Bioterrorism and Food Safety

Black ICE, a U.S.-Swiss co-hosted bioterrorism tabletop exercise for senior leaders from international organizations, emphasized the role of international organizations in a bioterrorism response and how they would interact with national governments. The U.S. and Switzerland sponsored Black ICE because they see such exercises as vital to an international response to a bioterrorism attack. A chain of real-life events including the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in 2001, preparations for pandemic influenza, naturally-occurring disease outbreaks such as SARS, and various bioterrorism hoaxes have shown us all how vulnerable the world is to disease outbreaks, whether naturally-occurring or as the result of bioterrorism. Exercises focusing on fictional bioterrorism scenarios sponsored by national, international, and non-governmental bodies have also pointed out national and global vulnerabilities. The Black ICE tabletop exercise scenario simulated a smallpox attack with self-infected terrorists traveling via airplane from South Asia to Central Asia, and then moving about a major city during a large, outdoor event to infect as many others as possible. Eventually, over the course of the Black ICE scenario, the disease spreads throughout Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and North America, resulting in cases in 17 nations, with 357 individuals infected, and 108 dead.

2005: U.S. Building Collaborative Response Against Bioterrorism (Jan 29, 2007)

2005: U.S. Regulations Require Registration of Food, Feed Companies (Sep 29, 2005) | New Method Rapidly Detects Potential Bioterrorism Agent (Sep 6, 2005)

2004: U.S. Pledges Smallpox Vaccine to Global Stockpile (Dec 10, 2004) | FDA Adopts Rule to Improve Food, Feed Safety (Dec 6, 2004) | United States to Require Prior Notice of All Imported Food (Jun 2, 2004) | New Rule Sets Procedures for U.S. Detention of Suspect Food (May 27, 2004) | U.S. Expands Efforts to Counter Bioterror, Global Disease (Apr 28, 2004) | Halting Spread of WMD Key Goal for United States, European Union (Jun 26, 2004)

The United States and the European Union are cooperating and "have made great progress in reconciling our regulatory approaches," the State Department's Charles Ries told a Senate panel October 16, 2003. "We too often overlook the progress that we've made when we focus our attention on the issues that still divide us," Ries, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told the Subcommittee on European Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After citing a number of informal initiatives U.S. and EU regulators have launched to strengthen transatlantic cooperation, Ries said tthe interim final U.S. regulations on bioterrorism and food safety "have been significantly modified to make them less burdensome on trade, in part in response to comments received from the EU and our other trading partners."

2003: Ries Cites U.S., EU Efforts to Reconcile Regulatory Approaches (Oct 17, 2003)