Centralization of food production makes nation vulnerable

The centralization 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 (CDC) 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 centralization 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. Bioterrorism was not the cause of that outbreak, but Besser said its specter 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. “When I started in public health, that didn’t cross my mind when we had a new case,” Besser said. “There’s a lot that’s being done on the security side to try and reduce those threats, and then there’s a lot that’s being done on the preparedness side,” he said. “There are laboratory networks around the country that have improved our ability to diagnose agents that could be used for bioterrorism. There are security measures in place around how those agents are used.”

Still, he acknowledged, “if someone really wants to do something bad or deliberate, it’s going to be very hard to stop them. It’s important that we’re able to detect it quickly and that we have countermeasures available to be able to respond.” Besser said the CDC must be prepared to be first responders not only in the case of illnesses, but also in cases where public health could be at risk, such as in the aftermath of a natural disaster.