SAN FRANCISCO — One of the deepest fears following the Sept. 11 attacks was that terrorists might poison the country’s food.
Hoping to ease people’s anxieties about what they were eating, President George W. Bush vowed to draw a protective shield around the food supply and defend it from farm to fork.
An Associated Press analysis of the programs found that the government has spent at least $3.4 billion on food counterterrorism in the past decade, but key programs have been bogged down in a huge, multiheaded bureaucracy. And with no single agency in charge, officials acknowledge it’s impossible to measure whether orchards or feedlots are any safer.
On Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee held a hearing to examine a congressional watchdog’s new report revealing federal setbacks in protecting cattle and crops since Sept. 11. Just days after the 10th anniversary of the attacks, lawmakers demanded answers about potential food- related threats and reports that the government may have wasted money on languishing agriculture anti-terrorism programs.
“We may be blindsided by an intentional food-based attack on this nation sometime soon,” John Hoffman, a former Department of Homeland Security senior adviser, testified at the hearing. “The unfortunate truth is that we, as a nation, lack effective surveillance. . . . At present, our primary detection capability is the emergency room.”
Top U.S. food-defense authorities insist that the initiatives have made the food supply safer and say extensive investments have prepared the country to respond to emergencies. No terrorist group has threatened the food supply in the past decade, and the largest food poisonings have not arisen from foreign attacks but from salmonella- tainted eggs produced on Iowa farms that sickened almost 2,000 people.
