| December 8,
2004: During a press conference held yesterday
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson,
announced his resignation and highlighted the concerns
his predecessor presumably will have to deal with over
the next four years. Among these concerns was contamination
of the food supply by terrorists.
"I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the
terrorists have not, you know, attacked our food supply
because it is so easy to do," Thompson said. "And
we are importing a lot of food from the Middle East,
and it would be easy to tamper with that."
He described inspections of food imports as increased
but still “very minute.”
But perhaps his number one concern is the possibility
of an avian flu pandemic flu. Avian influenza has been
causing much concern in south-east Asia where 34 people
have already died from the disease. Currently the disease
is passed only from bird to human but was the strain
to mutate to allow human to human infection the World
Health Organization is estimating the largest flu pandemic
of past century with death estimates of 70 million people.
For more on Thompsont's farewell speech: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31377-2004Dec3.html
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