News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – As the clock ticked toward a possible US government shutdown at midnight, federal officials said today that key activities to keep food safe and otherwise control infectious diseases would continue, albeit at reduced levels in many cases.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government has moved to allow individuals and groups to continue working with certain hazardous biological agents beyond the Nov 12 deadline for complying with new registration rules while the government completes background checks on those groups.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today cited a new $5 million fund for food security research and a five-fold increase in food import inspections as the latest examples of its efforts to improve the security of the nation's food supply.

The agency made the announcement as it released an 18-page progress report on its food security efforts since Sep 11, 2001.

(CIDRAP News) – Despite progress in the past 2 years, local emergency response agencies in the United States remain dangerously unprepared for major terrorist attacks, according to a new study by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank.

(CIDRAP News) – A large-scale bioterrorist attack on US agriculture would probably not lead to famine or malnutrition, but it could damage the economy, public health, and public confidence in the food system, according to a report recently released by the National Academies' National Research Council.

(CIDRAP News) – Restaurant food that was contaminated, probably deliberately, with a pesticide made 107 people sick and puzzled epidemiologic investigators for 4 months in 1998 and 1999, according to a report in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assocation.

(CIDRAP News) – President Bush's National Strategy for Homeland Security, released this week, lays out a lengthy agenda for defending the country against bioterrorism as well as other kinds of terrorist attacks.

(CIDRAP News) – President George W. Bush yesterday signed a far-reaching bioterrorism bill designed to strengthen the public health system, tighten controls on dangerous pathogens, and protect the nation’s food and water supplies.