Senate chair expresses concern about transfer of Agriculture employees

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, last week raised questions about the Bush administration's proposal to transfer thousands of employees from the Agriculture Department to the proposed Department of Homeland Security.

When Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman appeared before the Senate committee last Thursday, Harkin noted that the administration's plan includes moving 3,200 plant protection and quarantine officers from Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to Homeland Security. But, under the plan, Agriculture would be able to "borrow back" 1,500 to 1,600 employees when there are outbreaks of farm diseases, such as citrus canker, or insect problems like the medfly in California. Harkin told Veneman he is worried that this plan could leave the borders unprotected against threats to the food supply.

Veneman said she believed that after the Homeland Security Department goes into operation, the Customs Service may be able to deal with some agricultural matters at the borders.

Harkin also said he is seeking a clearer understanding of the transfer of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in the Atlantic Ocean off New York state from Agriculture to the new department. The plan on which the Bush administration and the House Agriculture Committee agreed would put Plum Island under the control of the Homeland Security Department, and the House Agriculture Committee recommended that "upon transfer" of Plum Island, "the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Agriculture shall enter into an agreement to ensure USDA access to the center for research and diagnostic activities."

The committee also said that the 3,200 employees who would be transferred come from the work force at 189 "points of entry," not the research service or APHIS.

Alfonso Torres, a Cornell University dean who was formerly director of the Plum Island center, told the committee that Plum Island is part of a network of Agriculture research facilities and should be left under the department's control, just as human health laboratories are being left under the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Torres noted that many of the same diseases studied at Plum Island are also studied at an Agriculture lab in Ames, Iowa, but the administration has not proposed changing control of the Ames facility. Live animals with certain diseases are studied at Plum Island, but not brought onto the mainland of the United States, which allows the U.S. government to claim, for example, that the United States is free of foot-and-mouth disease.

Torres told Government Executive there have been past proposals to turn Plum Island into a center for human bioterrorism research and that he would oppose any attempts to turn it into a classified facility. "Plum Island has always worked as an open academic setting," he said.

Harkin and Agriculture Committee ranking member Richard Lugar, R-Ind., have also expressed concern that the Bush administration plan does not cover inspection of food imports that may be intentionally contaminated. Lugar said in a statement issued at the hearing last week that he still wants administration "input on how it intends to assure coordination of the food safety agencies at our ports of entry."