Establish an Office of Poultry Defense

I found it interesting that in your Dec. 11 issue, most of the A section of the paper was dedicated to terrorism, the Middle East and homeland security. Yet buried on Page A29 was a small article indicating that Consumer Reports magazine had announced its findings that 42% of 484 fresh broiler chickens tested contained deadly campylobacter bacteria and 12% of the chickens contained salmonella -- rather alarming statistics.

It would seem to me that more people in the U.S. will probably die from food poisoning than from terror attacks in the coming years. Perhaps the Bush administration could allocate a tiny portion of the huge homeland security budget to help combat this other threat to the American public. Or maybe we simply need to establish the Office of Poultry Defense?

Will Ray

Burbank