"September 11 was a wake-up call to our country's vulnerability to bioterrorist threats," Grassley said. "It's vital to our national security that we beef up our efforts to address these vulnerabilities. This bill provides a comprehensive plan to address bioterrorism by enhancing our preparedness at the national, state and local levels."
The Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2001 is designed to fill in the gaps of our nation's biodefense and public health infrastructure. The bill focuses on protecting our nation's food supply, speeding the development and production of vaccines and other countermeasures, enhancing coordination of federal activities on bioterrorism and increasing the investment in fighting bioterrorism at the local, state and national levels.
The legislation authorizes approximately $3.2 billion in fiscal year 2002. Approximately $524 million of those funds would be used to protect agriculture from bioterrorist attacks, including $80 million to upgrade the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service facility in Ames.
"Modernization of the Ames facilitiy will help safeguard our food supply and enhance American agriculture's biosecurity," Grassley said.
Funding proposals in the bioterrorism bill include:
?$640 million to improve the Strategic National Pharmaceutical Stockpile;
?$60 million to upgrade the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) bioterrorism capabilities;
?$59.5 million to improve the public health laboratory network through the CDC, including the development of a national laboratory network;
?$1 billion to improve state and local preparedness capabilities, includes $667 million for new emergency state bioterrorism preparedness grant program;
?$370 million to improve hospital response capabilities and health care capacity;
?$509 million to accelerate production of the smallpox vaccine;
?$524.5 million to improve food safety and protecting agriculture from bioterrorist attacks.
Last month, Grassley met with public health and safety officials in Iowa to assess the state's ability to prevent, respond to and recover from terrorist attacks. State and local leaders say that sharing information with their federal counterparts is going smoothly, but they are looking to Washington for additional resources. It's estimated that Iowa has spent at least $2.6 million on homeland security since September 11. Congress passed a $40 billion package to expand counter-terrorism efforts at home and abroad and to assist with the recovery and clean-up in New York and at the Pentagon.