Latest terror is bio-terror

The centralisation of food production is a major reason for many of the outbreaks of food-borne illness across the nation, a senior official from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Richard Besser, the director of the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response, said the agency has done a good job of determining where the outbreaks have originated, but that it has been "not so good about implementing corrective action to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Besser spoke at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center as part of an ongoing lecture series about public health.

"The centralisation of food production makes outbreaks something we have to be ready for," said Besser, who began his professional career studying food-borne illnesses.

During his presentation, he discussed how the CDC helped pinpoint the source of a deadly E coli outbreak last year. The outbreak, traced to bagged baby spinach grown in California, was blamed for the deaths of three people and for sickening hundreds more across the country.

Although bio-terrorism was not the cause of that outbreak, Besser said its spectre has become a concern in recent years while studying cases of food-borne illnesses.

He noted that in recent weeks, the CDC has aided with investigations of botulism and anthrax in different parts of the country. A standard question in such investigations now is whether such illnesses are naturally occurring or the result of a deliberate action.

While less than a decade ago the concept of terrorism felt distant and like something that would never happen in America, 9/11 changed everything. Still, when most of us think of terrorist attacks we think big: car bombs, airplane hijackings, and atomic blasts quickly come to mind. Some of the deadliest weapons for terrorists, however, might be so tiny that the human eye cannot even see them.

Unlike traditional warfare, bio-terrorism, a terrorist attack that deploys viruses, bacteria, or other germs as weapons for the intent of massive human destruction, can be quietly insidious. With preparation, the worst biological agents could spread through air, water, and food supplies. Days might pass while germs spread rampantly without anyone knowing.

Just six years ago attackers delivered anthrax as a powder in letters sent through the US mail. Unfortunately, this was not the first time that humans manipulated microbials and viruses with harmful intent. In the past, smallpox (a virus) and plague (a bacterium) have also been agents for biological warfare.

The nature of these miniature biological powerhouses has led the US Government to believe there is an increased need for preparedness and surveillance. Preparations are well under way to counter a biological attack. Much is on the horizon to hasten the development of counteragents using new technologies such as the breeding of transgenic rabbits to make human polyclonal antibodies and finding new uses for old antibiotics.

The DoD hopes to decrease the spread of viruses and deadly bacteria by leveraging accelerated manufacturing techniques that rapidly produce huge quantities of vaccines and antibodies. The goal is to create an accelerated manufacturing platform that can produce as many as three million doses in 12 weeks. The ability to respond rapidly and with such large quantities represents an enormous technological advance for society.

Five years ago, the US Congress and the Bush administration ordered food inspectors at American ports to begin stamping the words "United States Refused Entry" on incoming shipments that failed to meet basic safety regulations.

The goal was simple: Prevent importers from trying to sneak the rejected shipments through another US port, where the inspection process might be less thorough because of smaller staffs, a heavier flow of shipments or plain old lack of vigilance.

But the Food and Drug Administration, the agency that oversees the majority of the nation's food supply, still hasn't implemented the crackdown on "port shopping" by substandard importers. Among other things, regulators have been unable to agree on how big the stamp should be and where it be should placed, according to USA Today.

And, as bizarre as it sounds, some importers have complicated matters further by pushing for an invisible stamp - readable only to US inspectors - that would give companies a better chance of peddling their rejected products to countries where regulations are less demanding.

Universal Detection Technology, a developer and provider of early-warning monitoring technologies to protect people from bio-terrorism and radiological weapons, announced that it has received more orders for its bio-terrorism detection kits stemming from its presentation during the Gulf Security conference in Sarasota, hosted by the Sarasota Sheriff's office. Orders are in addition to the ones announced previously.

UDTT marketed its counter terrorism solutions including the Company's bio-terrorism detection kits, real time anthrax detector, and radiological detection systems during the conference to members of law enforcement. The kits were billed to the security agencies and the US Army through SSI as part of the participation fee for the counter-terrorism training at the Gulf Coast Terrorism Prevention Conference.

"We are pleased to receive additional purchase orders even after the conference and we hope to increase our market share through our marketing efforts," said Mr Jacques Tizabi, UDTT's Chief Executive Officer.

Cows from Victoria, Australia, are being used to conduct world-first research into protecting humans in the event of a bio-terrorism attack using anthrax, plague or ricin.

That country's Department of Defence bio-terrorism unit and Melbourne firm Anadis are using the cows, kept at Tatura in north-central Victoria, to develop a spray-on gel that could identify agents used in a bio-terror attack and contain the infection.

Anadis recently secured a $ 500,000 federal grant to continue their research and the firm's Dr Grant Rawlin is currently in New York speaking with US military authorities about the project.

A forerunner to the research program has already been successful in using early-stage milk from Victorian cows, known as colostrum, to produce an injection to protect against E coli infections in humans. Experiments for the bio-terrorism and influenza applications are now being conducted using the Tatura herd.

While researchers are not using live strains of ricin, plague and anthrax in the cows, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation is working with Anadis to develop potential identification and containment gels in laboratory research.