Food Safety Concerns Increase
In Wake Of Terrorist Attacks

WASHINGTON —(AP)— Senate Democrats want to spend more than $700 million to hire hundreds of new inspectors and take other measures to protect farms and food from terrorist attack.

The Bush administration last month requested $106 million for food security.

The Democratic proposal includes $636 million for the Agriculture Department and $100 million for the Food and Drug Administration. The money would bolster inspections of imported food and domestic grain supplies and also pay for research into biosecurity measures.

The extra funding for USDA would be roughly equal to the entire annual budget of the department's Animal and Plant Inspection Service, which guards against the introduction of diseases that could harm livestock and crops.

``The American people need to have confidence that the food they put on their table or order at their local restaurant is safe,'' said Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The funding is part of a $3.1 billion package of biosecurity measures that Democrats put in their economic stimulus plan. If the stimulus plan isn't approved, Byrd plans to put the food inspection funding in a Defense Department spending bill, spokesman Tom Gavin said Thursday.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said that consumers should feel confident about the safety of their food supply, though she recommended washing fruits and vegetables and cooking meat thoroughly.

``At every step of the food chain, both in the private sector and in government, we are continuing to work together to review systems and to ensure that our food will have all of the precautions taken that we possibly can,'' Veneman said in an interview with CNN.

She has said her biggest concern is that terrorists will attempt to infect livestock with hoof and mouth disease. While harmless to humans, the disease spreads so quickly that an outbreak could be devastating to the livestock industry.

USDA officials had no immediate comment on the Democrats' spending plan.

Most of the administration's requested funding would go to FDA. The agency wants to hire 410 new inspectors, lab specialists and other personnel at FDA to check fruits, vegetables and other products, primarily imports, and buy additional equipment to detect pathogens. FDA currently inspects just one percent of imports.

The push for food safety meshes with a call from food safety experts at Clemson University for increased restrictions at farms, orchards, packing houses and shipping points as farmers prepare for the threat of agroterrorism.

Although much of the threat has focused on anthrax, people and crops could be harmed by crop dusters, said David Winkles, president of the South Carolina Farm Bureau.

Jim Rushing, an associate professor of horticulture at Clemson and member of the university's biosecurity team, said it would be ``terribly difficult'' for terrorists to contaminate large amounts of fruits and vegetables. However, as a precaution, South Carolina growers and food producers should restrict access to orchards, farms, packing houses and shipping points of fruits and vegetables, Rushing said.

``There are a lot of companies that haven't paid much attention because they haven't had to,'' he said.

Dan Lafontaine, director of the state meat and poultry inspection department, a branch of Clemson University, said South Carolina cattle, hog and poultry farmers tightened biosecurity measures including restricted access to their operations earlier this year in response to an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease abroad.

There's little danger of an animal poisoned with anthrax getting into the food supply, Lafontaine said. Infected animals become extremely sick and die quickly, so a slaughterhouse could easily detect it.

The chance of anthrax in South Carolina livestock is ``virtually nil,'' he said, because anthrax has never been found in farm animals here. If terrorists tried to contaminate meat after processing, normal cooking would kill the bacteria.

``It's close to impossible for it to get into the meat supply,'' Lafontaine said. ``There is a lot of effort in making everyone aware of who has access to their animals and their crops.''

Food processing plant security could be improved by stopping people from walking in unattended, and by increased testing of materials, he said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has increased its inspection force at import facilities by 40 percent since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said.

Officials have stepped up inspections at ports and airports, said Jim Rogers, of the USDA's Animal and Plant and Health Inspection Service, the key responding agency.

Libby Hoyle, a Clemson extension food and nutrition specialist, said there is a greater danger of food-borne illness from improper food handling than terrorism.

But Mother Nature is helping there.

Cool weather means meat is likely to be safer, a government analysis of deadly E. coli bacteria says.

The risk of illness from E. coli O157:H7 is nearly three times as high in the summer, when the bacteria is more common in cattle, as it is the rest of the year, the Agriculture Department said in a preliminary report released Monday.

From June through September, about one in every 600,000 servings of ground beef carry a risk of illness. From October through May, the risk drops to one in every 1.6 million servings.

The report also says that children five years old or younger are 2.5 times more likely to get sick from the bacteria as the general population.

Most, if not all, feedlots in the country contain at least animal cow infected with the bacteria, the report found. Besides contaminating meat, the bacteria get into drinking water and on crops through manure runoff.

The government will use the data in deciding what steps are needed, if any, to reduce E. coli illnesses. The department will take comment on the report's findings before making them final.

The report ``shows the importance of preventing cross contamination in the slaughter plants and also ensuring temperature controls in transportation,'' said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.

E. coli is blamed for 62,000 illnesses, 1800 hospitalizations and 52 deaths a year. By comparison, salmonella is responsible for 1.3 million illnesses and 550 deaths annually.

Scientists say E. coli first appeared in cattle in the late 1970s. Processing plants treat beef carcasses to remove the bacteria, and scientists are studying vaccines and feed additives that could prevent cattle from being infected.

The USDA report says more research is needed on the effects of refrigeration and storage on the bacteria.