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Today 9/26/2006 10:43:00 AM
FDA Finds Vulnerable Areas In US Food Production System
KANSAS CITY (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has identified four areas where the nation's food supply is most vulnerable to a terrorist attack, an FDA official said Monday.
Donald Kautter, general health scientist at the FDA, told attendees of the International Symposium on Agroterrorism, that one area of weakness is the large batches used in some food production processes.
In some cases, thousands of gallons of product are produced at the same time, creating a large number of servings and the potential to infect a large number of people with a biological agent, he said.
Such an agent does not have to originate with any U.S. animal herds but the perception that it might have come from domestic livestock or flocks would cause serious economic harm to the industry, he said.
(Makes one wonder about the lax inspection being done on the imports from all over the world- since Tommy Thompson said that only .005% of all imported food is inspected at import...How much product could one load of adulterated cheap lean Uruguayan or Mexican import meat taint when mixed with tons of US beef to make ground beef ?)
Another area of vulnerability is the short shelf life of some food products, Kautter said.
Some products have rapid turnaround from the time of production until they are completely consumed. Thus, he said, by the time a disease is discovered, a recall or quarantine of a product would be useless.
Thirdly, Kautter said there are various ways to get a uniform mixing of a particular contaminant into a food. A terrorist would not want his disease-causing agent to "clump" together and cause only minimal harm, he said.
Easy access to a product at the critical point of introduction is a fourth area of vulnerability, Kautter said.
If a terrorist were planted at a food processing facility, that person would know where in the process to inject a disease-causing agent, Kautter said. A more restrictive movement policy at a particular company would minimize this risk, he contended.
(How do we control or even monitor the people or movement policy within foreign countries? Bad enough - we can't even stop the domestic corporate interests from hiring illegal aliens that they don't even know the true name of...)
Source: Lester Aldrich; Dow Jones Newswires; 913-322-5179; [email protected]
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(And it doesn't appear that the imported food products are being inspected any more than anything else coming thru the ports- in fact this excerpt leads one to believe it could even be less...Luckily these guys were more interested in profitting than killing infidels- but what about next time :???
In pleading guilty to the charge in the Miami indictment, the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers admitted that they imported five kilograms or more of cocaine into the United States, beginning in or about 1990 and continuing until in or about July 2002. Specifically, the brothers were responsible for the importation of over 200,000 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia that was smuggled into the United States through Central America. The Cali Cartel used a variety of methods to smuggle the cocaine into the country, including: the concealment of the drug in shipments of concrete posts sent from Colombia to Venezuela and eventually South Florida; the concealment of cocaine in shipments of ceramic tiles sent from Colombia to Panama to Guatemala, where the cocaine was removed from the tile, repackaged in boxes of frozen vegetables and then shipped to South Florida; and the concealment of cocaine in shipments of coffee from Colombia to Panama, and then South Florida.
Although the defendants were imprisoned by Colombia in 1995, they continued to run the Cali Cartel from prison by working through Miguel's son, William Rodriguez-Abadia, and others who oversaw various aspects of the cartel using new routes and new methods - such as the hiding of cocaine in shipments of empty chlorine gas cylinders and, later, the placement of cocaine in containers of pumpkins for surreptitious removal by co- conspirators working at the Port of Miami. On March 8, 2006, William Rodriguez-Abadia pleaded guilty in Miami to his involvement in this drug trafficking conspiracy and was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=73222
FDA Finds Vulnerable Areas In US Food Production System
KANSAS CITY (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has identified four areas where the nation's food supply is most vulnerable to a terrorist attack, an FDA official said Monday.
Donald Kautter, general health scientist at the FDA, told attendees of the International Symposium on Agroterrorism, that one area of weakness is the large batches used in some food production processes.
In some cases, thousands of gallons of product are produced at the same time, creating a large number of servings and the potential to infect a large number of people with a biological agent, he said.
Such an agent does not have to originate with any U.S. animal herds but the perception that it might have come from domestic livestock or flocks would cause serious economic harm to the industry, he said.
(Makes one wonder about the lax inspection being done on the imports from all over the world- since Tommy Thompson said that only .005% of all imported food is inspected at import...How much product could one load of adulterated cheap lean Uruguayan or Mexican import meat taint when mixed with tons of US beef to make ground beef ?)
Another area of vulnerability is the short shelf life of some food products, Kautter said.
Some products have rapid turnaround from the time of production until they are completely consumed. Thus, he said, by the time a disease is discovered, a recall or quarantine of a product would be useless.
Thirdly, Kautter said there are various ways to get a uniform mixing of a particular contaminant into a food. A terrorist would not want his disease-causing agent to "clump" together and cause only minimal harm, he said.
Easy access to a product at the critical point of introduction is a fourth area of vulnerability, Kautter said.
If a terrorist were planted at a food processing facility, that person would know where in the process to inject a disease-causing agent, Kautter said. A more restrictive movement policy at a particular company would minimize this risk, he contended.
(How do we control or even monitor the people or movement policy within foreign countries? Bad enough - we can't even stop the domestic corporate interests from hiring illegal aliens that they don't even know the true name of...)
Source: Lester Aldrich; Dow Jones Newswires; 913-322-5179; [email protected]
------------------------------------
(And it doesn't appear that the imported food products are being inspected any more than anything else coming thru the ports- in fact this excerpt leads one to believe it could even be less...Luckily these guys were more interested in profitting than killing infidels- but what about next time :???
In pleading guilty to the charge in the Miami indictment, the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers admitted that they imported five kilograms or more of cocaine into the United States, beginning in or about 1990 and continuing until in or about July 2002. Specifically, the brothers were responsible for the importation of over 200,000 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia that was smuggled into the United States through Central America. The Cali Cartel used a variety of methods to smuggle the cocaine into the country, including: the concealment of the drug in shipments of concrete posts sent from Colombia to Venezuela and eventually South Florida; the concealment of cocaine in shipments of ceramic tiles sent from Colombia to Panama to Guatemala, where the cocaine was removed from the tile, repackaged in boxes of frozen vegetables and then shipped to South Florida; and the concealment of cocaine in shipments of coffee from Colombia to Panama, and then South Florida.
Although the defendants were imprisoned by Colombia in 1995, they continued to run the Cali Cartel from prison by working through Miguel's son, William Rodriguez-Abadia, and others who oversaw various aspects of the cartel using new routes and new methods - such as the hiding of cocaine in shipments of empty chlorine gas cylinders and, later, the placement of cocaine in containers of pumpkins for surreptitious removal by co- conspirators working at the Port of Miami. On March 8, 2006, William Rodriguez-Abadia pleaded guilty in Miami to his involvement in this drug trafficking conspiracy and was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=73222