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Release No.
0137.03
ofTeleconference with Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman
and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge with the
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Additional
Information
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Tom, good morning.
MR. BRAND: Thank you, Larry, and good morning.
On behalf of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters, I'd like to say it's the highlight of our annual Washington Watch Meeting to be invited to the Department of Agriculture for this news conference.
For those that are listening, we're seated at the Williamsburg Table here in the Department of Agriculture's building, overlooking the Mall in our nation's capital. Surrounding the table are agriculture journalists from across the United States who will be asking questions of the Cabinet level Secretaries that are sitting beside me.
I'd first like to introduce Ann Veneman, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, in whose house we are sitting today, and she will introduce Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge.
Ann M. Veneman was sworn in as the 27th Secretary of the U.S. Department of agriculture on January 20th, 2001. She was chosen by President George W. Bush to serve in his Cabinet and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate.
Growing up on a family farm in a small rural community in California, she was a 4-H member and understands issues that are important to America's farmers and ranchers.
Madam Secretary, thank you for your hospitality, and we look forward to your comments as well as your introduction of Secretary Ridge.
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SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Well, thank you very much, Tom, and thank you very much to all of you for being here today. Just as you indicated, we look forward to this visit to Washington from you all as well. And I want to congratulate you on your presidency. Certainly Colleen did a great job last year, and we really appreciate everything that this organization does to help us get the word out to people all across the country about the important issues that we're dealing with.
"This year, as you know, 2003, has started out to be a pretty busy one. We've been on the radio broadcast with you all several times this year already. I think we were counting up that it was almost 5 or 6 weeks in a row that we did a radio broadcast. So it's great to see all of you here in person today, and we really appreciate all of your participation in these.
"As you know, when we had this event last year in this room, we brought in two of our Cabinet colleagues, Secretary Norton and Administrator Whitman for, I think, one of our first joint public appearances, and I think it was very well received. In fact, it was so successful that we did a joint appearance like this, first ever time, on CSPAN, where the three of us were there for a whole hour talking about issues of the environment and so forth.
"So this year, as you all developed your agenda and wanted to talk about the importance of Homeland Security and the importance of Homeland Security to the food and agriculture sector, we could think of no better person to have join us this morning than our brand new Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, who is an absolute delight to work with, and I will be introducing him in more detail later.
"I do want to applaud you for selecting Homeland Security as your topic for discussion because it is so important to the food and agriculture sector. And I'm also very pleased to have our Deputy Secretary here with us for two reasons. One, he's been out sick all last week and we're glad to have him back, but more importantly, he has been a true leader in our efforts in coordinating a lot of our Homeland Security activities. And we truly appreciate your leadership, Jim. Thank you and thanks for being here.
"I know that you're going to have a more detailed discussion with Jim Moseley and some of our people who are involved directly in our Homeland Security office about some of the kinds of details of what would happen in the event we should have some kind of threat or outbreak to our system a little later on, so I'm sure that will be helpful to you as well.
"As you all know, and as you all have heard me say many times before, protecting the food system and protecting the public health are high priorities of USDA. Animal and plant health obviously is a very key area as well as our meat and poultry inspection systems. And so we have a dual area of responsibility looking at protection of the food and agriculture system. As you all know and as you have heard me talk about many times before, I wasn't in this job two or three weeks when we had a major threat to our animal health and food system because of what was going on, particularly in England, but also in Latin America with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
"We saw the pictures on the television of how devastating this disease was. We saw what was happening to animals, what was happening on the farms, and the economic devastation it caused to farmers themselves. We immediately stepped up our efforts. It was before we had any sub-Cabinet in place. We had at that time brought in a state veterinarian from California to assist in our efforts to coordinate all of this. We increased our inspectors. We began to look at all of our infrastructure and how we could respond, and we also sent veterinarians, many of them, both from the Department and from throughout the country to England to assist with this effort, and many came back and said, "We never could have had a better training exercise than this."
"Only a few short months later 9/11 came, and then we began to look at everything we did in terms of the potential impact from an intentional threat to our food system, and we started to assess what might those kinds of intentional threats to our food system be? Obviously, when we looked at what could most threaten, what could most quickly impact our food system, things like foot and mouth disease again came to the forefront. And so we have been working with all parts of the food chain to look at where are the areas of vulnerability, where do we need more protection? What do we need to do to protect our food chain from threats of intentional harm?
"So we have worked with industry at all levels, and we've got materials on our website. We've put together best management practices, a number--and I don't take credit in USDA for doing all of this because we've worked closely also with the private sector and we've worked closely with the Trade association in looking at best management practices in working with, for example, the agriculture system, for farmers to look at who's coming on their farms, who's flying around their farms, look for areas of suspicion. The farm community's always been pretty trusting of who is around rural America. It's a different day today and so we have, we have standards and best management practices for that.
"In the processing plants we've encouraged people to increase surveillance, increase security checks of employees, increase camera surveillance within plants.
"Transportation, again, making sure that there aren't any vulnerabilities in the transportation system, and of course the retail system as well. There's a number of materials on our website as I indicated, guidelines, that can be used.
"The other thing we've been doing is looking at all of our internal systems. Where are the vulnerabilities within our government system? And obviously, we have a network, as you know, of laboratories all across the country. Laboratories have been an area where we have looked very closely at what we've been doing to make sure that security both of our employees and of our facilities themselves. And that responsibility also extends out to the universities that we do so much business with. So many of the land grants participate in so much of the research that we do. So we've worked with our laboratory systems, our universities and so forth.
"We've also worked very hard and Deputy Secretary Moseley has really led this process to test our systems through gaming exercises, and we've held a number of these at Department levels, at agency levels and so forth. And we've included in those a number of different agencies.
"Obviously, Homeland Security's been a key player in those gaming exercises, as well as Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, because we would have to have them involved if there were a big animal disease outbreak and disposal of carcasses, for example. So there are Department of Justice on legal issues, there are a whole range of agencies that would come into play should we have a major outbreak of some kind of disease or other food safety or incident in our food system. So these have been very proactive on our parts, participating in these, and as Jim has told me several times, the more we use it, the better we get.
"We've also, with Secretary Ridge, created a coordinated inter-agency response system for food and agriculture. Our critical partners in this, of course, have been Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services, but the food system has been recognized by the Department of Homeland Security and the administration as being an area that we need to be aware of, that we need to be prepared, and we need to continue to make sure that we have the safest food supply in the world.
"As you all know, our border inspectors were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. We've had a number of questions on this, but we will continue to work in a very close partnership with the Department of Homeland Security as we train these people, as we look at the vulnerability, as we work to protect the Ag industry. And I'm hopeful that we'll be giving a little training to some of the Customs and Immigration people about what to watch for, giving us more eyes and ears to protect our agriculture.
"So in addition, Plum Island, our research island in New York, will transfer to Department of Homeland Security on June 1st. So those are the two entities from USDA that will now become a part of Homeland Security.
"I want to again applaud all of you for discussing this topic today. Homeland Security is a critical issue. We have worked very hard to improve our emergency communication systems to make sure that we can quickly communicate the necessary information, and you all are key players in that process.
"I now want to turn this over to Secretary Ridge. It is truly an honor and a privilege to serve in the Cabinet with him. We have, wouldn't you agree, a remarkable cabinet?"
SECRETARY RIDGE: "Yeah, we do."
SECRETARY VENEMAN: "And you're a terrific addition to it."
SECRETARY RIDGE: "Thanks."
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SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Governor--we still call him Governor Ridge because that's what we called him until he became a Secretary, so we can call him either, because he was the Governor of Pennsylvania, and actually gave up that position when the President asked him to come to the White House and take on the very important role of coordinating the Homeland Security efforts for the administration. In a very short period of time, the administration had proposed a very comprehensive Homeland Security legislation, and later when that was passed, he nominated Secretary Ridge for the position, and he was confirmed without any difficulty whatsoever.
"It is--he's a pleasure to work with, a wonderful partner, and a great supporter of agriculture. So it's my pleasure to introduce to you, Secretary Ridge."
SECRETARY RIDGE: "Thank you, Madam Secretary, Ann, and to all of you, greetings, good morning. It's a great pleasure to have the opportunity to spend some time with you this morning.
"I do have a couple of thoughts I'd like to share with you, but I think it's important for you hopefully to understand that the experiences that Ann referred to as Governor, have given me quite an insight into the food and fiber operation of this country because ag was the number one industry in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I can't recall right now what percentage of our state domestic product, but it was a high percentage, and it's nearly 20 percent of our national domestic product, so I understand the economic significance of public confidence in our food products.
"We did a lot of trade work. More often than not, we took our Secretary of Agriculture with us on trade missions. I mean I can recall very vividly standing in a Tokyo supermarket talking about Pennsylvania poultry being exported there. I mean, a pretty high standard to get into that kind of market. And if you can meet that standard you know you've got some of the best products in the country. So I appreciate the necessity of not only domestic public confidence, but international confidence in the safety of our food products, because I think we export about 20, 25 percent of our farm and ranch products as well, so we've got collectively a responsibility to maintain and continue to assure the consuming public, domestic or international, that food safety is a very, very high priority for this administration. And it is.
"I mean I very much appreciate the process, the continuum in the agricultural community from the ranch and the farm to the processor to the distribution chain, out to retail, and those many steps along the way require this country to make sure that we've done everything we can to manage in a reasonable basis the risk associated with terrorist threats as it impacts on this massive industry, that affects the livelihoods, and affects our economy and each one of us so significantly on a day-to-day basis.
"So I bring that perspective as a Governor to this new department. The other perspective I bring to the new department is the job I had just, well, for a little over a year as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. One of my primary responsibilities was to coordinate activity between or among the different agencies. And so when Ann talks about working in collaboration with our friend, Secretary Thompson, over at HHS, I see the role we have in the new Department of Homeland Security really as a continuum of the work that they began shortly after they both became Cabinet Secretaries. I mean that kind of collaboration daily with food safety and public safety has been very much Ann and Tommy's priority within both of these Cabinet agencies.
"And we kind of, we pile on. We add on. Hopefully, we're value added to that operation because we have developed a national strategy to combat terrorism, and we've identified sectors within our economy that deserve very special attention.
"And obviously the ag sector is one of those critical pieces of work of our economic infrastructure that we talked about in the strategy. And as we set up the new department and focus on critical pieces of our national economic infrastructure, it'll be a continuation of that work with Secretary Veneman and Secretary Thompson that we will engage in.
"As Ann pointed out, we've already had some exercises with the Department of Homeland Security. You play as you practice, and the notion that you run these exercises is critical I think to ensuring that in the months and years head we build up a national capacity to respond if an incident occurs that affects the agricultural industry.
"So, with those two experiences, as of January this year, I became the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As you know it is a reconstitution of 22 different departments and agencies, about 175,000 different people.
"And as you also know, thanks to the aggressive and successful advocacy of your Secretary of Agriculture, the initial plans for the Department were to include just about every employee in the Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service.
"As soon as that was revealed internally within the administration, I think it was within 30 seconds or a minute that it was on the street, the Secretary of Agriculture called and Ann said, `Tom, I know conceptually what you're trying to do, but I really think that we need to have folks sit down and take a look at what you seek to achieve, and I think I can show you there are better ways to get there than just aggregating the entire service into the Department.'
"I mean, I guess that speaks to Ann's earlier comment about the ease and the comfort we have working with each other. I mean, she didn't call and say, `Hey, Tom, what a lousy idea. You just can't get there from here.' She said, `I think there's a better way to go about achieving that mutual goal,' and we did it and, frankly, I'm grateful for it.
"And as we look at the Department, as it's presently constituted, we think it is a stronger department. We have some of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service folks. I must tell you every time I'm at a border community, when I visited every airport, I make sure that they are highlighted in the trip because it is critically important to those who would follow me, the press and everybody else, but also the these men and women and to the agricultural community to understand that we in the Department of Homeland Security view their presence as a critical piece of our Border Protection Unit.
"And to Ann's point, the notion that down the road we will also cross-train some of the Customs folks and some of the folks that used to work in INS, that agency no longer exists. It's been divided. Its function exists, and the good people who worked there exist, but we divided their functions into two different pieces.
"The point that we would cross-train them for those good folks to be looking at some issues that are relatively important to you we think adds value. There's an additional capacity at the borders with the right kind of training.
"So we made that adjustment early on, and thanks to the Secretary's advocacy and willingness to sit down, we, frankly, think we have a better border inspection operation because of that.
"The Plum Island facility, again, you should be reassured that I understand completely that it is the first line of defense in agroterrorism. I mean, that's where we're going to see the contaminants. That's where we're going to identify the pathogens and Memorandum of Understanding that we have with the Department of Agriculture and will develop, and the collaborative relationship will be as good as any in this government.
"Ann and I have pledged sometime this year to get up and visit those facilities so that the agricultural community can understand that we--we know we are working together. That's another visible manifestation of the fact that it will be doing work for the Department of Homeland Security, but there's a broader audience, and there's a broader body of work that Plum Island does for the agricultural community, and we both understand that, and it's really a value added to our operation and continues to add enormous value to the Department of Agriculture.
"I think, finally, what I would share with you, and then I guess we're moving into Q&A, is that I have the opportunity to see homeland security issues at the 40,000-feet level, but I also have an opportunity to see it down locally, and the President believes that you cannot secure the homeland from Washington, D.C. Leadership, hopefully, resources, standards, there are a lot of things that we can do, but at the end of the day, the homeland is only secure if the hometown is secure.
"And so to that end, as we work with the agricultural community, as we work with other communities throughout the country, we understand it's important to be out in the states and in the counties, working with men and women who, on an operational basis, day in and day out, have responsibility to help us, the first line of defense, everybody says it, but that's absolutely, unequivocally true.
"When something happens in an ag event, in any other event, you're not going to dial area code 202. You're going to respond immediately at a local level, and then hopefully we'll be in as quickly as possible with the assets we need to isolate, to minimize, to quarantine, whatever we need to do, in order to get the job done.
"So you should know that as we go about organizing the new department, our eyes are cast on the 50 states and regions and getting the relationships that we develop down to the local level. So we've come a long way. We still have a long way to go.
"I said to a group of people the other day, when somebody asked, `Do you sleep well at night,' and I said, `I sleep very well at night.' And that's probably the only thing that I said in the speech that got an applause, but I got an applause with that line. And the fact is I sleep well at night because America has been leaning forward not waiting for federal direction, not waiting for federal support.
"The folks in the agricultural community, since the President and the Secretary called upon them to be aware, to take extra precautionary measures, whether we're at yellow, at orange or liberty shield, and by the way, the Department of Agriculture, like every other agency, provided some additional security measures when we felt we had to add another layer of security when the military moved into Iraq.
"Every single day around this country people are doing a better job than they did the day before, and I just see our capacity as a nation to prevent terrorism, to reduce our vulnerability and to respond to a terrorist event, if it occurs, improving every single day.
"And, again, the federal government has got to be a large part of that, but it's the partnerships with you, it's the partnerships with your governors, and your mayors and other members of the public and private sector that ultimately helped us build that national capacity.
"So I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to be here with my friend and to have this conversation with you this morning.
"Thanks very much."
MR. BRAND: "Thank you, Madam Secretary and Mr. Secretary.
"I will lead off with the questions I guess this morning and just ask I understand in APHIS there's been some discussion about a livestock identification program as part of homeland security. Can you explain to our livestock producers how that would be an important step in securing our livestock herds?"
SECRETARY RIDGE: "Well, let me tell you that some of these thoughts are certainly preliminary in nature, but again given the economic significance of the livestock industry, so you take the economic significance, the notion that every day we have to look for more and better ways to continue the confidence that we have in the food and fiber that we produce in this country, it just seems to us that, working with the Department of Agriculture, that's probably a very good initiative to undertake."
MR. BRAND: I turn to the next question to Ron Hays with Clear Channel Agriculture in Oklahoma.
QUESTION: "Thank you, Tom, and good morning, Madam Secretary, Mr. Secretary.
"We have marching across the country right now a worrisome disease, Exotic New Castle Disease, an unconfirmed report, cases still being tested in Eastern Oklahoma now of the game fowl flock we understand right at the end of this last week.
"Arkansas is extremely nervous, as of course that is a major part of their agriculture in Northwestern Arkansas, very close to that. As a matter of fact, a lot of birds are raised are in Oklahoma, shipped across the state line to Arkansas. Arkansas has closed their borders as of the weekend, we understand, except for some very stringent limitations.
"What is the game plan, as far as to deal with these game fowl flocks? It seems like that's been the case as we've gone from California to Arizona to El Paso and now getting into very serious production areas of the country?"
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SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Well, I appreciate the question, and it is an important one, and it is important from the perspective of homeland security because this is a very serious disease. People have called Exotic Newcastle the foot-and-mouth disease of poultry.
"It started in California, as you indicate. And one of the very difficult things with regard to this disease versus, say, larger animals like cattle and foot-and-mouth, is that poultry and chickens are so easily moved. You can put them in the trunk of the car. It's hard to really track where they're going, and you have an entire system in this country of game birds.
"And this disease has primarily been transmitted, we believe, through game birds that have had contact with each other in these various facilities, some illegal, some legal, but it is a very serious problem.
"We believe that we are getting it under control, but I can tell you that, as are both the state people in California and the APHIS people in California, who we have deployed tremendous numbers of people to California to try to get a handle around this disease, they have found that hardly anyone had anticipated the number of people in the area around one of the biggest cities in the country, Los Angeles, have backyard poultry.
"It is just phenomenal how many people are keeping chickens, not just game birds, but you know once you get it into these neighborhoods, it spreads, and so it has been a tremendous challenge for our disease experts, and we've put a lot of money into this, and a lot of personnel into this to try to eradicate it.
"We did have some indication in Arizona and then in--or in Nevada and then Arizona, and then more recently in Texas. I don't believe this Oklahoma situation has been confirmed at this point. The Texas, interestingly enough, was not in the same strain as the Arizona, Nevada and California.
"But this is a high priority for us. It has certainly given us some insight as to how we can deal with this. We know that if this disease moves, and we've had a lot of discussion about it into the East Coast, we could have very serious, serious problems.
"Now, the fortunate thing in California, for example, is that it has not moved, knock on wood, yet from the South part of the state to the North part of the state, where I'm from, where we also have a lot of poultry production, and we've got a lot of extra surveillance up there. But we've limited movement of commercial, poultry. We've limited movement of poultry that's been moved North to be processed. That's not happening any more.
"But it really is a very serious problem with regard to these game birds. We have also engaged our Office of Inspector General to look at the whole range of issues, in terms of this transporting of birds and how we can put some limits and work with local law enforcement to try to limit the movement of birds around states and between states.
"So it is a severe situation and one we're taking very seriously and have been taking very seriously, and have put a tremendous amount of resources into."
SECRETARY RIDGE: "If I might add, I'm grateful that Ann answered that question. Thank you, Ann, very much."
[Laughter.]
SECRETARY RIDGE: "But it gives rise to the briefing that I had with our friends in Great Britain, on a recent trip. We asked them to basically debrief what they did right and what they did wrong in handling the foot-and-mouth, and they did the same thing for the Secretary.
"And they were very candid in their own introspection with regard to the immediacy, the swiftness with which they responded to quarantine, limited movement and destroy the infected animals. I mean, they would be the first ones to tell you that had they responded more expeditiously, had they been willing to make a tough call at the front end, and there were some real logistics problems associated with that as well.
"But I think, again, lessons learned to be applied and conceivably in whether it's a terrorist-related incident or not, there's some lessons that are applicable there."
MR. BRAND: Emery Kleven from [inaudible] Farm Network, Omaha?
QUESTION: "Thanks, Tom.
"Secretary Ridge, as your department was being developed, there were concerns by some members of Congress that as you transition areas from several agencies, including USDA, that they weren't confident that it would be a smooth transition, such as Plum Island and things like that.
"Are you confident, and, Secretary Veneman, are you confident that the transition, as you go from one department to the other, will be smooth?"
SECRETARY RIDGE: "We have been up and running now for not quite 100 days. I've been in the job for 100, but the actual transition of people in the Department began March 1st, and anecdotally, from my experience, and I've been out and about quite a bit, I think the transition has been very smooth. The Memorandums of Understanding that we need to have with some of our companion agencies, that process has been completed.
"I will be the first one to admit, and I think it's important to note, that the good people in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service understandably were reluctant, what did this mean for us, do we get to focus on our historic mission, and I think hopefully they've discovered that, yes, that is the focus. You are now part of a border team.
"And I think at the end of the day
we add some value at the border because prior to the reorganization, you
had INS reporting up a chain, you had the Customs reporting up a chain,
you had the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and right now,
as we consolidate it, it's a lot easier for the Secretary to the Under
Secretary, the folks at the border to have direct lines of responsibility
and accountability.
"It will be a lot easier for us to affect the kind of cross-training
that Secretary Veneman is talking about. So I think today things have
gone very well."
SECRETARY VENEMAN: The other thing I think that is important, in terms of the interface of these systems, is the ability that we will have to work with Customs, and we were working on this before the new Department, but to interface our computer systems to use their records to look at when food product and meat product is coming in, things that USDA traditionally had the jurisdiction over, to better integrate these systems so that we can track what's coming into the country more comprehensively.
"But in terms of the transition, I think that our employees, you know, are tremendous that work on the border inspection, and they have been team players. When you go to airports or you go to ports even before this transition, they worked closely with their counterpart agencies on inspection issues in airports and so forth, and they do a tremendous job.
"I remember one trip I took out to Chicago. We went to the Chicago airport during the food-and-mouth, before 9/11, and the amount of work that they were having to do; they were pulling out shoes, and the most interesting things was golf clubs and washing every one of them before they could go through the system.
"And so these are the kinds of things that our folks have traditionally done to protect our food supply and our animal health and plant health in this country.
"Now, many people haven't understood the importance of these programs, and they are absolutely critical, but I believe that if we get them off to the right start, in terms of the transition into Homeland Security, because of our strong partnership and our strong desire that we work together, that we can have a very effective transition, that we are having an effective transition and that the employees themselves will, while employed by the Department of Homeland Security, will continue to recognize their primary mission to protect the food and agriculture in this country.
SECRETARY RIDGE: "If I could add on that very briefly, I think the Secretary has alluded to something that is very, very important. We are, this country is taking its Customs inspection, which will be for ag and non-ag products to foreign ports. The Cargo Security Initiative that we are engaged in, we will start inspecting cargo before the containers even make it to the ships, in many instances.
"So as the Secretary points out, because of the new department, some of these new initiatives, where we can match up some of the intelligence we might have, where we might want to inspect that particular bulk shipment or we might want to inspect that particular container, we now have a position to really consolidate our information base and act on it.
"And, again, I think that makes us stronger. I might add I still think one of the most impressive inspection tools that I've run across, and I also happen to love dogs, is the Beagle brigades at the airports.
"I stopped a group that was traveling with me the other day because your good folks were out there, and they had several suitcases, and I mean it's just absolutely amazing to me how sophisticated and how well-trained these animals are.
"And, again, it is a value added to our operation at the borders and to the extent that we can push that out even further, we'll do that. And at the end of the day, since so much of the world's economy depends on export and imports of foodstuffs, it will be in the world's interest for us to adopt comparable security measures.
"I had occasion to board a ship in New Orleans that was registered in Singapore, the crew was Indian, the grain was American, and it was on its way to Japan. So you've got four countries that want to make sure that the crew, the cargo, and the ship move through international commerce as safely and effectively as possible and make sure that the cargo is safe all along the way.
"So, again, I think, as the Secretary pointed out, it's more than twice the value. I mean, it's just really new capacities that we're building together."
MR. BRAND: Jeanette Merritt from AgriAmerica in Indiana?
QUESTION: "Thank you. Good morning, Madam Secretary and Mr. Secretary.
"You both spoke of the exercises that the offices have done to prepare our food supply against a threat. What have those exercises taught us that still needs to be done to prepare ourselves for a terrorist threat to our food supply?"
SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Well, that's a very good question, and I think one of the things you will do later today is discuss the communications aspect of those exercises and how you all can play a role, and that's one of the areas we found that we needed to make sure we were prepared for.
"But I think that, overall, what we have learned in these exercises is the need to have every part of the Department involved from the Inspection Service, the Animal and Plant people to the Food Safety Inspection Service, to the Department of Health and Human Services, to Homeland Security.
“What tends to happen in government is that everybody works in their little stovepipe, but when it comes to responding to an outbreak or responding to an emergency, we need to be able to work together.
"I think one of the greatest success stories of being able to respond to emergencies is FEMA because I think FEMA has made tremendous strides over the years, in terms of how they coordinate the response to emergencies in this country, and you now have that organization under your Department.
"But I think we learn a lot from them because they've done a lot of work to coordinate government resources. We need that same kind of thing when it comes to a specific emergency of an animal disease outbreak like foot-and-mouth disease, where it might be intentionally introduced in several places around the country.
"And so we've learned a tremendous amount in terms of just the coordinated effort, and how we move forward, and how the coordination would work. And, again, that's been a very, very valuable exercise.
"In my view, with all of these things, you can always continuously improve what you're doing and what you know, and so we continue to work on these issues. And as Jim Moseley and the others who have led this effort have said is that we are in so much better shape, in terms of who does what, when, where, and how and how it's coordinated than we were when we began this process. So we think it's been a very valuable one."
SECRETARY RIDGE: "If I might add, I don't think there's more--this is where the broadcasters come in--if there's one lesson that we've learned, whether we're dealing with agroterrorism or any other form of terrorism, there is a public information, a public affairs component that's absolutely essential for us, as a country, in order to deal with an event.
"We need to get out timely and accurate information to the right channels. The worst thing that can happen to us and, frankly, we saw it a little bit with the anthrax challenge that confronted this country, as the Secretary pointed out, initially, for the first couple of days, there were multiple talking heads. It was certainly a real challenge because there was no manual anybody pulled off the shelf and said, `Oh, my goodness. Anthrax in envelopes. How do we deal with this?'
"Well, we learned a lot about anthrax, but we also learned the importance of a unified, public message, giving timely and accurate information. Americans can deal with information. They'll deal with knowledge. They'll act on it or they'll, and you may tell them not to act, and here's why.
"And so I think, like any other crisis, whether it involves the ag community or anything else, one of the most important ingredients of a successful response is a good public information, public affairs effort, and that's where you all come in."
SECRETARY VENEMAN: "If I might just add one other thing that we've done that I do think is important is that we have learned from our, as you know, we have the United States Forest Service in this department, and they have one of the most comprehensive systems of incident management of anywhere in the world. That incident command system is one that FEMA early on recognized as a very, very good tool, and so they have an ongoing contract with FEMA.
"So these forest fire fighters that do incident commands in forest fires can be pulled out and put on an emergency.
"And, in fact, on the day of 9/11, that night we had five incident management teams leave from the West on military planes. Three went to New York City, two went into the Pentagon, and particularly in New York, these people were invaluable. We could not have done the job in New York City without them, according to the Fire Department. When I went up there and visited the Fire Department of New York, they told us how invaluable these people were.
"And, in fact, in January, I just signed an agreement with the Fire Department of New York--went back up there--a tremendous event, where our people in the Forest Service are now partnering to train people in the Fire Department of New York, and in fact we will have firefighters on some of our forest fires this summer.
"In addition, we have realized the value of this incident command system to outbreaks of animal diseases. And so, for example, we have our Forest Service Incident Command people involved in Exotic New Castle in California.
"We've had them involved in Avian Influenza in Virginia because they know how to manage large incidents; you know, take all the people that need and all of the issues that need to be managed, and that's been very valuable as well, and an example of how we can use things that seem really relatively unrelated to make things work better in the event of an emergency."
MR. BRAND: Taylor Brown with the Northern Ag Network, Billings, Montana.
QUESTION: "Thank you, Tom.
"You mentioned the gaming exercises, and I think it would help if you could help us visualize where we might play a role in that; for example, an example of the kind of the issue that scares you the most. What's the issue where you would really worry about it? And maybe you've done a scenario like that.
"And I was just thinking if that issue erupted this morning this table, there's, I've estimated, about 1,500 radio and television stations listening right now from the people around this table.
"Give us an example, without going into too much detail, an example of where we might be called upon to play a role. What scares you?"
SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Well, that's a very good question, and it's one that you all will be addressing in much greater detail in your session with the deputy secretary, and APHIS and others just after this session. But let me give you an example.
"Again, foot-and-mouth disease. It's one I've alluded to. Suppose--and it was a scenario that we looked at. Suppose it were introduced in three different parts of the country in very concentrated areas of animals all at once. Do we have the resources? Do we have the lab capacity? Who goes where? Who does what? What agencies do we need to be involved?"
"Those are the kinds of scenarios, and how do we get it communicated? How do we deal with the communications? Who can do what? What role can the communications part of this play? So that's the kind of thing. We've had other scenarios that have addressed other things from, you know, food safety to other events.
"But I must say that one of the things that we know in this country is that we have had intentional tampering with the food supply in the past. We've been quickly able to respond, in most cases. We've had outbreaks of things like E. coli. And, yes, we've had problems, but we still know how to get to the bottom of the problem, do recalls and respond.
"So I just want to reiterate that despite the fact that we are doing everything we can to prevent intentional threats, I do believe we have a strong food safety and protective system in this country with regard to our food supply and that it will work.
"These gaming exercises really give us some insight into issues that we may not have anticipated and that we need to really figure out in terms of, particularly if you had multiple, intentional introductions of a major disease like foot-and-mouth disease, how do you deploy resources?"
SECRETARY RIDGE: "One of the givens, and unfortunately most Americans take for granted because we're all consumers, is that whether it comes to food or water and some of the other things we've done, there has been science and safety applied to those consumables for a long, long time in this country.
While we're rushing right now in trying to think about what are the technological innovations, what are the new scientific applications, what kind of other detection devices can we put out there in response to 9/11, the fact of the matter is, when it comes to our food and water, there have been in place systems that have basically given us the safest and most abundant food supply in the world.
"So, basically, as I take a look at the challenge of the Department of Homeland Security, it's really building on a system, not like we have to create one, because it's been out there for a long, long time."
MR. BRAND: Orion Samuelson from WGN and U.S. Farm Report in Chicago.
QUESTION: "A quick question. Have you prioritized the threat to livestock, plant disease, water? Do you have an order of the threat concern there?"
SECRETARY RIDGE: "Have not. Because, you know, again, there are references that we pick up in the intelligence community that all of those might be potential targets. But as we developed the unit within the new Department, we have an Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Unit, and as we get more and more information, we may be able to make sounder judgments and set priorities. But right now, just a general supply chain for food and the water supply.
"But most people don't understand that their local water, because of the science and the system that has been in place for a long, long time is tested hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day for different kinds of contaminants.
"Now, what we need to do, as we develop the body of information with regard to potential terrorist threats, foreign or domestic or criminal, and we'll certainly have that access, is to make sure that the system that's in place is expanded to include a means to detect that potential threat.
"So right now we haven't, but in the course of time, depending on the information we receive, we may go right out to that particular sector of the ag community and say this is a threat, these are the kinds of things we need to do."
MR. BRAND: Thank you, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman and Secretary Tom Ridge for joining us today.
MR. QUINN: "And thank you, Tom Brand, president of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters for being our host today and for your members to participate with us.
This broadcast has originated from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington. This is Larry Quinn bidding you a good day."
[Applause.]
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