Food Supply Is Secure From Bioterrorism, FDA Says

Top federal officials sought to reassure Americans on Monday that the food supply was well protected against a bioterrorism attack, as the government issued a new regulation to help disease detectives track the source and destination of food.

“I believe firmly that we have a good handle on food importation, and also on the production of food ... with respect to intentional or accidental adulteration,” said Lester M. Crawford, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

The agency issued the fourth in a series of regulations to improve the policing of domestic and imported foods. The new rule creates industry record-keeping requirements that, in the event of an outbreak, will help officials track suspect food to its source and halt distribution.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson set off alarms Friday. During a news conference where he announced his resignation, Thompson said he worried about a bioterrorism attack on the food supply “every single night.”

Thompson softened his comments Monday.

“There is more work to do yet, but our nation is now more prepared than ever before to protect the public against threats to the food supply,” he said in a statement that praised the FDA’s new rule.

Some experts said Thompson did the public a favor Friday by candidly pointing out a glaring vulnerability, but others noted that although it was theoretically possible to carry out a bioterrorism attack on the food supply, it would be difficult to do.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said FDA inspectors needed to check a greater share of food imports and be armed with the legal authority to inspect processing centers and farms abroad.

The FDA inspects about 2% of food imports.

“The FDA is dramatically short-staffed and underfunded when it comes to managing its mandate to ensure food safety,” DeWaal said. “The U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to our food safety structure.”

Part of the problem, she said, is that responsibility for the oversight of imported food is divided between the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for meat and poultry. Agriculture inspectors check about 20% of imported meat. They also travel overseas to inspect foreign facilities and evaluate the food safety systems of other countries.

DeWaal’s organization, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group with a special interest in nutrition issues, has called for the creation of a single government food safety agency with broader authority and more inspectors.

But UC Davis microbiologist Mark Wheelis said the threat of a bioterrorism outbreak was probably much lower than other types of attacks, such as bombings. “My sense is it’s not likely that any terrorist organization on the planet now has anywhere close to the expertise to cause mass casualties with a bioterrorist attack,” Wheelis said.

An attacker would have to have specialized scientific skills to produce a chemical or biological agent, knowledge to calculate how much to use, and inside access to some part of the food industry, said Wheelis, whose courses cover biological and chemical weapons.

“It’s a possible threat,” he said. “It’s not one we can ignore, but it’s not one to get overly excited about.”

Most imported food comes from Europe, Mexico and South America. Only a fraction originates in the Middle East, and much of that is from Israel. Nonetheless, Wheelis said, the FDA should probably be inspecting a greater share of imported food as a deterrent.

The Bush administration says it has increased the number of FDA inspections from about 12,000 a year before the Sept. 11 attacks to about 97,000 now. The Department of Health and Human Services projects that it will spend $150 million in 2005 on programs to protect the food supply from bioterrorism, up from $800,000 in 2001.

“We have to continue to improve and be as fail-safe as we can be, [but] we are far better off than we were three years ago,” Crawford said.

The new FDA rule requires manufacturers, packers, shippers and others who handle food to keep records showing who supplies it and who receives it next. The records would be made available to authorities in the event of a terrorist threat, an attack or an outbreak of food poisoning. Congress exempted restaurants and farmers.

Previous regulations required domestic and foreign food facilities to register with the FDA; mandated foreign suppliers to give advance notice of food shipments; and established the agency’s authority to impound suspect food products that could cause serious harm or death.

DeWaal said the regulations had been watered down because of pressure from the food industry. “The FDA’s new record-keeping requirement is a modest improvement,” she said, “but nothing to breathe a sigh of relief over.”