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In europe, nothing to do with the European Union is the issue of cypress. And will undertake to work with the republican and the turkish republican warn cypress to work for a fair amicable solution on the britain basis. Look. I think were on the, potentially, on the verge of some great progress in cypress. I paid tribute to both on both sid sides. And i met them both. And Prime Minister in new york. And the turks are playing their role, the brits are playing their role, we, obviously, have a role and our basis. You know, its huge in cypress. Were willing to see some of that territory that we dont need to help move the process forward and i think its a good thing. You know, it really is, but, you know, cypress is one of few examples in the world, who are willing to, by lack that these two are trying to make a difference for peace and being willing to take a risk with the electorates behind them rather than just behave solely, you know, obeying the narrow part in politics of the group thats got them into par. They are really reaching out to peace and i think theyre doing a great thing. Its safe to say, i think a year ago, lets take that. Thank you. Thank you. So, i may refer to you which my apologies. But, thank you. For accompanying the secretary of state. Thank you very much. Thank you. The meeting is now adjourned. As the nation elects a new president in november, will america have its first foreign born first lady since louisa adams or will we have a first president as first gentlemen. Learn more about the spouses from c spans first ladies. First ladies gives readers a look into the personal lives and impact of every first lady in american history. Its a companion and features interviews with the first ladys historians. They each offer brief by og g biographies. First ladies in paper back published by Public Affairs is now available at your Favorite Book seller and also as an e book. C span washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact here. Coming up friday morning, chief Political Correspondent for c span news well discuss over voting for donald trump. Then senior Political Correspondent from mike. Com will talk about the role millennial voters and what issues are motivating this election cycle. Be sure to watch c spans washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern friday morning, join the discussion. Speaker of the house paul ryan talks to College Republicans in Madison Wisconsin about the republican legislative agenda. Liberal progressism and the 2016 election that iss live at 1 00 p. M. Thats live at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on c span. Food safety was the focus of panel of former policy makers at the partisan policy center. They discuss how to protect the public from bio terrorism and Infectious Diseases. This is about two hours. Welcome. Good morning. Im chief medical adviser here at the bipartisan political center. I want to welcome all of you here that todays event entitled bio agri defense policy americas food supply health and economy at risk. Todays topic for me brings back memories of our first task as a Public Servant at which were the number one work on distribution in the event of wide scale an tlax event and help develop the pandemic. At the time in response to threat of highly pathogenic h 5 n 1, bird flu, if you will recall. In spite of much progress spanning both republican and democratic demonstrations. The 2015 bipartisan report, at the Blue Ribbon Panel on reported that the nation still remains highly vulnerable to biological threats and intentional, be it biological terrorism or unintentional in the form of emerging and reemerging Infectious Diseases in origin. A critical consideration in the National Dialogue on bio defense, includes the need to protect americas food supply. And its 1 trillion agri cultural sector. So todays event will highlight the importance of agriculture as well as highlight the strategies, tactics and policy solutions to ensure the of agriculture into bio defense for the next administration and congress. We are very fortunate today to have two outstanding panels of National Private sector leaders and Public Servants to lead our discussion. So at this time without further adieu i would like to introduce the moderator of our first panel, our aspiring leader here at bbc and founder and president at the Bipartisan Policy Center jason to get us started. Thank you for raising the bar. I will do my best. So welcome everybody. We have a really interesting conversation here today. I think, really, its important because its a conversation that we think is not happening enough here in washington. Im going to introduce our panelists and well get into a little bit of conversation among our leaders and then have some q and a. First, to my immediate left, senator majority leader bpc founder of senator tom. If you know tom at all, you know he has a desire for Public Policy. He has led, i dont know, how many initiatives here at Bipartisan Policy Center. Hes also a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel on bio defense. Well have a chance to talk with tom about and i think there are very important insights that hes brought forward. Ill finally note that tom is really critical voice about how to make washington work better in senator recently wrote a book called crisis point, a very thoughtful story talking about opportunities in a clinton riot administration for the country to start governing it. Well talk a little bit about what we see for governance around these issues. Then really a pleasure to represent dick meyers here to the Bipartisan Policy Center as a tremendous record of National Service and courage, i think is most courageous event might have been taken on the interim presidency of Kansas State University six months ago. I wonder whether navigating the pentagon two hundred tenured professors. General matters i think most you know is four star general. He was the 15th chairman of joint chiefs of staff and among his many accomplishments he was also awarded the president ial medal of freedom. We will soon be joined by our friend chairman mike rogers, i believe, his shoes are being polished as we speak and i will introduce him when he joins us. So just to kind of get to the conversation started, i thought it would be useful to ask to reflect a little bit on the broad question of why is important. Why is it a National Security issue. Why did we convince you to come here today and talk about it . Lead on. Jason, thank you for those kind words and for moderating and your leadership here and thanks for the plug for our book. We always could boost book sales. I appreciate that, as well. Thank you for your commitment and the extrood effort youve made in this regard and the leadership youve shown in so many security context. Its a real pleasure and im flattered to be involved it was such a distinguished panel this morning. I think these are issues that deserve the highest attention and the most critical prioritization as we look at Public Policy in the context of National Security. And i dont think anyone disputes the importance of the issue, but i dont think is happened is weve given it the kind of attention that it so justly deserves. I must say, if i could, from a personal perspective, this is even more critical to me because of my own experience, its 15 years ago this month that our country experienced a series of an tl anthrax attacks. It was a trying, very terribly difficult time for our country and people feel very very vulnerable. And that experience, think, sensitized everyone to how enormously important this could be. I was majority leader at the time and so i was right in the middle of the aftermath of that, congressman rogers has just joined us. And i was in the middle of the aftermath. I can say from personal experience, regrettably, frankly, that there was virtually no coordination. There was a real almost a conflicting set of recommendations on how to address the matter. And it was just a very alarming experience to me to see how poorly prepared we were. Well, that was 15 years ago. Weve now, i think looking back over the last decade and a half can say weve made some progress. But if you really think about it and you look at our preparatory position today, you look at where the infrastructure is today. Frankly, i think were far off the mark with regard to where we need to be to avoid what happened 15 years ago. Were having many of the same discussions we did a decade ago, right now. And so in that 15 year period, in spite of all the of the good intentions, weve had the epidemic, the pandemic of 2007 or 2015. We had h 1 n 1 in 2009. We had ebola in 2014. We had zika this year. And theres absolutely no doubt in my mind that its just a matter of when, not if the next natural or deliberate crisis will occur. One of the most respected authorities on this issue in the country and a friend of mind said something that a congressional hearing earlier this year that i thought was really right on the mark as is so often the case the things she writes and says, but he said she thought these natural events ought to be used as preparation and practice for the deliverables. But the fact of the matter is were not ready for either, natural or deliverable. For the last couple of years ive been involved in as jason mentioned with the blue bipartisan Blue Ribbon Panel on bio defense. It was last year we issued our first report aftering 33, short term, medium term and long term approaches to how we might address this circumstance. And we addressed all the bio terror threats across the board, we drilled down on a couple, including the biological threat to agriculture. As we analyze just what we ought to do with agriculture in particular, we focused on one idea that i think has so much merit. That is the one Health Concept that we look at threats to animals and the environment and humans simultaneously and come up with a comprehensive plan. We also said that it was so critical that we elevate the level of leadership around this whole issue, much more effectively than we have in the past and that it actually be the responsibility of the Vice President , but somebody in the west wing has to be involved here. We have to find a way to ensure that its elevated and given the stature that it truly deserves. We also felt that the importance of creating some the wherewithal to deal with this issue and the response and the Recovery Period with real medical applications that just havent been developed so far. So as i look at what kansas state has done and so add my rabblely providing the leadership they have and now here at the bpc, im encouraged that weve elevated it. Im encouraged that theres a call for hire priority. Im encouraged that with this new administration, whoever that may be, and new congress that will have an opportunity to build a broader context for this whole issue that we have right now, but weve got to do one thing that weve failed to do for the last 15 years. We have to move from rhetoric to action. We have to find ways to put an action plan into place and im hopeful we can talk about that today. Before asking you to talk a little bit about the remarkable things happening in kansas state. This is a real pleasure to welcome our good friend mike rogers to this discussion. Mike was the representative of the eighth district from michigan from 20012005. I think most of you know is the chairman of House Select Committee on intelligence. Mike has been the leading voice on this issue for a number of years. Hes worked hard to create bio medical into congress. He has also the closest thing to a tv celebrity here at the Bipartisan Policy Center, we look forward to hearing in a moment, but, general. Jason, thank you. And senator good to be with you again. I think the last time was in the middle of the night in the plane somewhere, you had been speaking somewhere, i was begging a ride and you were kind enough to help me out. Its good to be with you and weve been together on a couple at least one other panel. And your insights are always much appreciated. I think back to 9 11. I was getting ready for confirmation hearing. And i got there a little before 9 00 but before the first power was struck in new york city and senator of cleveland and then georgia and hes bringing up some tea. Tea drinker and wanted me to share some of this great tea and we called it off because we knew something was up and i think about how we had how we thought about threats to the United States prior to 9 11 and there might have been somebody somewhere that it said, well, you know, the way these nonnations state actors terrorists in other parts of the world could impact, they could run them into buildings. Nobody really thought of that there might be somebody somewhere that thought about it. It certainly has risen threat. And as we look back determined, but the time people were concerned about that, but thats kind of one scenario. And we had to deal with the aftermath and still dealing with the aftermath. But in 1999, actually, kansas state put out a report, a study on homeland defense, food Safety Security and Emergency Preparedness program. It talks about the threat to our food animal, food plants and even threats from terror, if it doesnt occur naturally. And so maybe they were ahead of themselves. I never once i was made aware of this report when i was chairman, i thought it was really, really good work. But since then, frankly, not much has happened to change the landscape. The recommendations in the commissions report the recommendations here and the thoughts here not many, if any that makes us any safer from these kind of threats. So 9 11, we couldnt anticipate or we didnt anticipate. Here weve had plenty of warning. We know what the possibilities are. And we know people around the globe are interested, particularly people who would wish us, you know, discover pretty quickly and the sights that al qaeda were occupying and theyre working to develop, excuse me, by weapons targeting people and food in america. The list included six human pathogens, six livestock and poultry pathogens, and four crop pathogens, by the way, ill talk a little bit more about crops in just a minute. But crops are often left out of this equation, they tier the last thing people think about. But the bottom line to all of that, the planning for some sort of man made event, terror event in the United States has been around for a long time. The good news is, when you put in a system to deal with naturally occurring pathogens, you also help with the terror piece of it. So its something we ought to be doing in any case. I think we have a heightened state of urgency here about deterring the terror piece of it. Sa Osama Bin Laden had said any time, the economic goal was pleading america to the point of bankruptcy. It was said a lot, that was their goal. And just recently, one of the operational leaders of isis recently killed by u. S. Air strike declared this was from daniel from one of his blogs. He said here is what this isis leader said, the smallest action you do and the harder their in the heart of their land is dear to us than the largest action by us and more effective and more damaging to them. So, the beat goes on. Weve been warned. And as you know anything about the current threat from al qaeda, isis, is when they say things theyre thinking about them, theyre planning them and its as the senator said, its just its not an if, its when its going to happen and will we be prepared. Other countries are working on this. Russia continues to work on these kind of weapons, certainly north korea, other countries as well. With recent technology to manipulate so forth has become lot easier to develop these weapons. Theres some off the Shelf Technology that makes it a lot easier in todays world than it has in the last decade. I would just agree with the senator, were not ready in this country. Livestock examples will be handle primarily, i think, and we have doctor beckham, that Medicine College out at kansas state and shes she has personal experience with animal pathogens that do not the transfer and shell probably cover that when she talks. But i would like to talk about just two examples to crops and not because kansas is a weak state or south dakota is a weak state. This is because we, along with rice, make up 3 of the coloric intake. Probably didnt go notice by many that we blast, which is a fungle disease in bangladesh and 100 of the crops. Bangladesh is were busy trying theyll get there intentionally and it came across the sea and across borders, probably in a container of food stuff made it. And we work on it and there are some solutions being tested but it was probably not going to be one solution that fits all ca s cases. And then in afghanistan, usda found these mixed in with wheat flower samples. They had over 150, and what they do is effect us as humans and low doses they can cause hallucinations and large doses they can cause neurological disease and amputation. So and we know these go way back to the middle ages. We see paintings that show that. A couple of examples of pathogens that are can effect our crops and that can effect, as somebody mentioned, i dont know, jason who was this 1 trillion ag economy that we have in this country, 50 of our gdp. I think when we think about threats to food animals, food crops. You think about the ranchers and farmers problems. Theyre a very small part of. In terms of numbers, theyre a very small part of the numbers involved in the food chain. When you get to 15 of gdp or thereabouts this becomes for our country. Finally, ill just say kansas state, one of the funnest things to see in manhattan kansas four very large construction cranes you dont often see them and theres these huge construction cranes that are helping build the National Mile agri security facility there in manhattan and theyre going to be pouring concrete for almost two years and it was the probably the deepest hole ive seen in manhattan and now its being filled with concrete. Thats where the capability is moving and were going to hopefully see that come to fruition and theyll help study these diseases, continue studying these diseases and coming up with ways to protect ourselves. The diseases will work in the in bath. They can transfer from animals to humans. So some really bad stuff. In the end, what a nation what an adversary, to create in the populace, distrust of the government the one way you do that is rate fear. Food crop diseases in the United States it can be an Economic Impact as well. It can be real impact in our diets. It can create an element of fear no matter really how small and i think its something we need to be thinking about and preparing for. These are almost a perfect weapons because all of the condoms are relatively soft targets. Theres no danger to the perpetrator. Theyre not going to, in most cases, be injured by what they do. I mean, in many ways theyre the perfect weapon. And ill save the rest of my time for questions, thank you. How do you see this issue and where do you see opportunities to improve our situation. Good to see you again, mr. Chairman. This is a good time to bring in the drink carts. I dont know if its going to get much better. And public reports t information on that computer was a bit concerning. It talked about a strategy for using biological warfare to further their aims and gains. The recurring theme was that its much easier to obtain a biological weapon than it is a Nuclear Weapon. So all the conversations a we had and the frustration i sensed from senator who was at the front end of this, receiving end of this and where we are today and the lack of progress, really, weve made some i think some good efforts, the legislation, we now have 160 different therapeutics or vaccines that were developed through barta trying to make sure we can get rid some of the valley of death in the development of vaccines and therapeutics and other things. The pandemic preparedness bill which both of these are bipartisan efforts. The only problem is people vlakked interest in funding the full application of what it means. We have huge institutions across the government that deals with this of nuclear its well coordinated. We have intelligence community, every aspect of scientific community. Everybody is integrated understanding the real threat of that Weapon System in any form, either a small radiological dirty bomb up to a full blown nuclear explosion. And so weve spent a lot of time effort and energy getting that command in control, putting the intellectual capability. I think what were going to argue today is we need to do that now. The enemy is much more sofisticated than they use to be. If you think about even the recent out breaks that both of you have talked about, ebola was actually studied by soviet scientists way back in the 70s as a weapon of opportunity. We saw it naturally in africa. So the only thing left was to send in the military for mobile hospital units and that created a whole bunch of problems in and of itself. Thankfully, there were other things that kind of happened that naturally took care of this problem. If that were to happen again today, i would venture to guess were no better prepared than we were at the out break of ebola. And we know for a fact that Intelligent Services and adversary scientists has worked on that as a system. We know for a fact that rice blast was the other one that we knew kansas works on wheat blast, theres some similaritities. That was a weaponized system designed to deny their enemies you want to go after logistics that was exactly what could you deny your adversary access to food products, militarily. So what we talked about into the economics of a food chain, houston, we have a problem all of that is real. The sophistication of our adversary in isis, the days of the monkey in small camps scattered across the middle east are gone they had the right capability and the right understanding of how to process, develop and deliver biological weapon. I agree with both the general and senator, it will happen, its a matter of how were prepared to respond to it and have we set ourselves up in being successful, beating it, disrupting it and reacting to it. I think today, probably not. We know there are four things cared deeply about. I think it was flattering me a little bit to be included in that list he wrote a lovely letter that was and encouraged us to take a look at that. Clearly its motivating a lot of resources my first question is why is bio security been on that priority list. Like you indicated that we had a tremendous amount of is this just longevity. Or is there some reluctance. A little bit of both, i think. And theyre exceptionally good and over a period of years, decades, really, theyve developed this expertise and thats integrated back in the military community and there were real things that they could see to work on. We knew at one time that north korea was trying to export components of Nuclear Components to iran. We watched that happen. Same with countries like bangladesh and other places you could see these materials moving around. It was a very real threat and it plugged into a real architecture. Thats an easy thing to do. And its important work. You dont want that material going anywhere. We just havent had that. And so we have some really bright folks in the u. S. Government who understand this threat very well. But they cant go back and plug in to this kind of an operation, this kind of an integrated established operation. And its pretty hard to go to congress these days, i mean, if we cant get the pandemic readiness bill funded and we know we have these problems, the bird flu, i think, took 25 of the birds in iowa, one event, 25 , imagine if this was a targeted event. We would be in some trouble with our food system. We. I think we can. It is going to take a little bit of investment and it is going to take a little bit of rethinking of how we structure bio defense that broader intelligence and military. So, tell us in terms of oh, please. And i think mike pretty much covered it. Just to emphasize, you know, when you research the literature, currently, if they did, its a long time ago. Like other threats that are maybe more tangible and strike the imagination in different ways. When you look through the intelligence, its not one of the priorities and that so we have some people that are looking at that very closely, we have a Fusion Center that actually does pretty good work here, but theyre not many other folks helping in that regard. Were just not gather the intelligence. And we know its coming, right. We know this is a possibility. One of the ways you protect yourselves you start gathering intelligence we dont have that. If we stumble across it, thats fine. Its not deliberate. Start to think a little bit about the prioritization of the initial steps and serve on the Blue Ribbon Commission we think other panelists are aware of and the most prominent effort to call these issues together. Can you talk a little bit about the framework and what the feeling was about the top priorities. You asked the question why is there a difference between nuclear and biological and i think theres two parts to the answer, first is awareness. People dont need to be people can see a Mushroom Cloud and know exactly the ramifications of a much room cloud. How do you see what were talking about no food or the threat to food and the aspects around the biological threats to agriculture. Its harder to visualize, but when you think about the fact that and the next 40 years we have to produce more food than we did in the last 4,000. Well have almost 10 billion people and it took us to about 1850 to get the first billion. So four years producing more food in the last 4,000. 1 trillion of our economy as the general just noted is agri churl so the awareness is there, we just and that leads me to the second part of the answer, we need leadership. We need somebody who can take this and make it the kind of priority it deserves to be. But one of the problems we have in any governmental infrastructure and when you think about this challenge youve got an agriculture component. Youve got an nfc component. Youve got a defense component. And all of these entities are not coordinated like they need to be. Its easy to talk about it and its easy to put more papers out there. Its harder to take that very eclectic array of bureaucracies and say were going to integrate this in a way that produces an action plan that really provides some direction and i believe if it aint in the oval office. Its got to be west wing driven. To elevate above all these agencies just as judge biden is doing so admirable. Its going to take a moon shot like approach led by the Vice President or somebody of that stature to make this happen. When the white house tries to coordinate around one person who is not subject congressional oversight. Weve seen their tension there just on the basis separation of powers and institutional ego. Obviously theres a desperate need on coordination, how could that happen between executive and legislative branch. My mom use to say invitation to the party solves all your grass issues. You invite your neighbor and you can part on your lawn. Work with me, people, work with me. On this. My mom was a brilliant woman. I think you have to include congress in the conversation. So i think if the executive branch goes off and tries to do this on their own, i dont think it will work. I think you need some representation from, a, members who are keenly interested the right committees an get them participating in that conversation. If you had that the Vice President on the council for bio defense, then i would recommend you bring some folks from the house and senate who are interested in the issue and are committed to being a part of it. I think if you do that, youll get much more buy in. Congressional reform on oversig oversight, we could have four panels lasting six days. Is there still oversight. Yeah, exactly. Maybe not these days. But the problem is you have, the dni told me at one time, if theres an event he has to appear before Something Like 159 committees. I forget the numbers. Its outrageous. Hes going to spend all of his time running around who have a little slice of jurisdiction on this. I think its horrific waste of time and i dont think its good oversight. I would like to see realignment with oversight issues with big issues like this so you get a better product. I will note that we have the pleasure of working with hamilton. If there are about 103 committees that dhs has to report to and its just one of the advantages to have the responsibility at least it would get the executive branch organized because they have to get their act together, as well. So, i mean, there will be a lot of benefits to doing this and we just cant assume the executive branch is well organized for this particular effort. I mean, different departments have different views and what their responsibilities are and somebody has to lead that. It only happens, i agreed totally, having seen been to a couple of wars now and seen how you try to harness all instruments of National Power to bring that on afghanistan or iraq. The only way it really works is if somebody is in charge. You have somebody that has to be in charge on the executive charge, for sure. Were focusing on the federal questions. If this is going to be a whole of government response, theres obviously important roles that the state and local level and i wonder if any of you are aware of those efforts and to what extent is this more of a focus, you know, closer to the problem. First of all, i think kansas and consist kst state deserve real accommodation for the leadership. They have a unique program and really begin to put the action plan together with research and coordination unlike anything weve witnessed before. I think some states have begun to put plans together. Theres a requirement that each state have a plan, but it isnt coordinated. It isnt really understood from one state to the next. Theres very little interactive experience from one state to the next. Again, it begs for a federal framework even though there is, as you say, a Critical Role to play as you saw with new york and pennsylvania after 9 11 and virginia and washington. But that coordinated effort really has to emanate from someplace, right now it doesnt exist. I give great credit to some of the governor who is have elevated it within their states but a lot more needs to be done to make it kind of the National Framework that is going to be required for a national response. The one place in the state of kansas and i already referred to our intelligence center, which, i think, using the word unique applies here because according to the folks in Homeland Security it is unique. But theyre the ones theres one group that are looking through all of the intelligence trying to connect the dots about what might be coming our way in a nefarious sense. There are a lot of research, were one university. I know and dr. Beckham knows more about this than i do, we were talking beforehand about an effort between texas a m and kansas state senators to work when an out break occurs it gets reported quickly and we can start to come up with protocols to deal with it. That is in jeopardy. Its the only program, i think, of its kind out there. Its been pretty successful. But its only going to live so long. So the premise is exactly right. I think a lot of this has to happen at the state level. It can happen. There are a lot of people that are ready for action, but better coordination, appropriate funding, whatever that means, to make these things come to life is whats needed. Any final thoughts before we open it up to questions. And we saw this right after 9 11 and we were trying to put together pandemic issue. What do we stock pie. How do we get it there. And the states have to be a part of that solution on two phases, one, i use to get people coming into my office, god love them. As my mother would say, who wanted the big command centers and, you know, had population four, but they had to have everything that the major urban areas had and it really made no sense whatsoever and the political pressure put on the state Emergency Responders was pretty significant and that pressure came to congress and everybody wanted what everybody had. We dont have that much money. I would love to send the most Sophisticated Technology to the lowest population county, candidly, it doesnt make sense to do that we have to get the resources part right. B, i think it was last year, 2015, the Homeland Security committee did some work and found that people didnt even know where to go to access the materials that of which they might need to be prepared. The process, they didnt know who to call. They didnt know how to go through the process. I dont care if its radiological their what we found was, lots of materials that we had purchased along the way is now expired the shelf life is over and we still have it and it hasnt been deployed and now what do you do, do you have to go back and repurchase all of this new stuff to sit on the shelf for five years. It was pretty expensive to go through this operation. Weve got to get that piece figured out soon. Not every state is going to need exactly the same thing. We ought to be okay with that. And we ought to be able to work with the states, to direct those dollars from the central Central Location to get the right thing at the right place at the right price. We just dont have the money to spend in every you know, every city and every corner of the country. Its not going to happen. That replaces plum island. That deals with the diseases, both that occur around the world, actually. To helm work on these diseases is, i think, still a little bit of a question mark, or a big question mark, frankly. Thats just another example. Thats got to be part of the solution. Thats not the only solution, its part of the solution for some of the worst that we can come across. And were still not clear what the direction is going to be after its built. Now, weve got a couple of years to figure that out, but theyll pass quickly and things have to be laid in place while were doing work at another level three lab on campus to prepare for people for working in the in bath. Not just at this moment. They have microphone holders and they had about 15 minutes for thoughts, particularly questions and if you identify who you are, that would be appreciated. Good morning. Excuse me, my name is andy mccabe. Im the ceo of the association of veteran medical american colleges. In recent years weve seen the emergents of microbial resistance is capturing great attention at the national and International Level. And i wonder if you can comment on the ways that you see that as an opportunity to synergyize effort es here. In other words how many cry sees or emerging threats can we focus on at a time and what does it mean to improve on these efforts or to say, well, that kind of distinguishes these things here in bio defense, if you can comment on that, that would be great. And maybe can you keep the mike up here. If you unpack the question a little bit. I think we understand theres a big tension between antibiotics and the potential for pathogen resistance, if you can say a little more for the audience. What im thinking about is the recent efforts over the last couple of years at the national and International Level to focus on antimicrobial resistance, anything from the president s commission and recently the United Nations efforts on this. So theres a growing effort and mobilization to attack this issue. Weve talked about how bio defense has been an issue that is below the radar. Its not capturing the attention that it needs despite a lot of people talking about it for many years. I know youve worked on this a lot in your career. So is there value in attaching this to antimicrobial resistance. Or does it dilute this effort and dilute attention and focus. Actually, i dont think theres a clear answer to that question. I think it has to be explored. Theres little doubt that technology is continued to advance in, you know, moores law is still in effect. I think as it unfolds and as we understand the amazing technological advances, the real question were going to have is, can policy stay abreast . And in this context, can we come up with a mechanism that accounts for this amazing technological advance. I oftentimes say that i the American People speak to their government in the 21st century. The government listens in the 20th century and responds in the 19th century. And what we have to do is figure out a way for the government to stay, at least, within reach of the Technological Advancements were making and i dont know. I dont have an answer to your question today. But it definitely requires us to analyze just whether or not it would make sense for us to do it and if we did do it, how would we do it effectively and take advantage of what Technological Advancements were making. I expect we can. Are there questions. I appreciate the panels work to highlight the issue in the plan that vbc has done or the research at kansas state thats been highlighted. Context in whats needed. Strategic Partnership Agreements that have flown out of hspd 7 and 9 that have been congressional actions to get the executive to take action. And sort of saying, what is the coordination thats lacking that has tried to be set up in National Infrastructure protection plan, what is the intelligence, sort of, coordination thats lacking in Partnership Agreements, you know, with private entities and the states . Just kind of you know, asking where are those next steps . Because there are these plans that have been developed in the past ten years. Any of you have a ill take a stab at it. I came skeptical to this idea that the Vice President should have this biodefense committee or council. I was a little skeptical of it at first and the more i get into it, the more i think senator daschle is right. You have to have somebody that can peer over all of the tubes and there are some great activity in one place that doesnt no ones aware of in the other place, and there is really no opportunity to have that discussion in a real and meaningful way. Its all personality based now. If somebody knows somebody, they can pick up the phone and have a conversation and get something done. That happens. The problem is there is no one entity that, as i said, draw all of those people to the same place to force that kind of a conversation. And if you look at the dni model, that was exactly the same problem we were having up to 9 11, great work was happening all over the intelligence community, but not one person could pull them together in a place and say weve got to kind of do a joint effort here and if youre spending 10 on that and ive got 3 over here, wouldnt it be better to spend 12 on the same problem . And so and save a buck. And so that, i think, has to happen here if were going to get any of that, and, again, some of that congressional action is based on the silo effect as well. Right, this is my little lane and im going to take care, make sure my lane is doing it exactly right. You need that, i think, that command and control structure that forces collaboration, not because people dont want to do it, but the system is not built to allow them to do it in a way that i think is productive. So let me just add to that from sort of an airmans perspective. When i was commander of u. S. Space command, i went to a meeting of all the combatant commanders, the pentagon and deputy secretary of defense then dr. John hemry, asked people in the room who thinks theyre responsible for we called it Computer Network defense back in the 9 0s iss, but Cyber Defense. Who thinks theyre responsible for Cyber Defense . Everybody raised their hands. He says, well, we got a problem. If everybody thinks theyre in charge, nobodys in charge. So i think what were kind of the crux of your question, theres been a lot of things that will enable right things to happen, but somebody has to think its important. Somebody thinks this has to be a National Security issue and then it might flow from there, but i think the priority is not there. My Research Says that some people are just kind of pushing it they dont want to think about it. Its really hard, right . Its really hard. Its i dont know if its any harder than nuclear or nonproliferation, but people its just hard to get your arms around. It will involve lots of entities that will be doing lots of research and has to come together in some ways sharing research. Not one of the strong suits of researchers to share what theyre doing. So in general. And so i think its more that. Its just priority issue. Not necessarily a inside the executive branch, probably inside of the legislative branch, a lot of people think this is theirs. And thats good, but we need more cohesiveness, more it were going to get focused on the problem, somebodys got to be in charge. Somebody in the executive branch, whatever committees, primary committees, on the hill. Somebodys got to be in charge of this. Time for a couple more questions. Good morning. Thank you for speaking today. My name is caroline kennedy. Im an Operations Coordinator with the International Biosecurity and prevention forum. So this is u. S. Government initiative, we do a lot of outreach to make sure people are sharing best practices internationally and domestically. As we do do so much outreach, i find that many of the scientists or Public Health officials have a pretty good understanding of biosecurity and some of the threats that we face. Someone mentioned that we need to work on making sure that everyone is understanding and visualizing what the biological threat is and i think thats a major issue that thats lacking in the general public, and in fact, lacking in the general public then were not going to get that impetus to further legislation on that. So essentially my question is, what do we do to better enable visualization of the biological and agricultural threat . Thats a great question. A good documentary. Im for that. That gets peoples attention. A good documentary. I mean, what was the one on nuclear war day after. Yeah, day after. Gets peoples attention. All of a sudden you say, this isnt good, what can we do to stop this . I think a good documentary on this would be very helpful to one that captured peoples imaginations that was, you know, factual as you can make it. Not hyperbole. Not too much drama, but just kind of explain how this how things could go wrong, and i dont know if thats right i agree with general myers. I also think if i could go back to the comment, we ought to take the lessons weve acquired from the experiences weve had in the last 15 years, whether its Avian Influenza or ebola or h1n1. I mean, there are lessons there and we havent, you know, again, because i dont think weve had the leadership, and this isnt meant to be a partisan issue at all, it just because weve not had the prioritization, maybe thats a better word, people havent made the connection between natural and deliberate. And weve got to do a better job of making the connection. Whether its a documentary or leadership that can speak to the issue around the country or this coordinated effort that weve all talked about between congress and the administration. Somebody has to make the link, the segue, between natural and deliberate and say, look, this situation, as bad as it is, could be 100 times worse if it were deliberate set of circumstances that doesnt take much imagination but that connection i think could be very he help. I would only add if you watch all eight episodes of the classified on cnn there you go. It will give you a great idea of how you could do it and ill take any ideas you have, watching all eight episodes of declassified. The eight cd disc isa wonderful Stocking Stuffer if anybody is thinking of the holidays. I think we have time for one last question. Good morning. Youre good. My name is chris lewis. Im a proud kansas state grad. You talked a lot today about the national response, with ebola excuse me, with ebola, Avian Influenza, obviously it is a worldwide potential problem. How much is the International Response and International Relationship development being addressed at this point . Thank you. Maybe ill start just by saying i think its sort of the the same set of problems we have domestically, we face internationally. Ironically, with all the challenges we face in many parts of the world as a result of these pandemics, we dont see much more leadership internationally than we do midwest ical domestically. In part, its a requirement that the United States step up to the plate and provide that elevated leadership and prioritization, but we have to do the same thing internationally weve done domestically and take those Lessons Learned and apply them to deliberate circumstances that could occur and will occur at some point in the future. I think if you look at the International Position and all the things we just talked about, how do you muster resources, how do you have a Central Organization that helps get the resources where they have to go . If you see the problems were having, magnify them by ten overseas. Ive been in some of these International Forums and you can see in some cases theyre five and ten years behind, again, not because they dont have the interest or the effort, they just cant muster the same kind of resources and their systems are almost more defuse than ours are. Internationally, in the United States, wrestling with the same problem. Theirs just seem a little worse. Thats where i think we can provide some leadership and some help on an international basis to get all of our resources mustered up. Maybe not everybody has to show up in liberia when ebola breaks out. Maybe thats not the right decision. You know, now everybody wants to show up at the same place and commit some kind of a resource. Maybe thats not the right answer. Maybe we break this up a lot like nate toe dnato did. Some people can do airplanes. Some people can do signals. We ought to start looking at that around the globe and say well create our Deployment Opportunities based on what cape abouts y capabilities you bring to the table. What happens overtime, everybodys capabilities go up over time. We have to start somewhere. Thats what id start to do. Thats why were behind the International Effort for pandemic response. Were not prepared internationally and the case study i would use is ebola. I was aware of some of the things going on in the department of defense to help and actually on a board of a Nonprofit Research institute has well that was contributing to that. But there was a lot of confusion, a lot of false starts. Thats probably indicative of how well prepared we are internationally for ebola and probably most food animal, food plant kind of problems. I wonder with wheat grass in bangladesh, with we sure it came in the way they think it came in . Are we susceptible in the United States . What steps are we taking to make sure that doesnt happen in our wheat crop, for instance . I dont know the answer, im sorry, i dont know the answer to that question, but i think these are international problems. They dont know borders. Weve got most of the bad stuff is either in this country or on the borders. Lot of it is, anyway. This is this is dangerous stuff. And we ought to approach it the same way we approach some of the human diseases that we worry so much an, in bout, in my opinion i want to ask you all to thank our first panel. Were going to now transition to some of the details with our expert panel. I will just note that bill hoagland, senior Vice President , is going to be moderating this panel. As many of you know, bill is one of the most credible people in this town when it comes to anything to do with economics, budget and finance. He may tell you he started his career at usda. He may not tell you that he leaves once a year to go home and help harvest the wheat. When it comes to some ag creds, bills a real deal. Thank you, bill. Good morning, everyone. Jason took away what i wanted to say at the im the only agricultural economist here at bpc from what i know, and so first of all, welcome, everybody, but welcome particularly to my aggie colleagues out there. Also, jason mentioned theres a kansas influence here at bpc in the form of one of our founders being, of course, bob dold buti would also point out were influenced daily by another major kansan, thats secretary dan glikman who works with us on a lot of issues here and we really appreciate the influence of kansas. Let me say this second panel here is very distinguished. You have their bios so im not going to go into all that. Were going to focus on Animal Health a little bit here and i think probably build upon a number of the issues that came up in the Previous Panel. First of all, just let me introduce them as we go down the line here. To my immediate left here is tammy beckham, shes been mentioned already by the acting president. Shes the dean of the Kansas State University college of veterinary medicine. Bob kadlec, Deputy Director with u. S. Senate select committee on intelligence, and last but certainly not least, asha george, codirector of the panel that you heard about in the blue ribbon study panel. Before we get into some questions that i have, would each of you take just a couple of minutes and tell the audience about your perspectives on the bioagra defense landscape and on a i dont know if we can up the optimism from the first panel but on a scale from one to ten, ten being the best, where would you rate the security of our food system today from potentially deadly pathogens coming into it . Tammy, ill start with you. Sure, first of all, its an honor to be here today, so thank you very much. Its an honor to be here with my panelists. This is a particular passion of mine as its been a large part of my career and protecting the food system is just incredibly important. I mean, as we sit here today, the Agricultural Industry gives us one of the safest, most affordable and abundant Food Supplies in the world, so on average, ill just give you some statistics. Consumers only spend 6. 4 of their annual expenditures on food and if you compare that globally, its anywhere between 11 to 47 . So we know we have a very robust agricultural system and were very thankful for that. The very things that make it so robust also make it so very susceptible to disease introduction. So we know, too, and we talked about it previously that theres probably a little bit of complacency. We havent seen foot and mouth disease in the u. S. Since 1929. We dont have african swine fever. We dont have other diseases that are nationally occurring abroad. We ask ourselves this morning how come its so difficult to get our arms around whats happening in the biological arena. These pathogens are found naturally around the globe. Its very difficult to get your arms around where they are and how they move because theyre naturally occurring organisms. We see them every day globally and we can talk little bit about the global perspective here in a few minutes. But we also know going back to the comments that were made earlier about what was said with naturally occurring issues that weve seen a lot of those, too, over the last several years and the last decades. So weve had p. E. D. And weve had a. I. , Avian Influenza incursions and we can use those and have used those, i believe, to help us prepare for that intentional or next natural introduction of a transboundary disease. I think there has been Lessons Learned and i think there have been things accomplished since 2001 and a great deal. We can go over some of those. I do think there are critical gaps that still exist. Ill tell you that it wasnt until 2014 when ebola happened that the true meaning of one health i think came to light, and that we saw some of the critical gaps that we face in bio and agro defense. As many of you might remember, there was a nurse who was infected with ebola and she had a dog so that brought to light the issue around one health and just how close our Companion Animals are to people on a daily basis and just what that risk can be from interacting on a daytoday basis whether with our livestock or food system or whether thats with our Companion Animals. We know we also didnt have the countermeasures available to deal with that particular outbreak. We didnt have diagnostic tests that were validated for animals that we could use to test the dog at that time and we didnt have policies if place to show how we would handle it, quarantine, those types of things. Ill call out to usda, dod, those people came together and quickly put together policies and procedures and value dated the diagnostic test so we had those. In that event, we were very much left on how we were going to handle that particular case. Had there been other animals and other Companion Animals, where would they have gone, where would they be put in quarantine . Those kind of things came to light. So we do have critical gaps that exist in our preparedness. Theres been a lot done since 200 2001. We have surveillance plans. We got the prep plans from usda. We got Business Continuity plans that have been developed with our industry and sectors. All of those things have been done since 2001 and theyve been coordinated with our federal government to our states with our industry partners. And so i want to give to a shoutout to those agencies that helped coordinate that and private industry that helped coordinate that as well and academias role in all of that, too. However, as i said, i think we do still have a lot of gaps. We dont have a comprehensive b biodefense program. We talked a lot this morning about barta, thats a production of countermeasures for humans. We dont have anything on the animal side that is analogous to what barta is. The Strategic National stockpile is funded to a much greater extent than the National Veterinary stockpile and so we have to give some light to, and we have to shed some light on, the agricultural and Companion Animal side of the house when it comes to bio and agro defense. I think thats kind of what were here today. Success in addressing these gaps obviously are going to be really dependent on one Health Concept and taking an all of agency, all of state, all of industry approach to addressing these things. And as i mentioned, i think we have to have some capability to incentivize this activity. Through funding, through real leadership at the top thats going to encourage people to work together. There are people working together today through one Health Initiatives within the agencies, through the states, through the industries. We have to bring this more into focus on a very much higher level. And then we have to incentivize people to work in this area and then the other thing that ill say is on a global level. These diseases occur naturally. We are doing a lot on the global level through the Global Health security agenda. We work with our partners at oie, to help build capacity in the International Arena and we do so through incentivizing them, these developing countries, to work in a one health context. We do that much less in the u. S. Because of the way were funded. The medical side does one thing, the animal side does the other thing. We have to through the leadership, the industries, usda, tdod, we have to bring ths together so were using our resources better, coordinating better and leveraging resources. When we talk about barta, theres an animal side of it. We have funding for the National Veterinary stockpile. We have to bring these things together and have a higher level conversation on how we koo coordinate these events. So thats all i have. From one to ten . Oh, i knew you were going to make me put a number on it. Yes, i am. Im going to give this a six today. Good. Bob . Thank you. First of all, first of all, thank you for the invitation to be here and to be part of this panel. Certainly this is an area of great interest to me. I would take a similar approach to tammys in terms of cataloging a variety of different elements of what we have here. Im going to start with a number because, quite frankly, you cant give a single number. As tammy appropriately put out or identified is that theres a federal component to the state and local and clearly a commercial industry component. So first of all, ill start with the commercial industry. I give them an eight or a nine because why . Why, because their brand and profit share depends on ability to provide safe food to us. And so you can imagine if there is a circumstance where something is deliberately introduced into the food chain, something naturally occurred in the food chain is really theirs that has to be protected in terms of how theyre going to respond to that. In some ways the incentives are implicitly there for the industry to do these things and they do it. I think from the state and local activities, ill just use iowa as an example, and ill kind of embellish a little bit of what chairman rogers taked about in terms of the Avian Influenzaout break that occurred in iowa in 2015, that single outbreak not only killed 25 or had to kill 25 of their bird flock but cost 1. 2 billion and significantly 8,500 jobs. And decreased both federal and state tax revenues. The effects of these events even when theyre fairly localized are pretty enormous. State and local authorities that have significant Agro Business in their area, whether it with california, iowa, North Carolina, arkansas, whatever, they essential lcertainly take seriously because its their home turf, if you will, and jobs and state economies that are dependent on it. Ill give them a seven or eight on it. When i look to the federal government, for the reasons i think the Previous Panel said with great, i think, detail and authority, more than i can offer, is simply is probably about a three or four. Why . Because its not an obvious visible priority. If you looked at the latest farm bill and asked yourself what provision was in there for food defense or agricultural security, i think youd be hard pressed to find anything of that nature in that bill. And is that an issue of congress . Is tit an issue of the congress or executive branch . The answer is as weve heard the many silos of excellence that exist across the domain and quite frankly the preponderance in the biodefense area, i can speak authoritytively on this have been focused on the human health issues. During my tenure in the white house when i served originally back in 2002 to 2005 then again in 2007 to 2009, the issue of one health was just emerging as a concept. The idea that this has not been, if you will, embraced entirely through the entirety of government i think is really a function i think as senator daschle spoke eloquently on about leadership, focusing on these areas. The gentleman asked the question about antimicrobial resistance, where does that fit into the priority . I say it fits squarely into the food ag defense business because as we have found out through that experience that the preponderance of antibiotic use has been in the food agricultural business where that has put great pressure on the creation of arguably resistance strains so as companies now are voluntarily withdrawing the use of these antibiotics on wide scale, thats putting an onus on those companies to basically use other kinds of methods to limit the growth of pathogenic bacteria that could get into the food system so it kind of focuses on our ability to have good surveillance and how do we monitor those stock herds or those herds, whatever the animal species is, to ensure that they are not necessarily posing a risk to the consumers of those products . So i would say thats one area. The last thing ill say is, again, to give you the low marks for the federal government, somebody mentioned hspd9. Its one of the few hspds you dont hear very much about in the biodefense world. I will say the author of this was a fellow ksu grad, kurt mann, a veterinarian of some distinction, who went on to be a deputy secretary at usda. Heres the challenge with that is, that does not figure prominently in some of the conversations theyre having in the halls of congress or in the halls of the executive Office Buildings around town. And its because, primarily, again, one issue of leadership. If you look at the number of things that are contained in that particular document, which is awareness and warning, great vulnerability assessments, mitigation strategies, response planning, research and development, outreach and professional development, you heard that some of these things have been set into motion and quite frankly people take them seriously. Obviously the people at the ground level with the muddy boots who are growing the crops or managing those herds have been focused entirely on those issues daytod to day because s there are livelihood, thats their careers. In the washington sphere, inside the beltway, thats certainly had not the same sway. I think that really does get to the point of Senior Leadership and focus and priority on these issues. Im hardened to hear the Obama Administration recreated the senior position in the white house for biodefense security. Where is that veterinarian whos managing these issues in i dont know if that person exists yet. The transition now to a new administration. The idea this can be a central part of that. Whether its the Vice President or someone else who manages that port po portfolio. Its critical it does get managed. Just to highlight one thing, again, we talked a lot about terrorism and i dont doubt that terrorists are out there planning bad things against good people like us. We live in a very different world. Im going to give you little bit of a reference to something thats worth a read which is talk about the gray zone. The idea that competition amongst great powers or countries in the world today will exist the level of overconflict. If you google gray zone, youll find scholarly military papers on the subject. Its called hybrid warfare. This idea, talk warfare as weve seen with cyber in a way thats nonattributable, very difficult to attribute to basically take its toll on a society or country. It certainly has economic it has economic input. Arguably you could look at these same set of issues as it would relate to someone who would deliberately try to attack one of our gemstones of our society and that is our food and agricultural production. Critical infrastructure around that. So i just offer that as an issue that as we go forward that has to be central to whoever takes over the reins of government both in congress and in the white house. Obviously in congress, its a little harder. You have a number of committees of jurisdiction. We talked about department of agriculture. The agricultural committee. Interior department has a role in this. Epa has a role in this. Hhs has a role in this. So you can imagine the difficulty that will happen, but a lot of these difficulties can be managed with good leadership and a prioritized focus on these set of issues. Thank you. Asha . I, too, am going to join bob in issuing multiple numbers for multiple things. The reason for that is that, you know, were talking about agriculture like its the singular like it a singular thing. One word for one thing. And the truth of the matter is, the sector is composed of all different kinds of things. The supply chain and food and crops and farmers and industry and people involved in pharmaceuticals and all of it. All of it is so its so much. And so you would have to assign i think youd have to assign a number for each and every one of those elements. And how they average out, i dont actually know, but i would also say that the number we might assign today is going to change tomorrow, is different last week, last year, a few years ago, back when bob was in the white house and so forth. And i think that thats okay. I just wish that somebody was continuing to ask that question, where are we . How do we feel about it . I think that in addition to just an enormous and extremely complex sector that were worried about being attacked, naturally or intentionally, this issue of Economic Impact is a huge driver. And as a driver for everybody all the way down to the lowest level person, boots on the ground, different types of boots on the ground, down with the farms. People are, you know, concerned about it but theyre concerned about it in terms of their liveliho livelihood. Cant get everybody to be all excited about it because, oh, somebody is working on an agent, weaponizing it, moving it, whatever. You can get people interested in this issue just from the economic standpoint. You know, the case in point for that would be white house studies that were done shortly after the foot and mouth disease outbreak in europe. A number of years ago. We dont see a whole lot of National Economic Council Study on disease events but we did back then. Its an important driver but again now were talking about the economy and talking about inputs into the economy, how we optimize various elements of the economy. Even so, going back to what was said earlier by chairman rogers, we have statements from terrorists and nationstate actors saying they want to attack the economy. This is one way and we cant afford to just disregard it. I think another point i would like to make is that in our attempt to address complicated problems, we take a tangle of what they are composed of and we separate those pieces out. And we say theres human disease over here, theres the cyber thing happening here, has an interface with some things. Well, we have a livestock issue, we have a crop issue, we have potential for attacking supply chain vulnerabilities and so forth and we separate them and then we say, well, department of commerce, youre in charge of this and that sounds like a department of ag thing. Oh, well accept that, and that is now in dhs, so theres a dhs thing. But we separate them out and we try and address those individual strands individually not that were doing such a great job of that but thats what we try and do. I think, then, that leaves us separated and we unnaturally leave them separated and in terms of policy, in terms of activity, whats happening over here isnt happening over there and maybe it should because these its actually a tangle where everything is touching everything else. I think we have to be more realistic about that. I dont think its just a matter of putting somebody in charge, although we did, of course, put out that recommendation, number one recommendation was that the Vice President be put in charge of all of biodefense including agra defense. But i think its also a question of right leadership, rightminded, righteducated folks. We have a political system which is wonderful, but if we want somebody to address agra defense issues, biodefense issues and so forth, we need people who actually know about those issues sitting in those political appointments. We have to have people taking positions, high level in the government and throughout the government, who have a clue as to what theyre doing and what theyre talking about. You know, one of our big examples of this is what happened with fema and Hurricane Katrina and, you know, we everybody ragged on the add straiter of the time and i to this day do not rag on the administrator because he only did what he was supposed to do from a political perspective. He went for a political appointment and got it. He was not the right person to be in that position at the time. What did we do after that . If were going to have somebody be in charge of fema, we have to have somebody who has a significant and deep Emergency Management background. That is also political and we went in that direction. We have to do the same thing in this arena. I think lastly, bill, and i know we need to move on, i think we mentioned what we want to do from a state and local perspective. Agriculture is a state and local issue as much as it is anything else. We talk about Fusion Centers and role of Law Enforcement and so forth. I think more than anything else, with the sole exception of human medicine, agriculture affects every state in the country. Somebodys got something going on with absolutely everything. Not everybodys got a Nuclear Weapon sitting in their state. Some have some Nuclear Material in their hospitals that they have to get ahold of. Engaging everybody requires actually understanding that and then turning everybody on whether its a primary activity in their state and locality or not. So while im heartened to hear that the kansas Fusion Center im not so heartened to think the other Fusion Centers are not and they should be. Were talking about protecting the nation from something that could affect the entire nation and any state in the nation. So as we think about this, we have to have people who think in that manner as well. And arent so tempted to constrain it to a few states or constrain it to a few diseases or to a few departments and agencies. Were going to leave time for questions from the audience here and i had a number of questions, but let me one thing im going to take away from this conversation real quickly is building upon senator daschles comments earlier is this agency, the coordination of a number of agencies and the alphabet soups of agencies out there involved. Bob, you mentioned a number of agencies. I also would like to shout out as the general did, department of defense is involved in this in a big way and probably one of the successes that they helped with was ebola last year. Coordination is a big issue going forward. Well jump over i think we touched upon it in the Previous Panel and youve all touched upon it in terms of let me go to something down into the weeds a little bit here and that is in 20 20142015, department of agriculture had to transfer, i thinks about 1 billion from the Commodity Credit Corporation over to afis to take care of bobine influenza, tuberculosis at that time. That agencys budget doubled just because of that one issue in usda. Maybe tammy, maybe you were more involved. How do you rate our dealing at that time, the federal government . We got pretty low grades here for the federal government. How did they do in that particular crisis situation . So i dont think im in a position to rate how they did. I just want to comment on something that you said. You said that their budget doubled. So my point my point i want to make is that too often were reactionary. Yes. And were not proactive. So the fact that were having to transmission money to an agency that has this responsibility to take care of these things is reactive and not proactive. Thats what were here to talk about need. During the outbreak, i do think they handled it well. A number of things they had to step up to the plate and do. These are routine things they do on a daily basis, afis does. They help the industry by understanding the disease ecology. We have the national Animal Health laboratory network, we have 57 labs testing for Avian Influenza. It took a crisis. Were too reactionary, were not proactive. And i will say that i do believe these agencies obviously have taken all these afteraction plans. They put steps in place. Theres a nice afteraction plans that talks an the things they learned during that outbreak. Again, preparing is always better. Were often too reactionary. I think thats why were here today, draw more attention to it, talk about how we prepare on the front end so were better engaged in the event theres an outbreak. You can never fully prepare for whats going to happen, correct . There can be more variations, if it was a deliberate introduction, you could have three types of foot and mouth disease introduced across the u. S. Which would be obviously an issue, so we need to be prepared on our surveillance side. We need to be prepared to detect and respond and i think there has been a lot of progress. Im going to go back to the laboratories, to the testing, to the surveillance programs. Too often we think disease by disease. We dont think emerging diseases or all of, you know, the one Health Approach toward disease preparedness. We talked about amr. You asked that question. What are the things we can leverage . We should be leveraging our Surveillance Systems that are already out there for thirks rig this, right . For instance, at texas a m, we were engaging veterinarians to provide information through electronic means. Why couldnt we use the same system to collect data on amr, instead of different agencies funding different people, which they are, to collect that data . That doesnt make any sense, right . So we have to look at this as more of an all of agency, state and federal partner, industry approach. Dont want to leave academia out. Thats where im out. Dealing with tenured professors. If we come together through academia, if we come together, we can address these issues. Id like you to stay, just on a different note, and i think the zika event, the recent zika Event Highlights the challenge of responding, our form of government responding to these kinds of events. And that is that you have to have congress appropriate money to do this. The fact they were able to do an internal shift, a budget, basically move money across is something that quite honestly is no doubt traumatic as well as disruptive to the agency thats involved. It certainly was the case with hhs, with zika, they had to shuffle money around. We have the Disaster Relief fund which funds fema. Every year we put money into a fund that based on a president ial declaration, that money can be then used. Its already preappropriated. Everybody knows that all disasters are local so i think politicians generally understand that the flood in North Carolina today could be a tornado in kansas tomorrow, that that money is set aside for those kind of legitimate emergencies and they dont require congressional action to do. It would only make sense, actually, you know, to kind of highlight just something that came up in the recent campaign that was proposed to have a Public Health Emergency Response fund as a means to basically have a pot of money so that in the case of the next zika, you dont have to do that. Well, itd only make more sense to have a similar fund or same fund used for these kind of veterinarian or agricultural emergencies that are significant. Maybe not as costly in some ways but certainly significant. Fact is these are the kinds of things, arguably, that the leader can say we need, in the next president ial budget that money is allocated to do those kinds of things so that we shouldnt be surprised. We may be surprised that, yes, its two strains of fmd or not, maybe its another form of avian influen influenza, but the point here is that these are the kinds of anticipated emergencies that can be prepared for in a way that accommodates our, dont want to say ponderous form of government, our democracy in way that lives by the constitution that we can have these funds set aside to deal with legitimate emergencies in a timesensitive fashion that minimize the impact, economic and personal impact, that these things have. Thank you. Im the moderator, im not supposed to take positions but i concur with your position on this one in particular. There are those things we know were going to have to fund. Maybe in the short amount of time we have here, i want to give a shoutout to the Kansas State Universitys project you have on your biosafety level 4. I heard in the Previous Panel that the moneys been funded for the building and construction and the ongoing. Weve got authorizing appropriation staff out here. Tell me, once this is built, how are we going to keep it operational given budgetary constraints . I guess ill make some of my ag friends out here mad. Shouldnt the ag sector, itself, through the user fees or mechanisms, should they be contributing since the impact this would have on the ag seconder is big, dont they have a role also to play in helping to fund these kind of activities . So, in b. A. T. H. , it will open in 20222023. Its a facility. It will be the Gold Standard state of the art facility for studying diseases. Having said that, its a 1. 25 billion facility thats been funded to open in 20222023. At this moment, we need to start looking at programmatic funding for the usda and department of Homeland Security programs that will house in this facility. Right now, if you look at the funding for palm island, were talking about 3 million or 4 million budgets within the respective usda programs and dhs budget somewhere around 15 million in programmatic, not looking to expand as i understand it over the next several years in ag. Thats a problem when youre building a 1. 25 billion facility. To be real fair and to be able to execute the program that they need to execute within a one health environment. And to be able to be a true partner with the cdcs of the world, fdas, hhs, again, within that one health context. Right now not sure of a lot of activity going on to build the budget over the next several years thats going to include everything from workforce education and training. As we know that a lot of the palm island staff will not be transferring to manhattan. Theres going to need to be a concerted effort to do that so as we talk today, we need to be anticipating that and starting to put dollars in educating the workforce from both the afis areas, dhs side of the house, includes epidemiologists, scienti scientists, biological technicians at the bench, laboratory technicians, we need to be educating and training this workforce thats going to go in this facility. And we need to be increasing the budgets and getting that money appropriated so we can build the right sized scientific programs that can be collaborative with our human health counterparts. Thank you. Real quick, bob, asha, if you were elected to congress or president next year, whats the one or two things you would say needs to be done quickly in this area . I would say that we do need that leader, Biodefense Council that we recommended. Okay. But as part of that, pulling the usda, department of interior, department of commerce, some of these departments that were not used to thinking about when it comes to defenserelated issues, and Homeland Security issue, pulling them in and making them true making them True Partners in this endeavor is critical. Youve been elected. What do you want to do . I dont know if i want that or not, but the short story is, basically convene your cabinet. Basically this is a priority. This is a priority, mr. Dni or ms. Dni, secretary of agriculture, secretary of defense, secretary of Homeland Security, this is a priority, you all have something to contribute, you all have something to do here. What you need to do is build a plan for me that will basically make our agricultural and Food Industry resilient. This is a partnership not with the federal government but with our state and local partners and with the commercial industry and i would look for you to convene with your respective partners to basically come up with a plan and report back in 90 days what are the 3 or 4 things we need to do that i can take to congress to make sure that its part of my new budget, consistent, sustainable budget over time, to drive this as a priority for the country . Would you like to take a shot at would you like to be elected . No, but i would agree with that exactly. I think you need to take a look at what would be the i dont want to see the veterinary side of the house left out. I would concur you need the subject matter expertise there on the agricultural side. I would convene a group to reach out to the stakeholders and to the industry and to academia and to the states to decide what those top two or three priorities are, to shore up the agricultural Defense System in the country. Good. We have time here for about 15, maybe 15, 20 minutes of questions and as in the Previous Panel, please identify yourself and ask a question and direct it to any of the panelists up here. There was a question right up here on front. Hi, kevin cane with the association of veterinary medical colleges. Last week i was involved in kind of a daylong process of figuring out whats going to go into the next farm bill, the fiveyear authorization, still a little ways off but if you could have your dream authorization in that bill to kind of address some of the things you talked about today, what would that be . What would that look like . When it comes to the farm bill and the other authorizing vehicles, its important to ask the question that you vust ajusd and make sure people are clear. Part of this has to do with setting expectations. Its never been an expectation of the farm bill to include something to do with any National Security issue. So somebody has to set that expectation and then the Congressional Staff and the congressional members will respond to that. But i think specifically, there are very, very specific activities that are already ongoing that need to be authorized. So if they havent been authorized already. Waiting around for the national Animal Health laboratory network, for example, to get authorized until just so recently is a little ridiculous and it could very well have gotten into the farm bill. I wouldnt want to see thousands of pages of that sort of thing but somebody needs to make sure that whats already happening is authorized and will allow congress to conduct the oversight it needs to. I would put that in there and i would make sure that a National Strategy, similar to what were requiring or recommending for biodefense in general, that a National Strategy activity be put into the farm bill as well. Particularly addressing and agriculture, obviously, but giving the department of agriculture a leadership role in that arm with the other major players. I think that thats really important. As with the human biodefense, there are a million little strategies and plans and policies all over the place that have to be brought together and form a really good strategy. The rest of it, you start getting into pieces and parts, right, which happens with congressional legislation, you know, i understand, but i think without the strategy, were continuously disorganized and we need it. Questions out here . Question over here. Hi, my name is dennis with a Small Company called metabioda. So pulling on some of the things that have been said here then on the last panel, so i know dr. Beckham had talked about being, were too reactive, not proactive enough w the former panels talking about different disfrat agencies and unified command and control. I think one of the questions is how do you then incentivize all these agencies, commercial actors or whatever, to be start start being proactive instead of being proactive . Is there a way to do this . Do you guys have suggestions for how this could happen . If i could take an initial stab at thirks first of all you dont have to make the case to the commercial industries to be proactive. Theyre on top of these things because it does reflect their brand and profit share. The question is, from the federal government, particularly, what are the things that they can do to set in motion, if you will, to be prepared for the next event . You know, part of these things are very, i dont want to say not sexy, theyre not, i mean, its making sure you have a professional cadre of people out there that are trained out there that can do this. Conversation before this panel started, started with tammy, and identified that the number of applicants to veterinarian schools are going down. At a time when we probably need more veterinarians for a variety of reasons. Small and large. And so thats one thing that we can incentivize right there. It gets the idea of training, ensuring that we have a robust career field that allows you to draw upon people because you cant predict the next disaster. And the idea of having money set aside for those things is significant. I would just comment by saying, incentvization. Tie money to incentivizing the outputs and Holding People accountable. Think as far as the industries, hes right. The industries do have that sense because of their brand and the commercialization, obviously. The biopharmaceutical industry, though, how do we incentivize them to develop vaccines and diagnostics for basically a market that doesnt exist in the u. S. Today . How do we look at that, how do we incentivize them to do that . Working with departments to incentivize them to develop that type of countermeasure that we need. The other thing i would say just going back to the comment about veterinary colleges, obviously we have to continue to grow the workforce thats interested in this area. We have about 1. 6 applicants to those the admission ratio there. I think we have to continue to get folks that are in veterinary colleges interested in those areas to work in whether thats the federal government, Public Health. We have a lot of our graduates that go out and practice Companion Animal med sicine. Thats wonderful. Colleges, we educate for all spectrums of the profession but also need to open their eyes to the other opportunities out there. Global veterinarian medicine, the Global Health security agenda relies on the one Health Concept, getting out, doing Capacity Building abroad. Those are really rewarding careers and educating the veterinary profession and those kids that are in veterinary colleges now to those opportunities is is going to be absolutely critical. I think elevating the value of that veterinary degree, i mean, take a look at the roles veterinarians play in the world today. The role we play in the food supply, protecting the food supply, protecting your pets, keeping them healthy. We play sum an incredible role in society. Getting that message out there and elevating the value of the veterinary degree is so important as we move forward in this area. Questions out here . Theres one back here. Good morning. Id like to thank both of our sets of panelists. My name is kathleen giles, supervisesupe supervisor i thought rather than the acronyms i would spell it out. Id like to comment basically on one of the previous questions then comments from the last panel as far as what the federal government is doing. Right now ill say my unit is working closely with afis. Were about to launch a class that weve written called animal plant health. So basically a joint criminal epidemiological investigation course. Thats training, boots on the ground industry. Local veterinarian, state veterinarians. Local, state, Law Enforcement, as well as federal, how to work together. That means information sharing from when it happens. Because if the fbi or Law Enforcement finds out three years later were not going to be able to find that path to be able to solve that if it was intentional. I know in the past our animal and plant experts dont think anything beyond accidental or natural. Let the expert, let the fbi, let the local Law Enforcement think about intentional. Working together is a great relationship. What were doing in december at new mexico State University for the very first class is were actually teaching this to our local wmd coordinators, local Law Enforcement, border patrol, anyone that has a stake in this. So my question to this panel and to the Previous Panel would be, when you recognize the vulnerability, were trying to come up a way to bridge that gap. We dont have money to actually do this. Were working on weve been promised 2 of what weve asked for and thats across the unit. And were launching all these new initiatives and we try to put congressional notes out to speak to the experts in congress and lawmakers. We want to be partners with you on this, how can we fund this, like tammy, you shouldnt have to have a Huge Investment there and not have anyone staffing it. I think this is a challenge for every single topic we could possibly come up with. Everybody asks the same question. And, you know, i would tell you about ten years ago, members of congress would sit in local field hearings and say United States government is broke. So you cannot come here today and say what we need is more money. Now, that said, we obviously have a budget and we have mechanisms going on. In order to increase the amount of money put in a budget item, there are a number of things that have to happen. One is the president has to put it in the president s budget. If it doesnt make it over there, that is coming over to congress for congress to respond to. The other element is whats happening with appropriations and authorization. If nobody on that side is asking for it, either, then now you have a huge gap. So, as far as the role of the fbi is concerned, the bureaus got to get out and say this is what we need, this is why we need it, of course, and they are. Then it becomes a complicated thing and we have to look at those various elements. The reason i bring it up is that its not enough, its simply not enough to say we need more money. We have to take it down levels lower and lower to where we are identifying exactly how much money we need. Were communicating up on the legislative branch and the executive branch and all the different branches and getting to stakeholders who actually ask the same thing of the folks that are putting money in and then the other issue has to do with Public Private partnerships and industry putting in money as well. Its not as much as we would like to, because we love the fbi, it is not the fbis entire responsibility to execute some of these activities. I think we have to be smarter and get industry funding as well. Can i first of all thank you for making that contribution, but could i ask, have you heard about this project before . The farm bill may be an opportunity to raise this issue as a legitimate, educating, if you will, the First Responder community, educating the commercial industry. It would seem to me that that would be a functional area that could be part of a farm bill provision. Seem to get the judiciary committees to actually weigh in on the farm bill. Im not sure that they ever have in the past. Mr. Grassley should have some interest in that. Any other questions out here . I see no other questions and i know our cameras going to shut down here in a couple of minutes, so let me first of all thank all of you. Thank the panelists. Just a little closer here from my perspective, first of all, as mentioned, i grew up on a farm so i saw veterinarians long before i ever saw a medical doctor, i can tell you that for sure. In fact, my brother saw what the veterinarian was making and he became a veterinarian. So, but a small animal veterinarian. Not the direction you wanted to go. And in doing a little prep for this event, i reread sections of jarrett diamonds wonderful boo book. As some of you may remember. Guns, germs, and steel. In that book he relived the events surrounding the mandam indians tribe from the great plains which i think covered part of kansas and the great plains out there. And how in 1837, the tribe contracted smallpox from a steam boat that was traveling up the Missouri River from st. Louis. And i dont think it was intentional, per se, i think we have some bad history that there was some use of smallpox as a

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