What is the government doing to protect the U.S. food supply from avian influenza?

David Goldman, MD, MPH
Office of Public Health Science
USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service

The Food, Safety and Inspection Service has public health veterinarians and inspection program personnel who are stationed at each of the slaughter & processing facilities on a daily basis, on a continual basis, to ensure that the meat, poultry and egg products are safe, that they’re wholesome, and that they are accurately labeled.  There are other things that the department is engaged in with its partners and other federal agencies and in state agencies.  Among those are, first of all, we do not allow any country that has had a detection of high path avian influenza to export product to the U.S.  So no product from any other country, any poultry products from any of the countries in which high path avian influenza has been detected, or allowed to come into the U.S.  Similarly we collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security’s customs and border protection agency to prevent smuggled poultry or poultry products from entering the U.S.  We also have engaged our partners in a very extensive monitoring program of live birds; both domestic poultry, as well as wild birds in this country, so that if we were able to detect high path avian influenza we would be able to implement our response plan immediately.