. 

The President requested those dollars from the Department of Agriculture standpoint. We actually requested and received the full 

$91 million that we sought. A good portion of that money is for surveillance, including surveillance of the wild bird populations coming down through Canada. And so we are confident that we have 

the mechanisms in place, particularly with this additional money, 

to achieve what I think are high-priority surveillance issues at this 

point. 

Senator SANTORUM. If a migratory bird were to be tested and 

found, would that be something that the public would be made 

aware of or is that something that——

Mr. CONNER. Yes, we would, as soon as confirmation of that test 

would happen. Certainly that would be public information. I will 

tell you Secretary Johanns believes firmly in an open system of 

communication with the public. We have been through a number 

of issues, as you know, with BSE, the so-called mad cow disease, 

in terms of release of public information of that. I think we have 

demonstrated that we are not going to put out bad information prematurely, but as soon as information is confirmed we are going to 

make that information known to the public so that they can take 

appropriate action, whatever that may be. 

15

Mr. AZAR. And Secretary Leavitt and the President—in terms of 

human-avian influenza preparedness, transparency and openness 

are the centerpiece of how America is trying to deal with this problem, and encouraging other Nations around the world to similarly 

be transparent and open. So obviously we have to set the example. 

Senator SANTORUM. Very good. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your testimony. 

If the second panel could come forward? Thank you, gentlemen. 

I appreciate you being here. Let me go in order of testimony. First 

we have Dr. Robert Steele, who is the Dean of the College of Agriculture Sciences at my alma mater, Penn State University, and an 

appropriate blue and white tie that you have on, Dean Steele. 

Thank you for being here and for certainly the great collaborative 

effort that you have shown to me in our office and the work that 

we have done on agriculture policy and agriculture research, you 

and the school have been terrific in providing lots of resources to 

us and my staff, and I just want to thank you publicly for the cooperation. 

Dr. Gary Smith, who is a Professor of Population Biology and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary 

Medicine. Thank you very much for being here. 

Finally, Dr. Bernard Goldstein, who is the Professor of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. So we 

have Pittsburgh, State College and almost Philadelphia represented here today. So thank you, thank all three of you, for being 

here. 

Dr. Steele? 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT STEELE, DEAN, COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AT PENN STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. STEELE. Thank you, Chairman Santorum, and I appreciate 

the opportunity to represent the Commonwealth’s land-grant university at the hearings here today. As you know so well, we have 

been celebrating our 150 year sesquicentennial, along with Michigan State University, as the Nation’s two oldest colleges of agriculture, Penn State having awarded the first undergraduate and 

graduate degrees in agriculture in all of the United States, and we 

are quite proud of that 150–year history. And throughout those 150 

years we have been dealing with biosecurity. We defined it different ways, depending on the decade. 

We also are proud of the fact that of the nearly 150 4–year institutions of higher education that we have in the Commonwealth, 

that Penn State, as the land-grant university, is the only university 

that offers programming across the entire food and fiber spectrum, 

reaching into each of the 67 counties of the Commonwealth. 

In my written text, I offered five examples or sample areas where 

we are working in collaboration with USDA, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Pitt, as well as Penn, to illustrate a few key 

points, and those areas were avian influenza—and we have already 

been talking about that—the development of molecular biosensors, 

where we are taking the fascinating technology of biotechnology 

and merging it with nanotechnology, the area of plum pox, which 

Secretary Wolff mentioned, the issue of soybean rust—very, very 

16

important and key across the entire country—and then finally 

what we called the EDEN program, and I notice that it is in Secretary Conner’s written remarks, the Extension Disaster Education 

Network that plugs into each of the 67 counties of Pennsylvania, 

along with PEMA and FEMA, but also into the nearly over three 

thousand counties across the United States. 

Across those five example areas, I think a few common things 

emerge. First of all, we do not have all the answers for the issues 

of today, let alone what tomorrow’s issues are. We need to continue 

to find ways to close these knowledge gaps that are there, and we 

need to close these knowledge gaps, whether it is the threat of an 

intentional introduction of a pest or pathogen or the unintentional 

or natural introduction of a pest or pathogen, because as a scientist 

I can tell you the science is the same. The science is the same 

whether it is intentional or unintentional with any pest or pathogen. 

Second, and I believe probably the most important issue here 

when we talk about security, agriculture, biological security, is that 

this is a generational issue. This is going to be with us for decades, 

just as it has been. We will define it in different ways in the years 

ahead, but we have a very real workforce issue. Think back to the 

anthrax issue of a few years ago and how difficult it was to find 

people who knew much about anthrax. I know people at the FBI 

and the CIA came to Penn State and we went to retired faculty to 

bring them out to deal with this issue.

I saw figures just yesterday where 8 years ahead we are projecting the need for 24 million college graduates in the job market, 

and the demographics are predicting we are going to have 19 million. So we have this general workforce issue to start with in the 

area of agriculture security, biosecurity. These best and brightest 

young people, what can we do to convince them that they can have 

a rewarding career in this area, an important career, because yes, 

it is in the public good. As we all know, unfortunately, it is also 

an issue of national defense, as well. 

When I look within Pennsylvania, I see the single-most important issue facility-wise, and Secretary Wolff already pointed this 

out, in biocontainment and the need for additional biosafety Level–

3 facilities, not only at Penn State, but at Pitt and Penn and frankly wherever we need them. The one that will be coming into Harrisburg is just simply not going to be adequate, and we are woefully behind other States in the United States in this, and we need 

to pay attention to that. 

At the national level, in my role——

Senator SANTORUM. I hate to interrupt your testimony, but could 

you explain while you are on the subject what the difference is between a Level 3 and a Level 2, and why it is important and why 

we are behind? 

Mr. STEELE. Well, the different levels are a function of the nature of the pathogen, all the way up to a Biosafety Level–4—Ebola 

virus, for example, into a Biosafety Level 4. So it is an issue of the 

degree of containment and the measures and steps that need to be 

taken to protect you from the pathogen, the pathogen from you, 

17

and as you might guess, the higher the number, the price tag goes 

up. That is the short answer to your question. 

Nationally, I think the issue we have—and we have been working with Secretary Conner on this, is we all know we are resourceconstrained in everything that we do, and we need to find more effective and efficient ways of using the resources that we already 

have, and in my role—in a leadership role in the national landgrant community, there has been a small group of us working with 

USDA and others to fundamentally restructure our research, education and extension arm of the USDA to make better and more 

efficient and more effective use of the resources that we already 

have. I do think that there are some efficiencies that can be gained. 

So in the end—and I know your subcommittee actually will become very important with us because this is Title VIII of the farm 

bill, which your Research Subcommittee deals with front and center. So finally I close with trying to ask the question, as this session is closing, are we prepared, and my answer is not nearly well 

enough because of the knowledge gaps, the workforce needs as we 

project in the future. And we need to get to work in doing this because if not us, who is going to do it? And so again, Senator, thank 

you for giving me the opportunity to present my testimony here 

with you today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Steele can be viewed in the appendix on page 102.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Dean Steele. 

Dr. Smith? 

STATEMENT OF DR. GARY SMITH, PROFESSOR OF POPULATION BIOLOGY AND EPIDEMIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF 

PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF VETERINARY MEDICINE, KENNETT SQUARE, PENNSYLVANIA 

Dr. SMITH. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. My name is Gary 

Smith, and as you know I work at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Penn has a number of institutions and the initiatives that deal 

with all hazard response, but I am just going to concentrate on the 

particular responsibilities of the School of Veterinary Medicine, 

which is where I work. The school’s primary contribution to the national effort to maintain agricultural biosecurity involves first 

training the veterinarians who will be among the primary responders to any threat to agricultural biosecurity, and then the research 

and service components of our work that is exclusively directed toward biosecurity issues. And that service component includes the 

National Salmonella Reference Center, the William Boucher Field 

Service, the Poultry Diagnostic Laboratory, and our contributions 

have already been mentioned to the Pennsylvania Diagnostic Laboratory System, and that is indeed the bread and butter of what 

we do, and it represents an existing infrastructure upon which our 

ability to coordinate research and to develop an integrated strategy 

to protect the agricultural industry from both accidental and deliberate introduction of pathogens in part depends, and that infrastructure, of course, is being elaborated all the time. 

One example is the Emerging Primary Animal Healthcare Specialist Training Program, a long title for something quite simple. 

It’s designed to train those who actually work on, for example, 

18

dairy farms, to recognize diseases and conditions that may affect 

productivity and perhaps some serious breakdown of biosecurity. 

But is agriculture prepared to defend itself? Well, up to a point. I 

am going to use just one example to illustrate what I mean by that. 

It is certainly the case, for example, that research workers like myself and my colleagues at Penn State have been extremely active 

over the last three or 4 years in exploring things like the mathematical models of foreign animal diseases that have proved so useful in controlling, say, mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease 

in Europe, and which could equally well be applied here in the 

United States. 

It is absolutely no exaggeration to say that Pennsylvania, New 

Jersey and Maryland all taken together have more research groups 

with more experience and more expertise in areas like infectious 

disease modeling and syndromic surveillance methodologies than 

anywhere else in the United States, but the data that drive these 

systems are just not there in any kind of useful quantity. 

Multi-infectious disease models absolutely depend upon something quite simple, knowing where the farms are and how the animals move between them, and that means we need good maps and 

we need an effective national animal identification system, and at 

the moment, with some caveats, we have neither. There are, indeed, current attempts to remedy these deficits at both the State 

and Federal level, I know, as I am sure you know, too, but I honestly am pessimistic that any of them will return useful information in a timely manner. And to be quite honest, our current research strategies—that is to say my own and my colleagues at 

places like Penn State—is to assume that we will never have these 

data and to decide to focus instead on workarounds, to attempt to 

use what is available in the public domain and to see if we can answer worthwhile questions about prevention and control using information that is much more granular, to use the jargon, than we 

would like. 

Just in case you think this is some arcane issue of interest only 

to those who model infectious disease dynamics, it is worth pointing out that the perfectly ordinary methods of dealing with infectious disease outbreaks also depend on being able to trace animals 

back to their original farm. At the moment, this is done by questionnaire and by following the commercial paper trail. It is tedious, 

it is often inaccurate, and worst of all it is slow. It is very, very 

slow, and as several of the witnesses have already stated, speed is 

everything in these matters. The delay of just 24 hours can mean 

an epidemic of almost twice the magnitude. 

One of the greatest impediments to the acquisition of good maps 

and of a national animal identification system are the quite proper 

and very realistic objections of the industry itself. There are some 

very complicated issues of confidentiality here, not to mention the 

required reassurances with respect to possible litigation that can 

only be resolved, I think, by legislation. 

Thank you. I will take questions at the appropriate time. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Smith can be viewed in the appendix on page 108.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you very much, Dr. Smith. 

Dr. Goldstein? 

19

STATEMENT OF DR. BERNARD D. GOLDSTEIN, PROFESSOR, 

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF 

PITTSBURGH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA 

Dr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you, Chairman Santorum. I appreciate 

the opportunity to be here. I am a physician, until recently Dean 

of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and I will approach this testimony from a public health 

background. I ought to tell you that I’m also the former—under 

President Reagan—the former Assistant Administrator for Research and Development at EPA, which is a very long title. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SANTORUM. We still think you are important here today, 

Dr. Goldstein. 

Dr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you. We in public health have been particularly concerned with food safety and with the public health infrastructure. Our Graduate School of Public Health is very research oriented. We are first in the Nation among State-related 

schools of public health in competitive NIH funding, only behind 

Johns Hopkins and Harvard among the 37 schools of public health. 

Our research grants from NIH funding lead us to approach the 

terrorism issue.By addding onto existing biomedical capabilities. 

We have a lot of opportunities to do that. We have moved forward 

in a number of different ways in an attempt to do so. But we would 

note to you that the silos that separate out research funding 

streams in this country tend to make it difficult to move across the 

various different potential funding pathway. In my written testimony, which I am paraphrasing, I have given you an example of 

an opportunity based upon NIH funding to much more rapidly detect and much more cheaply detect new pathogens, that one of the 

Nation’s experts has been unsuccessful in being able to generalize 

from NIH funding toward potential agricultural bioterrorism 

threats. 

Our schools major interest, however, is in the rural public health 

infrastructure and trying to work to safeguard rural public health. 

We have worked along with our colleagues at Penn State and the 

University of Pittsburgh at Bradford in the rural areas of our 

State. We have developed a nationally known Center For Rural 

Public Health Practice. The response to bioterrorism has been central to this program. 

We have had a major national meeting on the rural public health 

agenda, which we hosted through this center. It was interesting 

among these national experts terrorism toward the agricultural infrastructure was a major issue. Of the many different bullets that 

were in the document, the nural public health community noted, 

the importance that the locus of agricultural production could be 

key to bioterrorist targeting of the United States. 

The programs we have developed at Pitt-Bradford have been reasonably successful. Our overall center in Pittsburg, funded by the 

Centers for Disease Control of the U.S. Public Health Service—our 

Center for Public Health Preparedness, was awarded over $5 million for the next 5 years to train front-line public health workers 

and first responders. We offer onsite and long-distance training, 

preparedness nursing, bioterrorism, preparedness law, forensic epidemiology and environmental health to a combined total of more 

20

than 700 public health professionals and clinicians. However, in 

collaboration with the Center for Rural Public Health Practice at 

Pitt Bradford, we could and should do more that is specifically 

aimed at rural public health practice and agricultural issues 

amidst this broad range of efforts related to preparedness, in general. 

Our task is quite challenging for two reasons; one is obviously 

the lack of funding, but another has to do with the lack of public 

health infrastructure in our Commonwealth’s rural areas. The Federal HRSA figures show that Pennsylvania ranks 50th among all 

States in our public health infrastructure. In the size of our public 

health workforce per capita. are number 50. It is particularly notable in our rural areas. As just one example, many of our northern 

tier counties have an infrastructure in place of perhaps a total of 

two public health nurses, while demographically similar southern 

tier counties from New York State have a public health workforce 

that counts in the dozens. 

We need to do more to beef up the public health infrastructure 

in our State in rural areas to be able to respond to these threats, 

but our academic program has not waited for the Commonwealth 

to improve this infrastructure. We have used our CDC funding to 

reach out to the entire responder community—that is, firefighters, 

police, EMT personnel and others active throughout the rural parts 

of the State, and we have done this in collaboration with our colleagues at Penn State. Some of these programs are beginning to be 

copied nationally. 

Finally, I should point out that there is a need for integrated assessment and planning. You have asked some very good questions 

about that earlier. There is a Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It is certainly the first of the 

major centers working on the issue of bioterrorism from infectious 

disease, but it is aimed at understanding the broad issues related 

to the threat of bioterrorism to the Nation’s health, economic and 

social and political security. This began at Johns Hopkins. It has 

moved to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. D.A. 

Henderson is the physician who has been most responsible for the 

eradication of smallpox. He is the former Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and who was President Bush’s key 

person in the response to the anthrax episode. We believe that 

there is really a need for better integrated assessment that should 

come to a large extent from reasonably independent sources. We 

think the universities of our Nation can provide not only that independent resource to look across these various different areas, but 

to help with generalizing to the research that is needed to anticipate the future threats that will come, as Dr. Steele says, for the 

next generation. 

Thank you, and I welcome the opportunity to answer questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Goldstein can be can be viewed 

in the appendix on page 114.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Dr. Goldstein. Well, let me just 

pick up on where you left off, which is coordination. I mean, we 

have heard Secretary Wolff and the other secretaries talk about the 

one area that seems to come to the top, is communications and coordination. How much coordination and communications do the 

21

USDA and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture have with your 

organizations, and how involved are you in that? 

Mr. STEELE. At Penn State, in the Pennsylvania Department of 

Agriculture, I think some of my colleagues sitting behind me would 

say on a daily basis. Our leadership teams meet on a regular basis 

three or four times a year on building a common agenda. Our scientists again are interacting daily. We are quite appreciative of the 

highway money that has gone in to make the road between State 

College and Harrisburg a little quicker to get through. 

Senator SANTORUM. Almost done. 

Mr. STEELE. Almost. 

Senator SANTORUM. Almost done. 

Mr. STEELE. But it is just an extremely, extremely effective cooperation which then extends largely through the system to Penn, 

and then on other issues of commonality to institutions like Pitt. 

In a more separate, but parallel vein, through the land grant system where we are organized regionally, the Northeast region, the 

North-Central region, the West and the South, we interact with 

USDA primarily through what we call CSREES, the Cooperative 

State Research Education Extension System, and that is a very, 

very formal alignment, and it is, in fact, the essence of the land 

grant system. 

Dr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, it is a great advantage to the University 

of Pittsburgh to be able to work closely and cooperatively with 

Penn State on a lot of these different issues. I have focused on our 

areas that we would like to be able to do more, and they range, 

as I say, from basic research to my own personal interest in research, which is on some of the issues that are basically abuse of 

public health principles in world trade to the detriment of American farmers. Again, these are the kind of things in which the collaboration could be enhanced, but it gets out of the bioterrorism 

area. 

Senator SANTORUM. Well, you both mentioned the issue of worker 

training and the importance of that in our response, and I assume 

also in our notification, detection and the like. You mentioned the 

public health issue, our public health workforce. Just a question as 

to why you believe that we are in such—compared to New York 

and I assume other States, since we are 50th—that we are in such 

a bad state here in Pennsylvania. I mean, that somewhat surprised 

me, given other States that we are comparing ourselves with. So 

I would ask the question why, and then to Dr. Steele just a general 

question on the issue of workforce training and things that we 

might be focusing on here. My guess is we will be doing a major 

piece of education bill following up on—there was a commission 

that was put together headed by the former head of Boeing, Norm 

Augustine, who put forth ideas on how to get more kids interested 

in math and science and the importance of that. So my guess is we 

will be doing something along those lines. So if you can think about 

ideas that might respond to this issue in that context—can you talk 

about the public health issue first? 

Dr. GOLDSTEIN. I’m in the Commonwealth 5 years now. I was 

surprised at those figures, as well. We have spent a lot of time and 

effort in our Center for Public Health Practice trying to understand 

why. Part of it is now you count the numbers. The State DepartVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:11 Oct 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30234.TXT TOSHD PsN: LAVERN
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ment of Health would tell you, ‘‘Well, it is not quite as bad as that 

looks,’’ but now you do the count does not explain it all. We are so 

far behind everybody that even if you counted the public health 

workforce somewhat differently, we would still be 48th or 47th. 

The key issue from the point of view of this hearing is that the 

problem is mainly in our rural areas. We have some very good public health workforce groups in Philadelphia, Allentown, and other 

areas—Pittsburgh, certainly, Allegheny County. The professionalism of the State Department of Health is excellent, in my 

opinion, but there are just too few folks and they are too busy, and 

when you get anything added to it, they are simply not going to 

be able to respond. 

Senator SANTORUM. Well, I guess my question is why is the funding in Pennsylvania so disparate from the funding in New York? 

I mean, is it State policy? 

Dr. GOLDSTEIN. It is our States that make the decision. 

Senator SANTORUM. OK. 

Dr. Steele? 

Mr. STEELE. Senator, the workforce issue, I think—and I am 

going to confine my comments to the college graduate—obviously, 

it is much, much broader than that, but a young person graduating 

from college has options, as I pointed out, just simply looking at 

the numbers, and fundamentally they are going to go where they 

see opportunity, and our challenge is at the youngest age possible, 

and the literature would suggest by the third or fourth grade if you 

want to get a young girl interested in a career in math or science. 

So we need to start as early as possible to help these young people 

understand that there are attractive, viable careers out there in 

areas such as biocontrol, security, molecular biology, 

nanotechnology, whatever. 

As I said in my comments, it is in the public good to do that, and 

particularly in the food and fiber sector. And you can never do 

enough of it, and the numbers and the demographics are, quite 

frankly, working against us right now. 

Senator SANTORUM. Yes. One of the things that has struck me 

in the these reports is showing that the number of engineers that 

we are graduating has basically been flat over the past couple of 

decades, which China now graduates almost 10 times more engineers than we do. If you consider the fact that technology jobs are 

the future of any economy, what economy is going to succeed when 

China, India and others—and even countries much smaller than 

we are, are graduating more folks in the technical fields. 

That is a big issue for us. If you have any comments on specifically how we deal with that, I would be anxious to hear them. 

Mr. STEELE. I, a few months ago, was in China and had the opportunity to address a freshman class at a university there, an agricultural university of 9,200 young people, 9,200, and we read in 

the papers about the hot China economy growing at eight, 9 percent clips. When you go over there, you see it right in front of your 

eyes, the investment that is being made in their educational system, and their goal, which was so clearly stated to me, was to have 

50 percent of their 18–year-olds go on and get a university education versus—and I believe it was something on the order of 18 

percent right now, and they are just investing heavily into their 

23

science and engineering infrastructure. And these young people are 

understanding and seeing that there are career opportunities available, and that is in part why we are not seeing as many of them 

coming to the United States, as well.

Senator SANTORUM. Very good. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your testimony. 

While the final panel is coming forward, let me do a couple of 

housekeeping things. First, I had asked the President of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, Carl Shaffer, to be here today to testify, but 

he is out of the State on another mission and could not be here. 

I just wanted to thank him for taking the time to prepare a statement, and I would like to enter that statement in the record and 

thank him for the great—again—cooperative work that we have 

done with him and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau in representing 

the interests of Pennsylvania agriculture. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shaffer can be viewed in the appendix on page 134.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Second, I just want to introduce State Senator Noah Wenger, who is here today. Senator Wenger is a member 

of the Senate Republican leadership in the State Senate and is a 

great friend of Pennsylvania agriculture, former chairman of the 

agriculture committee in the Senate of Pennsylvania. So thank you, 

Senator, for being here. 

Our final panel introduced—first is James Adams, who is the 

President of Wenger Feeds. Thank you, Mr. Adams, for being here; 

Walt Peechatka, who is the Executive Vice president of PennAg Industries; Lew Gardner, who is a dairy producer from Galeton, up 

in the great northern tier; and Keith Masser, who is the President 

of the Pennsylvania Cooperative Potato Growers. Thank you all for 

being here. 

Mr. Adams, would you proceed? 

STATEMENT OF JAMES ADAMS, PRESIDENT, WENGER FEEDS, 

RHEEMS, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. ADAMS. Thank you, Chairman Santorum, and thank you for 

putting this as a high priority on your agenda and visiting the 

State at our State Farm Show. Wenger’s is a 60–year-old regional 

feed manufacturer that mostly delivers to poultry and swine farms, 

and we act as sort of a conduit for local grains and soybeans, convert those into a high-quality feed, and then distribute those out 

to numerous family farms. Sometimes we have up to 500 locations 

that we deliver to, so biosecurity has been important for us for 

many years, and specifically, having gone through the 1983–1984 

avian influenza, we have disinfectors on our trucks and our servicemen practice very high standards of biosecurity. So we are very familiar with the on-the-farm, on-the-ground type of biosecurity that 

is important in this. 

The reason we have that is we need to protect our customers, 

whether they are a large corporation or they are a family farm, 

that we are not tracking around any type of disease. Also we own 

millions of laying hens ourselves, we want to ensure that we do not 

lose an income from that. So it is a very important subject to us. 

24

As I mentioned, we learned a lot of lessons in the 1980’s from 

avian influenza. I guess I am a little more optimistic than some of 

the other panelists have been, in that I have seen what farmers 

and agricultural people can do in the face of an emergency. The industry in Pennsylvania actually was credited with jumpstarting the 

effort to control avian influenza in 1983 by getting together cooperatively, even though they were competitors, and getting a lot of 

information together, where farms were, although at that time we 

did not have GPS systems. We actually did it with cardboard and 

county maps and sticking little pins in and things like that, but the 

industry did urge our local university and the PDA to put together 

a GPS system that we have used since 1983–1984. It actually gets 

instituted rather rapidly when an outbreak occurs and the industry 

again works cooperatively to try and address these situations. 

Anything can be improved, and I guess the message for you, if 

there is help that we can have, is basically in four areas, and they 

would be: detection, indemnity, vaccination and protection. With 

detection, we do have a relatively good system, and I think Secretary Wolff’s written comments showed that we have about 

240,000 AI samples that are submitted every year, that the industry is trying to safeguard and have a knowledge base of what is 

going on here. 

Those tests can always be upgraded. They need to be more rapid. 

They need to be more accurate. A lot of them tell you that you have 

an AI, but they do not specifically tell you what kind you have. So 

we can use better tests at any time. They should be very quick and 

hopefully inexpensive, so that they can be put into action rather 

quickly. When you have flock sizes of 200,000 or herds of 2,500, 

you need to have economical tests, also. With the indemnity program, I think Pennsylvania farmers are not coming with their 

hand out and saying, ‘‘Bail us out of this,’’ but what a good indemnity program does is it promotes people cooperating and joining a 

surveillance program, rather than just taking their animals to the 

normal market, driving down the road and spreading disease along 

the way. So it needs to be a specific program, but it needs to be 

effective enough that it gets the cooperation of most of the people 

that are in the industry, mostly to encourage their submission of 

samples. 

Another idea that goes along with that, that I think leverages 

the Government’s money, is if we could have a subsidized business 

interruption program similar to crop insurance, so the Government 

is not paying the full amount, but they are paying enough that it 

encourages people to do that, because a lot of times, if it is one or 

two or three flocks, a company that is involved with that may be 

able to ward off that type of economic impact, but if three of those 

people are individual farmers and that is their sole income, they 

could be wiped out if a good indemnity program or a business interruption insurance is not in place. 

The third area is vaccination, and Pennsylvania has been in the 

past prevented from using vaccination effectively. We did stockpile 

some. We allowed another State to use it. The stockpile for Pennsylvania has not been re-created, but we would encourage a seed 

stock and research into how you can quickly multiply those viruses 

into effective vaccines, because it will take purification and replicaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:11 Oct 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30234.TXT TOSHD PsN: LAVERN
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tion to get a vaccine that is in a usable form that will not harm 

the animals that are going to be using it, so it would be a very specific stockpiling of the vaccine. 

The final area would be protection of the farms. I am not sure 

if the news got to you down in Washington, but we had a local animal-rights group break into a farm in the area, and that is trespassing, that is breaking and entering. And to be fair, local police 

are not sure what their boundaries are. State Police might not be 

familiar with agriculture. The local prosecutors may not know everything that they can bring to bear, and they may think, ‘‘Well, 

all they did was they broke into a chicken house, what is the big 

deal?’’ But if they were carrying disease into that farm and that became a reservoir for neighboring farms, or if they deliberately 

brought something into that farm, it could create a big problem. So 

we would like to see stiffer penalties on that, not have it be a misdemeanor. If somebody is actually breaking and entering and trespassing onto someone’s property, whether they are a farmer or not, 

we think that should be seriously dealt with, and it will help the 

biosecurity efforts, not just the property rights. 

We again appreciate you coming here to Pennsylvania and holding these hearings, and just need a little bit of fine-tuning in a lot 

of the programs that we have to leverage what we are already 

doing. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Adams can be viewed in the appendix on page 117.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. Adams. 

Mr. Peechatka? 

STATEMENT OF WALT PEECHATKA, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, PennAg INDUSTRIES, HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. PEECHATKA. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. 

PennAg Industries Association appreciates the opportunity to offer 

comments this afternoon on behalf of our association. For your information, we represent more than 600 agricultural businesses, including, I might add, Wenger Feeds, as a member of our organization. 

I would like to start by reiterating and reemphasizing some of 

the comments that Mr. Adams just made to you on behalf of the 

poultry industry because it is very important information. We believe Pennsylvania is the leader nationally in the area of biosecurity on our poultry farms. After a devastating avian influenza outbreak in early 1980’s, Pennsylvania’s poultry industry began an aggressive effort to prevent future outbreaks and minimize their impact if they did occur. All commercial poultry operations in the 

State have been included in a data base that can be utilized by the 

industry and by our regulatory partners in the USDA and the 

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in the event of a disease 

outbreak. 

In addition to the excellent data base that we have available, the 

second component of the Pennsylvania program is the surveillance 

practice by our poultry industry. Each year, poultry producers send 

nearly 250,000 routine samples to our laboratories for diagnosis. 

I would like to turn to a few recommendations, and we would encourage your subcommittee and the U.S. Congress to consider the 

26

following items in addressing the issue of biosecurity and developing other initiatives which provide financial support to the agricultural community. First, increase the diagnostic laboratory capability in States with large concentrations of poultry and livestock. 

We encourage the Federal Government to provide additional financial support for the development of a BSL–3 laboratory at one of 

our Pennsylvania research institutions, so that the facility can be 

used for both research and for routine sampling and diagnosis. 

Second, we believe every State should be encouraged to develop 

a premise identification program along the lines of the program 

Pennsylvania has developed for the poultry industry. However, the 

issue of information confidentiality must be addressed when undertaking this effort. 

Third, agri-terrorism has been occurring with increasing frequency. Animal-rights groups have been breaking into research facilities and commercial poultry operations for the purpose of releasing animals and filming the contents of these facilities. These activities are strict violations of the basic tenets of biosecurity and 

place the owners of these operations in jeopardy of having disease 

introduced to their operations. 

To address this problem, we recommend that the Federal statutes be strengthened. Federal laws should be such that violations 

are recognized as a national threat to our country and to those that 

produce the food stuff to feed our population. I would also like to 

take this opportunity to commend the FBI for its ongoing efforts 

in the terrorism incidents in Pennsylvania. They have done a wonderful job with the existing statutes, and we believe that they could 

even do a better job if those statutes were strengthened. 

Fourth, we recommend that a significant portion of any Federal 

appropriation for addressing the bird flu threat be devoted to 

fieldwork and adequately preparing the agricultural community to 

prevent a bird flu outbreak or to promptly contain it, should it ever 

occur. While I am on the subject of bird flu, I want to take the time 

to emphasize the fact that it is important to recognize why bird flu 

incidences have occurred in Asia and Eastern Europe. Most of the 

countries which have reported outbreaks to date have humans and 

birds and animals cohabiting in the same house or in very close 

proximity. These birds and animals run loose, and if they are carrying a virus they are spreading it rapidly throughout the house 

of its owners and perhaps throughout the neighborhood. 

One of the many advantages of modern confinement animal and 

poultry operations, which we do have in this country, is that animals are confined in environmentally controlled barns, thereby 

minimizing the risk for infection. Confinement also eliminates the 

potential for wild birds and animals to spread the disease from 

flock to flock since the domesticated animals are isolated from the 

wild ones. 

Fifth, one of the most frequent disruptions of poultry production 

in Pennsylvania is the problem associated with live bird markets. 

These markets in some of our major cities are reservoirs for disease, which can be easily spread back to the farms that are supplying the birds. 

Last and No. 6, while most of our comments and recommendations today are centered on our animal and poultry agriculture, one 

27

remaining issue that also requires increased attention is our 

agrochemical industry. This industry, which PennAg also represents, provides the pesticides and the fertilizers to those in production agriculture. Agri-chemical facilities are also subject to the 

threat of terrorism. In this instance, also, we believe that the Federal statutes could be strengthened so as to discourage terrorism 

at these facilities. Penalties should be increased to minimize or 

eliminate the potential for terrorism against this industry. 

We appreciate the opportunity to offer these comments, and I 

stand ready to answer questions you may have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Peechatka can be viewed in the 

appendix on page 122.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you. 

Mr. Gardner? 

STATEMENT OF LEW GARDNER, DAIRY PRODUCER, GALETON, 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. GARDNER. Thank you very much, Senator Santorum, for inviting me here and holding this hearing on biosecurity. I would like 

to take this opportunity as a dairy producer in Pennsylvania to 

thank you for your effort in MILC legislation that is in progress 

and hopefully signed by the end of this month. I am a dairy farmer 

from Potter County, Pennsylvania, and we operate a 250–cow farm 

with my wife and my two sons, and the safety and security of the 

Nation’s milk supply is of the utmost importance to the U.S. industry and dairy producers in the United States, as well as Pennsylvania and all over. 

The dairy industry partners have been working closely together 

for the last several years to develop initiatives that would address 

biosecurity challenges in the dairy industry. Biosecurity is an important aspect of ensuring a safe food supply and protecting our 

animals’ health. My cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, has 

taken a number of initiatives in recent years to secure their milk 

supply throughout the production and processing chain, and I have 

provided some details in my written testimony of that fact. 

Dairy farmers have begun to adopt practices that will minimize 

opportunities to intentionally tamper with their livestock and milk 

for biosecurity measures. Common sense must be used when developing and implementing biosecurity practices on farms. In Pennsylvania, the vast majority, 85 to 90 percent of our dairy farmers, 

milk less than 100 cows per farm. Small farms will definitely need 

some kind of a financial resource to help them implement the biosecurity practices and install the technology and surveillance systems that is proposed. 

About 25 percent of our farmers in Pennsylvania are, because of 

religious belief, Amish or Old Order Mennonites and do not use 

electricity. That should be taken into consideration. They are a 

vital part of our dairy industry. The implementation of Federal biosecurity regulations must be in sync with State regulations and 

other regulatory agencies. I will give you an example of that. As 

a dairy producer, my farm, my milk house and my milk tank must 

be open for inspection by U.S. Public Health 24 hours a day. If a 

U.S. Public Health rating officer comes to my farm and my milk 

house is locked and my bulk tank is locked, then I could receive 

28

a zero score on a U.S. Public Health rating which would jeopardize 

my ability to market my product. So what I am saying is common 

sense must prevail. I think U.S. Public Health says that if they 

have a key, then that is all right. There are 10,000 dairy farmers 

in this State and six rating officers. That is a lot of keys for a lot 

of people to carry. 

Dairy product safety and security measures have been in place 

at processing facilities; PMO regulations, drug residue testing on 

every tankerload of milk, milk tanker seals and tanker wash tags. 

If any one of those seals is tampered with or absent, that milk is 

rejected. HACCP procedures are in place in plants to ensure appropriate plant operations, employee screening and background checks 

and restriction to access to milk plants. More work needs to be 

done on that. We need more work done on USAID programs. They 

need to be made mandatory and resources must be made available 

for the public sector to accomplish these program goals within 3 

years. 

Materials need to be developed to aid dairy farmers understanding the need for biosecurity practices. Penn State, through 

their extension program, could play an active role in this. National 

biosecurity practices must be developed and coordinated by individuals who understand the industry with the goal of implementing 

reasonable and practical guidelines. Federal and State resources 

must be made available to help dairy farmers offset the cost of implementing practices and installing technology that is available to 

accomplish this. Federal regulatory agencies should recognize the 

efforts and capabilities of their State partners in developing and 

implementing on-farm security measures. 

In conclusion, the dairy industry partners recognize the need for 

enhancing biosecurity practices throughout the industry and look 

forward to working closely together with our Federal and State 

partners to accomplish our goals. I want to thank you very much 

for this opportunity to appear before you. I look forward to your 

questions or comments. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gardner can be viewed in the appendix on page 125.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. 

Mr. Masser? 

STATEMENT OF KEITH MASSER, PRESIDENT, PENNSYLVANIA 

COOPERATIVE POTATO GROWERS, SACRAMENTO, PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. MASSER. Thank you, Chairman Santorum. On behalf of production agriculture, the Pennsylvania Potato Growers Co-op and 

the National Potato Council, I thank you for allowing me to testify 

amongst these esteemed guests. I am the eighth generation in my 

family to farm in western Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and if 

I assume—according to the last panel here, I am probably a detriment to our economy. I did acquire an engineering degree from 

Penn State, and after working in that profession for a couple years, 

I thought I could serve my family better by going back and joining 

the family farming operation. So sorry, you guys, but I did not 

apply the engineering degree to its fullest extent. However, we did 

try and use it. We built a processing plant, so I’m basically inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:11 Oct 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\30234.TXT TOSHD PsN: LAVERN
29

volved as operating three companies as president of our family 

farming operation, where we grow 3,600 acres of crops and we distribute potatoes throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. 

Keystone Potato Products is a processing company that we just 

got launched this year through the help of some USDA initiatives 

and State initiatives. We are using methane gas to fire a boiler to 

produce steam to dehydrate potatoes. We are using these dehydrated potatoes and selling those ingredients to bakeries and 

pierogies and processed potato chips, and the Pennsylvania Potato 

Growers Co-Op is a marketing organization that we use to market 

growers’ potatoes throughout Pennsylvania. 

In our farming operation, we use a third-party food safety inspection program called the American Institute of Baking. We do it voluntarily to help support some of the Government agricultural practices that are initiated by the U.S. Federal Insecticide and 

Rodenticide Act. We market a lot of people’s potatoes throughout 

the country in Pennsylvania, and we do require that they send us 

confirmation that they are following the GATT procedures, basically that they are using the pesticides according to label, that they 

have sanitary conditions on their farm and that their produce is 

safe. There is this program that we do voluntarily, then there are 

some customers, such as AlDI’s Supermarkets and Albertson’s—

they put out an initiative saying they require us to have these 

third-party food safety programs in place, although they are not enforcing them. They are buying from suppliers who do not have 

these programs in place. 

At Keystone Potato Products—we do have a third-party safety 

food program in place, and we chose a National Processors Association food safety program. We did this because of the many different 

third-party programs that are available. We chose the one that 

would encompass most of the companies we want to sell to. Campbell’s Soups requires that particular auditing agency for us, so we 

selected it. Now, if we were to sell to Appleby’s, they would choose 

Silica. These programs cost a lot of money, and we need to try to 

find within our industry some kind of consistency so that we can 

have one third-party agency that would encompass the different 

suppliers. That is a problem that I see surfacing through these 

third-party auditing programs, is that we could possibly have three 

third-party auditing programs at our company to service three different accounts. 

How do we have the smaller producers that we are involved with 

have a third-party food safety auditing scenario? It is expensive. 

The primary expense is making it happen, but I have a full-time 

person on staff, and she is doing the recordkeeping, the inspection 

process, checking the rodent traps and making sure all the lights 

have safety protection, so there are glass covers so we do not have 

glass entering with product. It is tough—it is difficult for a small 

producer to be able to have a full-time person auditing their farming operation or their shipping operation. So one of the things that 

I can see coming about and that we would be initiating is have an 

organization like the Pennsylvania Potato Growers Co-Op select a 

third-party food safety auditing system and then help the growers 

that are members to perform these practices and have that take 

place. 

30

What I think the Government—needs to take place here, is to 

protect from the accidental and forceful introduction of a pest. If 

one would remember back, the Irish Potato Famine was an event 

that significantly impacted our industry, and many of the Irish immigrants that came to this country were as a result of that famine, 

and that was caused by a fungal disease called Late Blight. We 

still have problems with that disease, and we need to continue with 

our research dollars to help keep that disease in check. 

We need to have our borders protected from pests like potato 

wart and Ralstonia. Ralstonia is a disease that enters this country 

through—and it did recently—through geraniums, imported geraniums. This causes brown rot in potatoes and it could devastate 

our crop. I got concerned when I saw some personnel being taken 

from APHIS and getting taken and taken into the Homeland Security Agency. We need to make sure that people in the Homeland 

Security are trained to those standards that APHIS has in their 

knowledge to make sure we have our borders protected from the introductions of those accidental pests, and those types of pests could 

be introduced forcefully, as well. That could tear up our industry. 

So basically those are the concerns I have, and I would able to 

answer questions at any point that is appropriate, and my written 

testimony is presented, and thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Masser can be viewed in the appendix on page 131.] 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, Keith, appreciate that, and 

thank you all of you for your much fuller written testimony. All of 

that testimony will be entered into the record. Just a couple of 

questions because we are running a little late—you mentioned, Mr. 

Adams, the issue of vaccinations and problems in your testimony. 

You mentioned problems with international restrictions on vaccinations. Can you elaborate as to what the problem is in that regard? 

Mr. ADAMS. As I understand it, there are certain diseases that 

are recordable diseases, and we have been fortunate that they have 

split up avian influenza into just—the highly pathogenic ones are 

the reportable ones. But most countries do not want a country that 

they would import from to use an avian influenza vaccine, because 

what I have been told is they feel that they would not know when 

you have a real disease and when you do not, but we feel that with 

modern vaccines, one, you would use a killed vaccine which would 

not replicate; the other was, with some of the technologies, you can 

put a marker on the vaccine so that you could go back, and if you 

drew blood from that bird or got tissues, you would able to tell 

whether it was a natural infection or if it was a vaccinated virus 

that was in there. So we feel the technology has outpaced what the 

old trading laws were. 

I know we have had conversation, and we had a presentation—

I think here—for USDA to help us get that message across, and 

some countries just say, ‘‘Well, that is our law and that is how we 

are going to follow it.’’ So I think it falls in the trading area. 

Senator SANTORUM. Is it, in this case, just a matter of either a 

convenient way for a non-tariff barrier or a true misunderstanding 

of the science? Which do you believe it is? 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SANTORUM. OK. You have answered my question. 

31

Mr. ADAMS. I think a lot of it is a trade barrier problem. 

Senator SANTORUM. Yes. OK. You have answered my question. 

Mr. ADAMS. Because some countries have used it very effectively. 

Italy used it very effectively, and there is no problem, so it has——

Senator SANTORUM. You say they used it? 

Mr. ADAMS. They used a killed vaccine in Italy to stem their 

avian influenza, and also this last round up in Connecticut, the 

United States got to use vaccine, and part of that has been because 

they started to look—because of the size of the United States, they 

are looking more at regionalization, allowing that if you have avian 

influenza in one part of the country, it does not eliminate exports 

from the rest of the country. So we have made some progress in 

that area, but it is still—a lot of it is not based on science, and that 

is what we should go toward. 

Senator SANTORUM. You mentioned the area of detection, and I 

know you, Mr. Masser, just talked about that, too. Have you noticed—and I know we just appropriated money for detection in 

avian flu—but have you noticed over the last few years since terrorism and bioterrorism has come much more to the fore, an improvement in detection of pathogens by the governmental entities 

in your field? 

Mr. PEECHATKA. I agree with what Mr. Adams just said. Probably one of our researchers from the previous panel would be in the 

best position to answer that, but I think, by and large, there has 

been an increase. 

Senator SANTORUM. I would like to know what the folks who are 

actually out there working feel, how they feel, whether you sense 

that there is a better system out there. 

Mr. ADAMS. Well, as I mentioned, and I think several others had 

it in their written testimony, Pennsylvania is doing 240,000 avian 

influenza samples already. That is partly imposed on us by States 

where we want to sell our products to, but partly it is self-imposed, 

that the industry wants to know where avian influenza is. So for 

us to have greater detection, we would have to have more testing 

done. 

I think you probably saw the headlines where the National 

Chicken Council just mentioned or just announced that they are 

going to be testing every flock that goes to slaughter for avian influenza. So that will be millions and millions of birds a year. People 

could criticize it and say it is after the fact, but AI can move so 

quickly that that is still an important piece of information that you 

can then work backwards in the regions and see what is going on. 

But to get more detection, I’m not sure. What we would like is that 

it is more rapid, because a 1–day delay in avian influenza management, once it is already here, and that management is so critical, 

and we learned that lesson too well. We started acting in Pennsylvania very, very quickly, and you could see from the data we went 

from—I think it was a $65 million-dollar price tag and 17 million 

birds lost, to the last outbreak that we had was one farm, 200,000 

birds, and if it was $400,000, I would be surprised. So we have 

learned a lot of lessons. We are not perfect, and we could get surprised at any time, but we have a pretty good system in place, but 

you have to act very quickly. 

32

Even in 1983–1984, and I know in some of the Delmarva incidents, the companies have taken the expense to put down the very 

first flocks, and they said, ‘‘We do not care about government help 

or anything. We just think it is the right thing to do,’’ to act so 

quickly that they will just get rid of the first two sentinel flocks 

that are out there. Speed is what we need, so in detection we need 

a research into new detection methods that are very specific for 

H5N1 or H7N2 or H5N2, whatever the culprit is at that time, and 

not have a vague, ‘‘Yes, you have AI, but we really do not know 

what kind it is.’’

Mr. MASSER. I think the detection or the technology has gotten 

better, but logistics has gotten slower. For instance, we have a 

quarantine on golden nematode in New York State, which is a 

nematode pest that affects potatoes and potato production that was 

introduced from Europe back in the 1800’s, and there is a USDA 

program that is in place. It is properly funded, but it takes a lot 

of priority to make sure it is properly funded, to quarantine and 

make sure that pest is in place. 

So what I am talking about then is it requires samples. We get 

our farm sampled periodically to make sure that the nematode is 

not moving. So you test around the area to make sure that the 

nematode has not got introduced into neighboring counties and 

States. We just got involved in a government contract shipping potato flakes to Moldavia. It took 12 days for the Federal Government 

to test our samples and to get the results back before we could 

ship. 

I do not think it takes that long to test the flake for microbes, 

but it is the logistics of making it happen that takes the time, and 

that takes money to have testing. Our samples had to get sent to 

Florida and have it tested and get the results back. So more testing 

facilities or having the technology being distributed so our products 

can get tested faster would be appropriate. 

Senator SANTORUM. Mr. Gardner, you mentioned your concern 

about information on biosecurity—information materials on biosecurity. As you may have seen, Mr. Azar from HHS, representing 

FDA, held up a little pamphlet talking about biosecurity in the 

milk area. Have you seen that pamphlet before? 

Mr. GARDNER. I had not read it, but I have seen it. We have 

pamphlets we hand out, a kit, to all of our producers on the different agencies, the different procedures that are being held, selling, restricted access and those kinds of things that we have done. 

That is the kind of information I am talking about, basic information for the producers would be important. 

Senator SANTORUM. My question is do you feel like the Federal 

agencies involved, the universities involved, are providing enough 

information to you with respect to biosecurity in your operations? 

Mr. GARDNER. I think the agencies are working together very 

well with providing the information, all the agencies together. I 

think the one handicap we have now is time. The animal identification process has been very slow in this country. Dairy—most of our 

animals are identified. It is just a matter of centralizing that information so that if there is an animal that has a disease, that it can 

be tracked rapidly, and all of the animals need to be tracked with 

the beef and all of the animals, but that has run a little slower. 

33

It has come along, but we have to have a mandatory identification 

premise animal identification program that identifies the animal 

and the premises where it came from, and this takes coordination 

between the State and Federal Government and the other agencies. 

Senator SANTORUM. Do you agree with that? 

Mr. ADAMS. Yes, I think they have done a good job. It is a job 

that never ends. You get new producers that get involved, and 

older ones get out of the business. I think it is a three-pronged 

thing. We need governmental help maybe to produce publications 

and things like that. We need universities to help distribute that, 

because they have a lot of meetings already set up, and the last 

thing we need is another meeting. So they can tag a biosecurity 

issue into one of those meetings, but the third, I think, is the responsibility of the industry to either take the publications or make 

their own, or dissect them and translate them into things that producers actually understand, and a lot of it has to be a show-andtell—you know, this is what you should actually do—because many 

times you will sit and, if a program is at the end of a long day of 

other sessions, you are going to miss some of that material. So I 

think it is a constant, never-ending educational process that we 

have to do. 

Senator SANTORUM. Is the material being distributed in forms 

that are useful to you, not just pamphlets, but on the Internet, and 

that are accessible to you, maybe interactive? 

Mr. ADAMS. Yes. Right now I would have to say—and I hate to 

always bias this toward avian influenza, but I will anyway—there 

are about maybe 10 sites right now that you could go to if you 

wanted to know what is happening in avian influenza, what biosecurity measures should you do. There is enough web sites out 

there that are very good. They have been put together, I would say, 

pretty rapidly, too, and they are very accurate, but you have to 

have the mentality that you want to go to the Internet to look for 

those things, and I would have to say that if the average age of 

a farmer is 58, I am not sure they are all going to be in touch with 

that, not that age is a determining factor in that, but maybe experience. 

Senator SANTORUM. It is a good indicator. 

Mr. ADAMS. Experience is, but I think there is a lot of material 

out there. 

Senator SANTORUM. Animal identification? 

Mr. ADAMS. In swine and dairy and beef, it seems to be a logical 

way to go. In the poultry area, we have a problem with thousands 

of animals in one load on a truck. We would look more toward facility identification, which there is some of that already, or maybe as 

a worst-case compromise is maybe some type of coop identification 

or something like individual bird identification. They have done 

some testing, and it then becomes a food safety problem, that the 

little tag or something that you put on gets in with the meat product because of the smaller size of a bird versus some of the other 

mammals that are out there. 

Senator SANTORUM. Thank you, gentlemen, very, very much for 

your testimony, and we are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:14 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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