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91–045 PDF 2004

S. Hrg. 108–491

AGROTERRORISM: THE THREAT TO AMERICA’S

BREADBASKET

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 19, 2003

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

MICHAEL D. BOPP, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TIM RADUCHA-GRACE, Professional Staff Member 

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel 

BETH M. GROSSMAN, Minority Counsel 

AMY B. NEWHOUSE, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 1

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 3

Senator Lautenberg .......................................................................................... 8

Senator Durbin ................................................................................................. 25

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003

Hon. James M. Talent, a U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri ..................... 5

Thomas McGinn, NCDA&CS, North Carolina Assistant State Veterinarian, 

Department of Agriculture .................................................................................. 9

Peter Chalk, Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation, Santa Barbara Office ............ 14

Colleen O’Keefe, D.V.M., M.S., Illinois Department of Agriculture .................... 17

Hon. Penrose Albright, Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology, Department of Homeland Security .......................................................................... 32

Lester M. Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D., Deputy Commissioner, Food and Drug 

Administration ..................................................................................................... 37

Charles Lambert, Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory 

Programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture, accompanied by Merle Pierson, 

Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, U.S. Department of Agriculture .... 39

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WISTNESSES

Albright, Penrose: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 32

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 88

Chalk, Peter: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 73

Crawford, Lester M., D.V.M., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 37

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 96

Lambert, Charles: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 39

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 117

McGinn, Thomas, NCDA&CS: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9

Prepared Statement with an atachment ........................................................ 58

O’Keefe, Colleen, D.V.M., M.S.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 17

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 83

Talent, Hon. James M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 53

APPENDIX 

‘‘Executive Summary—Stripe Rust of Wheat,’’ by Dr. H.F. Schwartz, Colorado 

State University, 11/18/03 ................................................................................... 128

‘‘Bioterrorism—A Threat to Agriculture and the Food Supply,’’ Lawrence J. 

Dyckman, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, prepared statement ...................................................................................................................... 130

Page

IV

Questions and Responses for the Record submitted by Senator Akaka for: 

Dr. Peter Chalk ................................................................................................ 147

Dr. Penrose Albright ........................................................................................ 151

Dr. Lester Crawford, from Amit K. Sachdev, Associate Commissioner 

for Legislation, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health 

and Human Services ..................................................................................... 153

Dr. Charles Lambert ........................................................................................ 156

Chart submitted by Chairman Collins entitled ‘‘Terrorists’ Interest in 

Agroterrorism’’ ...................................................................................................... 160

Chart submitted by Chairman Collins entitled ‘‘30 Agencies Involved in Possible Foot and Mouth Disease Outbreak’’ .......................................................... 161

‘‘The Midwest Alliance for Agroterrorism Countermeasures,’’ by Abner W. 

Womack, University of Missouri, Co-Director of the Food and Agricultural 

Policy Research Institute, prepared statement ................................................. 162

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AGROTERRORISM: THE THREAT TO 

AMERICA’S BREADBASKET 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Collins, Akaka, Durbin, and Lautenberg. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS 

Chairman COLLINS. Good morning. The Committee will come to 

order. 

Today, the Governmental Affairs Committee will examine the 

vulnerability of America’s agriculture and food industry to terrorist 

attacks, what our Nation must do to defend against agroterrorism, 

and how prepared we are to respond to such an attack. 

In the war on terrorism, the fields and pastures of America’s 

farmland might seem at first to have nothing in common with the 

towers of the World Trade Center or our busy seaports. In fact, 

however, they are merely different manifestations of the same high 

priority target, the American economy. Even as he celebrated the 

toppling of the pillars of our economic power in the videotape released shortly after September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden urged 

his followers to hit hard the American economy at its heart and 

core. 

Nothing is more at the heart and core of our economy than our agriculture and food industry. It is a $1 trillion economic sector 

that creates one-sixth of our gross national product. One in eight 

Americans works in this sector. It is a sprawling industry that encompasses a half-billion acres of croplands, thousands of feedlots, 

countless processing plants, warehouses, research facilities, and 

factories for ingredients, ready-to-eat foods, and packaging, as well 

as the distribution network that brings food from around the Nation and around the world into the neighborhood markets and restaurants via virtually every mode of transportation. 

Hundreds of pages of U.S. agricultural documents recovered from 

the al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan early last year are a strong indication that terrorists recognize that our agriculture and food industry provides tempting targets. According to a new RAND Corporation report, which will be released at today’s hearing, the industry’s 

size, scope, and productivity, combined with our lack of preparedness, offer a great many points of attack. Among our witnesses 

2

1 Chart entitled ‘‘Terrorists’ Interest in Agroterrorism,’’ appears in the Appendix on page 160. 

today will be the report’s author, Dr. Peter Chalk, a noted expert 

in biowarfare. 

Al Qaeda’s interest in agriculture is not limited to studying documents. These killers have practical, hands-on knowledge. A CIA report released in May confirmed that the September 11 hijackers expressed interest in crop dusting aircraft, an effective and remarkably simple way to spread biological agents, including plant and 

animal diseases, over large areas. 

We have also learned from the CIA that Osama bin Laden himself has considerable knowledge of agriculture. He controlled sunflower and corn markets in the Sudan in the mid-1990’s and may 

have used his farms to train terrorist operatives.1

This horrific page is from The Poisoner’s Handbook, an underground pamphlet published here in the United States that provides 

detailed instructions on how to make powerful plant, animal, and 

human poisons from easily obtained ingredients and how to disseminate them. It was found in Afghanistan in the hands of a 

group known to support al Qaeda. 

Last spring, a Saudi cleric who supports al Qaeda and has since 

been arrested issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, that justified the 

use of chemical and biological weapons, including weapons that destroy tillage and stock. 

To appreciate the potential impact of agroterrorism, consider the 

economic and social impacts of naturally occurring events of agricultural disease outbreaks. Here are just three examples. 

The 1997 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Taiwan had an 

immediate cost to farmers of $4 billion. The estimated cost to date 

of trade embargoes is $15 billion. The 2001 outbreak of foot and 

mouth disease in Great Britain cost $1.6 billion in compensation to 

farmers. The lost revenue to tourism, a manifestation of the psychological impact, is estimated at $4 billion. 

The 2002 outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease in California led 

to huge economic losses for poultry farmers and the quarantine of 

46,000 square miles. Included in this area was the U.S. Army National Training Center at Fort Irwin. 

But to call these three cases naturally occurring ignores an important point. Each was caused by human error, by carelessness, 

by a lapse in security. In Taiwan, it was one infected pig imported 

from Hong Kong. In Britain, it was one batch of infected feed at 

one farm. In California, it was one infected rooster smuggled across 

the border from Mexico. The ease with which terrorists could replicate these events is alarming. 

Since September 11, we have done much to make our Nation 

more secure. Nevertheless, much of America remains unprotected. 

A vital sector remains largely unguarded and an attack could be 

devastating. 

As we will hear today, an attack upon just one segment of the 

food supply could cripple our economy, require geographic quarantines, cause massive social upheaval, and, of course, produce illness and death. 

To prevent a future attack, we must first understand the danger. 

The RAND report describes the threats and vulnerabilities and exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
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1 Chart entitled ‘‘30 Agencies Involved in Possible Foot and Mouth Disease Outbreak,’’ appears 

in the Appendix on page 161. 

plores the likely outcomes of a possible agroterrorist attack. It is 

a call to action. 

Understanding current Federal efforts to prevent and respond to 

a terrorist attack will help us understand what we need to do to 

better address our vulnerabilities. Therefore, we will also hear testimony today from representatives of the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of 

Homeland Security, who will outline existing efforts and capabilities as well as what we must do to deter, detect, and respond effectively in the event of an attack. 

As the chart to my left shows,1 should there be an attack, more 

than 30 agencies may be involved. This is an example of the 30 

agencies that would be involved in the event of an outbreak of foot 

and mouth disease. We must make sure that the efforts of these 

30 agencies are effectively coordinated and that the Federal Government has a plan. After all, the impact of an ineffective Federal 

response could be devastating. 

According to the National Defense University, even a limited out- break of foot and mouth disease on just ten farms could have a $2 

billion financial impact and wide-ranging effects on society, including the impairment of military deployment and readiness. These 

simulations are based upon the research of Dr. Thomas McGinn, 

who will also testify before us today. 

Congress has not held a hearing devoted to agroterrorism since 

1999, 2 years before the September 11 attacks on our Nation. That 

is not to say that no work has been done on this issue since that 

time. In addition to the work of the Federal departments and agencies represented today, Senator Roberts, who held the 1999 hearing, worked with me to help write the food safety provisions included in the Bioterrorism Act. Senator Durbin has worked hard to 

raise awareness of food safety vulnerabilities. And my distinguished colleague Senator Akaka, perhaps more than any other 

Senator, has worked toward legislative solutions to our Nation’s 

vulnerabilities to possible agroterrorist attacks. Our first witness 

today, Senator Talent, has also been an outstanding leader in this 

effort as the chair of the Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on 

Marketing, Inspection, and Product Promotion. 

I look forward to working with Senator Talent as well as with 

the Members of this Committee to make sure that this aspect of 

homeland security receives the attention and the resources it deserves. We must join together on a bipartisan basis to address this 

growing threat before it reaches our soil. 

I would now turn to Senator Akaka for his opening statement. 

Senator Akaka. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I also 

want to welcome Senator Talent and to tell him that I will be willing to work with him on this issue. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, for scheduling this 

hearing today which is so important to our country. Agroterrorism 

4

is an important subject that receives too little attention. Perhaps 

it is easier to talk about terrorists attacking people than about terrorists attacking animals or grain production. Unfortunately, the 

two threats cannot be separated. To attack the Nation’s food supply 

is to attack all of us directly. 

After September 11, the President placed agriculture on the list 

of critical infrastructures that need to be protected from a terrorist 

attack. Since then, USDA has moved to improve its preparedness, 

prevention, and response efforts in the event of an agroterrorist attack. 

We are being warned that America must do more to protect the 

U.S. agricultural resources. Despite the warnings about the vulnerability, as expressed by the Chairman, of this important sector of 

our country, our response has been woefully inadequate. 

The Partnership for Public Service recently issued a study that 

examined the Federal Government’s ability to defend against a bioterrorist attack. The Partnership report found that Federal agencies responsible for safeguarding our agriculture would face crushing burdens if our food and water supplies were contaminated. 

The General Accounting Office issued three reports in the past 

year examining food processing security, foot and mouth disease, 

and mad cow disease. The GAO report and others suggest that we 

have a long way to go to prevent and prepare for an attack on our 

agriculture. 

An unclassified CIA report released this month warns that advances in biotechnology have the potential to create a much more 

dangerous biological warfare threat. We must be mindful that any 

techniques that can be used to develop new bioweapons can be applied to developing threats to our agriculture. 

The vulnerability of America’s agriculture has long concerned 

me. When I served on the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, I supported the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which plays a critical role in protecting our borders and farms from agricultural pests and diseases, a critical mission for my home State of Hawaii. 

As a U.S. Senator, I continue to be concerned about this problem. 

In the 107th Congress, I introduced legislation to enhance agricultural security in the United States. Unfortunately, that bill was not 

considered during the last Congress and I again introduced legislation to address the shortcomings in agricultural security preparedness. My two bills, S. 427, the Agriculture Security Assistance Act, 

and S. 430, the Agriculture Security Preparedness Act, focus on the 

need to increase coordination in confronting the threat to America’s 

agriculture industry. 

The two measures provide for better funding and better coordinated response and defense to an agroterrorism attack. The first 

bill is primarily aimed at assisting States and communities in responding to threats to the agriculture industry. The legislation authorizes funds for communities and States to increase their ability 

to handle a crisis. It also encourages animal health professionals 

to participate in community emergency planning activities to assist 

farmers in strengthening their defenses against a terrorist threat. 

The second measure will enable better interagency coordination 

within the Federal Government. The legislation establishes seniorVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
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1The prepared statement of Senator Talent appears in the Appendix on page 53. 

level liaisons in the Departments of Homeland Security and Health 

and Human Services to coordinate with the USDA on agricultural 

disease, emergency management, and response. Also, the bill requires DHS and USDA to work with the Department of Transportation to address the risks associated with transporting animals, 

plants, and people between and around farms. 

No one disputes the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth 

a pound of cure. The Nation’s capability to counter agroterrorism 

is increasing. However, the central importance of agriculture to our 

country suggests greater efforts are needed. 

The consequences of a lack of preparedness could be quite high. 

My two bills will help our Nation act now so that a future 

agroterrorist attack can be avoided or quickly responded to before 

the damage to lives or livestock is too great. 

I look forward to our witnesses this morning and look forward to 

a productive discussion. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

I know that our first witness is on a very tight schedule this 

morning so I am going to call upon him for his statement and then 

come back and turn to Senator Lautenberg for his opening remarks, if that is acceptable to the Senator from New Jersey. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

It is with great pleasure that I now introduce my esteemed colleague, Senator Jim Talent of Missouri. Senator Talent is the 

Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Marketing, 

Inspection, and Product Promotion, which has jurisdiction over the 

Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection 

Service. He represents a leading State in agriculture production 

and his commitment and leadership in protecting our Nation’s food 

supply is a real asset not only to his State, but to our entire Nation. Senator Talent, we are glad to have you here today. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. JAMES M. TALENT,1 A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI 

Senator TALENT. I am very grateful to be here. Thank you, and 

the Ranking Member Senator Akaka, and thanks to Senator Lautenberg also for allowing me to go first. In return, I am going to 

be as brief as I can be. 

I want to start off by thanking you for holding this hearing. We 

really are past due, I think, in holding another hearing on this important issue. We need to raise the visibility of the question of food 

security. Contrary to what some of us believe, without thinking 

about it, food doesn’t come from a grocery store. It comes from the 

ranches in the West. It comes from the farms in the Midwest. It 

comes from the potato farms in Maine, Madam Chairman, and it 

is vulnerable to attack at all different levels of the production 

chain. 

I want to thank you for allowing me to address the Committee. 

I am the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Agriculture Committee that has jurisdiction over marketing, inspection, and product promotion, and therefore over this issue. 

6

I do think it is important at the outset of the hearing, and since 

I am the first witness, maybe I can do it, to provide some notes of 

reassurance to consumers. We do have the safest and the most 

abundant and the most affordable food supply in the world. That 

was true before September 11. I think it is still true. 

But what we are all recognizing here is that a system that was 

designed to protect against incompetence or unintentional mistakes 

that might allow pests or disease into the system is not necessarily 

designed as well as it should be to protect against an intentional 

attack. We have begun that transition in the last several years, but 

we need to make certain that we complete it and complete it as 

soon as possible because the stakes, as you have pointed out, 

Madam Chairman, are huge. 

Apart from the threat to safety, which is, of course, the No. 1 

thing, the diseases introduced in the system can and have affected 

people. 

There is also a tremendous threat to the economy, and one gets 

the sense that is really what the terrorists are after. They want to 

spread fear and a lack of confidence in the food system. Agriculture 

sales account for 13 percent of the GNP. They are nearly one-sixth 

of all jobs in the United States. Of course, in the Midwest, where 

I am from, they loom as an even greater proportion of the economy 

in Missouri and the States around Missouri, and you have detailed, 

I think very well, Madam Chairman, what happens when there is 

an outbreak of some kind of food-related disease. 

Canada’s beef prices have declined 50 percent since BSE was discovered there. You have talked about the effect of swine fever in 

the Netherlands, foot and mouth disease in Taiwan, foot and 

mouth disease in the European Union. We all know the impact of 

BSE in Britain, and not just on the beef business there, but also 

on the tourist business. 

And this is why it is so crucial to Missouri, Madam Chairman, 

because our two biggest parts of the economy are agriculture, agribusiness, and tourism. An outbreak of BSE or FMD or something 

like that in Missouri or anywhere near it would have a devastating 

impact, or could have a devastating impact on the economy, depending on how prepared we are and how quickly we act, and that 

is really what the hearing is about. 

The experts in this, and you are going to have them here, I am 

not going to try and anticipate what they are going to say, but they 

talk about the importance of things like geography. We all know 

that livestock in particular tends to be raised in close quarters. 

There are certain parts of the country that are responsible for most 

of the livestock production and so the diseases tend to spread 

quickly because the animals are close together. 

That emphasizes the importance of timing. We need to anticipate 

where this is most likely to occur. We need to have protocols in 

place so that we have confidence, we detect these diseases quickly 

and respond as quickly as possible. It took the Europeans 2 weeks 

to discover FMD in their domestic livestock and that is too much. 

The producers, as you know, Madam Chairman, are already cooperating. It is their job to stay in touch with their herds and their 

cattle and their pork. They know what is going on there and they 

will participate and are participating in protocols with public 

7

1Prepared statement by Dr. Ab Womack appears in the Appendix on page 162. 

health agencies, with veterinarians, with law enforcement, so we 

can count on them, anyway, to do their part of the work. 

What strategy should we use? I can’t emphasize enough in your 

deliberations, Madam Chairman, and we are going to do this in the 

Agriculture Committee, the importance of cooperation and partnerships and established protocols. That graph that you put up is really a pretty damning graph. There are all these agencies that are 

involved in it. That is probably too many. At the very least, we 

have to be certain that they have protocols in place, they know how 

they are to work together to prevent this and respond quickly if 

and when it happens. We don’t want this to be some kind of fire 

drill, when the alarm goes off, where they are all running around 

doing the same thing, and I am certain that is what your hearing 

will look into. 

I want to, in closing, point out some of the good work that we 

are doing in Missouri. I have written testimony I would like to submit for the record if I could, Madam Chairman——

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection. 

Senator TALENT [continuing]. By Dr. Ab Womack, who is the CoDirector of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at 

the University of Missouri.1 If there is anything, and there is a lot 

going on good in agriculture in Missouri, Ab Womack knows about 

it. I would encourage you, Madam Chairman and staff, to consider 

him a ready resource if you want advice about this. 

We have established an alliance at the University of Missouri 

and we are already partnering with producers, with life sciences—

we have a lot of life science research centers in Missouri anyway—

public health agencies, law enforcement, becoming a kind of center 

for developing protocols to deal with this and prevent it and address it quickly if and when it occurs, and hopeful of being able to 

work at the university with the Department of Homeland Security 

in the future to try and prevent this. 

We have a big stake in Missouri, a big stake in the Midwest, but 

everybody in the country does. I am glad you are holding this hearing to raise the visibility and the importance of this and I am sure 

a lot of good is going to come out of it. 

Thank you again. I thank again my friend from New Jersey for 

allowing me to go first. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much for your testimony. I 

know I speak for all the Members of this Committee when I say 

that we look forward to working with you on solutions. 

Senator TALENT. I have talked with Senator Cochran and he is, 

of course, extremely interested in this and I expect we can move 

ahead together on it. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Madam Chairman, before Senator Talent 

leaves, I received my basic training in Missouri, in the Ozark 

Mountains, and as I dug a foxhole there with mighty strokes of a 

very sharp pickaxe, I couldn’t get anywhere and I am delighted to 

hear that Missouri has something else besides that. [Laughter.] 

Senator TALENT. Well, Senator, you were undoubtedly in Fort 

Leonard Wood, and if you dig at Fort Leonard Wood, you will hit 

8

rock. It is one of the reasons the Army has established that. It sort 

of beefs up our recruits. [Laughter.] 

But you go a little further south and east and you get to the foothills, some of the best farmland in the country, and then you go 

north and west. We have a lot of interesting places in Missouri. I 

am glad you were there, Senator. Come any time. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator, and Senator Lautenberg, thank you for your courtesy in letting our witness proceed before your opening remarks. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG 

Senator LAUTENBERG. I was pleased to do that, Madam Chairman, because I am grateful that you are examining this subject, 

that we have a chance to take a look at it today. 

In the last few years, we have worked so hard to reduce the 

country’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks, and it is a paradox 

when you think about it, that we now are moving to organicallyproduced products because we want to rid ourselves even of the 

slightest taint of a chemical or materials that might interfere with 

the purity of the product. And here we are, recognizing how vulnerable we all are to an attack on our agriculture, on our food supply. 

Unfortunately, our food chain from production to processing to 

distribution and consumption presents an all too easy target for 

those who want to harm America, and few targets have the impact 

that one could conceive as that coming from our food supply, something unknown that takes time to discover and then the time involved in reaching a large group of people in a given area, possibly 

a huge group if things go as one could imagine. 

As one of our witnesses today, Dr. McGinn of North Carolina’s 

Department of Agriculture has put it, our food supply provides a 

big bullseye to some terrorists. Though people may not realize it, 

we actually have agriculture in my State, despite it’s being densely 

populated—the most densely populated State in the country—we 

are referred to as the ‘‘Garden State’’ and there is a reason for that. 

New Jersey was a place of wonderful gardens and food production, 

and even though we are so crowded, we still today have nearly 

10,000 farms. Most of these are family farms. They cover about 

800,000 acres, and 800,000 acres in New Jersey, when you don’t 

have a lot of acreage to spare, is quite significant. 

We produce fruit, vegetables, some corn, milk, greenhouse and 

other specialty crops and we are the Nation’s second leading producer of blueberries and the fourth leading producer of cranberries 

in the country. Agriculture contributes $800 million a year to New 

Jersey’s economy, and yet for 2003, we have received only $146,000 

for plant and animal disease response and surveillance and the 

Counterterrorism Food Safety and Security Program. 

This compares rather poorly with other States. If you compare 

our population sizes, this sum by no means represents a proportionate ratio. 

So given the size of our industry and our proximity to some of 

the biggest most vulnerable markets in the country, the poultry 

food safety funding that we receive is of concern to all of us in New 

Jersey. One of the things I would like to hear, Madam Chairman, 

9

1The prepared statement of Dr. McGinn with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page 

58. 

this morning is how we assess threats to our food safety, how we 

allocated Federal resources to respond to these threats. 

Again, I congratulate you for holding this hearing. It is more 

than overdue. I will be anxious to hear what the witnesses have 

to say and look forward to the outcome of this hearing. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

I would now like to call our second panel of witnesses forward. 

Our witnesses on this panel will provide an overview of agroterrorism by outlining the range of threats to our food chain, the 

vulnerability terrorists could exploit, and the economic, social, and 

public health consequences of such an attack. 

Dr. Tom McGinn is the North Carolina Department of Agriculture’s Assistant State Veterinarian and its Director of Emergency Preparedness. Dr. McGinn has worked with the National Defense University on computer simulations that illustrate the effects 

of attacks on various segments of the agriculture and food industry. 

Dr. Peter Chalk is a policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and 

is the author of a new report that I mentioned in my opening statement that is entitled, ‘‘Hitting America’s Soft Underbelly.’’ It offers 

an enlightening assessment of our exposure to agroterrorism and 

makes several important policy recommendations. 

Colleen O’Keefe joins us from the Illinois Department of Agriculture, where she is Division Manager of Food Safety and Animal 

Protection. Ms. O’Keefe will describe the Partnership for Security 

in Agriculture, an initiative among eight Midwestern States to develop a response plan. 

I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today, and Dr. 

McGinn, we will start with your testimony. I understand that you 

have a PowerPoint presentation that you are going to use. 

TESTIMONY OF THOMAS McGINN, NCDA&CS,1 NORTH 

CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Dr. MCGINN. Thank you. I just also want to add that I am the 

President of the State Animal Response Team for North Carolina. 

That is 42 organizations in a public-private partnership to respond 

to any animal in any disaster anywhere in North Carolina using 

the Incident Command System. So it is a public-private partnership on our State level and also on our country level. I am also 

Deputy Team Leader for VMAT–3, which is part of the National 

Disaster Medical System. So I am deployed both for State and national animal disasters. 

Chairman COLLINS. You have a lot of experience and that is one 

reason we were so eager to have you testify this morning. 

Dr. MCGINN. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be with 

you today. 

I would like to start out by saying that the intentional use of a 

weapon of mass destruction against agriculture is agroterrorism, 

and what I would like to share with you today is how agriculture 

is both the perfect target and the perfect weapon. I am going to 

share with you some simulations that demonstrate the need for us 

to harness the resources and the energies of all aspects of governVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
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ment as well as public and private partnerships and the citizens 

of our country for the protection of our food. 

I mentioned that agriculture is the perfect weapon. It is easily 

obtained. It is easily creating fear. It has collateral destruction, will 

destroy our food, and the persons that would actually use a biological event against terrorists are not harmed by it. It has been 

around since the beginning of history. The history of biological warfare says that warring nations seek to destroy the food producing 

capability of their enemies. So you can see why it would be a perfect weapon. 

You have already mentioned that it is a perfect target. It is the largest single sector in our U.S. economy and it contributes $12 billion to the balance of trade. 

Also, information discovered from Afghanistan illustrates that al 

Qaeda is interested in using these weapons against us. 

My next slide will be a simulation that demonstrates the intentional introduction of foot and mouth disease into multiple locations in our country. In the lower left corner, you will see the days 

as they go forward and the States that are infected during each 

day, and then you will see the arrows that will go across the slide, 

indicating the spread of the disease. So you see Day One is the first 

day of infection. What you will see here is that by Day Five, we 

are already in 23 States, and that Day Five is the first day that 

the disease is detected. So it is subclinical. It cannot be seen until 

Day Five and then it is in 23 States. 

By Day Eight, it is in 29 States, and then we would probably be 

in a position where there will be a national stop movement declared. The national stop movement would result ultimately in an 

estimated destruction of over 23 million animals. 

This disease also is infectious to meat and dairy products, so not 

only would the stopping of the movement of animals occur, but also 

then there would have to be restrictions on the movement of food, 

as well. 

So imagine what would be going on at this point in time as this 

sort of scenario occurs and the capabilities of these 30 organizations to respond to something that is already in 20 to 30 States before we have the capability of detecting it with current technologies. Imagine if such a disease was also a zoonotic disease, a 

disease that could affect humans, as well, and the kinds of concerns and frustrations that we would be experiencing and the effects on our economy that would occur. 

With this scenario, every day that can be saved, particularly 

early on, is a reduction in millions of lost animals and billions of 

dollars saved to our economy. So the earlier we can detect this and 

the quicker we can respond, the more effective we would be at preventing this kind of a destruction. 

If you look at the model I just shared with you and calculated 

the number of people that would be needed to respond to such an 

emergency, what we have done is sat down and added up all the 

people for decon, for permitting, for treatment, and for disposal of 

animals, for feeding and all these sorts of things, and come up with 

a total number of over 700,000 people would be needed at the maximum number of people at the greatest level of outbreak in our 

country. 

11

Seven-hundred-thousand people—our Nation is not prepared to 

be able to respond with that kind of response. Therefore, we need 

statutory authority that requires the training and exercising on the 

county level, the State level, and the national level to be able to 

get the organizations that you have shared with us earlier to be in 

a coordinated and integrated capabilities to respond to this kind of 

an outbreak. 

First responders, not only in the agricultural area but also as it 

relates to law enforcement, as it relates to fire, emergency medical 

services, all will be pressed into service in a situation like this, as 

well as the National Guard and the military. 

I also believe that this total number of people, that this demonstrates the need for having the ability to have State and county 

animal response teams, much like we have volunteer fire departments that already exist in our country. 

That was a simulation that I showed you last on an intentional 

introduction into the food production area. This is an intentional 

introduction of two pathogens into the food processing area. What 

this demonstrates, and you will see the days as it moves forward 

over on the right of this particular slide, on December 1, an introduction of two pathogens at the processing level in multiple sites. 

Again, it could be several sites or they could have actual delivery 

into many sites at one time. Obviously, the more sites they deliver 

to, the quicker these sorts of pathogens will spread throughout our 

country. 

This slide demonstrates the number of sick people, the number 

in the ICUs and dead people that would result from the distribution of infectious material from these processing plants into single, 

just into single grocery stores and restaurants throughout our 

country. 

Imagine the fear that would result from such an intentional introduction. Such a biological attack would create signs, both gastric, respiratory, and neurological. Anybody who is sick with any 

kind of a disease, whether it is flu or an allergy or whatever, or 

just a simple stomach virus, would think that they were infected, 

as well. This would overload our public health system and the confidence in the country’s ability to respond. Our government’s ability 

to respond would be called into question and fear would be widespread. 

We have become a Nation concerned about receiving anthrax in 

our mailboxes. Imagine what it would be like to be a Nation concerned about opening our refrigerators and anthrax being in our refrigerators, as well. 

Another method that terrorists could use would be the introduction of a pathogen into the quality control system. Imagine they 

just intentionally introduced it into a food sample or into a diagnostic laboratory. Our country would not even have to be infected 

with the disease. They just put an infectious material into the laboratory system and then the appearance of an infectious disease in 

our country would then exist. 

And imagine the confidence that we would lose, or the people of 

our country would lose, in our system even with such an introduction. Our inability to validate the movement of animals and product would cause further loss of confidence in the public as we 

12

would deal with these sorts of introductions within the quality control systems. 

Imagine people purchasing products from other countries, not because they had a preference for taste, but because they were scared 

that it might be infected with some substance. 

The protection of our food supply, therefore, is central to our culture and central to our government’s stability. As consumers, we 

are looking for government agencies to speak with one voice. We 

are looking for them to actually give us the roles and responsibilities that they will undertake, the roles and responsibilities of the 

private sector, and then of the citizens themselves. 

We were looking for funding on the State level to actually do the 

sorts of things that can’t be done on the national level to actually 

determine what our vulnerabilities are and how they, in fact, reduce some of the risk associated from what these simulations detect. 

Our country is looking at these 30 organizations that you shared 

to stand on the walls of a fort to protect food security arm in arm, 

not to be in the bunkhouse arguing over which particular agency 

is going to defend which section of the wall. 

Here are the issues that we are addressing tangibly in North 

Carolina. These are things that we are currently doing to address 

the concerns. 

The first one, detection and surveillance. You can see our education programs are critical, educating consumers, building resilience within the consumers as part of what we must be about. Instead of fear, we have got to instill confidence and resilience. Having an integrated human and animal alert system—this is something that we are pioneering in North Carolina with public health, 

emergency management, and the State Bureau of Investigation as 

well as the FBI. 

And automated remote sensing capabilities. We have got to be 

able to detect earlier these sorts of pathogens. If we can see them 

before they are clinical, then we are going to again save millions 

of lives—millions of lives in terms of animals and billions of dollars. 

And then containment and eradication, the ability to force multiply. The 700,000 people I shared with you earlier, we have got to 

train right down to the local level. These are the people that are 

going to be responding, not some group of folks coming in quickly 

from a national capability. 

Increased technology, such as vaccines. We are going to have to 

expand our vaccine capabilities, our pharmaceutical capabilities. 

The Strategic National Stockpile is a very good place to actually expand that capability and to roll that capability out, as well. 

And increase our laboratory capacity. If you take the same scenarios and look at what the costs are, how much laboratory capacity is needed, then we start to see the kinds of vulnerabilities that 

we are currently challenged to have in place. 

Data management, a national multi-hazard GIS geographic information system. We have got to be able to know where these farms 

are and where these processing facilities are and how they move 

product long before we get involved in such an attack. Trying to determine where these places are located during an attack takes 

13

weeks to months and we don’t have the luxury, as you can see, of 

any days to do these sorts of things. 

Advancing livestock modeling capabilities. We have got to be able 

to put economic numbers associated with these models and we are 

very diligently trying to determine what kind of intervention strategies we need to do to return to normalcy in terms of production 

and processing, and also what are the costs associated with these 

intervention strategies. 

And finally, vulnerability assessment and risk reduction capabilities. We have got a food security program that is looking all the 

way from the raw ingredients through the producers, processing, 

distribution, and all the way to the retail and strengthening the 

chain, every link in that chain, in terms of what are the 

vulnerabilities. We do not know like we need to know what these 

vulnerabilities are. We do have a food safety culture, an excellent 

food safety culture in this country. We have got to develop a food 

security culture and this is a program that we are pioneering with 

AFDO, NASDA, and ASTHO in North Carolina. 

Continuity of operation programs are critical on the national 

level, but also right down to the processor and the food level. 

And then lastly, statutory terrorism training and exercising, 

much like what is done in the areas for radiological events. It is 

required. It needs to be required, and that would actually encourage the integration of these different agencies to work together. 

We need Federal guidance. We need Federal leadership and Federal resources. We have got to be able to do that on a central basis 

and on a decentralized basis. The integration and coordination is 

essential. 

There is funding that has been put forward in our State and all 

the other States that I have seen for law enforcement and for public health, for hospitals, targeted funding. 

Agriculture, as you can see from these simulations, is part of the 

critical infrastructure of our country and similar funding directed, 

targeted at the protection of our food security coming down through 

Homeland Security, ODP, through specific agencies with deliverables associated with that will ensure the consumers of our country and the confidence that they have had up until now will continue forward as we face the kinds of threats we will be facing in 

the future. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you today. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you very much, Doctor, for an excellent presentation. When you were showing how quickly disease 

would spread, I was reminded of the ‘‘Dark Winter’’ exercise that 

tested what the spread and reaction would be to a deliberate contamination with smallpox. These simulations are very similar with 

the rapidity with which the disease spreads and the public reaction. So thank you for sharing your simulations. 

Dr. MCGINN. It does also point out that within so many States, 

that it is a homeland security issue. It is not a State by State issue. 

Chairman COLLINS. That is a good point, as well. 

Dr. Chalk, thank you for being with us and please proceed with 

your testimony. 

14

1The prepared statement of Dr. Chalk appears in the Appendix on page 73. 

TESTIMONY OF PETER CHALK, POLICY ANALYST,1 RAND 

CORPORATION 

Dr. CHALK. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for the opportunity to 

testify on this important subject. 

Over the past decade, the United States has devoted considerable 

resources to upgrading homeland security in the context of improving our response contingencies against attacks against critical infrastructure in the country. While many gaps remain, this emphasis on preparedness and response has led to the development of at 

least nascent command structures that now have begun to span the 

ambit of potential terrorist attacks from conventional bombings 

right through to more exotic chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological incidents. 

Agriculture, however, is one area that has received relatively little attention in this regard, particularly with respect to accurate 

threat assessments and consequence management procedures. Indeed, the sect was only included as a specific component of U.S. 

National Counterterrorist Strategy following al Qaeda’s attacks on 

September 11. 

The purpose of my testimony today is to expand the debate on 

homeland security by looking at some of the vulnerabilities that 

are inherent in agriculture and the capabilities that would be required to exploit those vulnerabilities. 

A few words about the importance of agriculture. It is absolutely 

essential to the economic well-being of the United States. Although 

farming directly employs less than 3 percent of Americans, one in 

eight Americans actually are employed in an industry that is either 

directly or indirectly supported by food production. Cattle and dairy farmers alone earn between $50 and $54 billion 

a year through meat and dairy sales, while roughly $50 billion a 

year is raised through agricultural exports. At the time of the 2001 

attacks, agriculture constituted 9.7 percent of the gross domestic 

product of the United States, generating cash receipts in excess of 

$991 billion. 

Unfortunately, given this economic importance, agriculture, the 

inherent nature of agriculture does remain vulnerable to disruption 

and sabotage, both naturally occurring and deliberate. A number of 

factors account for this. 

Agriculture is both a large and intensive industry in the United 

States. Most dairies in the country can be expected to house at 

least 1,500 lactating cows at any one time, with the larger facilities 

housing upwards of 10,000 animals. And as we have heard, unlike 

human beings, these herds tend to be in very concentrated populations and are reared and bred in close proximity to one another. 

An outbreak of a contagious disease at any one of these facilities, 

particularly if it was airborne in character, would be very difficult 

to contain and could quite easily necessitate the wholesale eradication of all exposed animals, which is both technically and financially demanding. 

U.S. livestock has also reportedly become increasingly diseaseprone as a result of husbandry changes that have been designed to 

elevate the volume, quality, and quantity of meat production or to 

15

meet the specific requirements of individual vendors. Biotechnic 

modifications have reportedly increased the stress levels of exposed 

animals, which has, in turn, lowered their natural tolerance to disease while at the same time increased the volume of bacteria that 

they could be expected to shed in the event of an infection. 

There is also insufficient farm and biosecurity surveillance. 

Farmers in the United States have tended not to think about a deliberate attack against their facilities, much less actively planned 

to prevent one. Farms have, as a result, evolved as relatively open 

affairs, seldom incorporating concerted means to prevent unauthorized access or intrusion. 

Food processing facilities also lack uniform biosecurity measures, 

particularly those that have proliferated at the medium to lower 

end of the production spectrum. Thousands of these facilities exist 

across the country, exhibiting uneven standards of internal quality 

control, questionable biosurveillance, and transient, largely 

unscreened workforces. Entry-exit controls are not always adequate 

and may not actually be practiced at all, and even basic measures, 

such as the padlocking of warehouses, may not be practiced. 

There is also an inefficient passive disease reporting system in 

the United States. Responsibility for the early identification of a 

disease necessarily rests with the agricultural producers, but this 

is being hampered by the lack of clear communication channels between producers and regulators and reportedly also by an unwillingness on the part of farmers to quickly report disease outbreaks 

for fear that this could lead to uncompensated destruction of their 

livestock. 

Finally, there is inappropriate training of veterinarians to recognize and treat foreign animal diseases. In part, this reflects the 

lower number of people actually entering into veterinarian science 

and also the preference choices of those that do, many of whom 

now tend to focus on domesticated animals because that is where 

the money is. Fewer and fewer people are actually focusing on 

large-scale husbandry. 

Now, although vulnerability does not equate to risk and there 

are few reported actual incidents of terrorists employing biological 

agents against agriculture, a realistic potential for such a contingency certainly exists. Indeed, what makes the vulnerabilities in 

agriculture so worrying is that the capabilities that are required to 

exploit those vulnerabilities are not significant and certainly far 

less significant than those that would be required to carry out a 

mass attack against humans using biological agents. 

At least four factors account for this. First, there are a large 

number of potential pathogens from which to choose, with at least 

15 Class A agents being identified as having the ability to severely 

disrupt or affect animal populations. Most of these diseases are environmentally hardy and many are not routinely vaccinated against 

in the United States. 

Second, many foreign animal diseases cannot be transmitted to 

human beings. This means there is no requirement on the part of 

the perpetrator to have an advanced understanding of animal disease science nor is there any need for elaborate containment procedures or personal protective equipment in the preparation of the 

agent. 

16

Third, if the objective is human death, the farm-to-table food continuum offers a low-tech yet highly conducive mechanism for the 

transport and dissemination of bacteria and toxins, such as salmonella, E. coli, and botulism. Developments in the farm-to-table 

food continuum have greatly increased the potential number of 

entry points for these contaminants, which has greatly augmented 

the technical ease of actually carrying out an orchestrated foodborne attack. 

Finally, animal diseases can be quickly spread to affect large 

herds over wide geographic areas. That reflects both the intensive 

nature of farming in the United States as well as the increased disease susceptibility of animals. There is, in other words, no obstacle 

of weaponization. I would like to stress that, because 

weaponization is often cited as the most important barrier that 

needs to be overcome in terms of actually weaponizing biological 

agents and one of the major factors that has so far prevented substate use and escalation to that level. 

The ramifications of a concerted attack against the food chain 

would be far-reaching and they could quite easily extend beyond 

the immediate agricultural sector to affect other segments of society. We would have mass economic disruption, generating costs 

that would be expected to cross at least three levels. You would 

have direct costs associated with containment and eradication procedures. You would have indirect costs associated with losses that 

accrue to industries that are either directly or indirectly supported 

by agriculture, as well as compensation paid to farmers. Finally, 

there would be international costs in the form of protective embargoes imposed by major trading partners that were seeking to protect the viability of their own agricultural sectors. 

You would also get loss of political support and confidence in government. A successful bio attack against livestock would undoubtedly encourage people to lose safety in the confidence of the food 

supply and they could possibly lead them to question the effectiveness of existing bio preparedness measures in general. The actual 

mechanics of dealing with a bio attack against agriculture could 

also be a trigger for mass public criticism, particularly in the event 

of a mass euthanization of exposed animals. 

The United Kingdom foot and mouth disease outbreak provides 

a glaring example of just how far these effects can go. There, there 

were firebreaker operations that involved the eradication of nondisease-showing but susceptible animals in so-called firebreaker operations. That generated opposition not only amongst affected 

farmers, but animal rights advocates and eventually the public in 

general. 

Finally, you could quite easily get social effects, particularly if a 

zoonotic disease became entrenched in the United States and was 

passed from animals to humans and human deaths actually occurred. Terrorists could use this to their advantage to create an atmosphere of fear and collapse without actually having to carry out 

concerted direct attacks against humans and accept all that entails 

in terms of attracting mass government reprisals and potentially a 

loss of support. 

Despite the ease by which agricultural terrorism can be carried 

out and the potential ramifications of such a scenario, I don’t think 

17

1The prepared statement of Dr. O’Keefe appears in the Appendix on page 83. 

that it is likely to constitute a primary form of terrorist aggression. 

This is because acts, while significant, are delayed. They lack a single point of reference for the media to latch onto and to emphasize. 

They are probably going to be viewed as too dry in comparison to 

more conventional attacks, such as a bombing campaign. 

However, I think that attacks against agriculture could certainly 

emerge as a favored secondary form of terrorist aggression that is 

designed to further entrench and augment the general social disruption and upheaval generated by a more conventional terrorist 

bombing. The mere ability to employ cheap and unsophisticated 

means to target a State’s economic base while at the same time 

possibly overwhelm its public management infrastructure gives 

agroterrorism considerable utility in terms of cost-benefit payoffs 

that would be of particular interest to any sub-state group that is 

faced with overcoming significant power of symmetry, such as al 

Qaeda. 

And I will finish off by saying that one must remember that bin 

Laden has specifically exhorted the use of biological agents against 

the United States in whatever manner possible and part of his 

strategy now is very definitely focusing on destroying the economic 

underbelly of the United States as he sees that as the principal anchor that is sustaining what he views as the demonic Westerndominated system across the globe. 

Thank you very much. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. O’Keefe. 

TESTIMONY OF COLLEEN O’KEEFE, D.M.V, M.S.,1 ILLINOIS 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Dr. O’KEEFE. Thank you, Madam Chairman and distinguished 

Members, for inviting me. My point will be at a State level where 

we are with the region. 

Illinois has $7.5 billion in farm income, and $1.4 billion of that 

is livestock cash receipts. So we see agroterrorism as a very valid 

problem. With the ease of travel and the presence of biological 

agents worldwide—we have O’Hare as an international stop 

point—foreign animal disease in Illinois would be a major problem 

because it would stop the movement of interstate, intrastate animals, and then as our previous people have said, would cause great 

economic problem. 

And then there is the problem with consumer confidence. What 

meat products would be available would become prohibitively expensive and then the consumer confidence as to whether they 

would even choose to eat it. 

Presently in Illinois, we have an Emergency Animal Disease and 

Animals in Disaster Annex with our Illinois State Emergency Management and this allows the Department of Agriculture access to 

our other State agencies. We have a plan with the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety for animals and plants in the case of a nuclear disaster. 

Our most current initiatives have occurred this spring when we 

are trying to get down to the first responder level, which is the people who will be the ones that will initially notify us of these outVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
18

breaks. We started with general meetings, trying to notify veterinarians of their roles as first responders. In October, we had our 

first informational meeting for veterinarians to bring them up to 

date on foreign animal diseases and to find out what their willingness will be to help us as a first responder. 

We will also be carrying this down to the producer level in the 

future. The training of the producers as first responders is something that we feel is very important. We are hoping to start getting 

emergency animal disease and animal in disaster plans next to the 

county emergency response plans and we hope to have regional and 

county veterinary response teams available. 

So we have a fairly general overall State process, but that doesn’t 

get us to the point where we need, which is down to the producer 

and veterinary level. 

In putting together our State plan, we started this actually in 

1998. In 2002, it was recognized that this is not a State issue, this 

is a regional issue, and then a Central States Animal Emergency 

Coordinating Council was formed through the effort of Illinois. The 

Departments of Agriculture and Emergency Management in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and the USDA came together to look at the issues at a regional level and in that report, there were several findings that 

came out that I think are important to bring out. 

The overall goal of the regional plan was to enhance communication. Initially, it wasn’t even known how one State would notify another State of a possible foreign animal disease. It is down to that 

basic level. So these are issues that we needed to look at. 

We need to work together towards a common system of tracking 

and monitoring animal movements. Illinois alone imports and exports 360,000 head of swine, cattle, sheep, and goats per month—

that is Illinois—and the rest of these States, you can probably multiply that by each State, and some States, probably Iowa, even 

more. 

The States with appropriate mapping technology and data collection are the exception rather than the rule. We need to have the 

USDA implement an electronic system to track livestock movements. 

The post-outbreak livestock movement protocol is critical. We 

have talked about the stoppage of infected animals to prevent the 

further infection, but at some point, we have to be able to facilitate 

the normal marketing of animals also, animals that are healthy 

and unexposed, to try to minimize the economic damage that will 

occur. 

We need to know what the government’s indemnity plan would 

be before the emergency arises, and there is a disposal issue of animals that have been infected. This has to be done ahead of time 

because the numbers involved are huge. 

There are multiple agencies involved. No one Department of Agriculture can possibly cope with an infection. So we have private 

organizations and associations and all the agencies involved, and 

so training and testing is critical that we continue that. 

Those were the resolutions that were made. Earlier this year, a 

multi-State partnership in resource sharing has been organized to 

continue with this criteria. The partner States at this point are IlliVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
19

nois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, 

Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. 

This partnership has the goal to determine where the State 

needs lie and what States can and should be doing together to 

strengthen our agricultural security and programs, and what they 

have done at this point is we have three work groups that are rapidly working. We have a State-to-Federal work group which is trying to strengthen our State and Federal bonds. We have a Stateto-State work group that addresses the issue of interstate threat 

communication, joint planning and exercise, and livestock movement, quarantine, and crop security. 

The cooperative resource sharing group is trying to address services and resources that can be shared across State borders. We 

presently have an Emergency Management Assistance Compact, 

and what this does is allows for licensees from one State to work 

in another State in an emergency situation. So that is important, 

that we learn to use that to share veterinary emergency response 

teams and State animal health employees. We need to share our 

laboratory resources. We need to learn to share planning and educational materials. 

The State needs—while Illinois is doing really well, we have several critical shortages, our staffing, for one. Our State, and our 

State is not alone in this, is doing our emergency management with 

three people who are working half-time on this. 

Our State laboratories, both the animal disease laboratory and 

our agricultural product laboratory, are always needing equipment. 

I am sure you hear that all the time. But it is important that we 

have the most current equipment so we can have the most rapid 

diagnosis of disease possible because that is what makes the differences in slowing down the economic devastation. And we need 

to have equipment that will keep our staffs safe. 

The other thing is the State labs are not at this time allowed to 

test for foreign animal diseases and if we had an outbreak, the only 

place it is allowed to test is Plum Island, and that system would 

rapidly become overwhelmed and what would happen is that it 

would cause a delay in diagnosis and containment and that is a 

critical need that we have. 

We need help with the technology of just simply mapping where 

our livestock are, where the slaughter facilities are, warehouses 

are, this type of thing. We need to be able to look at the land to 

determine where we can set up disposal capabilities. 

And the other thing we need is we need to be able to continue 

training and exercising all of these groups that are managing together. We need to have a very good rapport with the Federal Government. We can’t do this without Federal help, both on a basis of, 

in Illinois, we can quarantine animals but we cannot cause their 

euthanasia or the disposal of them without a very lengthy process, 

not counting the fact that we simply do not have the money. And 

so we need the Federal Government to step in and declare emergency so that we have the capabilities of getting animals disposed 

of to stop this disease. So working with the Federal Government 

is critical to any foreign animal disease and I truly hope that I 

never have to use any of what I have in plan implemented here. 

Thank you. 

20

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Dr. O’Keefe. 

Dr. McGinn, I want to pick up on a point that Dr. O’Keefe made 

about the tracking of livestock. From your presentation, it is evident that the speed with which a localized outbreak of foot and 

mouth disease could accelerate into a national catastrophe is truly 

alarming. It also is evident that it would be relatively easy for an 

agroterrorist to create such an outbreak and then just let it naturally spread on its own. 

It is my understanding that the phenomenon is driven in large 

part by the widespread industry practice of moving animals 

throughout the country to save on the costs throughout the production phase. I am told that in the beef industry, for example, that 

80 percent of the animals pass through 2 percent of our feedlots. 

I was astounded to learn that. 

Are these movements sufficiently tracked so that livestock coming from farms that are infected could be identified and isolated? 

Explain a little bit more to us what the process would be if you discover an outbreak. You pointed out that it would take several days 

before it became evident. How difficult would it be to trace back to 

the farm where there may have been an intentional contamination? 

Dr. MCGINN. The consumers want us to be able to do that instantaneously, and in order for them to have confidence in our ability to actually contain these contagious agents that move so rapidly 

across our country, we are going to have to improve our system. 

You heard Dr. O’Keefe from Illinois say that they move 300-plus 

thousand animals per month. We move, just out of our State, close 

to 200,000 head every week and millions of poultry every week, as 

well. Millions of poultry and close to 200,000 livestock animals 

move out of our State each week. It is an incredible network, not 

only of live animals but also of products within the food chain, not 

unlike the Internet. 

To protect this network is going to require not just protection 

around certain facilities, but the entire network itself. That is why 

the critical infrastructure of transportation is also important, as 

well as agriculture. In order to be able to actually protect this network, we have to know where it is, and if we are spending in some 

of the exercises that I have participated in weeks trying to find the 

farms that could have actually been exposed to a disease, the disease is continuing to move on. You never—it is like a fire that is 

out of control. We never actually get ahead of the fire because we 

don’t know where the fire is and we are always behind the curve 

trying to contain the spread of this virus. These viruses don’t sleep 

at night. They move in our transportation networks. 

Consequently, we have got to have a national multi-hazard geographic information system. We have got to do this not just for 

livestock, but also every aspect of the food chain, and not just on 

the animal side—for plants, pesticides, fertilizers, all the areas of 

agriculture. We have got to look at every area and have all the different hazards which could possibly be affected identified. 

This takes some additional work at this point in time. We have 

the safest food system in the world. Terrorists are causing us to 

make it even safer and the development of this national capability 

to actually track these movements is a critical component of what 

we need. 

21

Chairman COLLINS. We talked mostly about attacks on livestock, 

but intelligence reports tell us that terrorist groups are also targeting the various parts of the food chain as potential means of 

spreading disease and toxins. I would like each of you to comment 

on the vulnerabilities of our food chain aside from the livestock 

issue which we have talked about, and we will start with you, Dr. 

McGinn. 

Dr. MCGINN. As I was mentioning, fertilizers are used as bombs. 

Pesticides, as well, we have heard about their use as a terrorist activity. The plant pathogens, as well, and the destruction that can 

be done from plant pathogens is enormous. 

We have got to look at each aspect of the food chain from the raw 

ingredients through the production and processing and distribution 

up to the retail level and carefully look at the vulnerabilities and 

then put in place some vulnerability reduction strategies that look 

at it as a network or as a chain instead of just as an individual 

commodity along that chain. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Chalk. 

Dr. CHALK. Yes. I agree that one has to look at the entire food 

production process in assessing vulnerabilities. With respect to 

crops, there are definite vulnerabilities vis-a-vis a seed growing 

stock for the subsequent growing season. 

With respect to food processing facilities, I think most of my attention focuses on the smallest scale production plants that exist 

across the country because it is at this point that biosecurity and 

surveillance tends to be least uniform, and in many of these facilities, there is not an adequate system of tracking the dissemination 

of products that actually go from the plant itself through the distribution chain to supermarkets and so forth, so that would be very 

difficult to actually trace back a contaminated product once it becomes apparent, which is a problem. 

The one saving grace is that these smaller facilities actually have 

a smaller cachement area. The larger food processing facilities, if 

one could actually orchestrate an attack within those companies, 

that would be the one that would actually have major run-on effects in terms of public health. But fortunately, food buyer security 

surveillance at those facilities is of a far higher standard. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. O’Keefe. 

Dr. O’KEEFE. When I was preparing for this speech, my expertise 

is in animals and so I polled other members of my Department of 

Agriculture on the issues of feed, seeds, and fertilizer security. Our 

response is we have done a risk assessment, but that is about it, 

and the reason being is that we feel that the animal terrorism is 

the main thrust of what would be economically important, and so 

we have chosen to put our limited resources and people into that 

area. 

However, we recognize that this is not the only one and that is 

our next issue to look at, is attempting to come up with some rational plan to help with this. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Dr. McGinn, you stated in your written testimony that the 

United States, and this surprised me, lacks the capability to 

produce vaccines to combat foreign animal diseases, such as foot 

22

and mouth disease, and would have to rely upon Great Britain in 

this case for our vaccine supply in the event of an outbreak. 

I wonder, does it make sense to rely on another country for this 

vaccine? Could you describe the resources that would be required 

to develop it in the United States? 

Dr. MCGINN. Senator Collins mentioned earlier Dark Winter and 

that scenario that really helped us see the need to get smallpox 

vaccine back as a way of protecting our country. If you look at 

these types of scenarios that we are sharing today, obviously, we 

have got to expand our ability to have the kinds of vaccines that 

we need to protect our food producing capabilities. 

Foot and mouth disease is a very complex vaccine that in order 

to be able to make it in such a way that we would have it on the 

shelf and ready to cover all different types of infection is a challenging thing to do. So what really needs to happen is looking at 

the different potential biological weapons that could be used 

against livestock and then determining what those costs would be 

for the development of those vaccines and then going ahead and 

targeting some dollars to accomplish the ability for us to be able 

to contain an outbreak quickly with the use of vaccines that could 

be available. 

Senator AKAKA. Dr. Chalk, I know you work in California, as 

well, as here in Virginia. In your testimony, you cited the outbreak 

of exotic Newcastle disease in California chickens in 2002. Can you 

walk us through the successes and failures in the Federal, State, 

and local agencies and their response to this outbreak? 

Dr. CHALK. Well, with respect to the poultry industry, I would 

argue that contingency measures are higher simply because there 

have been more referenced disease outbreaks at these facilities. 

There tends to be a higher awareness of the need for biosecurity 

and consideration of biosurveillance in terms of people coming on 

and leaving the premises, all of which tends to result in more effective recognition and rapid treatment, which tends to mean that although a large number of animals and flocks would be destroyed, 

that the disease itself doesn’t spread. 

The problem is that you can’t extrapolate that experience to the 

general agricultural industry at large because the referent examples aren’t there. The referent experience isn’t there. And I would 

say that if one was to equate the relative success of containment 

and eradication procedures vis-a-vis poultry compared to, say, 

swine herds or beef stocks, that the former would be far higher. 

But that is simply because it is of a smaller scale. You are not dealing with large-scale animals. And also, the visual impacts are not 

going to attract the same sort of media attention in terms of 

euthanization and eradication. 

But certainly, the problem with the poultry industry is that diseases that affect birds do spread very quickly and these populations are incredibly concentrated in nature. So it is highly vulnerable in that extent, but at the same time, that vulnerability has 

bred more concerted security preparedness measures. And certainly 

our experience in California when we have looked at the biosecurity measures at poultry farms is of a far higher standard. So to 

that extent, it is a positive, if you would like. 

23

Senator AKAKA. Yes. As you can tell, I am interested in the communication and response in these efforts. Dr. O’Keefe, in your testimony, you make a series of recommendations for ways in which 

Federal agencies can aid State and local governments to prevent 

and respond to an outbreak of foreign animal diseases. I think you 

implied that the communication is not that great. Can you comment on your experience working with Federal agencies? For example, do you feel that there is adequate communication between the 

Illinois Department of Agriculture and the Federal agencies and 

that they are responsive to State and local needs? 

Dr. O’KEEFE. The lack of communication, I think, is more on a 

State-to-State basis, just learning who we have to talk to in each 

State, because various States have different structures. So that is 

it. 

As far as working with the Federal level, the Federal veterinarians that we deal with in the State of Illinois have been exceptional 

as far as working with us, training with us, helping us set up our 

plans. So in that respect, it has gone well. Beyond that, I really 

couldn’t comment. 

But as far as working with the Federal veterinarians, of course, 

the major problem is the shortage of the numbers involved and 

that is a problem. But we do get along fairly well, at least in Illinois, with our Federal veterinarians. The communication problem 

is more State-to-State in trying to get the right language together 

and who to talk to and how to organize, because obviously these 

emergencies aren’t going to recognize State boundaries. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you for your responses, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Is there not a network, a database that veterinarians, Dr. 

O’Keefe, can access for epidemic-type conditions? 

Dr. O’KEEFE. If I understand you, if we see an outbreak, is that 

what you are saying? 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Of a highly contagious disease. 

Dr. O’KEEFE. Actually, there is a protocol of notifying the State 

veterinarian here in Illinois and then the State veterinarian notifies the Federal veterinarian in charge. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. So all veterinarians, because they are licensed professionals, know how to——

Dr. O’KEEFE. Well, actually, that was one of the issues—when we 

did the first responder meeting—that we had to bring up, is that 

we are not taught, we haven’t been taught how to—what do you 

do when you see a possible disease situation? Who do you call? It 

never has been an issue prior to this so it is not well——

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes. 

Dr. O’KEEFE. In fact, we have made up magnets that we are just 

spreading everywhere, to producers and to veterinarians, that exactly give the protocols of who to call. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Without oversimplifying, I mean, this is 

something certainly that looks like the first level thing to do——

Dr. O’KEEFE. Right. Well, that is what I said. 

Senator LAUTENBERG [continuing]. If you detect foot and mouth 

or swine cholera, that kind of thing, since you do have a profesVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
24

sional population that is largely in touch with those places where 

you might see evidence of these diseases. 

You said, also, Dr. O’Keefe, something that I was curious about. 

Were you describing a complicated array of things that prevent you 

from euthanizing livestock? 

Dr. O’KEEFE. Illinois statute says that we offer them an indem- nity. If they choose to say—I say their cow is worth $50 and they 

say their cow is worth $75, then it has to go to an arbitrator before 

we can do anything and that is how our statute is set up for the 

destruction of animals. And so, obviously, we don’t have time for 

that in an outbreak situation. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. So it becomes the first stage of an economic issue. 

Dr. O’KEEFE. Correct. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. And also, do you not have repositories 

where these diseased carcasses can be disposed? 

Dr. O’KEEFE. No. The number of animals that you are talking 

about, if you are talking about pigs and cattle, there is no place 

that can set up for that, and that is one of the areas that we are 

presently actively pursuing, is we need to have set up ahead of 

time a method of disposal. In England, I think everybody saw the 

burning carcasses. I mean, sadly, that is one possibility. There are 

other ways. But they can’t go to renderers because of the possibility 

of infection, so we have to come up with—and burial is another 

possibility. However, EPA may not look on burial sites as being a 

possibility. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. If we can find a place. We really haven’t 

identified a fully safe repository for spent nuclear waste——

Dr. O’KEEFE. Well, and we don’t want to transport these animals 

very far because of the infection. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. I remembered about a trip I took to the 

Soviet Union right after Chernobyl, months later, maybe a year, 

and I went into a supermarket, just as part of a review of what 

was taking place, and I saw signs advertising the fact that these 

items have been radiated as a result of the explosion there, and 

people bought it. They were cheaper, and they knew that it was 

cheaper in price. The same thing with meats. I was stunned, but 

when people are desperate, they do all kinds of things. 

I am not suggesting that we set up a system to accommodate 

that, not at all, but Dr. Chalk and also Dr. McGinn, if the mission 

was to scare us into activity, it sure scared us. Now, the response 

is the problem, because of the enormous cost that might be involved in preparing for these contingencies. 

You said something, Dr. Chalk, about that kind of attack not 

having the same visibility as a conventional bombing attack or 

something like that, but the amount of harm that it could do is far 

greater than anything except a nuclear bomb might do in one fell 

swoop. 

So I, frankly, sit here a little bit overwhelmed by the potential, 

that we know exists. I think there was a time, because Senator 

Collins, our Chairperson, referred to al Qaeda manuals that were 

found. Do you believe that these couple years later after September 

11 that al Qaeda still might have that as a target in mind, an attack on a food supply? 

25

Dr. CHALK. I think there are a number of things here. Certainly, 

if one takes at face value the assertions of bin Laden about economic warfare, a certainly viable method of undermining the economic resource base of the United States is through agriculture. 

And one also has to take into account that even if a disease was 

contained, the possibilities of recurrences are always there, especially if something like foot and mouth getting out of the agricultural population into the wildlife population. If those sorts of scenarios happen, then you have got a very difficult problem. 

If we look at the U.K. experience, for instance, although the 

eradication of foot and mouth disease has been declared, residual 

outbreaks continue to take place, which is still having an economic 

impact on the country. 

The other aspect to bear in mind is that al Qaeda is very definitely interested in biowarfare. We know that from written statements. We know that from verbal statements. The problem with 

biowarfare against human beings is that it is one thing to want to 

do it. It is an entirely different thing to actually weaponize agents 

to kill large numbers of people to make a mass impact. You can 

have a psychological impact, but it is much more difficult to have 

a mass physical impact. 

With bioattacks against agriculture, the very nature of the fact 

that the animals themselves are the weapons, means you don’t 

have to weaponize the agent. In addition, the mere fact that you 

can handle disease agents with little or no risk of latent or accidental infection, and the possibility that the general population 

may not understand that certain diseases are not transmissible to 

humans, all of these factors bear into the fact that attacks against 

agriculture are easy to do, will spread quickly, will definitely have 

an economic impact, and quite possibly have a very significant psychological impact—if one is looking at what terrorists aim to do, objective of disorienting society and undermining the support pillars 

that give any society strength. 

Agroterrorism in that sense is a viable option, particularly when 

you take into account its cost-benefit analysis. And one must remember that terrorists, like bodies of running water, always choose 

the course of least resistance. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Madam Chairman, I will conclude, but I 

commend you for holding this hearing and for helping us to understand what the dimension of agro-terrorism could be. I will leave 

it to you to direct us how to solve this problem. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. Senator Durbin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN 

Senator DURBIN. Madam Chairman, thanks for this hearing. I 

might tell you that I think this is historic in that after September 

11, I was asked to go to a briefing, a classified briefing, from our 

intelligence agencies about agroterrorism. I was the only one in the 

room. There weren’t a lot of Senators clamoring to get in at that 

point. A lot of other things were on our minds. But it was frightening. I haven’t spoken about it since publicly because of some of 

the concerns I have had, and I am glad that you are making this 

a public issue. We have to face it. 

26

You brought together a great panel here and another great panel 

to follow on. I want to quickly thank Dr. O’Keefe for being here 

from my home town. Her family and she have been friends for 

years and years and I thank her for joining us. 

Two things I would note here. We start off by saying to State and 

local agencies, get your act together here. Face the reality of food 

security. And yet, as you have noted at the outset of this hearing, 

we don’t have our act together in Washington by a long shot. You 

have noted some 30 different agencies that might be involved in a 

possible foot and mouth disease outbreak. We have 13 different 

Federal agencies that are responsible for food inspection, 35 different laws, 70 different committees and subcommittees of jurisdiction. 

We don’t have our act together. We are not taking this as seriously as we should. The next panel will represent three of those 

Federal agencies, not all of them, but the three major ones, but it 

is an indication that we haven’t really taken this admonition to 

heart here in Washington and we should. 

Let me try to explore two scenarios in the brief time that I have 

here, and let me first go to, and this is troubling in a respect to 

talk about it, but I think we have to and I think they have been 

alluded to. Virtually every agricultural State in the Nation has a 

State fair. Ours does, a huge gathering of people from rural areas 

and livestock, the best to come to be shown. As a youngster and 

as a father raising kids, we used to like to walk our kids, come take 

a look at the cows and the sheep and the horses and everything 

that is there. It was just a wonderful feeling. It is a great part of 

growing up in Illinois. 

And yet when you think now in terms of our discussion, this is 

an experience that we have to reassess. Dr. Chalk, you talk about 

the weaponization of foot and mouth disease and I think what you 

say is that it is doable. A person could find a way to spread this 

disease. If that is the case, let me ask you this. What is the incubation period for foot and mouth disease? 

Dr. CHALK. Well, Dr. McGinn was——

Senator DURBIN. Or Dr. McGinn, whoever. 

Dr. MCGINN. Three to 5 days was the accepted length of time. 

That is why a terrorist could actually put it on a handkerchief, 

bring it into our country from any country that has foot and mouth 

disease in the world, just put it on a handkerchief, bring it in, and 

infect at multiple sites. We can’t see the disease. The virus is actually spreading, but then in about 4 to 5 days——

Senator DURBIN. If you exposed livestock before they are being 

shipped back to the farm at a State fair, you would have dispersed 

this disease across the State. Frankly and sadly, in an efficient 

way, it would move across the State. That is a reality and would 

have a terrible damaging economic impact. How do we cope with 

that? How do we deal with that? 

Now let me go to the next area, food processing, which concerns 

me a great deal. In fact, Madam Chairman, I asked the General 

Accounting Office to do a study this year on food processing security. We talk about safety, but what about security? And what they 

found when it came to the security aspects which we have discussed here are troubling. 

27

They went to the two major agencies, Food and Drug Administration and USDA, who are represented today, and they concluded, 

the GAO, that neither agency believes it has the authority to regulate all aspects of security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture 

believes the statutes cannot be interpreted to authorize the regulation of security measures that are not associated with the immediate food processing environment. As a result, USDA does not 

believe it has the authority to require food processors to adopt 

measures to ensure security outside the premises, such as installing fences, or to require that food processors conduct employee 

background checks. 

So now we have moved beyond the livestock to the processing 

part of it and we don’t have the current authority to deal with security on the ground. Instead, we deal with something known as 

voluntary guidelines, and excuse me, but I don’t think that is good 

enough. It might have been good enough dealing with the problems 

of the 19th Century. It is not good enough in dealing with the problems of the 21st Century. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Durbin follows:]

OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN 

Good morning. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman for holding this hearing on a topic that potentially 

impacts the life of every American. I would also like to welcome one of our witnesses 

and a life-long resident of Illinois, Dr. Colleen O’Keefe from the Illinois Department 

of Agriculture. 

Agriculture’s contribution to our Gross Domestic Product is over one trillion dollars per year—one sixth of our GDP. And although only 3 percent of Americans are 

directly involved with farming, one out of eight (1/8) Americans are employed in an 

occupation that is directly supported by food and fiber production. Additionally, agricultural exports are the largest positive contributor to the United States’ trade balance. 

An act of agricultural terrorism or a naturally occurring agricultural catastrophe 

would have immediate effects on our economy and could threaten our national security. Public health and animal health could be compromised and public confidence 

in our institutions would be shaken. How long these effects would last depends on 

our readiness to respond. 

We have concentrated on many aspects of national security but have taken much 

more limited action to address agricultural and food security. There are many steps 

in the process that brings food from farm fields to grocers’ shelves and each step 

may be susceptible to tampering. Possible targets could include field crops, farm animals, food in the processing and distribution chain, market-ready food, storage facilities, wholesale and retail outlets, transportation systems and research institutions. 

Because of consolidation within the agricultural sector and vertical integration of 

our food production and distribution systems, one well-placed and well-timed attack 

could disrupt a considerable portion of our food chain. 

We should develop an integrated strategy that includes specific, relevant and 

measurable goals for preparedness, surveillance, response and recovery. 

We cannot assume we are prepared for agricultural catastrophes if we have not 

established clear roles for Federal, State and local authorities and integrated those 

roles into the overall homeland security plan. 

We cannot presume to have effective surveillance unless we develop adequate laboratory capacity and the ability to quickly transfer samples and results. 

We cannot pretend to have an adequate response unless we can predict patterns 

of disease dispersion and address economic, social, trade, diplomatic, legal and even 

military options after an outbreak. 

Communication is basic to our preparedness, surveillance, response and recovery, 

from local farmers to international trade partners. We must communicate effectively 

among and between agencies, with our trade partners and especially with the agricultural community that is so critical to our own individual well-being and the wellbeing of our entire country. 

28

Madam Chairman, right now there are too many variables in our approach to intentional or naturally occurring agricultural disasters. In the last Congress, I introduced legislation to combine the 13 different Federal agencies that have jurisdiction 

over food safety into one Food Safety Administration. A single food agency would 

serve as an efficient and coherent system dedicated to securing our Nation’s food 

supply and ultimately our public health and economic strength. I am making improvements to that legislation and plan to re-introduce it early in the next session. 

In closing, I would like to cite the 2002 report, ‘‘Agricultural Bioterrorism: A Federal Strategy to Meet the Threat’’ from the National Defense University. The paper 

concludes, ‘‘An aggressive, well-coordinated effort to combat agricultural bioterrorism will strengthen partnerships and improve coordination among agencies and 

organizations with responsibilities, programs, and capabilities to address a significant national threat. Perhaps, because the threat is more focused and manageable 

than other potential threats against the Nation’s infrastructures, an effective, wellcoordinated program may provide a model for other counterterrorism efforts.’’

Madam Chairman, I would suggest that now is the time to build that model program. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses 

about their agencies’ food security efforts at the State and national levels.

Senator DURBIN. And so I would like to ask each of you, in the 

short time remaining here, if you could comment briefly. Do you 

feel that consolidating our efforts in Washington is also essential 

to making certain that we deal with food security in a responsible 

fashion so that you in State and local venues have someone you 

can work with who really looks at the depth and breadth of the 

challenge that faces us? Dr. McGinn. 

Dr. MCGINN. Absolutely. I think if you look at the scenarios that 

we have shared today and the one you just mentioned about the 

State fairs, this was in Scientific American that that very scenario 

had been discussed, and the Scientific American said these sorts of 

scenarios are out there and having a Federal plan that coordinates 

all the agencies and requiring these Federal agencies to come up 

with that plan within a certain length of time, and then that sets 

a standard or a set of roles and responsibilities that they would undertake and then, in like fashion, requiring the States to follow 

that sort of plan to be able to address these intentional attacks is 

very much necessary at this point in time. 

To do that takes some resources. If you look at the scenario with 

smallpox and human health, what you saw is the CDC grants that 

came forward with a tremendous amount of resources to the States. 

They focus on different areas, training, exercising, pharmaceuticals, communications. They have all these different focus areas and 

very much feel like that in order to get this coordinated effort on 

the national level and on the State level, we have got to have the 

plans. We need deadlines to get those out there, but the dollars 

have to come to both levels to actually build the capabilities, targeted dollars, a large number of dollars, sustainable dollars that 

had not yet been put into this whole process. 

So a plan is great, but building capability in addition to that 

plan, both of those need to be on a time line and funded in order 

to address these sorts of things. 

Senator DURBIN. Thank you. Dr. Chalk or Dr. O’Keefe? 

Dr. CHALK. I absolutely agree. One needs to have a plan to ensure against duplication of effort, cross-jurisdictional jealousies, 

turf wars that inevitably arise in terms of mandates. It is all very 

well to have plans, but those plans need to be directed and coordinated in a single fashion to prevent the proliferation of ad hoc iniVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
29

tiatives that seek to address specific contingencies in an individual 

basis. And as we have seen in various other areas of counterterrorism, that is not a viable way of actually dealing with this 

threat. 

One also has to look at the agricultural and food industry in a 

holistic fashion. As you say, it definitely does need to include the 

food production part of the industry and those sorts of modalities 

need to be factored in in terms of setting predetermined standards 

that should be instituted across the board. So I would fundamentally support those sorts of efforts. 

Senator DURBIN. Dr. O’Keefe. 

Dr. O’KEEFE. I agree with everything they said. I can’t speak on 

a Federal level. That is not my expertise. But on the State level, 

we run into this all the time, whether public health has an issue 

or is it Department of Agriculture, and we—what our mandate is 

and what their mandate is are sometimes not the same and we can 

see a problem but not be able to deal with it and have to turn it 

over to another agency and there is a lot of time gap sometimes 

in getting it done. So assuming that they are both the same is a 

critical need legislatively. 

Senator DURBIN. Madam Chairman, I thank you. I thank the 

panel. I would just say to you, every time I bring this issue up, the 

lobbyists get nervous and their feet start shuffling and they are 

thinking, oh my God, he is going to take away my job. He is talking 

about combining some existing agency into a new agency and I represent the group that is comfortable with an existing agency. Don’t 

change things. Don’t rock the boat. 

And the same thing is true up here on Capitol Hill with Members of Congress who jealously guard their jurisdiction. They don’t 

want to give it up. And then you get downtown, and frankly, the 

only people who favor consolidation of food safety and security are 

either people who are not in the government or people retired from 

the government. As soon as they arrive and they are on the government payroll, in political positions usually, oh, they have just resisted night and day. We can’t afford this anymore. Agroterrorism, 

I think, ought to be the wake-up call here, that we can do a much 

better job, and thank you for alerting us. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator Durbin. 

We will do one final round of questions for this panel, limited to 

4 minutes each. 

Dr. McGinn, one consequence that you have explored of an outbreak would be an impact potentially on military training and deployment. This consequence is something that I think most of us 

hadn’t even thought of as a possible consequence of agroterrorism. 

Could you expand on your earlier comments and tell us a little bit 

about your concerns in that area and any suggestions you might 

have? 

Dr. MCGINN. Gladly. In the scenario we shared earlier, you can 

see all the arrows going across all the different States, but within 

those States then what occurs is multiple quarantined areas that 

will be popping up simultaneously. You could have 500 to 1,000 

farming facilities or processing facilities under quarantine at one 

time. 

30

This will create a restriction in movement that is very significant 

to the military, but also to anybody moving any sort of goods 

through, whether it is a research facility that has to move products, moving computers from one place to the next. Any sort of 

movements then become gummed up in the works, so to speak. 

So the military would be an example. They have got to be able 

to mobilize very quickly and deploy extremely quickly and so any 

sort of way that they would have to be dealing with these quarantined facilities would be a great challenge to them. They would 

also be restricted in where they could land and actually set up and 

stage in other countries. When other countries have had foot and 

animal diseases in their country, infectious organisms, we would 

not allow them to come and exercise in our country because of fear 

that those transports and those personnel might bring some of 

these infectious diseases into our country. So we have already set 

a precedence that says we don’t want those sorts of diseases coming into our country, so we would then in like fashion if a terrorist 

used such an organism against us, then we would have a difficult 

time being able to deploy to other countries, as well. 

So this whole issue of the massive number of quarantines associated, as we saw in the U.K., you had people leave their homes with 

their children so they could go to school and they actually left 

where they lived for long periods in time so as to get outside of 

quarantine areas. 

So the challenge associated with any kind of biological event, 

whether it is directed at animals or directed at people, becomes 

this whole issue of restriction in movement and obviously it has a 

great impact on our ability of our military to do what it needs to 

do to protect us, as well. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. I think that helps us understand 

that the consequences of an outbreak of animal disease are farreaching when it actually would have an impact on military readiness and the ability to deploy troops. 

Dr. O’Keefe, one of our witnesses on the next panel will talk 

about the Federal Government’s efforts to train State officials. For 

example, the Department of Agriculture’s APHIS sponsored 2-week 

training seminars three times in 2001 for veterinarians in all 50 

States. Could you give us your assessment of Federal efforts to assist State officials through education and training to increase the 

level of preparedness? 

Dr. O’KEEFE. We have at this point four trained veterinarians for 

the foreign animal disease diagnosticians, which is critical to the 

point of diagnosing quickly whether or not this is a risk or not. 

As far as the other levels go, when seminars have been made 

available, we have sent staff. At this point, we always need more 

training, but the level we are at right now is adequate. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Chalk, just one final question for you. We know that some nations, including the former Soviet Union, experimented extensively with crop and livestock diseases as weapons. Should we be concerned about the dissemination 

of that research to terrorist groups and to nations that sponsor terrorism, and if so, do you have any suggestions for how we can address that potential threat? 

31

Dr. CHALK. Yes, you are quite correct. The former Soviet Union, 

Iraq, and South Africa, are all countries that have—and the United 

States, for that matter—are all countries that have included agricultural components in their weapons of mass destruction biological 

programs. 

There is certainly a potential for that research to be disseminated by rogue scientists, by individuals seeking to make a quick 

buck, particularly from the Soviet Union, in exactly the same fashion as the concern exists vis-a-vis scientists who have been involved in the human side of the biological programs. 

I guess the fundamental way of dealing with that is to provide 

incentives for the scientists in the countries concerned not to do 

that in terms of providing viable income and employment opportunities and redirecting their efforts towards the development of sustainable vaccines to deal with things like foot and mouth disease. 

And certainly the technological expertise in those countries exists 

whereby one could tap into that and actually use it as a positive 

resource as opposed to a potential negative threat. 

On the State side, the one thing I would like to stress is that 

when it is argued that we are always dealing in scenarios when it 

comes to agroterrorism, I have only come up with two documented 

cases of the sub-state use of biological weapons deliberately as a 

political strategy against livestock. 

The mere fact that nation states have recognized its utility as a 

viable offensive weapon, as a form of asymmetric warfare, should 

be of concern, not only in terms of understanding its potential utility, but in many cases sub-state actors will seek to replicate what 

the state actor is doing, and that is certainly true of the terrorism 

method. So it is important that we understand the dynamics of 

how States have seen agroterrorism and we understand the potential dissemination of those lessons, of those implications down to 

the sub-state level. 

Luckily, though, with respect to the former Soviet Union, with 

respect to Iraq, and certainly with respect to South Africa, there 

has been a voluntary curtailment of the bio weapons programs in 

general. So that has mitigated that threat. But the fact is, the 

knowledge is out there. It is still there and we need to be aware 

of that. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would like to 

ask for comments from our witnesses either now or for the record 

on my legislation, S. 427, which is the Agriculture Security Assistance Act, and also S. 430, which is the Agriculture Security Preparedness Act. These bills increase coordination in confronting 

threats in the agriculture industry. I crafted this to maximize the 

benefits for our country and would like for you to look at it and 

to make comments on it. That is my question, and because of time, 

I would like to have it for the record. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

I want to thank this excellent panel for your testimony today. 

There is one final point that at least two of you raised that I want 

to highlight, and that is that an individual who is intent upon creating an attack of agroterrorism does not necessarily put himself 

32

1The prepared statement of Mr. Albright appears in the Appendix on page 88. 

at risk and that makes agroterrorism much more tempting, in 

many ways. 

For example, someone who is dealing with anthrax has to worry 

about contaminating himself. By contrast, someone who is seeking 

to create an outbreak of foot and mouth disease does not have to 

worry about ‘‘catching’’ the disease, and that seems to be the case 

with many of the pathogens that you have identified as potential 

vehicles for causing an agroterrorist attack. 

I think that makes the challenge that much more difficult and 

I want to thank you all for the work that you are doing in this area 

and for giving the panel a better understanding of the challenges 

our Nation faces. Thank you. 

I would now like to call our final panel forward. It consists of 

representatives of the Department of Homeland Security, the Food 

and Drug Administration, and the Department of Agriculture. 

These are the three agencies that are most responsible for 

agroterrorism preparedness and response. 

Dr. Penrose Albright is the Assistant Secretary for Science and 

Technology at the Department of Homeland Security. The Science 

and Technology Directorate heads the Department’s agroterrorism 

prevention and response efforts and oversees the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, our first line of defense against foreign animal 

disease. 

Dr. Lester Crawford is the Deputy Commissioner for the Food 

and Drug Administration. Two entities within the FDA, the Center 

for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and the Office of Regulatory 

Affairs play significant roles in FDA’s efforts to prevent and respond to an attack upon our food supply. 

Dr. Charles Lambert is Deputy Under Secretary for Marketing 

and Regulatory Programs at the Department of Agriculture. Dr. 

Lambert’s responsibilities include the management of the Animal 

and Plant Health Inspection Service, the principal Federal agency 

for preventing and responding to outbreaks of diseases and pests. 

APHIS also monitors foreign animal and plant health and maintains a surveillance system aimed at rapidly detecting and diagnosing outbreaks of exotic diseases in the United States. He is accompanied by Dr. Merle Pierson, Deputy Under Secretary for Food 

Safety. 

I want to thank you all for being here today and for your patience in waiting through the testimony of the other witnesses. 

Dr. Albright, it is a great pleasure to welcome you back to the 

Committee. We were very pleased to confirm you earlier this year 

and we look forward to hearing your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. PENROSE ALBRIGHT,1 ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, DEPARTMENT OF 

HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. ALBRIGHT. Thank you, Chairman Collins and Senator Akaka. 

I am pleased to appear before you today to report on the progress 

the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of 

Homeland Security is making in the areas of prevention, protecVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
33

tion, response, and recovery to acts of agroterrorism against the 

American people. 

The Department’s mission is to protect America from terrorist 

threats or strikes, including those directed at agriculture and food. 

The Science and Technology Directorate serves as the primary research and development arm of the Department of Homeland Security and its priority is to find technology solutions to meet pressing 

homeland security challenges. 

S&T is specifically tasked with marshaling the intellectual capital of the engineering and scientific communities to develop fresh 

and effective approaches to safeguard the American public. The 

Science and Technology Directorate collaborates with APHIS and 

with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, or ARS, on research at 

the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which on June 1 of this 

year became part of the Department of Homeland Security as mandated by the Homeland Security Act. 

In its planning, the Science and Technology Directorate has been 

guided by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, current threat assessments, our understanding of existing capabilities or those that 

can be anticipated in the near term, and by the priorities outlined 

in the President’s National Strategy for Homeland Security. In 

short, we are shaping the Directorate to serve as the Department’s 

hub for research and development for countering the spectrum of 

threats against the United States and its people. 

The Department and the Directorate must consider and address 

a number of factors in its approach to protecting the agricultural 

infrastructure. You heard a lot of the issues from the prior witnesses. 

The U.S. agricultural and food system is a large nationwide system of production, processing, and distribution. The opportunities 

both geographically and within the system for intentional introduction of biological agents introduces considerable complexity in securing these critical components of the national infrastructure. 

The historical approach to keeping foreign animal diseases, such 

as foot and mouth disease, out of the continental United States has 

been to secure and protect our borders against the unintentional 

introduction of animals carrying such diseases. The bioterrorism 

event, on the other hand, would be the result of the intentional introduction of one or more biological agents at multiple locations 

within our borders simultaneously. Therefore, we have a need to 

clearly understand the scope and scale of this challenge and to develop a national strategy and the necessary tools to prevent, detect, 

respond, and recover from such potential events. 

Through their research and regulatory programs, the USDA and 

the Food and Drug Administration provide the foundation for national agricultural, animal, and plant health and for public health. 

The USDA has established programs on foreign animal diseases 

and their pathogens, diseases of domestic animals and their pathogens, vectors and reservoirs of animal and human disease pathogens, plant crop diseases and their pathogens, and food safety. The 

FDA also has a very strong research program to address food safety and security concerns. 

34

Thus, our strategy in the Science and Technology Directorate is 

designed to overlay protection from agricultural terrorism onto this 

very excellent foundation. 

Two of the four high-consequence biological scenarios that have 

been guiding the Science and Technology Directorate’s planning for 

its research programs, in fact, address major concerns in agriculture and food, specifically, the deliberate introduction of foot and 

mouth disease into the United States and the results of a classified 

food security scenario that we also use in our planning purposes. 

We expect that the lessons learned from a thorough analysis of 

these initial two Department of Homeland Security biological scenarios will provide a valuable perspective and framework for our 

planning in collaboration with our USDA and FDA partners and 

will serve to guide the development of initial scenarios in agriculture and food safety. 

Let me now say a few words about one of our key concerns, 

which is foot and mouth disease. Foot and mouth disease virus infects cloven footed animals, such as cattle, swine, sheep, and deer, 

and is one of the most infectious biological agents known. It is not 

infectious to humans. 

The United States has been free from foot and mouth disease 

since 1929. As the isolation and manipulation of the foot and 

mouth disease virus requires fairly low to medium-range technology, this pathogen is a potentially high consequence if intentionally introduced to U.S. livestock. 

Research on the intact FMD virus is currently restricted to the 

Plum Island Animal Disease Center just off of Long Island. At 

Plum Island, the research program led by ARS and the diagnostic 

program conducted by APHIS are, in fact, unique. Therefore, Plum 

Island is recognized as a critical national asset that is essential for 

protecting the U.S. livestock that is vital to the Nation’s economy 

and food supply. 

We are currently developing a collaborative strategy for the operations and research programs on Plum Island with our colleagues 

at APHIS and ARS and with the customers and stakeholders representing key industry groups. This strategic planning includes, 

first, a 60-day study of facilities and the security status and requirements of Plum Island; coordination of the Plum Island program with the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures 

Center, or NBAC, that the Science and Technology Directorate has 

created at the Fort Detrick Biodefense Campus. NBAC is dedicated 

to protecting health and agriculture by advancing the scientific 

community’s knowledge of bioterrorism events and vulnerabilities. 

We are also performing an end-to-end analysis of the R&D requirements for a comprehensive program on foot and mouth disease, including identification of research and technology gaps and 

milestones for deployment of diagnostics, vaccines, and antivirals 

over a 1-, 3-, and 5-year set of time frames, along with the associated needs for facilities, staffing, and funding required to support 

this research and development activity. 

This is just but a part of a joint DHS–USDA comprehensive national strategy for foreign animal disease with an emphasis on foot 

and mouth disease which must be reported to Congress in January 

as required by the fiscal year 2004 appropriations language. 

35

The joint USDA–DHS Comprehensive National Strategy for Foreign Animal Diseases in general includes the drafting of a technology development roadmap. The roadmap includes the identification of major technology requirements and gaps with major milestones during the short, mid, and long terms in the following areas. 

Development, and if cost effective, deployment of a prototype surveillance capability along with development of outbreak response 

plans; development at MBAC of a forensics capability for agroterrorism threats; development and characterization of a strain and 

sample archive for the various diseases at issue; development of 

rapid detection capabilities—you heard from prior witnesses the 

importance of that—and also the development of rapid and new assays; and the development of new adjutants, antivirals, immune 

stimulators, and novel vaccines. These activities are significant 

new investments to enhance the national capacity to respond to 

agroterrorism. 

Consistent with that roadmap, currently within the Science and 

Technology Directorate, our initiatives and activities in agricultural 

security include, as mentioned earlier, in the context of foot and 

mouth disease, we are conducting end-to-end systems studies to 

fully understand the scope and requirements for foreign animal disease and food security scenarios in general. This includes the development and exercising of model simulations and tabletop exercise 

to explore the epidemiological and economic consequences and 

tradeoffs that follow policy and crisis management decisions associated with these scenarios. 

We are developing key enabling technologies and tools, such as, 

again, rapid assays and diagnostics, to prevent, detect, respond, 

and recover from the intentional or unintentional introduction of 

biological agents into the national agriculture and food systems. I 

should say that this is part of the much larger effort that we are 

conducting that is also applying these technologies to human 

health issues, as well. They apply equally across the board. 

We are developing key enabling technologies and tools, such as 

a detection and surveillance system that is known as the Biowatch 

Program that is currently deployed in 31 cities across the Nation 

for human health purposes in agricultural scenarios. 

We are performing end-to-end systems studies with USDA and 

FDA on food security to specify, design, and guide development of 

detection surveillance systems at critical nodes in the food production systems. 

And we have awarded contracts through our recent solicitations 

with the Technical Support Working Group for new detection technologies for biological agents, for example, botulinum toxin. 

We are also conducting through the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency a broad agency announcement for 

more advanced capabilities in this specific arena, and we are also 

funding long-range research at our national labs specifically in 

those areas. 

We will also be establishing university-based Homeland Security 

Centers of Excellence dedicated to agriculture and food safety in 

fiscal year 2004. 

We have also heard from prior witnesses about the need for 

trained researchers in this area. We have within the Department 

36

of Homeland Security a scholars and fellows program that supports 

undergraduate and graduate students in areas of interest to homeland security. There were a number, in our first class of fellows 

and scholars, of people engaged in biological research and I was 

told prior to the hearing that specifically one of them is a veterinary doctor who intends to perform her research at Plum Island on 

foreign animal diseases, so we are adding to that capability. 

We have further collaborations with S&T. Between S&T and 

USDA include, as I mentioned earlier, a Plum Island interagency 

agreement that provides for the DHS operations and maintenance 

of the facility. Also, to make sure that we are fully coordinating our 

foreign animal disease programs in collaboration with ARS and 

APHIS and to include bioforensic analysis to support attribution of 

agroterrorism events. We are conducting joint R&D programs on 

FMD diagnostics and also assisting APHIS in its support for the 

foot and mouth disease vaccine bank and foreign animal disease 

training and diagnostics capabilities up at Plum Island. 

As I mentioned earlier and as required by our appropriations 

language, we are developing with USDA a national agricultural 

biosecurity research and development strategy to be delivered in 

January 2004, and, of course, under Section 302.2 of the Homeland 

Security Act, we are required to develop a broad national strategy 

for homeland security research and development activities. And, of 

course, we are working closely with USDA and with FDA on the 

development of the relevant sections of that strategy. 

So in conclusion, the Science and Technology Directorate is 

leveraging its programmatic and research strengths and establishing working relationships with the key Federal biodefense 

agencies to complement the technology base and research capabilities available at USDA and FDA laboratories and also land grant 

universities. The collaboration between S&T and USDA on the operations and research programs at Plum Island and MBAC will 

continue to be a major programmatic and operational focus in fiscal 

year 2004 and beyond. The systems studies in fiscal year 2004 in 

foreign animal disease and food security scenarios will further define the research requirements for our strategy and budget in fiscal 

year 2005 and beyond. 

While the Directorate has made significant early progress in the 

areas of protecting the Nation from acts of agroterrorism, challenges remain and we have a great deal of work before us. But we 

are confident that we are moving in the right direction with our 

current collaborative strategy with USDA, FDA, and other stakeholders and our plans to systematically fortify the vulnerabilities 

in agricultural infrastructure and protect it from threats and attacks. 

Chairman Collins, this concludes my prepared remarks and I will 

be happy to take any questions. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Crawford. 

37

1The prepared statement of Dr. Crawford appears in the Appendix on page 96. 

TESTIMONY OF LESTER M. CRAWFORD, D.V.M., Ph.D.,1 DEPUTY 

COMMISSIONER, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION 

Dr. CRAWFORD. Thank you. Senator Collins and Members of the 

Committee, I am Les Crawford, Deputy Commissioner of the Food 

and Drug Administration. I am pleased to be here today with my 

colleagues from Agriculture and also from Homeland Security. 

FDA appreciates the opportunity to discuss our food counterterrorism activities. I will first briefly describe FDA’s food safety 

and security responsibilities. Then I will discuss FDA’s ten-point 

program for ensuring the safety and security of the Nation’s food 

supply. The plan includes FDA’s recent actions to implement the 

Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. I am told, Senator Collins, that you named it 

that, but we call it the Bioterrorism Act. I would like to thank you 

for your leadership role in the enactment of this landmark legislation. 

FDA’s food safety and security responsibilities. First, we are the 

Federal agency that regulates 80 percent of the Nation’s food supply, everything we eat except for meat, poultry, and certain egg 

products, which are regulated by our partners at USDA. Our responsibility extends to live food animals and animal feed. 

Food safety and food security continue to be top priorities for this 

administration. In our food safety and security efforts, FDA has 

many partners, Federal and State agencies, academia, and industry. We are working closely with our Federal partners, such as 

USDA, Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security 

Council at the White House, and the Department of State, as well 

as with law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies. 

I also want to emphasize our close working relationships with 

our sister public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control 

and Prevention, also the Customs and Border Protection Agency 

within the Department of Homeland Security, and with the Food 

Safety and Inspection Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in USDA. 

On July 23, Commissioner McClellan of FDA issued a report to 

HHS Secretary Thompson entitled, ‘‘Ensuring the Safety and Security of the Nation’s Food Supply.’’ The report outlines a comprehensive ten-point program to protect the safety and security of our food 

supply. I will briefly describe some of the program areas. 

First, a stronger FDA. Thanks to bipartisan Congressional support, the fiscal year 2002 supplemental included counterterrorism 

funds for FDA. This enabled our agency to hire over 800 employees, 655 of whom were hired as additional field personnel. Six-hundred-and-thirty-five were hired to address food safety and security 

issues, primarily at the border. 

Imports—the volume of imported food shipments has been rising 

steadily in recent years. It has increased about five-fold since the 

passage of the World Trade Organization Treaty. With the additional field employees, we have expanded FDA’s presence at ports 

of entry, increased surveillance of imported foods, increased domestic inspections, and enhanced our laboratory analysis capacity. 

38

Implementation of the Bioterrorism Act. Title 3 of the Bioterrorism Act provided the Secretary of Health and Human Services 

with new authorities to protect the Nation’s food supply against the 

threat of intentional contamination and other food-related emergencies. These new authorities will improve our ability to act 

quickly in responding to a threatened or actual terrorist attack, as 

well as other food-related emergencies. 

The agency has been working hard to implement this law effectively and efficiently. On October 10 of this year, we published two 

interim final regulations to implement Section 305, Registration of 

Food Facilities, and Section 307, Prior Notice of Imported Food 

Shipments. We have also published proposed regulations to implement Section 303, the Administrative Detention section, and Section 306, Maintenance and Inspection of Records for Foods. 

The interim final rule on registration requires domestic and foreign facilities that manufacture or process, pack, or hold food for 

human or animal consumption in the United States to register with 

FDA. FDA will have, for the first time, a complete roster of foreign 

and domestic food facilities. In the event of a potential or actual 

terrorist incident or an outbreak of foodborne illness, the registration information will enable FDA to quickly identify and locate the 

facilities that may be affected. We expect up to 420,000 facilities 

to register under this requirement. 

The Bioterrorism Act requires facilities to register by December 

12, 2003. FDA’s electronic registration system became operational 

on October 16, giving facilities time to register by the statutory 

deadline. We wish to encourage facilities to go ahead and submit 

their registrations and not wait until the deadline. As of yesterday 

afternoon, over 55,000 facilities had registered. We encourage people to hurry up and do that. It is very easily done off our website. 

We have a section in the upper right-hand corner which enables 

you to do it electronically in about 15 minutes. 

The interim final regulation on prior notice requires the submission to FDA of prior notice of food, including animal feed, that is 

imported or offered for import into the United States. This advance 

information would allow FDA, working closely with CBP, to more 

effectively target inspections to ensure the safety of imported foods. 

I would like to mention a few of our other program activities, if 

I may. FDA has issued guidance on the security measures the food 

industry may take to minimize the risk that food will be subject 

to tampering or other malicious, criminal, or terrorist actions. We 

have conducted extensive scientific vulnerability assessments of different categories of food, determining the most serious risk of intentional contamination with different biological or chemical agents 

during various stages of food production and distribution. 

FDA has established an Office of Crisis Management to coordinate the preparedness and emergency response activities within 

FDA and with our Federal, State, and local counterparts. To increase laboratory surge capacity, FDA has worked in close collaboration with CDC and USDA FSIS to expand the laboratory 

response network by establishing the Food Emergency Response 

Network, or FERN, to include a substantial number of counterterrorism laboratories capable of analyzing foods for agents of conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
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1The prepared statement of Dr. Lambert appears in the Appendix on page 117. 

cern. FDA has embarked on an ambitious research agenda 

throughout the agency to address potential terrorist threats. 

In conclusion, through the new authorities in the Bioterrorism 

Act and the measures outlined in the ten-point plan, we are making tremendous progress in our ability to ensure the safety and security of the Nation’s food supply. 

I want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss FDA’s food 

safety and security activities and I would be more than pleased to 

respond to any questions or comments. Thank you very much. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Lambert. 

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES LAMBERT, 1 DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR MARKETING AND REGULATORY PROGRAMS, 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, ACCOMPANIED BY 

MERLE PIERSON, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR FOOD 

SAFETY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Dr. LAMBERT. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Mr. Akaka. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you on behalf of 

USDA about agroterrorism and our efforts to prevent and respond 

to a possible attack. 

Many agencies within USDA have been working to address this 

issue. Today, my comments will focus only on the work at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and at the Food 

Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). APHIS is under the jurisdiction 

of Marketing and Regulatory Programs, and Dr. Merle Pierson will 

be available to answer additional questions and explore topics that 

I introduce in the food safety area. 

APHIS’s mission is to protect the health and value of American 

agriculture and natural resources. To accomplish this mission, 

APHIS has a safeguarding system in place to prevent introductions 

of foreign agricultural pests and diseases. APHIS also has operational response mechanisms to contain and eradicate a pest or disease should an introduction occur. 

Since September 11, 2001, APHIS has heightened its already 

vigilant efforts to prevent foreign agricultural pests and diseases 

from entering the United States, either intentionally or unintentionally. APHIS has undertaken numerous measures to bolster its 

infrastructure. More than ever, APHIS is confident in its ability to 

detect and respond to the accidental or intentional introduction of 

animal and plant pests and diseases to ensure that America’s food 

supply is protected and remains prosperous. 

Events over the past 2 years have led APHIS to increase its networks of partners and better share information with cooperators. 

In any emergency or situation, the better prepared both with information and with training everyone is the more effective the response will be. 

USDA realizes that there can never be enough people involved 

in safeguarding activities. We are actively working with stakeholder organizations, including the National Association of State 

Departments of Agriculture, U.S. Animal Health Association, the 

North American Plant Protection Organization, university systems, 

and county extension agents and others to maximize collective efVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:49 Jul 12, 2004 Jkt 091045 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\91045.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
40

forts to safeguard against potential introduction of foreign plant 

and animal pathogens. 

APHIS has held foreign animal disease awareness training seminars for State and Federal veterinarians from all 50 States to enhance preparedness for introduction of foreign animal diseases, to 

improve communications, and strengthen cooperative partnerships. 

APHIS also conducts yearly emergency preparedness satellite 

seminars to share vital information with veterinarian practitioners 

on how to identify and respond to an animal health emergency. 

More than 1,700 Federal and State veterinary officials and emergency planners, military representatives, and veterinarian college 

students and professors have participated. 

Working with our Federal counterparts is essential. In the event 

of an agroterror attack, the Department of Homeland Security and 

APHIS will work as partners to safeguard America’s food and agricultural resources. DHS will lead the team of first responders to 

contain and manage the threat, while APHIS provides crucial scientific and diagnostic expertise. This expertise will be critical in 

managing a potential disease outbreak as well as assisting efforts 

to find those responsible for a terrorist attack. In preparation, 

APHIS has established a liaison at DHS responsible for ensuring 

that agroterrorist response information is included in first responder training. 

APHIS has also entered into interagency agreements with other 

government agencies so that we can benefit from open source intelligence gathering on potential threats to U.S. agriculture and participate in the evaluation of newly developed rapid diagnostic 

equipment. 

Pest and disease detection is a critical component of our safeguarding system. Of the 2002 homeland security supplemental 

funding, $20.6 million went to facility and equipment upgrades at 

a network of animal and plant laboratories around the country. 

This investment has enhanced our diagnostic and response capability. 

APHIS’s safeguarding, intradiction, and trade compliance team is 

working in partnership with DHS and State and local law enforcement agencies to mitigate the risk of smuggled commodities. In 

addition, APHIS monitors pests and diseases overseas and has implemented the Offshore Pest Information System to monitor and 

document changes in distribution and outbreak status of specific 

pests and diseases in their countries of origin. 

APHIS currently has 64 Foreign Service officials stationed in 26 

countries on six continents. These officials work closely with their 

foreign counterparts to collect information and help focus our safeguarding efforts. It is important that we remain prepared for the 

introduction of a foreign animal or plant disease, whether introduction is intentional or unintentional. 

One of the most important developments in increasing the effectiveness of our emergency response is implementation of the National Interagency Incident Management System to ensure that the 

entire U.S. Government has a single comprehensive approach to incident management. This unified approach facilitates coordination 

among various agencies and jurisdictions and has been used widely 

in the emergency management community, including at USDA’s 

41

Forest Service when they are responding to fires. APHIS has already put this model to use with great success in combatting an 

outbreak of poultry exotic Newcastle disease in the Southwestern 

United States. 

APHIS also has opened a state-of-the-art emergency operations 

center which serves as the national command and coordination center for APHIS emergency programs. The center houses 40 or more 

personnel and operates around the clock in emergency. 

The Food Safety Inspection Service is the USDA agency responsible for ensuring that the Nation’s meat, poultry, and egg products 

are safe, secure, wholesome, and accurately labeled. Each day, 

FSIS has more than 7,600 inspectors and veterinarians in more 

than 6,000 Federal meat, poultry, and egg product plants and at 

ports of entry to prevent, detect, and respond to food-related emergencies. 

FSIS has undertaken a number of initiatives to protect meat, 

poultry, and egg products from the potential of a terrorist attack. 

The newly created Office of Food Security and Emergency Preparedness serves as the centralized office within FSIS for food 

security issues. OFSEP interacts closely with USDA’s Homeland 

Security Council and represents the agency on all food security 

matters throughout the Federal Government, as well as in State 

and local activities. 

FSIS collaborates and coordinates closely with its State partners, 

including the Association of Food and Drug Officials, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture to ensure an effective 

prevention and response program. 

Both APHIS and FSIS receive threat information and written reports from the intelligence community to update the Department 

on terrorist attacks relative to food and agriculture. This intelligence allows APHIS and FSIS to prioritize responses based upon 

both perceived vulnerability and what is known of the terrorist 

threat. 

The White House Homeland Security Council has recognized the 

need for a coordinated approach to food security matters and has 

assembled an interagency food working group to consider policy 

issues related to protecting the food supply and minimizing it as 

a target for terrorist activity. The working group has representatives from 12 Federal agencies, including FSIS. 

In addition to its partnerships with the White House and Federal 

agencies, in April 2003, FSIS signed a memorandum of agreement 

with the Surgeon General and Public Health Service that allows 

more commissioned Corps officers to be detailed to the agency. 

These officers will assist in preventing foodborne illness and help 

FSIS respond to foodborne outbreaks when they occur, as well as 

assisting in the agency’s homeland security efforts. 

In fiscal year 2003, FSIS undertook many new initiatives as well 

as strengthened its existing infrastructure to enhance the ability to 

detect any potential intentional threat to the food supply. FSIS has 

also strengthened its controls to protect the public from the entry 

of contaminated food from abroad. 

As part of FSIS initiatives to better develop its workforce to respond to potential terrorist attack, employee directives were issued 

42

last March to instruct in-plant and laboratory personnel on how to 

respond when the Homeland Security Advisory System threat level 

moves to orange or red. 

In March 2003, as Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the Federal 

Government initiated Operation Liberty Shield to increase security 

and readiness in the United States. During this time, FSIS implemented activities to focus efforts at preventing food and agroterrorism. 

FSIS, as well as FDA and APHIS, was selected to participate 

within a multi-department international trade data system in 

2004. This new initiative will establish a single automated system 

for sharing data on inspection and certification of products entering 

the United States and it will provide commercial enterprises with 

a single source for interaction with the various agencies that regulate imports. This new system will eliminate duplication, increase 

security, and reduce costs to the government. 

In fiscal year 2003, FSIS laboratories expanded their capability 

to test for non-traditional microbial, chemical, and radiological 

threat agents and increase their surge capacity. In addition, construction is underway on a biosecurity Level 3 laboratory that will 

enable FSIS to conduct analyses on a larger range of potential bioterrorism agents. Construction should be completed in December. 

The strong working relationships that USDA has with the other 

Federal agencies and with State and local governments and industry, as broadly defined from the production through processing sector to the individual food companies, is vital to our efforts to safeguard U.S. agriculture. Preserving traditional relationships and 

building new ones, such as with DHS, will strengthen our efforts. 

I assure you that USDA remains committed to our biosecurity 

and emergency preparedness activities, to ensuring the continued 

good health and value of U.S. agriculture. Thank you, and I look 

forward to responding to your questions. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Dr. Lambert. 

Dr. McGinn painted a striking picture of how fast an outbreak 

of foot and mouth disease could spread in our country. In fact, I 

wish I could superimpose his map on top of the chart that I have 

just asked to be displayed about the number of agencies that possibly would be involved in a foot and mouth disease outbreak. 

Each of your agencies is obviously involved and are among the 

key players, but we know that more than 30 agencies potentially 

would be involved were there an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. That raises concerns in my mind about whether the Federal 

Government has an integrated, effective plan for dealing with an 

outbreak such as of foot and mouth disease or other foreign animal 

disease. It is my understanding that before the new Department of 

Homeland Security was created, that USDA was taking the lead in 

developing a Federal emergency response plan for an outbreak of 

foot and mouth disease or other highly contagious disease. 

Mr. Lambert, I would ask you first, what is the status of that 

plan? 

Dr. LAMBERT. First, I would like to say that the data that Dr. 

McGinn presented, we have seen. They have actually been the 

basis for simulated exercises that have been conducted. In September 2000, seven deputy secretaries from across the government, 

43

the intelligence community, and State and local governments conducted a simulation that was shown in Dr. McGinn’s data, and 

since that time, APHIS has also conducted a simulated exercise 

that showed the multiple introductions of animal pathogens. Then 

FDA and FSIS have simulated or conducted an exercise on the intentional pathogen release in the food supply that Dr. McGinn 

showed. 

We do have—the FEMA exercise has been transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. In the event of a terrorist attack, 

they would become the first responders. APHIS would provide the 

technical expertise that we have within the Department in a coordinated effort to arrest and contain that disease. 

Chairman COLLINS. But are you familiar with the plan that 

USDA had begun to develop prior to the creation of the new Department? Did the work for that plan get transferred to DHS or is 

the Department of Agriculture still playing the lead role? 

Dr. LAMBERT. We are both working in that area. In the event of 

an outbreak, USDA would respond. We would coordinate and communicate closely with the Department of Homeland Security. If terrorist or purposeful introduction was indicated, then DHS would 

take the lead in the investigative efforts of that investigation with 

APHIS supplying the——

Chairman COLLINS. Has the plan, though, been completed? Are 

you familiar with what I am referring to? 

Dr. LAMBERT. The plan is in place, and yes, we do have a response plan——

Chairman COLLINS. It is completed? 

Dr. LAMBERT. Yes. 

Chairman COLLINS. OK. Dr. Albright, do you view DHS as being 

the lead agency in the event of an outbreak? My concern, I think, 

is obvious. When you have this many agencies involved, it just 

raises questions about whether there is going to be confusion, 

whether everyone understands the role played by individual agencies, whether anyone is coordinating the response as a whole, and 

we know from Dr. McGinn’s testimony that time is absolutely of 

the essence and we can’t afford any confusion or lost time. 

Mr. ALBRIGHT. Yes. I think, first, one point that ought to be 

made is that if there was an unintentional outbreak of foot and 

mouth disease, if this was just a standard agricultural health and 

safety exercise, essentially, that chart would still be in play. There 

have been response plans in place for a very long time that USDA 

has operated that provided for a coordination of all these different 

agencies and the marshaling of the resources necessary to respond 

to an unintentional outbreak. 

I think what has changed, of course, what you have alluded to 

is that with the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, that 

we now have a new Department that is charged with the responsibility of coordinating and responding to the deliberate introduction 

of these kinds of pathogens or, for that matter, to almost anything 

affecting our critical infrastructure. 

So I think it is certainly the case that with the advent of the new 

Department, that a lot of the prior Presidential decision directives, 

for example, that were associated with the various coordination activities that existed prior to the establishment of the Department 

44

need to be revisited, and they have been revisited and they are 

being updated to reflect first the post-September 11 environment 

and to also reflect the statutory responsibilities of the Secretary of 

Homeland Security. 

So yes, I think it is fair to say that the Department takes these 

responsibilities seriously. We are, as Dr. Lambert described, we are 

working very closely with USDA. They are obviously the subject 

matter experts in a lot of this, and working closely with, for that 

matter, FDA and other agencies to develop these response plans. 

Do I believe that we necessarily—I mean, are we in a position 

yet to respond to the kinds of scenarios, for example, that you saw 

Dr. McGinn describing? I guess I can’t say that that is necessarily 

the case yet. Clearly, there are technological issues involved. He 

pointed out, for example, that a lot of the issues surrounding such 

an outbreak just have to do with the incubation period of this and 

the fact that you have multiple sites being introduced all over the 

country. So clearly, there are tools that need to be developed and 

put in place before you could mount as effective a response as you 

would like. 

Chairman COLLINS. The RAND report includes six specific recommendations for a more aggressive and coordinated strategy to 

secure the agriculture and food sector against an agroterrorist attack. Specifically, the RAND report calls for, first, a comprehensive 

needs analysis to determine the appropriate investment requirements for the emergency management infrastructure; second, an 

increase in the number of State and local personnel who can identify and treat foreign animal diseases, such as foot and mouth; 

third, it calls for coordinated and standardized links between the 

U.S. agricultural and intelligence communities; fourth, enhancing 

the law enforcement community’s ability to determine whether disease outbreaks are deliberate or whether they are naturally occurring; fifth, improving the effectiveness of disease reporting systems; 

and finally, the need for an improved surveillance quality control 

and emergency response measures at food processing and packing 

plants. 

Dr. Crawford, I would like to start with you and get the opinion 

of all the witnesses of those recommendations. 

Dr. CRAWFORD. I think those are sound recommendations and we 

have taken them very seriously. Most of these were well underway 

before the advent of the report. However, the report strengthened 

our resolve and also gave us a good means of communication not 

only with the public, but with the Congress to close the gaps. 

One thing that was particularly important that I believe we have 

done successfully is to establish viable links with the intelligence 

community. That required, as you would know, all of us that are 

in authority in FDA to receive the proper security clearances and 

also to be linked up so that we could get daily briefings on the possibility of threats, etc. That has been accomplished and is working 

very well. We have certainly profited from this in our planning, 

and also, it is useful for us to have these kinds of clearances so 

that we can be involved in White House working groups and other 

trans-departmental groups that are dealing with these problems. 

So that was, I think, a very positive benefit of it. 

45

And the rest of it was proceeding apace. I think they were excellent suggestions and they have served as a benchmark for this tenpoint program that I mentioned, actually. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Dr. Lambert, your judgment of 

these recomendations. 

Dr. LAMBERT. Thank you. I would concur that these are very 

sound recommendations and we are moving to implement them 

and have moved to implement them. With respect to the intelligence, as my comments indicated, we do both at APHIS and FSIS 

receive these intelligence reports and they serve as the basis, along 

with other information from our animal health and foreign officers, 

information officers, to help guide and focus our efforts. 

Chairman COLLINS. And Dr. Albright. 

Mr. ALBRIGHT. I think they are probably consistent with other reports. For example, the National Academy of Sciences has done 

quite a bit of work in this area and has made essentially the same 

kinds of recommendations. We would agree with them. 

In terms of needs assessment, as I mentioned in my statement, 

we are focusing our efforts around specific scenarios that actually 

allow us to identify the bottlenecks and where we actually—what 

the gaps are and where we need to actually focus our efforts to better respond to these kinds of outbreaks. So yes. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Dr. Lambert, according to a recent GAO report, the Plum Island 

Animal Disease Center is taking unnecessary risks with the pathogen protection and is vulnerable to security breaches. Plum Island 

is the only U.S. facility capable of responding to an outbreak of foot 

and mouth disease. 

In addition, the Washington Post reported last week that the 

Federal Government had failed to meet the November 12 deadline 

that requires security reviews of U.S. laboratories and scientists 

under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness 

and Response Act of 2002. Reading that article makes me feel extremely troubled about this. What is USDA doing to ensure these 

security reviews are completed more quickly? 

Dr. LAMBERT. USDA had an outside independent agency conduct 

a security assessment at Plum Island in November 2001 and we 

worked with that independent agency to develop risk management 

approach to improve security on Plum Island. We have invested 

about $860,000 in security upgrades, even before September 11. 

Since that time, we have invested another $1.4 million of security 

countermeasures. Additional security guards were hired at Plum 

Island at a cost of nearly $1 million in fiscal year 2002 and nearly 

$1.4 million in fiscal year 2004. 

So measures have been taken to strengthen security at Plum Island, and I would add that recently, Plum Island did pass inspection as a select agent location. So we feel that additional measures 

have been taken. 

Senator AKAKA. Dr. Lambert, concern has been expressed by 

Members of Congress and farmers, as well, about the implications 

of the merger of the three border inspection agencies into what is 

being called the ‘‘one face at the border’’ initiative at the Department of Homeland Security. The consolidation, some feel, means 

46

that agriculture specialists are no longer present at primary border 

inspections. Officers with only basic agricultural training are now 

responsible for detecting suspicious animal and plant products. It 

seems questionable whether these officers have adequate training 

to know what to look for, especially since they are responsible for 

usually immigration and customs-related inspections. 

What is being done to ensure that qualified staff are protecting 

all aspects of our borders, and are they receiving specialized training? 

Dr. LAMBERT. Yes, Senator. We have heard some of the same 

concerns. Essentially, the 2,600 positions that were agricultural inspectors at APHIS prior to the transfer of those positions early this 

year to Homeland Security, essentially, those same people are 

there. They have agricultural training. They have the same basis 

of that training. 

We are working to continue that. APHIS has closely coordinated 

with Homeland Security to assure that we have people at the border that have agricultural expertise. APHIS is closely involved in 

the training of those people and in the policy decisions that they 

enact. 

Another way to look at that is that now we have nearly 4,000 

port inspectors that all have some agricultural exposure, as well. 

So we have added people from INS and Customs that can participate and watch for agricultural pathogens, in addition. So it cuts 

both ways. Thank you. 

Senator AKAKA. Dr. Lambert, last month, the House Agriculture 

Committee approved a bill to create a disaster response team within USDA. The mission of the team would facilitate financial relief 

for local farmers and ranchers in the event of a crisis. Can you discuss what role USDA sees for itself in local security enhancements, 

such as prevention and detection of agricultural attack? 

Dr. LAMBERT. We currently at APHIS have an indemnification 

program for producers who have livestock that need to be 

euthanized due to a disease outbreak. We think that is a part of 

our emergency declaration authority and the ability to reimburse 

producers for loss. We think that is important because knowing 

that they will not suffer these losses, or knowing that there is a 

potential for indemnification, that producers will be more willing to 

report an outbreak and to do that in a timely manner, and that is, 

as has been indicated, very critical to our ability to get the disease 

contained and eradicated. 

Senator AKAKA. Dr. Lambert, let me go back and ask you to clarify your response to my first question. When are the security reviews going to be completed for the other affected U.S. laboratories? 

Dr. LAMBERT. We have 75 provisional approvals and three that 

have been denied and we will continue to accept and review additional applications as they become available. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

As I learn more about this issue, I am struck by the number of 

points at which an agroterrorist attack could occur. If you look at 

the vulnerabilities of the system, it starts at the farm to our 

47

feedlots, even State fairs, and processing plants. There are so many 

different points of possible attack. 

Before we can develop effective measures to improve the security 

of our farms and food supply, we need to do, it seems to me, a better job of identifying our vulnerabilities. I would like to know to 

what extent have your departments undertaken vulnerability assessments for the entire agricultural and food industry sector, and 

we will start with you, Dr. Albright. 

Mr. ALBRIGHT. For the entire sector, I can’t argue for the entire 

sector. We certainly have leveraged extensive efforts that I know 

USDA and FDA conducted in doing vulnerability assessments. 

We, too, as I mentioned earlier, have been working closely 

through the Food Security Working Group with FDA and USDA 

and through various activities conducted by the White House. As 

we look at our defense posture in general, we have been leveraging, 

as I said, existing vulnerability assessments and also conducting 

additional ones based, as I said a moment ago, on some of the scenarios that we have been focusing our attention on in order to better inform response plans, investments, and that sort of thing. 

So I don’t think we can say we have looked at the entire sector, 

but we have certainly been looking at pieces of it. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Crawford. 

Dr. CRAWFORD. Yes. What we have done in collaboration with the 

two other departments represented here and also the White House 

Homeland Security Council, we have looked at the products that 

FDA regulates and we have evaluated the probabilities of them 

being used as a vehicle for terrorism in the United States. We have 

done threat and vulnerability assessments so as to identify those 

that are most likely, both in terms of the efficacy or effectiveness 

of an attack through this particular product, if you will, and second, the damage that could be done if it was used as a vehicle. 

As a result of that, we have identified those that are most likely. 

We have identified how this would be done and what we could do 

to interdict or contravene this from happening in terms of how 

FDA does its business. We have even looked forward to how this 

country might recover from such an attack. 

We have briefed these two departments on the most likely concerns, also the White House and other departments that have concerns of food safety and also terrorism, including the intelligence 

community and the science infrastructure of the U.S. Government. 

We would be pleased, and I think this should be done, so it is not 

just an offer, it is a plea, that we are able to give you this particular presentation, also, and whoever of your colleagues and of 

your staff that could receive the information because we would be 

very willing to—you can understand that I can’t do that here, but 

if we may, we would like to, once you reflect on it, would like to 

schedule such a debriefing. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. I will take you up on that. Dr. 

Lambert. 

Dr. LAMBERT. Yes. USDA APHIS has also conducted vulnerability assessments in both the animal and plant side. As Dr. 

Crawford indicated, those are classified, but we would be willing to 

participate in that briefing or independently to inform you in the 

appropriate manner. 

48

With respect to the critical infrastructure of vulnerability assessment, we are coordinating closely with DHS to identify and define 

those critical infrastructures and then proceed with the assessment. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Lambert, let me do a follow-up with you. 

I understand that FSIS, as opposed to APHIS—we have a lot of 

acronyms flying around here today—has completed a risk analysis 

of the food supply from farm to table, but that the risk assessment 

did not include an analysis of security measures at food processing 

and packing plants. I am told that the reason for that is that FSIS 

concluded that determined terrorists could overcome those security 

measures. That is not very comforting, I might add. 

The General Accounting Office has criticized this conclusion and 

I must say I tend to agree with GAO. What is the justification for 

conducting a risk assessment but essentially downplaying or ignoring preventative measures that food processors and packers are 

taking. Is USDA suggesting that processors and packers shouldn’t 

take security measures because they won’t be effective? I mean, 

that is a pretty chilling conclusion to draw. 

Dr. LAMBERT. Madam Chairman, with your permission, I would 

defer the question to my counterpart at FSIS and have him respond. 

Chairman COLLINS. Dr. Pierson. 

Dr. PIERSON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I might mention 

that the FSIS has conducted vulnerability assessments in the food 

system and, of course, identified high-risk commodities, threat 

agents, sites, etc. I join with Dr. Crawford in saying we would be 

very happy to brief you on this classified information that we have. 

Specifically to your concern area, we are, in fact, now conducting 

that assessment and taking those factors into consideration that 

you mentioned. We think that it is something that must be included in an assessment. 

Chairman COLLINS. But was there a conclusion reached by FSIS 

that security precautions at processing and packing plants would 

not be effective in deterring determined terrorists? This seemed to 

be GAO’s criticism. 

Dr. PIERSON. I think to make that as a broad criticism would be 

a little difficult to make. There certainly can be cracks in the system, and we, for example, do provide security guidelines to small 

and very small corporations. I might also mention that our 7,600 

inspectors who are there daily at the over 6,000 plants that are in 

existence have special training in food security issues and they can 

be of assistance in terms of identifying those gaps. But definitely, 

we are taking further consideration of how we can enhance protections in the food processing operations. 

Chairman COLLINS. I will provide you with the GAO finding that 

I am referring to, but just for the record, I am going to quote directly from GAO’s report. It is a letter that was included by FSIS’s 

Administrator Gary McKee, who was responding to the criticism by 

GAO. FSIS said, ‘‘FSIS made the assumption that plant security 

measures could be overcome by a determined terrorist and that certain commodities or processes could be more at risk than others to 

an attack. Security measures could lessen the risk, but the risk 

would still exist.’’

49

I am concerned if we are essentially writing off one point of vulnerability because we think the challenge is to great to secure 

these plants. I am concerned about the message that may send. Do 

you have a further comment on this letter? 

Dr. PIERSON. I could comment further that what is being identified is worst case scenarios, too, and scenarios where the ‘‘what if’’ 

situations, what if those security measures were overcome, what 

would be the results, also. 

Chairman COLLINS. But, of course, worst case scenarios are exactly what we have to plan for. 

Dr. PIERSON. That is exactly right. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

I have a question for Dr. Crawford. As you are aware, over the 

past few months, there has been an outbreak of hepatitis A in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and just last week in Pennsylvania. According to the CDC, this represents the largest foodborne 

outbreak of hepatitis A in United States history. The initial cases 

were traced back to green onions originating in Mexico and it is 

strongly suggested that the Pennsylvania outbreak has a similar 

source. 

Next month, as you mentioned in your testimony, the FDA is 

scheduled to begin enforcement of two new regulations that will require domestic and foreign food processing facilities to register with 

the agency. The regulations will also require the prior notification 

of any food products being imported to the United States. The FDA 

is also planning to require all companies involved in the food supply system to keep detailed records of the origin of food products 

that they handle. 

How would the hepatitis A outbreak have been prevented or handled differently had FDA’s new security measures been in place? 

Dr. CRAWFORD. Well, as I mentioned in my oral statement, the 

Bioterrorism Act, as we call it, does give us new authorities that, 

frankly, FDA has been seeking for many years. We now have the 

requirement to have food establishments not only in this country 

but elsewhere in the world that want to trade with the United 

States to register with us. We can require the registration. If they 

are not registered, then they may not do business with the United 

States either internally or externally. That, frankly, is something 

we have never had. 

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, it was useful for the 

government to do an inventory of food establishments and other establishments that FDA regulated as we tried to grapple with the 

possibility of further terrorist attacks following the anthrax outbreak. At that time, we did not have the authority nor did we have 

a list of who we were having to regulate. Now, you may ask, how 

could this be? Well, that is democracy in action. We didn’t have it. 

But because of the leadership of Senator Collins and you and this 

Committee and others, as I mentioned earlier, and Secretary 

Thompson, we now have that authority. So registration is something that is going to definitely happen as of December 12. 

The other thing we can do which speaks to this problem, as you 

know, we previously had difficulty with cantaloupes coming from 

Mexico, and then during the time I was Acting Commissioner, we 

50

found it advisable, necessary, and in order to protect the public 

health, we banned the shipment of cantaloupes from Mexico. We 

still have that authority to do that. We also have the authority to 

debar those companies that send contaminated food to the United 

States. If we go through the debarment process, they may not ever 

ship food again to this country. 

We also for the first time can detain food that comes into the 

United States, which is something that we are doing with respect 

to the green onions that you mentioned. 

And then finally, we require that a country or an entity wanting 

to ship food to the United States has to give us notice that it is 

coming. Before the advent of the Bioterrorism Act, it was like us 

standing at the border like the catcher in the rye, trying to figure 

out where to deploy our resources and what to do with the minimal 

authorities we had. Now, we have the authority to police the food 

supply and we are very much at FDA looking forward to December 

12, when we go forward and do this, we think, better. It not only 

makes us better in terms of bioterrorism prevention, but in essential food safety. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much for that response. This is 

what we are looking for and I am glad to hear that. Thank you 

very much, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

I want to thank this panel for their testimony and also for their 

efforts to make our food supply safer and to guard against an 

agroterrorism attack. The expertise and insight of all of our witnesses today have been extremely helpful to the Committee and 

shed much needed light on an aspect of homeland security that I 

believe has not received the attention that it deserves. 

We are all very proud of having the safest food supply in the 

world, but that doesn’t mean that we are somehow immune from 

an attack on our food supply. We know that terrorists such as 

Osama bin Laden have repeatedly stated their intention to cause 

economic harm and massive social upheaval, not to mention deaths 

and illness. When you look at the low-tech nature of so much of the 

agriculture industry, it is a tempting target, a real invitation to 

those who would do us harm. 

So I think there is an awful lot of work that needs to be done 

here. I look forward to following up and appreciate the offer for the 

classified briefings, as well. But I would also ask each of the witnesses that we have heard from today to provide the Committee 

with any recommendations for further changes in laws that you 

may think would give you the tools that you need. I think the Bioterrorism Act was a great step forward, but I suspect as you delve 

further into this area with your planning that you are going to find 

that there are some gaps in authority. 

We have talked, for example, today about the lack of a system 

for tracking livestock easily. Those kinds of recommendations may 

just be handled through administrative regulations, but they also 

may warrant some changes in laws. So I would invite your participation in that process, as well. 

Finally, I want to thank Senator Akaka who has been a real 

leader in this area with the bills that he has introduced, as well, 

and I look forward to working with him. 

51

I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge the hard work of 

my staff in putting together this hearing. 

So thank you all for being here today. The record of this hearing 

will be kept open for 15 days for the submission of additional statements or questions and the hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(53)

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