that we saw trip them up over time. it really wasn't the tuition and fees. >> go to see complete schedule. >> a discussion this morning with intelligence and defense policy experts on biological threat preparedness and food safety highlighting the importance of agriculture and bio security and strategies and tactics the next administration might use. part of the discussion features former senate majority leader, hosted here this morning by the bipartisan policy center and should get underway shortly. ..

[inaudible conversations].

>> hello. welcome to the bipartisan policy center. i just wanted to please ask you all to silence your cell phones. if you do tweet, please use the hashtag, bpclive. the event will get started shortly. thank you.

>> welcome. good morning. i'm dr.aprik. chief medical advisor here at the bipartisan policy center. i want to welcome all of you on behalf of bpc and our co-host, kansas state university, to today's event, entitled, bio agro defense policy. america's foot health supply at risk. today's topic brings back memories as my first task as a public servant at hhs 2005, were to number one, work on medical countermeasure distribution in the event after wide cale anthrax event, number two, develop the hhs influenza, in the h 5 n 1 avian influenza,

bird flu, if you recall. 2015 bipartisan report of the blue ribbon panel on biodefense reported that the nation still remains highly vulnerable to biological threats either intentional, via biological terrorism or unintentional, via nature itself, in the form of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases due to animal in origin. a critical conversation on the dialogue of national biodefense, includes the need to protect america's food supply and the one trillion dollar agricultural sector. today's event will highlight the importance of agricultural and biosecurity and strategies and tactics and policy solutions to include the inclusion of agriculture into biodefense 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 inspiring leader here at bpc and founder and president of the bipartisan policy center, jason grime to get us started. >> thank you for raising the bar. i will do my best. welcome, everybody. we have a really interesting conversation here today. i think really it is important because it's a conversation we think is not happening enough here in washington. i'm going to introduce our panelists. we'll get into a little bit of conversation among our leaders and have some q&a. first, to my immediate left, senate majority leader, bpc founder, senator tom daschle. i think he is well-known to just about everybody in this room. if you know tom at all he has somewhat insatiable desire for public policy he led i don't know how many initiatives here at the bipartisan policy center.

he is a also a member of blue ribbon panel on biodefense. we'll have a chance to talk with tom about very important insights the panel has brought forward. i will finally note tom is also really critical voice on the conversation how to make washington work together. he and senator lott wrote a book called, crisis point. in today's "washington post," a thoughtful story features tom and trent the opportunities in a clinton-ryan administration for the country to govern again. we talk about the obligations an opportunities for governance around these issues. really a pleasure to welcome general dick myers to the bipartisan policy center. he has a tremendous record of national service and courage. his most courageous event might be taking over interrim presidency of kansas state university six months ago. i wonder navigating the pentagon

prepares you for bureaucracy of 200 tenured professors. general myers is a four-star general. the 15th chairman of joint chiefs of staff between 2001 and 2005. among his many accomplishments he was awarded the presidential medal of freedom. we will soon be joined by our friend chairman mike rogers. i believe his shoes are being polished as we speak. i will introduce him when he joins us. so, just to kind of get the conversation started i thought it would be useful to reflect a little bit on the broad question why is agricultural security important? why is it a national security issue? why did we convince you to come here today and talk about it? tom, you want to lead off? >> thank you for those kind words and for moderating and your leadership here and thanks for the plug for our book. we always can boost book sales. i appreciate that as well, but i, general myers, thank you for your commitment and the

extraordinary effort you have made in this regard and the leadership you've shown in some security contexts. it's a real pleasure. i'm flattered to be involved with 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, i don't think anyone disputes the importance of the issue but i don't think has happened is we've given the kind of attention that it so justly deserves. i must say, if you could, from a personal perspective this is even more critical to me because of my own experience. it's 15 years ago this month that our country experienced a series of anthrax attacks. several people died. my office was the target of one of those attacks.

it was a trying, very terribly difficult time for our country and people feel very, very vulnerable. that experience, i 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 just joined us. and, i was in the middle of the aftermath and i can say from personal experience, regrettably, frankly, 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-prepare we were. well, that was 15 years ago. we've now, i think looking back over the last decade 1/2 can say

we have made some progress. but if you really think about it, and you look at our preparatory position today, you look where the infrastructure is today, frankly i think we're far off the mark with regard to where we need to be to avoid what happened 15 years ago. we're 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 god intentions, we've had -- good intentions, avian epidemic and pandemic in 2007 and 2015. h1n1 in 2009. we had ebola in 2014. we had zika this year. and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is just a matter of when, not if the next natural or deliberate crisis will occur.

tara o'toole, one of the most respected authorities on this issue in the country and a friend of mine and said something at a congressional hearing this year i thought was really right on the mark, as is so often the case with things she rights and said but she said she thought these natural events ought to be used as preparation and practice for the deliberate ones. but the fact of the matter is, we're not ready for either. natural or deliberate. for the last couple of years i've been involved as jason mentioned with the bipartisan blue ribbon panel on biodefense. it was last year we issued our first report offering 33 action items in both in three contexts, short term, medium term, and

long term approaches to how we might address this circumstance. and we addressed all of the bioterror threats across the board but we drill down on a couple including the bio, the biological threat to agriculture. and as we analyzed this, what we ought to do with agriculture in particular, we focused on one idea i think has so much merit, and 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. that is 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 insure that it is 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 in the response and the recovery period with real medical applications that have not been developed thus far. when i look at what kansas state has done and admirably providing leadership they have and the blue ribbon panel and here at the bpc, i'm encouraged that we elevated it. i'm encouraged there is a call for higher priority. i'm encouraged with this new administration, whoever that may be, new congress, we'll have a opportunity to build a broader context for this whole issue than we have right now but we've got to do one thing we've 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 i'm hopeful we can talk about that today. >> thank you, tom. general, before i ask you to talk a little bit about the remarkable things happening to kansas state.

it is great to wealth come our food friend, mike rogers to the discussion. he is the representative from 8th district of michigan from 2001 and 2005. he was part of house select committee on intelligence. mike has been a leading voice on the issue a number of years. he worked hard to create and fund the biomedical research development authority in the congress. he is also the closest thing to a tv celebrity we have here at the bipartisan policy center. so we look forward to hearing from you in a moment. but, general. >> jason, thank you. senator daschle, good to be with you again. i think the last time was the middle of the night in a plane somewhere as i recall. you had been speaking somewhere and i was begging a ride and you were kind enough to help me out. good to be with you on such an important topic, congressman rogers, always good to be with you. we worked together on at least one other panel. your insights are always much appreciated. sort of the way i will set the

stage i think back to 9/11. i was the acting chairman that day on capitol hill actually getting ready for a confirmation hear to be chairman. i got there a little before nine, just before, the first tower was struck in new york city. i went in with senator cleland then from georgia. the second tower was struck he was brewing up some tea. he is a tea drinker and wanted me to share some of his great tea. we called it off at that point because we knew something was up. and i think about how we, how we thought about threats to the united states prior to 9/11. and there might have been somebody somewhere that had said, well, you know, the way these non-nation-state actors terrorists from other parts of the world could impact us, they could hijack commercial airplanes and run them into buildings. nobody really thought of that. might be somebody somewhere

thought about it but certainly hadn't risen to the anybody at level of d.c. caring about that much particular threat. as we look back there were threats and we could have determined but at time people weren't concerned about that kind of threat. that is kind of one scenario. we weren't ready for it. we should have been. we had to deal with the aftermath and we're still dealing with the aftermath. in 1999 actually, kansas state put out a report, a study on homeland defense, food safety security and emergency preparedness programs. it talks about the threat to our food animal, food plants and even threats from terror, if it doesn't occur naturally. so maybe they were ahead of themselves. i remember 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 commission's report, the recommendations here and the

thoughts here, not many, if any have been acted on in a national way that makes us any safer from these kind of threats. so 9/11, we couldn't anticipate. maybe we should have but we couldn't anticipate or we didn't anticipate. here we have had plenty of warning. we know what the possibilities are. we know people around the globe are interested, particularly people would wish us ill. when we got into afghanistan, it was discovered pretty quickly in some of the sites that al qaeda were occupying that they were working in developing bio weapons, by owe weapons targeting people and food in america. it included six human pathogens and livestock and poultry pathogens. i will talk about a crop in a minute. crops are often left out of the equation. kind of the last thing people think about. but the bottom line to all that that the planning for some sort

of manmade event here in the united states has been around for a long time but as senator daschle said 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 it's, it is something we ought to be doing in any case. i think we have a heightened, we should have a heightened state of urgency here about deterring the terror piece of it. remember what osama bin laden had said many times and that is, their economic goal was bleed america to the point of bankruptcy. it was said a lot. it use to be classified. but that was their goal and just recently, one of operational leaders of isis recently killed by u.s. air strike declared, this is from daniel -- from brookings, in one of his blogs.

here is what this isis leader said. the smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us and more effective and more damaging to them. okay, so the beat goes on. we have been warned. and as you know anything about the current threat from al qaeda, isis and their ilk is when they say things it is because they're thinking about them. it is probably because they're planning them and it as the senator said, it is not if, it is when this is going to happen and then 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. and with recent technology to manipulate genomes and so forth, it has become a lot easier to develop these weapons. there are some off the shelf technology that makes this a lot easier in today's world than it has in the last decade.

i would just agree with the senator, we aren't ready in this country. we aren't near ready enough. livestock examples will be handled in the second panel primary i think. we have dr. tammy beckham, the dean of our vetmed sin college out at kansas state. she has personal experience with animal pathogens and zoo nottic diseases that transfer. she will probably cover that when she talks. i would like to talk about a two examples to crop. they're wheat crops. not because kansas is wheat state or south dakota is a wheat state. this is because wheat along with rice make up 40% of the can loric intake of global population. 40% of the caloric intake for wheat. worldwide attacks on either one of them would have dell terrorist effect for sure.

probably didn't go unnoticed by many, wheat blast, fungal disease, exploded in bangladesh. it can kill 100% of a crop. bangladesh was busy burning crops trying to eradicate it. the thought it didn't get there intentional. it came across the sea and across borders probably in a container of foodstuffs and finally made it to the wheatfields. that's, wheat blast is something we work on at k state. there are some solutions being tested probably not one solution will fit all cases for wheat blast. then in afghanistan usaid found these al can lloyds mixed in wheat flower samples. they had 150 wheat plow flower samples. they find these alkaoids they affect humans. low doses they can cause

hallucinations. in large doses they can cause neurological disease and amtation. we know these these go way back into the middle ages. we see paintings in the middle ages that show that. so, a couple of examples of pathogens that an affect our crops and an fav act as somebody mentioned, jason, who was this one trillion dollar ag economy we have in this country. 15% of our gdp. when people think about threats to food animals, food crops, they think about well, that is just ranchers and farmers problem. they're a important part of the food chain you but in terms of numbers they're a very small part of the numbers involved in the food chain. when you get to 15% of gdp or thereabouts this becomes significant for our country. and finally just say at can sans state one of the fun things to see in manhattan, kansas, four

very large construction cranes. you don't often see them in manhattan. there are these huge construction cranes helping build the national bio agrisecurity facility there in manhattan. they will be pouring concrete for almost two years. it was part of the deepest hole i ever seen in manhattan. now its is being filled up with concrete. that is where the plum island capability is moving. we'll hopefully see that come to fruition and helping study some of these diseases, continue studying some of these diseases coming up with ways to protect ourselves. the diseases that work in the in bath, zoonotic diseases transfer from animals to humans. obviously some really bad stuff. again i take you back to prior to 9/11. there were some people that cared a lot about this threat. 9/11 we were surprised. this has been on the table for a

long time. it's been talked about. i will say that i think crops are sort of the undertalked about, underthought about piece of this but in the end what a nation, what an adversary, buy oy extremists or terrorists ban to do, want to create in the populace distrust of their governance. one way you do that is create fear. can you imagine a major outbreak of any of these diseases, food, animal, food crop diseases in the united states, it would, there would be an element of fear. there will be economic impact as well. there will be real impact in our diets but it could create an element of fear no matter really how small. it is something i think we need to be thinking about and preparing for. this is, these are almost a perfect weapons, because, you, all the targets are relatively soft targets. there is no danger to the perpetrator.

they will not in most cases be injured by what they do. it will take some time to discover it, especially with our current surveillance methods which are inadequate. around then there will be no, it will be very difficult to have attribution, who did this. i mean, many ways there is a perfect weapon and i will save the rest of my time for -- rest of my time for questions, thank you. >> so, mr. chairman, i expect you're now going to cheer us up by talking a little bit about congress having very recently been part of these discussions. how do you see this issue and where do you see opportunities to improve our situation? >> well thank you. thank you, mr. president. senator, good to see you you again, mr. chairman. this is a good time to bring in the drink carts because i don't know if it is going to get much better. if you look what happened recently in syria, there was a recovery of a laptop computer by a pretty senior operative who was related to isis

command-and-control. according to public reports the information on that computer was a bit concerning. it talked about a strategy for using biological warfare to further their aims and gains and the reoccurring theme it is much easier to obtain a biological weapon than it's a nuclear weapon. maybe they need to refocus the way they think about use of these kinds of weapons. so all of the conversations that we had, frustration i sensed from senator daschle who was at the front end of this, receiving end of this, and where we are today are and lack of progress really, i think we've made some good efforts. the barda legislation, we have 360 therapeutics or vaccines developed through barda, to make sure we get angel or valley of death in the development of vaccines and therapeutics and other things.

the pandemic preparedness bill which was really, both of these are bipartisan efforts. the only problem is, people have lacked interest in funding its full application what it means. so what we haven't done at the very essence of this is married up what the threat is many about and how we're dealing with the threat. we just haven't done it. we have huge institutions across the government that deal with this notion of nuclear proliferation and rightly some it is well-coordinated. we have the intelligence community, scientific community, doe, everybody is integrated understanding a real threat of that weapons system in any form, either a small radiological dirty bomb up to a full, full-blown nuclear explosion. we spent a lot of time, effort, energy, getting command-and-control, putting the intellectual capability together and pursuing it worldwide where we find it with allies or on our own. an we've done that and i think

what we're probably going to argue today we need to do that now with biodefense. the enemy is much more sophisticated than they used to be. if you think about the recent outbreaks 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 happen naturally in africa, candidly our reaction wasn't to it very good. we found out we didn't have a lot of options reacting to it. the only thing left was send in military for mobile hospital units. that created a whole bunch of problems in of itself. thankfully a other things happened that naturally took care of this problem. if that happened again today, i venture to guess we're no better prepared than we were at the outbreak of ebola and we know for a fact that intelligence services and adversary scientists worked on that as a weapons system. we know for a fact that rice

blast was the other one we knew, kansas works on wheat blast. there are some similarities, but that was a weaponized system designed to deny their enemies of food. what do you do in military planning operations? you want to go after logistics first, right? if i stop you from getting beans and bullets, i win. well that is exactly what that research was designed to do. could you deny your adversary access to food products, militarily? you extrapolate that as the general so eloquently talked about, into the economics of a food chain, houston, we have a problem. all of that is real. the recent finding of that laptop computer is real. the sophistication of our adversary even in isis, the day of the monkey bar terrorists in small camps scattered across the middle east are gone. they are much more sophisticated. they have much better capabilities.

they are advertising for people who have these capabilities to join the fight. candidly somebody is one day going to walk through the door that is the, answers there is the million dollar question. they have the right capability and the right understanding of how to process, develop and then deliver a biological weapon. i agree with both the general and the senator, it will happen. it is a matter of now are we prepared to respond to it, and have we set ourselves up either beating it, disrupting it or reacting to it? i think today probably not. >> drinks for everyone. we'll move into a little conversation. just a moment before i do i want to acknowledge one of the bipartisan policy center's other founders, senator bob dole. i was with the senator a few weeks ago noting what we were up to. there are four things he cares deeply about, national security, agriculture, kansas and the bpc i think he was flattering me a

little bit to be included in that list but he really feels so passionately about he wrote us a really lovely letter i think is out on the table. i encourage you all to take a look at that. so let's move into what can we do about this, right? we understand there will not be a simple solution. clearly the nation is motivating a lot of resources to protect ourselves generally from these kinds of threats. my first question is, why has biosecurity not been on that priority list? mike, you indicated we have a tremendous amount of architecture focused on the nuclear threat. is this just longevity? is it just we've been thinking about nuclear weapons since the '40s and this is newer or is there some reluctance to engage this? >> a little bit of both i think. so if you look at -- we have subsets in the united states government that track even the black market movement of nuclear

materials. they're exceptionally good. over a period of years, decades, really, they developed this expertise. then that is integrated back in the intelligence community and the military community, and there were real things they could see to work on. we knew at one time that north korea was trying to export at least components of nuclear programs to iran. we watched that happen. there were some intercepts of those materials along the way over a period of, you know, 10 to 15 years. 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 very real architecture. that is an easy thing to do. it is important work. it is critically important. you don't want that material going anywhere. we just haven't had that. there are really bright folks in the u.s. government that understand this threat very well but they can't go back and plug into this kind of an operation, this kind of an integrated be

established operation and it's pretty hard to go to congress these days. if we can't get the pandemic readiness bill funded, we know we have these problems, the bird flu took 25% of the birds in iowa. one event, 25%. imagine if this was a targeted event? we would be in some trouble in our food system. again we don't have anything to plug into. i think what we hope, all of us are trying to say is, can we create that same kind of monitoring system and integrate it? i think we can. it is going to take a little bit of investment and it will take a little bit of rethinking how we structure buy defense in that droppedder intelligence and military community. >> tom, turn to -- please. >> i think mike pretty much covered it but, when you research the literature, i did a

google search for threats to our agricultural infrastructure last couple days. okay, what are people writing about out there? sad news, not many people write about anything. if they did it's a long time ago. it just hasn't, i think captured people like other threats that are maybe more tangible, strike the imagination in different ways. and two is, when you look through the intelligence, it is just not one of the priorities. so we have some people are looking at that very closely. we have a fusion center out in topeka that does pretty good work here but there are not many folks helping in that regard. we're just not gathering the intelligence and that's, we know it is coming, right? we know this is possibility anyway. we know this is a possibility. one of the ways you protect yourself is you start gathering intelligence so you can prevent it from happening and take the steps that can prevent it and we're not anywhere near that.

we don't have that if we stumble across it that's fine, but we would have to be stumbling across it at this point. it is not deliberate. >> i want to think a little bit about the prioritization of these initial steps. tom, you serve on the blue ribbon commission which think other panelists are aware of and certainly the most prominent effort to really call these issues together. can you talk a little bit about the framework and what the feeling was about the top priorities. >> well you asked the question why is there a difference between nuclear and biological? and i think there's two parts to the answer. first is awareness. people don't need to be. people can see a mushroom cloud and know exactly the ramifications of a mushroom cloud. how you see what we're talking about, no food or threat to food and the aspects around the biological threats to agriculture? it is harder to visualize.

when you think about the fact, that in the next 40 years we have to produce more food than we did in the last 4,000 because we'll have almost 10 billion people. it took us until about 1850 to get the first billion. so, 40 years, producing more food than the last 4,000. one trillion dollars of our economy is the general just noted is agriculture-related. so, you know, awareness is there. that leads me to the second part of the answer. we need leadership. we need somebody who can take this to make it the kind ever priority it deserves to be. one of the many problems we have in any governmental infrastructure is siloization. when you think about this health come pent, agriculture component, homeland security

component and defense component and all the siloed entities are not coordinated like they need to be. it is easy to talk about it and easy to put more papers out there. it is harder to take a very eclectic array of bureaucracies that we'll meld them together in a way that produces an action plan that really provides some direction and i believe in all the experience that i aggressive had over these many years is that if you're not in the oval office or close to the oval office, it ain't going to happen. it has got to be west wing-driven. to elevate it above all the agencies and bring it together as joe biden is doing with the cancer moon shot today. first time we're coordinating t will take a moon shot like approach led by the president or vice president or somebody of that stature to make this happen. >> follow up on that a little more as that relates also to congress because we've had mixed

experiences in the country with the kind of czar idea. some very successful. i think i wouldn't collapse necessarily dni into that. that was focused effort led by the congress but when the white house tries to coordinate around one person, who is not subject to congressional oversight, we've seen be tension there just on the basis of separation of powers and institutional ego. so, chairman rogers, how do you think can play out? obvious there is a desperate need for some coordination. how can that coordination happen between the executive and the legislative branch? >> well, my mom used to say an invitation to the party solves all your grass parking issues, right? meaning invite your neighbor and you can park on their lawn, right. work with me people, work with me, 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 to try to do this on their own candidly i don't think it will work. i think you need some representation, a, members keenly interested, the right committees and get them participating in that conversation. so if you had that, the vice president on the coordinating council for biodefense then i would recommend you bring some folks from the house and the senate who are interested in the issue and are committed to being a part of it. i think if you do that you will get much more buy-in. congressional reform on oversight could be, we could have four panels lasting six days on each. >> there is still oversight? >> well, maybe not these days. the problem you have, the dni told me at one time, if there is an event he has to appear before something like 159 committees, i forget what the number is. it is outrageous. he will spend all of his time running around to different subcommittees who have a little slice of jurisdiction on this that is horrific waste of time. i don't think it is good oversight.

i would like to see a realignment of oversight issues with big issues like this, so you get a better product. i would send out the invitation and park away on the lawn. >> i will note that we have the pleasure of working with tom kaine and lee hamilton of the 9/11 commission and the single recommendation they are most frustrated with non-engagement, that there are 103 committees dhs has to report to, and it is just, when you have 103 bosses you have no leadership. general -- >> another corollary to what they both said. >> yes. >> both branches of government to work together, one of the advantages of the president appointing somebody to have the responsibility is at least it would get the executive branch organized because they haveget, they have to get their act together as well. legislature we just talked about. so, i mean there would be a lot of benefits to doing this.

and you, we just can't assume the executive branch is well-organized for this particular effort. i mean different departments have different views what their responsibilities are. somebody has to lead that. it only happens, i agree totally, having seen, been through a couple of wars now seeing how you try to harness all instruments of national power to bring to bear on afghanistan or iraq, and the only wray it really works is if somebody is in charge. somebody has to be charge on the executive side for sure. >> we're focused understandably a lot on the federal questions but if this will be a whole of government response there is obviously a important role at the state and local level and i wonder if any of you are aware of those efforts? to what extent is this more of a focus closer to the problem? >> first of all i think kansas and kansas state deserve real commendation for the kind of leadership. they have a unique program to dedicate, you know, sort of a

national attention to the issue and really begin to put the action plan together with research and with coordination unlike anything we've witnessed before and certainly general myers can talk to that. but i, i think, some states have begun to put plans together. there is a requirement that each state have a plan but it isn't coordinated. it isn't really understood from one stated to next. there is very little interactive experience from one state to the next. again it begs for a federal framework even though as you said a critical role to play we saw with new york and pennsylvania after 9/11 and virginia and washington but that coordinated effort reallies that to emanate from someplace and right now it doesn't exist. i give great credit to some of the governors who elevated it within their states but a lot more needs to be done to make it

a kind of a national framework that will be required for a national response. >> say the one place, from state of kansas, i already referred to our intelligence fusion center in topeka which is the word unique applies here because according to the folks in homeland security it is unique. excuse me. but they're the ones, they are one group looking through all of the intelligence trying to connect the dots about what might be coming our way in a nefarious sense. and then there is a lot of research done at kansas state. we're just one university. i note and dr. beckham knows a lot more about this than i do, we were talking beforehand about an effort between texas a&m and kansas state funded centers to work the surveillance problem. when an outbreak occurs it gets reported quickly and you can come up with protocols to deal with it. that funding is in jeopardy. the only program of its kind out

there, it has been pretty successful but it will only 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 ready for action but better coordination, appropriate funding, whatever that means, to make these things come to life is what's needed. >> any final thoughts before we open it up to questions? >> we saw this right after 9/11 and we were trying to put together pots of money to debtdown together to debt downrange to help states and how do we get it there and the states have to be a part of that solution on two phases. one, i used to get people coming into my office, god love them, as my mother would say, who wanted big command centers and population four but had to have

everything that major urban areas had. it made no sense whatsoever. political pressure put on state emergency responders was pretty significant. that pressure came to congress and everybody wanted what everybody had. we don't have that much money. i would love to send the most sophisticated technology to the lowest population county but candidly doesn't make sense to do that i can say that now that i'm no longer in congress. it doesn't make sense to do that. @, we have to get resources part right. and b, i think it was last year, 2015 the homeland security committee did some work and found that people didn't even know where to go to access the materials that which they might need to be prepared. the process, they didn't know who to call. they didn't know how to go you through the process. i don't care if it is radiological therapeutics or even stockpile of anthrax and who can get it, who can't, how do i get it to my first-responders?

there is no clear path of understanding how all that happened. what we found was, lots of materials we purchased along the way has now expired. the shelf life is over. we still have it. it hasn't been deployed. now what do you do? do you have to go back to repurchase all of this new stuff to sit on the shelf five years? it was pretty expensive to go through this operation. we have to get that piece figured out soon. i think states have to be a part of that. not every state will need exactly the same thing. we ought to be okay with that. we ought to work with the states to direct those dollars from a central, central location to get range thing at right place, candidly at the right price because we don't have the money to spend in every city and every corner of the country. so that is not going to happen. >> let me go back to the national facility being built at kansas state, the plum level lab.

it deals with diseases that occur around the world actually. we have the funding to build it. the funding to operate it and what effort will be put in there is yet to be determined. and how much, how much they're going to enable the scientists that will work there to help work on these diseases is i think still a little bit of a question mark. well a big question mark, frankly. that is just another example. that has to be part of the solution. not only solution but part of the solution for some of the worst diseases we could come across and we're still not clear what the direct will be after it is built. we have a couple years to figure that out. we're in place for level 3 lab on campus to prepare for people working in the inbaf that is one effort, one example of inconsistency and we'll build

this billion dollars facility but maybe we won't fund scientists. that is an exaggeration but not much of one at this moment. >> so one of the gratifying aspects of our work is the expertise in the audience that come to these events. we have remarkably fleet-footed microphone holders and i have about 15 minutes for thoughts, particularly questions and if you just identify who you are that would be appreciated. >> good morning. excuse me. my name is andy mccabe. i'm the ceo of the association of american veterinary medical colleges. in recent years we've seen the emergence of antimicrobeal resistance capturing great attention at national and international level and i wonder if you could comment the ways

you see that as on opportunity to synergize efforts here or might it be diluting efforts? in other words how many crises and emerging threats can we focus on at a time, and what does it mean to include antimicrobeal resistance in these efforts or to say that kind of distinguishes these things here in bio and agridefense? if you could comment on that that would be great. >> keep the mic here. unpack the question. there is big tension between antibiotics and the potential for path again resistance but say a little more for the audience. >> what i'm thinking about is these recent efforts over last couple years especially at the national and international level to focus on antimicrobeal resistance, anything from the president's commission and then recently the united nations efforts on this. so there is a growing effort and

mobilization to attack this issue. we've talked about how bio and agridefense has been an issue that is below the radar. it is not capturing the attention it needs despite a lot of people talking about it for many years. senator, i know you have worked on this a lot in your career. so is there value in attaching this to antimicrobe beale resistance or if you do does that dilute the effort and dilute attention and focus? >> actually, i don't think there is a clear answer to that question. i think it has to be explored. there is little doubt that technology is continuing to advance in a, moore's law is still in effect. i think as moore's law unfolds and as we understand the amazing technological advances the real question we'll have, can policy stay abreast? in this context, can we come up

with a mechanism that accounts for this amazing technological advance? i often say, 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 we're making. and i don't know, i don't have an answer to your question today you but it definitely requires us to analyze just whether or not it would make sense for us to do it and just, if we did do it, how would we do it effectively and take advantage of what technological advancements we're making? >> i expect we could probably get some additional thoughts on our second panel, i see nodding up front. other questions? right behind you.

>> jim monk from the congressional research service. i appreciate the panel's work to highlight the issue. doing a great job of saying what is important and things we need to go forward about the plan the bpc has done or research at kansas state been highlighted, i wonder if you could give some more context to what's needed in the direction in light of things like the national infrastructure protection plan, strategic partnership agreements, that have flown out of hspd 7 and 9 that have been congressional actions to get the executive to take action on agriterrorism and sort of saying what is the coordination that's lacking that has tried to be set up in the national infrastructure plan? what is the intelligence or the coordination that's lagging in the strategic partnership agreements, you know, with

private entities and the states? just kind, asking where are those next steps? because there are these plans that have been developed in the past 10 years. >> any of you have -- >> i will take a stab at it. i came skeptical to the idea that the vice president should have this biodefense committee or council. i was a little skeptical of it at first. the more i get into it, the more i think senator daschle is right. you have to have somebody that can peer over all the tubes. there are some great activity in one place that no one's aware of in the other place. there is really no opportunity to have that discussion in a real meaningful way. it is all personality based and somebody knows somebody and picks up the phone and get that conversation going and that happens but the problem there is no one entity, as i said, can 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 the exactly the same problem we were having up to 9/11. great work was happening all the over the intelligence community but not one person could pull them together in a place to say, we've got to do a joint effort here. if you're spending $10 on that and i have $3 over here would it be better to spend $12 on the same problem, and save a buck? that i think has to happen here if we're going to get any of that. and again, some of that congressional action is based on the silo effect as well. this is my little lane and make sure my lane is doing it exactly right. you need that i think command-and-control structure that forces collaboration. not because people don't want to do it but the system is not built to allow them to do it in a way i think is productive. >> so, let me just add to that from sort of a airman's perspective. when i was commander of u.s. space command i went to a

meeting of all the combatant commanders in the pentagon and the deputy secretary of defense, then dr. john henry, asked people in the room who think's they're responsible for we call it computer network defense back in the '90s, cyberdefense? who thinks they're responsible for cyberdefense in the department of defense? everybody raised their hand. we have a problem. if everybody think's there in charge nobody is in charge. i think what we're, crux of the question there has been a lot of things that will enable the right things to happen but somebody has to think it is important. somebody thinks this has to be a national security issue. and then, 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 don't want to think about it. it is really hard, right? it is really hard. i don't know if it is any harder than nuclear non-proliferation

but people, it is hard to get your arms around. it will involve lots of entities that will do a lots of research that has to come together in a way to share research. not strong suit of research is to share what they're doing in general. so i think it is more that. it is a priority issue. not necessarily, and inside the executive branch, probably inside of the legislative branch. a lot of people think this is theirs. that's good. we need more cohesiveness if we get more focus on problem somebody has to be in charge. somebody on the executive branch, whatever primary committees on the hill. somebody has to be charged with this and seized with it. >> time for a couple more questions. >> good morning. thank you for speaking today. my name is caroline kennedy. i'm 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. i think that is a major issue lacking in the general public. in fact lacking in the general public then, we'll not get the impetus to further legislation on that. so, essentially my question is, what do we do to better enable visualization of biological and agricultural threat? >> that's a great question. a good documentary. >> i'm for that. >> that gets people's attention, a good documentary. what was the one on nuclear war? the day after.

gets people's attention. all of sudden you say, this isn't good, what can we do to stop this? i think a good documentary on this would be very helpful, one that captured people's imaginations. as factual as you can make it. not hyperbole, not too much drama. explain how things can go wrong. i don't know if that is right. >> i agree with general myers. i also think if i could go back to tara o'toole's comment, that we ought to take the lessons acquired from experiences last 15 years, avian influenza, ebola, h1n1, there are lessons there. we haven't, again because i don't think we have had the leadership, this isn't meant to be partisan issue at all, because we have not the prioritization, maybe that is better word, people haven't made a connection between natural and deliberate.

we have to do a better job making the connection, whether it's a documentary or leadership that can speak to the issue around the country, or this coordinated effort we all talked about between congress and the administration. somebody has to make the link, segue, between natural and deliberate. say look, this situation is, as bad as it is could be 100 times work if it were a deliberate set of circumstances that, that doesn't take much imagination. but that connection i think could be very helpful. >> i would only add if you watch all eight episodes of declassified on cnn -- >> i was going to hit it for you, mike. >> give you a great idea how we should do it, i will take any ideas watching all eight episodes of classified. >> the dvd disk set is wonderful stocking-stuffer anybody thinking about the holidays. i think we have time for one last question.

>> good morning. my name is chris lewis. i'm a veterinary consultant with booz allen hamilton, proud kansas state fan. he talked about the national response with ebola, avian influenza, obviously it is worldwide potential problem. how much is the international response and international relationship development being addressed at this point? thank you. . .

prioritization, but we have to do the same thing internationally we've done domestically and take those lessons learned and apply them to delivered circumstances that could occur and will to grab 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 have a central organization that helps get the resources would have to go? if you see the problems we're having, magnify them by 10 overseas. i've been in some of these international forums and you can see in some cases they are five and 10 years behind. not because they don't have the interest or effort. they can't muster the same resources, and their systems are almost more diffuse than ours are in time to deal with this

problem. internationally and in the united states, wrestling with the same problem, there seems a little worse than their little far behind. that's what i think we can provide some leadership and some of all and international basis to get all of our resources. maybe not everybody has to show up in liberia when the ball breaks out. maybe that's not the right decision. now everybody wants to show up at the same place and commit some kind of resource. maybe that's not the right answer. maybe we bring this up a lot like nader did with its strategic force contribution. some folks can airplanes and some people can do signals collection. we are to start looking at that around the globe and say we will create our deployment opportunities based on what capabilities that you bring to the table. and then what can happen over time is everybody capabilities go up over time. we have to start somewhere. if i working for a day i think that's what i would try to be and that's what we are a little

behind on that international effort -- if i were king for a day. >> we are not very well-prepared internationally. the case we always used his ebola. i was were some things going on in the department of defense to help, and actually i was on the board of a nonprofit research institute as well that is contributing to that. there was a lot of confusion, a lot of false starts. that's probably indicative of how well prepared we are internationally for ebola and probably most food animal food plant, which we bless in bangladesh i wish it came in the wake they think it came in? are we susceptible in the united states? what steps are we taken to make sure that doesn't happen in our wheat crop, for instance. i'm sorry i don't know the answer to that question. but i think these are international problems.

they don't know borders. we've got most of the best of is either in this country or on the borders. a lot of it is anyway. this is dangerous stuff and we are to approach it the same way we approach some of the human diseases we weren't so much about, in my opinion. >> i want to ask you want to thank our first panel for framing the narrative. [applause] >> we are going to now transition to some of the details with her expert panel and i would just note that bill hoagland, our senior vice president will be moderating this panel. has been getting a bill is one of the most credible people in this town when it comes to anything to do with economic, budget and finance. the mitchell he started his career at usda. they may not tell you he lease wants you to go and help harvest the wheat. bill is the real deal. thanks, bill.

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone. jason took what i want to say. i'm the only agricultural economist year at bpc from what i know, and to for so welcome everybody but welcome take we to my colleagues out there. also as jason mentioned there's a kansas influence at bpc and from of one of our founders been of course bob dole i would also point out we are influenced daily by another major kansan, and that's secretary dan glickman who works with us on a lot of issues here and would really appreciate the influence of kansas. let me say this second panel here is very distinguished.

you have their bios so not going to go into all of that. we are going to focus on animal help a little bit. i think build upon a number of issues that came up in the previous panel. first of all let me introduce them as we go down the line. to my left is tammy, and she's been mentioned already by the acting president of she's thinking of the tennessee state university college of veterinary medicine. bob is the deputy director with u.s. senate select committee on intelligence come and last but certainly not least -- codirector of the panel you heard about in the blue ribbon study panel. before we get into some questions that i have, with hud take just a couple of minutes and tell the audience about your perspective on the bio aggro defense and come landscape, and i don't know if we can up the

optimism from the first panel but on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best, where would you rate the secured of our food system today from potentially deadly pathogens coming into it speak with personal it's an honor to be today so thank you very much. and honored to be your with my panelists. this is a particular passion of mine. is a bit a large part of my career and protecting the food system is just incredibly important 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 give you some statistics. u.s. consumers only spent about 6.4% of annual expenditures on food. if you compare that globally it's anywhere between 11-47%. we know we have a very robust agriculture production system and we're very thankful for that

the very things that make it so robust also make it so very susceptible to disease introduction. we know, too, and we talked about it previously that there's probably a little bit of complacency. we haven't seen foot and mouth disease in u.s. since 1929. we don't have african theater, we don't have other diseases that our national bring abroad. we asked ourselves this plan how come it so difficult to get our arms around this happening in the biological agreement while these pathogens are found natural across the globe. so it's very difficult to get your arms around where they are and how to move because their national occurring organisms. we see them everyday globally and we talked a little bit about the global perspective in a few minutes but we also know going back to the comments made earlier, what's national occurring issues can we see a lot of those over the last several years come in the last decade. we've had tdd and we've had

avian influenza incursions and we can use those and reviews those i believe to help us prepare for that intentional or next natural production of a transboundary disease. i think there have bee been less learned and i think event things accomplished since 2001 and a great deal and we can go over some of those, but if you think there are critical gaps this alexis. it wasn't until 2014 when ebola happened at the true meaning of one help thinking delight. and that we saw some of the critical gaps that we face in bio and aggro defense. many of you might remember that was -- a nurse infected and she had a dog. that brought to light the issues around one house and just how close our animals are two people on a daily basis, and just what that risk can be from interacting on a day-to-day

basis whether that was a livestock interface is super whether that's with our companion animals. we know we also didn't have the countermeasures available to deal with that particular outbreak. we did have diagnostic tests that were validated or animals we could use to test the dog at the time and we didn't have policies in place to show how we would handle it, quarantine, those types of things. i'll call out to usda, dod, those people all came together and quickly put together policies and procedures and validated the diagnostic test so that we have those. in that event we were very much laid bare on how we're going to have about particular case. had there been other animals and other companion animals we would have gone? wherewith they been put in quarantine? we do have some critical gaps that still exist and are prepared as. i think there's been a lot done since 2001. we have the surveillance plans,

we've got to step up plans from usda. we've got business continuity plans that have been developed with her industry and sectors. all of those things have been done since 2001 and a given coordinate with our federal government, the states with her industry partners. i want to give a shout out to this agencies that help coordinate that into a private industry who of courtney that as well. and academia's role in all about. however, as i said i think we do still have a lot of gaps. we don't have a conference of biodefense program. we talked a lot about barda and that is a production of countermeasures for humans. but we don't have anything on the animal side that is analogous to what barda is. fisher dj'd national stockpile is limited to a much greater extent than a national vendor stockbroker and so we have to give some light to an empty shed some light on the agriculture and companion animal side of the house when it comes about and aggro defense. that's what we're here today.

success addressing these gaps will be really dependent on one health concept and taking and all of agency, all of state, all of industry approach to addressing these things. as i mentioned i think we have to have some capability to incentivize this activity and it will come through funding. it's going to come through all l the real leadership at the top it's going to encourage people to work together. there are people working together today through one health initiative, within agencies, but we have to bring this more into focus on a very much higher level. then we have to incentivize people to work in this area. the other thing i will say is on a global level. these occur naturally. we are doing a lot on the global level to global health security agenda. we work with a partners to help build capacity in the international arena. we do so through and synthesizing them in these

developing countries, to work anyone health concept. we do that much less than just because the way refunded because the medical side is one thing and animal side does the other thing. we have to come the industry from usda, dod can we have to bring this initiative together so that we are using our resources a better, so record getting better and leveraging resources so we talk about barda there's an animal psychic when we talk about the strategic national stockpile we are funding for the national that their stockpile. we have to bring this together and have a higher level conversation on how we coordinate these events. that's all i have. >> once again? >> you're going to make me put a number on it. i will give it a six today. >> bob? >> first of all thank you for the invitation to be your and be part of this panel. certainly this is of great interest to me. i would take a similar approach in terms of cataloging of ride a different element of what we have here but i'm going to start with the number.

because quite frankly if you can't get a single number because i think tammy will probably put up identified is there's a federal component to the state and local including commercial industry component. for civil almost over the commercial industry. i give them an eight or a nine because why? their brand and publisher depends on ability to provide safe food to us. you can imagine if there is a circumstantial something is deliberately introduced into the food chain for something naturally acquired in the food chain it is their bacon that has to be protected in terms of how they will respond to the. some ways the incentives are implicitly better for the industry to do these things, and they do it. i think from the state and local committees about just use iowa as an example a double kind of embellished look at about chairman rogers talked about in terms of avian influenza outbreak that occurred in iowa in 2015. that single outbreak not only

killed 25% of had to call 25% of the bird flock but across $1.2 billion come and significant 8500 jobs. and decrease both federal and state tax revenues. the effects of these events even when they're fairly localized a pretty enormous. so state and local authorities that have significant agribusiness in the area whether the california, iowa, north carolina, arkansas, whatever, they take this seriously because it's their home turf and quite frankly their jobs and the economy can state economies that are depend on. i give them seven or eight on that. when i look to the federal government and for the reasons i think the previous panel said with great i think detail and authority more than i can offer is simple is probably about a three or four. why? because it's not an obvious visible priority. if you look at the latest farm

bill and asked yourself what provision was in there, for for defense or agriculture security, i think you' think you would be hard-pressed to find anything of that nature in that bill. is dedication of congress, initiative the president of the executive branch? the answer is referred many silos of excellence that exist across the domain and quite frankly the preponderance in the biodefense area that i can speak authoritatively on this, have been focus on human health issues. during my tenure in the white house when i served originally back in 2002-2005, and again 2007-2009, the issue of one health was emerging as a concept. the idea that this is not been 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 question about

resistance and what is that fit in? i see it fits squarely into the food ago defense business because as we found out to that experience the preponderance of antibiotic use is been in the food agriculture business where that is put great pressure on the creation of arguably resistance strains. as companies now are voluntarily withdrawing the use of these antibiotics on widescale that's putting an onus on those companies to basically use the kinds of methods to limit the growth of pathogenic bacteria that could get into the food system. it focuses on our ability to could surveillance and how do we monitor those herds or whatever the animal species is to ensure that they are not necessarily posing a risk to the consumers of those products. i would say that is one area. the last thing i will say is come and begin to give you low marks of the federal government,

someone mentioned hspd nine. it's one of the few you don't hear from much of the biodefense world. i will say the author of this was a fellow asu grad, kurt, a veteran of some distinction who went on to be a deputy secretary usda but here's the challenge with that is that does not figure pomeroy and some of the conversations they are having in halls of congress or in the halls of the executive office buildings around town. it's because primarily again what issue in leadership. if you look at the number of things that are contained in that particular document, which is awareness and warnings, grateful for the assessment, mitigation strategies, response planning, research and develop a, you heard some of these things have been set into motion and quite frankly evil taken strictly. lots of people at the ground level with the muddy boots that

are growing the crops, managing those herds have been focus entirely on those issues, they did it because that's their livelihood, that's their professional careers. but in the washington sphere inside the beltway that is not the same. i think it does get to the point of senior leadership and focus and priority on these issues. the obama administration recruited the senior position in the white house for biodefense security. where is that veterinarian is managing these issues? i don't know if that person exist yet but arguably there's a great opportunity with the transition, now onto a new administration. i did that this can be essential part of that whether it's the vice president or someone else who manages that portfolio. it's critical that it does get managed. just too high but one thing and again we talked a lot about terrorism and i don't doubt that terrorists are out there planning bad things against the people like us, but i think we

live in a very different world and the going to give you a little bit of a reference to something that is worth a read, which is talk about the gray zone. it's the idea that competition amongst great powers are countries in the world today will exist probably below the love of -- if you behoove gray zone you will find some scholarly military papers on the subject but it's also called hybrid warfare. this idea you can conduct war for as we've seen with cyber in a way that is not attributable are very difficult to attribute to basically take its toll on society or a country. you can talk about cyber being in -- information technology. it is economic input your but arguably you can look at the same set of issues as it would relate to someone who deliberately try to attack one of our gemstones of our society, and that is our food and agricultural production, our critical infrastructure about that. 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. august in congress it's a little harder. you have a number of committees of jurisdiction. he talked about the department of agriculture agricultural committee. into your department has a role to epa has a role in this. hhs has a role in this. 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 the senate issues. >> i, too, am going to join bob in issuing multiple numbers for multiple things. the reason for that is we are talking that agricultural like it's, like it is a singular thing. one word for one thing. the truth of the matter is the sector is comprised of all different kinds of things. the supply chain in food and crops and farmers, and industry

and people involved in pharmaceuticals and all of it. all of it. it's so much. so you would have to assign a number for each and everyone of those elements. and how the average out i don't actually know. but i would also say that the number we might assign today is going to change tomorrow, different lastly, last year, a few years ago, back when bob was in the white house and so forth. i think that's okay. i just wish that somebody was continuing to ask that question, where are we? how we feel about it? i think that in addition to just an enormous and extremely complex sector that we are worried about being attacked and affected, 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 concerned about it but they're concerned about in terms of their livelihood. he can't get somebody to be all excited about it because somebody is working on an agent and weaponizing are building it or whatever, you can get people interested in this issue just on the economics standpoint. the case in point for that would be why those studies that were done shortly after the foot and mouth disease outbreak in europe a number of years ago. we don't see a whole lot of national economic council studies on disease defense but we did back then. it's an important driver, but again we're talking about the economy and talking about inputs into the economy and how to optimize very stillness of the economy.

even so going back to elicit earlier by chairman rogers. we have statements from terrorists and nation-states, actors saying they want to attack the economy. this is one way and we can't 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 there's human disease over here, this is cyber thing happening here, interface was something. we have a livestock issue. we have a crop issue. we have potential for attacking supply chain performance was and so forth, and we separate them and then we say department of commerce, you're in charge of this and that sounds like a department of ag thing. i will accept that, vhs.

but we separate that out and we try and address those individual strands individually. not that we're doing such a great job with that but that's what we try and do. i think then that leaves is separated and we are naturally leave them separated in terms of policy come in terms of activity. what's happening over here isn't happening over there and maybe it should. it's actually a tangle where everything is touching everything else. i think we have to be more realistic about that. i don't think it's just a matter of putting somebody in charge, although we did of course but out that recommendation, our number one recommendation was vice president be put in charge. i think it's also a question of right leadership, right minded, right educated folks. we have a political system which is wonderful, but if you want somebody to address agro defense

issues, biodefense issues and so forth, we need people who know about this issue sitting in those political appointments. we have to have people taking positions, i love and the government and throughout the government, who have a clue as to what they're doing and what they're talking about. one of our big examples of this is what happened with fema. hurricane katrina. everybody ragdolls be administered at the time, and i to the state 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 the position at the time. what did we do after that? we said if we're going to somebody in charge of fema do we have that somebody who has a significant and the 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 last week, 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 rule 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. somebody has something going on with absolutely everything. nutty buddy has a nuclear weapon sitting in their state. some have some nuclear material in their hospitals that they have to get a hold of. engaging everybody requires actually understanding that. and then turning everybody on whether it's a prime activity in the state and locality or not. so while i'm heartened to hear

that they can't is fusion centers is taking a look at this, i am not so hard to think the other fusion centers or not. they should be. we are talking about protecting the nation from something that could affect the entire nation and every state in the nation. and so as we think about this, we have to have people who think in that manner as well. and so are not so tempted to constrain it to a few states or consider to a few diseases or to a few departments and agencies. >> we are going to leave time for questions from the audience out and i had a number of questions but one thing i want to take away from this conversation the quick is building upon senator daschle's comments earlier is this agency, the coordination of a number of agencies in alphabet soup of agencies out there.

bob, you mentioned a number of agencies but i would like to shout out as the generated department of defense. bob did this end up big way. this coordination is a big issue going forward. we will jump over, if it were touched upon the previous bet and you'll have touch upon it but let me go do something very down into the weeds a little bit. and that is in 2014-2015 department of agriculture had to transfer a think about $1 billion from the commodity credit corporation to take care of bovine encephalitis, influenza and tuberculosis at that time. that was, that agency's budget doubled just because of that one issue. from maybe tammy, maybe you were more involved, how do you rate

our dealing at that time, the federal government? we got a pretty low grade for the federal government are how do they do in that particular crisis situation speak with so i don't think i in a position to rate how they did. i want to comment on something that you said. you said that there budget doubled. so my point i want to make is that too often we are reactionary and we are not proactive. in fact, we're having to transition my to an agency that has this response ability to take care of these things is reactive and not proactive and that's what we are here to talk about today. i will tell you to an outbreak i do think they handled it well. i think that there was a number of things that they had to step up to the plate obviously and do and these are routine things to do on a daily basis big help in addition to understand the disease. they redefined laboratory definitions.

when the national animal health letter network where we of 57 labs that are testing for avian influenza. we are to reactionary, not proactive. i will say i do believe these agencies have taken all the after action plans. they put steps in place to as nice after action plan on the usda website at the tops of the things they learned during the outbreak and again preparing is always better. we are often direction and i think that's why we had to do is to call more attention to to talk about how we are on the front and so we are betty ready to engage -- better ready. having said that you can never really fully prepared for what's going to happen, quite? it could be many different variations it was a deliberate introduction, you could have foot and mouth disease introduced across the u.s. which would be at issue. we need to be prepared on our surveillance site.

we need to be prepared to detect and respond. i think there has been a lot of progress and i go back to the non-laboratory testing, surveillance program. too often we think disease by disease but we don't think emerging diseases or all of the one health approach towards disease prepared and. we talked about amr. you asked that question. what are the things we can leverage? we should be leveraging our surveillance systems that are out there for this. for instance, when i was at texas a&m we were developed as a failed system where we are engaging veterinarians to provide information to electronic means. why could we is that same system to collect data on amr instead of different agencies, assigning different people to collect that data but that doesn't make any sense. we have to look at this as more of an all of agency, state and federal partner, industry approach. only if we do in academia come to leave academia out, that's where that, dealing with tenured

professors, but if we come together to academia, if we come together we can address these issues. >> if i could just add, a different note, i think the recent zika event highlights the challenge of our government respond to these kinds of events. that is yet that congress appropriate money to do this. so the fact of able to do an internship the budget, pace of movement across, it's something that quite honestly is no doubt traumatic as well as disrupted the agency that's involved. it certainly wasn't the case with hhs with zika but had to shuffle money around antarctica get appropriation. it's interesting where this thing called the disaster relief fund. every year we put money into a fund that based on the presidential declaration, that money can then be used. if we appropriated and everybody knows that all disaster our local so i think policies should

you understand that the flood in north collided today could be a tornado in kansas tomorrow, but that might be set aside for those kinds of legitimate emergencies and they don't require congressional action to do. it would only make sense and actually to kind of highlight something that came up in the recent campaign, that was proposed that the public health emergency response fund as a means to basically have a pot of money so that indicates of the next zika you don't have to do that. it was one make more sense to have a similar fund on the same fund that could be used for these kind of veterinary agriculture emergencies that are significant to maybe not as costly in some ways but certainly significant. but the fact is these are the kinds of things arguably that the leader can say we need that could suggest that in a presidential, next presidential budget, that money is allocated to do those kinds of things so

that we shouldn't be surprised. we may be surprised that two strains are not a maybe it's another form of avian influenza, but the point is that these are the kind of anticipated emergencies that can be prepared for in a way that accommodates our, i don't to say pashtun our democracy in a way that lives by the constitution, that we can have these funds set aside to do with legitimate emergencies in a time sensitive fashion that minimize the impact economic and personal impact that these things have. >> thank you. i'm the moderates on the us posted a position but i concur on your position on this -- but there are those things that we know that we will have to find time and again a short amount of time when i want to get a shadow to the kansas state university's project you have in your biosafety level. i heard in the previous panel that the money has been funded for the building, construction

and ongoing. we've got authorizing appropriations staff. tell me, once this is built, how will we keep shouldn't the tag sector through user fees or mechanisms, shouldn't they be contributing since the impact this would have on the tag sector is big, don't they have e also to play in helping to fund these kind of activities? >> national -- will open in 2022-2023. is the federal government facility so it will be -- it will be the gold standard state-of-the-art facility for studying diseases and so on. having said that, $1.15 billion facility has been funded to open in 2022-2023.

at this moment we need to start looking at programmatic funding for the usda and department of homeland security programs that will be housed in this facility. right now if you look at the funding, we're talking about three or $4 million budget within the respected usda programs and dhs budget somewhere around 15 for programmatic, not looking to expand as i understand over the next so years and act. that's the problem nibbled at 1.25 tony garza to do. the program needs to go into to be somewhere around 15 million, to be real fair and to be able to execute the program that they need to execute within a one health environment. into be able to beat it to partner with the cdc's of the world, with the fda, hhs, within that one health concept. right now i'm not sure of a lot

of activity that's going on to build a budget over the next several years to to include everything from workforce education and training as we know a lot of the plum island staff will not be transferring to manhattan. they would need to be a concerted effort to do that. as we talked today we need to be anticipating that and starting to put dollars in educating the workforce from both the aphis, biological technicians. we need to be educating and training this workforce that's going to go in this facility. and we need increasing the budget and getting that money appropriated so that we can build the right size scientific programs that can be collaborative with our human counterpart. >> bob, asha, if you are elected to congress or president next year, what's the what are two

things you would say needs to be done quickly in this area? >> i would say that, i would say that we really do need that later and the council recommended. but as part of that, pulling the usda, department of interior, department of commerce, some of these departments that we are not used to think about when it comes to defense-related issues and homeland security issues, clinton and making them true, making them true partners in this endeavor is critical. >> bob, any thoughts? you have been elected to what you want to give? >> the short story is basically convened a cabinet and basically saisay this is a priority. this is a priority, 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. what you need to do is build a plan 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 a commercial industry. i will do you to convene with a respective parties to come up with applicable report back in 90 days what are the three or four things we need to do that i can take to congress to make sure that it's part of my budget that's a 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 speak was no. but i would agree with exactly. i think you need take a look at what would be, i do want to see the inside of the house like that so i would encourage you need that subject matter expertise on the agricultural side. i would convened a group to reach out to the stakeholder and to the industry and academia,

and to the states to decide what are the top two or three priorities, to shore up the agricultural defense. >> we have time here for about 15, 15-20 minutes of question as in the previous panel, please identify yourself and ask the question and directed any of the panelists. there was a question right up your in front. >> kevin kuwik association of american veterinary medical college. last week i was involved in a daylong process of figuring out what's going to go into the next farm bill, the flag your authorization and still a little ways off, but if you could have your sort of dream authorization in that bill to kind of address some of things you talked about today, what would that be? what would that look like?

>> i think when it comes to the farm bill and other authorizing vehicle, i think it's important to ask the question you just asked and make sure people are clear. i think part of this has to do with setting expectations. it's never been expectations of the farm bill to include something to do with come in a national security issue. somebody has to set that expectation, then the congressional staff and 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 if they haven't been authorized already. waiting around for national animal health labrador network for example, to get authorized until just recently is a little ridiculous. it could very well have gone into the farm bill. i would not want to see thousands of pages of that sort of thing but somebody needs to make sure what's already happening is authorized and

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 we are requiring or recommending for biodefense in general, that a national strategy activity be put into the farm bill as well. particularly addressing agriculture obviously, but giving the department of agriculture a leadership role in that come along with the other major players. i think that's really important. as with 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 happened to congressional legislation understand but i think without strategy, we are continuously disorganized.

>> questions? question over here. >> my name is dennis lee. so pulling on some of the things that have been said here and on the last panel, i know dr. beckham talked about being not proactive enough. the former cowboy but all these different agencies and unified command and control. i think one of the question is how do you think incentivize all these agencies or any other actress, commercial actors or whatever, to start being proactive instead of being reactive? is there a way we can do this? do you have suggestions for how this could happen? >> if i could take an initial step in this. until they get to make the case to the commercial industry to be proactive. they are on top of these things because it really does reflect their brand and their profit share. the question from the federal government particularly what

other things they can do to set in motion, to be prepared for the next event was part of these things are very, i will not say not sexy. it's making sure we have, you have a professional target of people out there that are trained, trained out there that can do this. i had a conversation before this panel started, i was talking with jamie and identified a number of applicants to better name schools are going down come at a time when we probably need more veterans until veterinarians for a number of reasons, small and large. that's one reason we can incentivize right there. he gets to the of training to ensuring we have a robust career field that allows you to draw up on people. you can't predict the next disaster and i didn't have the money set aside for these things is a significant one. >> i would just comment by

saying, it comes with pashtun tribe money to incentivizing the output and hold people accountable. i think as far as the industries come he's right. the industries you have a sense because of the brand and the commercialization obviously. the biopharmaceutical industry, how do we incentivize them to develop vaccines and diagnostics are basically a market that doesn't exist in the u.s. today? how do we look at that? how do we incentivize them to do that? is that work with our federal government partners to develop programs like barda to incentivize them to develop that type of countermeasure that we need? the other thing i would say just go back to the comment about vegatheinner colleges. we have to continue to grow the workforce. we have about 1.6 applicants to those, to the admission ratio. i think we have to continue to get folks there in the veterinary college interested in these areas to work and/or whether that the federal

government, public health. of a lot of our graduates to go to practice companion animal medicine. that's wonderful. that as colleges we educate for all spectrums of the profession but we also need to open their eyes to the other opportunities and global veterinary medicine as a major global health security agenda really relies on the one health concept in getting out and doing capacity building a broad and these are rewarding careers, and educating the veterinary profession and those kids fed and veterinary colleges now to those opportunities will be critical. i think elevating the valle valf that veterinary degree, take a look the role veterinarians play in the world today. protecting the food supply and protecting your pets and keeping them healthy. we play such an incredible role in society, it just getting that message out and elevating the value of that veterinary degree is so important as we move forward in this area.

>> questions out here? there's one back here. >> good morning. i like to thank both of our enlisted my name is kathleen. i'm an agent with the fbi. i'd like to comment they said on one of the previous questions and comments from the last panel. as far as what the federal government is doing. right now i will say that my unit is working closely with aphis. we're about to launch a class we bring called animal plant health. basically joint criminal, epidemiological investigation course and that's training boots on the ground come industry, local better name, state veterinarians, local state law enforcement of laws federal out of work together. that means information sharing when it happens. at the that our love was advisor three years later, we will not be able to find a path to solve

the if it was intentional. i know in the past our animal and plant health experts not necessarily think anything beyond accidental or natural. so let the experts, the fbi, but the local law enforcement think about intentional. working together is a great partnership. so what we're doing in december at mexico city university for the very first class we are teaching us to our local coordinators, local enforcement, border patrol from anyone that has a stake in this. so my question to this panel into the previous panel would be come we recognize the vulnerability can wear time to come up with a way to bridge that gap but we don't have money to actually do this. we are working on, we've been promised 29% of what we've asked for and that's across the unit, and we're launching all these new initiatives and we try and put congressional notes out so we can speak to the experts in congress and to the lawmakers.

what do you suggest? obviously we want to be partners with you on this. how can we funded this? can become you should not have a huge investment and that anyone staffing it. sorry. >> i think that this is a challenge for every single topic we could possibly come up with. everybody asks the same question. and i would tell you, about 10 years ago members of carcass would sit in local field hearings and say united states government is broke -- members of congress to you cannot come here and say what we needed is more money. that said, we have a budget and we have mechanisms going on. in order to increase the amount of money put in a budget item come there are a number of things that have to happen. what is the president has to put in a present budget. if it doesn't make it over there than that is coming over to congress for carcass respond to.

the other album is what's happening corporations and authorization. if now be on the side is asking for either. then come now you have a huge gap. as far as the role of the fbi is concerned, the bureau has got to get out and say this is what we need and this is why we needed, of course, and there are. but it becomes a complicated thing and went to look at those very stylistic the reason i bring it up is that it's not enough, it's simply not enough to say we need more money. we have to take it down levels lower and lower to where we are identify exactly how much money we need. we are communicating up on the legislative branch and executive branch and all the different branches and getting stakeholders to ask the same thing of the folks that putting money into and then the other issue has to do with public

private partnership and industry putting in money as well. it's not as much as we would like to because we love the fbi, it is not the fbi's entire responsibility to execute some of these activities. i think we're to think smarter and get some agency funding in as well. >> could i, first of all, thank you for making that contribution. but could i just ask this? had heard about this project before? good. that's good. spin i would say maybe an opportunity to raise this issue as illegitimate, educating if you of the first responder committee, the commercial industry. to give it seems to me that would be a functional area that could be part of the farm bill provision. >> it would be interesting to get the judiciary committees to weigh in on the farm bill. i'm not sure that they ever have in the past. >> they should have some interest in that.

any other questions out here? i see no other question that i know our cameras are going to shut down in a couple of minutes, so let me first of all thank all of you. thank the panelists. just a little closer from my perspective. first of all as mentioned i grew up on a farm, 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 veterinary was making and eating a veterinarian. but a small animal veterinary and. that's the direction you wanted to go. ain't doing a little prep for this event i read sections of gerrit diamonds wonderful books, some of you may remember it, guns, germs and steel. and in the book he relived the events surrounding the indian

tribe from the great plains which i think ever part of kansas and the great plains out there, and how in 1837 the tribe contracted smallpox from a steamboat that was traveling up the missouri river from st. louis. that i don't think it was intentional per se. i think we have some bad history that there was some use of smallpox as a weapon, but in a couple of weeks that tribe went from 40,000 down to something like 40. a tremendous drop. so terrible diseases from animal related pathogens. clearly has a long and quite frankly very scary history. we kind of help you at the bipartisan policy center that this discussion today elevates this a little bit i would love to see this more discussed in

residential campaign that it's been discussed. and i hope that we can continue to press on it. so thank you very much. thank you all for joining us this morning, and have a good day. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] >> [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] >> want to let you are road to the white house coverage continues this afternoon. donald trump is campaigning in west palm beach, florida. he will have a rally there. it is getting underway. he should be speaking shortly. we will take it as shortly as well live here o here on c-span. and some campaign news from florida today with a hill reporting hillary clinton leading donald trump by six points in the critical swing state of florida. the new poll released today shows they were among likely voters in florida, clinton leads 49-43%. with another 7% undecided. according to a survey done at

florida atlantic university, this is an economics point initiative. hillary clinton continues to dominate donald trump among hispanic voters with a 52% lead over, for hillary clinton and 33% for donald trump. and among female voters in florida hillary clinton leading 51-43 with 7% undecided. read more about that at thehill.com. the rally in west palm beach, florida, just getting underway. some introductory speakers and we will take you there live here on c-span2. >> donald j. trump, thank you. thank you. [cheers and applause] >> thank you very much, sharon day. please, we will have mr. trump coming out shortly. when he does, do me a favor.

please give him a palm beach county welcome. i want to see the paint peeling off the walls. let him know he is back home with friends, with this too is supported and hardest workers. thank you very much. god bless you all. and let's go win this thing in november. [cheers and applause] ♪ ♪. ..