• Food securityProtecting the U.S. Food Supply Chain

    An attack on our food supply—whether from intentional tampering, or due to contagious animal disease—could be dangerous to human health and could cause long-lasting economic impacts. DHS S&T is working to protect the U.S. food supply chain – from the farm to the table.

  • Food securityBeating the “Billion-Dollar Bug” Is a Shared Burden

    A lurking threat that has stymied US corn growers for decades is now returning to the forefront: western corn rootworm. Sometimes referred to as the “billion-dollar bug,” the species’ tiny larvae chew through the roots of corn plants, causing devastating yield losses. In 2003, farmers began planting a genetically engineered variety of corn known as “Bt,” which produces a protein toxic to the pest species – but by 2009, the billion-dollar bug had already evolved adaptations for resistance to the toxin. Study shows how individual farming practices associated with greater corn rootworm damage can have farther-reaching effects.

  • Food securitySecure Food Supply Chain

    By Adam Thomas

    As the world grows increasingly globalized, one of the ways that countries have come to rely on one another is through a more intricate and interconnected food supply chain. This interconnectedness has its benefits. But, as the coronavirus COVID-19 global pandemic has made abundantly clear, it also leaves the food supply chain — all the steps involved in bringing food from farms to people’s tables across the world — exposed to potential shocks to the system.

  • Warmer temperaturesWarmer Temperatures Slow COVID-19 Transmission, but Not by Much

    It is well known that rates of transmission of some respiratory viruses, including influenza, tend to fall during the summer months. As COVID-19 has spread across the globe, questions have been raised about whether warming temperatures, humidity and UV index might slow, or even halt, the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These effects on virus transmission will be important to understand as warmer months ease in and states across the country consider and implement reopening plans. Mount Auburn Hospital says that while the rate of COVID-19 incidence does decrease with warmer temperatures up until 52 degrees F, further warmer temperatures do not decrease disease transmission significantly. A higher UV index also assists in slowing the growth rate of new cases, but the overall impact remains modest. Precipitation patterns did not appear to have any effect on virus transmission.

  • Food securityClimate change already affecting global food production—unequally

    The world’s top 10 crops —  barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane, and wheat — supply a combined 83 percent of all calories produced on cropland. Yields have long been projected to decrease in future climate conditions. Now, new research shows climate change has already affected production of these key energy sources — and some regions and countries are faring far worse than others.

  • Food securityFDA unveils new food imports safety strategy

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday unveiled a new strategy for ensuring the safety of imported foods, part of a comprehensive food safety overhaul in the wake of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011. The FDA aid the United States imports about 15 percent of its food supply from more than 200 countries or territories, and that the quantity of imported foods is rising.

  • Foreign invasionFirst in-port insect discovery by CBP in San Juan

    An entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed recently that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists made a first in port discovery of an insect within an imported air cargo shipment of cut flowers arriving from Bogota, Colombia. CBP says that the Guayaquila pallescens, commonly called treehoppers or thorn bugsis the first of its species intercepted in Puerto Rico.

  • Food securityUsing technology to defeat a tiny beetle which threatens grain stores

    Invasive insect species pose a considerable threat to U.S. agriculture and natural resources – making it imperative that known invasive species are detected and their introduction prevented throughout global trade pathways. The tiny khapra beetle poses a major threat to unprotected grain stores. Scientists at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) are helping the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) Plant Protection Quarantine (PPQ) find an easier, more effective way to inspect bulk food supply for khapra beetles.

  • Food safetyImplementing new food safety measure hampered by lack of funding

    Roughly forty-eight million Americans have food-borne illness each year, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 128,000 of them are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. The cost of treatment and lost income is $15 billion a year or more, according to data from the Agriculture Department.When Congress passed the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) new powers to prevent food outbreaks, however, it failed adequately to fund the agency, thereby diminishing its ability to implement new regulations and inspection powers on food producers and foreign suppliers.

  • Food safetyFood safety specialists hope new tracking approach will lead to better intervention

    Estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show these four pathogens cause 1.9 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year. A new partnership to improve food safety and better track foodborne illness is an approach that food safety specialists say will lead to better intervention strategies.

  • Food safetyObama proposes a single federal agency to monitor, enforce food safety standards

    Some eighty-seven million Americans are sickened each year by food contamination, 371,000 are hospitalized with food-related illness, and 5,700 die from food-related disease. The GAO says that the country’s food safety system is “high-risk” because of “inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources.” At least fifteen different government agencies have some role in approving the foods Americans eat. The White House proposes having a single agency — the Food Safety Administration, housed within HHS — “provide focused, centralized leadership, a primary voice on food safety standards and compliance with those standards.”

  • Food safetyA computer program would track food, ingredients in packaged food, imported into U.S.

    Scientists at University of Minnesota’s National Center for Food Protection and Defense(NCFPD) are developing a computer program called CRISTAL, which could allow the government and private sector to map the supply chain of every product imported into the United States, from mobile phones to car seats to the ingredients in packaged foods. The USDA already monitors some aspects of the nation’s food safety, but DHS is particularly interested in CRISTAL because of increasing terror threats to the nation’s food supply.

  • Food safetyUSDA plans to expand private meat inspection scheme despite criticism

    The USDA’s plan to expand a pilot program which shifts responsibility from government inspectors at meat processing plants to private or company-employed inspectors has faced skepticism and criticism. The pilot plan was supposed to be evaluated, but the USDA Inspector General reported that the department has yet to study the effectiveness of the plan in improving food safety and efficiency in the plants. Critics say the replacement of government inspectors has led to an increase in the number of instances of contaminated meat in the U.S. plants which have adopted the plan – and also in the Canadian and Australian meat plant where the scheme has been implemented.

  • Food safetyNew food fraud database launched

    DHS defines food fraud as the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain; a new database compiles thousands of food fraud reports; the most fraud-prone foods: olive oil, milk, and honey

  • Food safetyCDC: outbreaks linked to imported foods increasing

    U.S. food imports grew from $41 billion in 1998 to $78 billion in 2007; as much as 85 percent of the seafood eaten in the United States is imported, and depending on the time of the year, up to 60 percent of fresh produce is imported; the increase in imported food has been accompanied by an increase in foodborne illnesses, with fish and spices the most common sources