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 se