and advanced biodetection for the 21st century to describe and what can be done to achieve the division for the program begun in 2003. it has been painful watching the dhs try over and over again, like pushing a boulder up the mount to create a biodetection system that serves the needs of the nation. mr. chairman, ranking member, and members of the committee i suggest to you that 19 years is long enough for things to have gone on the way they have with this program. we recommend that you either shut it down or replace it with a program that works the way you want it to. our states, localities and taxpayers deserve no less and the good people working in the department of homeland security deserve some relief. and i want to applaud the biodefense efforts of fema, coast guard, ice, tsa and cisa to defending the nation against biological threats and deserve your oversight and support. but as you encounter the bioweapons destruction office, i urge the committee to define its role. it lacks direction and it needs direction and guidance from you. thank you again for the opportunity to come bef

i hope we talk about the sum to date more about what we can do to ensure we have the best biodetection capability of their and make smart investment in research and development in this area. i am concerned about our capabilities in terms of the ability to detect various pathogens that could do is a lot of harm and are not currently detectable. the department of homeland security is counting weapons of mass distraction office, which is just talked about, cwmd, we'll talk about that a lot today, very significant role in this mission of biosecurity. but the office is plagued with some challenges, some of which are perennial, some of which predate the formation of the office and as i said lack of coordination biowatch is a primary biosecurity program at dhs, operated by the cwmd office. for the last 20 years in my view biowatch has consistently under delivered on its intended purpose to detect biological agents that could possibly pose a hazard to the public. so in my view though rules need to be clarified but also detection expanded. again i look forward to the views of the experts today