This is a mirror of the White House press release, May 22, 1998, from the White House Briefing Room.
This is a mirror of the White House press release, May 22, 1998, from the White House Briefing Room.
Message Creation Date was at 22-MAY-1998 13:26:00
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Vice President
___________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release: Contact:
Friday, May 22, 1998
(202) 456-7035
VICE PRESIDENT GORE LAUNCHES COMPUTER NETWORK
TO FIGHT FOOD-BORNE ILLNESS
New Food Safety System Five Times Faster At Locating Serious and Wide-Spread
Food Contamination Problems
Washington, D.C. -- Addressing a problem that affects 33 million Americans
each year, Vice President Gore announced today a new national computer network
that will be five times faster at identifying and combating food-borne illness.
PulseNet -- a national computer network that identifies outbreaks of
food-borne illness -- will enable public health laboratories across the country
to use the Internet to provide alerts when outbreaks of food-borne disease
occur.
"President Clinton and I are committed to finding ways to ensure that the
food Americans put on their tables is safe," said the Vice President, who was
joined at a White House ceremony by Health and Human Services Secretary Donna
Shalala and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. "With this efficient new
computer network, we can more effectively trace widespread foodborne disease
outbreaks and warn millions of Americans to stay away from contaminated food
products."
In as little as 48 hours, PulseNet can identify rogue E.coli strains in foods
by identifying the distinctive DNA fingerprints of pathogens found in both food
sources and the patients suffering from gastric illness. In 1993, it took
three weeks to track an rogue E.coli contamination in hamburger meat produced
by single source.
PulseNet will link food safety investigators at the Centers for Disease
Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department, four key
area laboratories and state health departments to link directly with the
PulseNet database.
As of today, epidemiologists in the following states will be on PulseNet --
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, Washington California, Colorado, Florida,
Georgia, Iowa, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and
Wisconsin. The CDC plans to have all states on the network by 1999.
This important Administration initiative will reduce the number of Americans
who suffer from episodes of food-borne illness and prevent over 9,000 deaths a
year. This initiative is part of the Vice President's effort to reinvent
government through partnerships at state and federal agencies and make smart
use of the latest technology.
The Vice President also announced the formation of FORCG (pronounced Force G),
a partnership of federal and state agencies to better respond to food-borne
illness outbreaks.
This is a mirror of the White House press release, May 22, 1998, from the <http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/html/briefroom.html> White House Briefing Room.
HHS Press Release and CDC Fact Sheet on PulseNet
Additional information on the Food Safety Initiative