Government Ramps Up Efforts to Protect Food Supply
Dec. 7, 2004 — -- While there is no known evidence of tampering with the U.S. food supply, outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson caused some alarm last week by warning the country's food was at risk.
Thompson said during a press conference that he "cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." He said he worried "every single night" about such an attack.
Today Thompson stood his ground. "The food supply -- and I want to make sure everybody understands this -- is safe. But," he added, "that doesn't mean somebody, somewhere, or sometime could not put some kind of adulterated additives to the food that could cause problems."
Some officials say it may be a matter of luck that there have been no major attacks. Consider, they say, how vast the American food industry is:
"We need to be doing a lot more. We need to be doing it at the source," said Jerry Hauer, a former health and human services assistant secretary and Thompson's former counterterrorism chief.
Hauer says his colleagues in government worried about someone dropping bacteria into a tanker truck full of milk on its way from a farm to be pasteurized. If the terrorist planned right, processing would not destroy the poison, and in a few days, there might be 50,000 tainted jugs available in the stores.
Such an attack might not kill many people, but it might be terrifying to millions.
"It is still a very vulnerable part of our infrastructure," said Hauer, "one that they continue to work on, but we're not there yet." Hauer, now at George Washington University, is also a consultant to ABC News.
Adding to the problem, more of the food consumed in the United States is imported, which makes it cheaper but harder to track. And it all moves very quickly, from the farm to the processing plant to the table, to keep it fresh.
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