From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Homeland Security: An Overall Strategy is Needed to
Strengthen Disease Surveillance in Livestock and Poultry

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Daniel Garcia-Diaz,
Director, Natural Resources and Environment

Related GAO Work: GAO-13-424: Homeland Security: An Overall Strategy is
Needed to Strengthen Disease Surveillance in Livestock and Poultry

Released: May 2013

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's May 2013. If
left unchecked, diseases that affect livestock and poultry can lead to
economic losses and human health concerns. A team led by Daniel
Garcia-Diaz, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team,
recently reviewed the federal government's efforts to monitor and
respond to animal diseases. GAO's Sarah Kaczmarek sat down with Daniel
to talk about what they found.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What's the federal government's role in eradicating
diseases in livestock and poultry?

[ Daniel Garcia-Diaz: ] The United States Department of Agriculture,
USDA, is the lead agency for detecting, controlling, and eradicating
diseases in livestock and poultry in the country, but it also works with
other federal agencies that are also responsible, directly or
indirectly, with disease surveillance and public health issues.
Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for
coordinating all biosurveillance efforts in the federal government. It
coordinates with federal agencies such as USDA to ensure that the
federal government is effectively addressing this issue.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] You mentioned the Department of Homeland Security.
But how has the USDA responded to new or emerging diseases?

[ Daniel Garcia-Diaz: ] So USDA is in the process of updating or
modernizing, if you will, its animal disease surveillance efforts. And
what it hopes to do is to provide a national picture of the health of
the country's livestock and poultry. In the past, it's only tracked and
monitored specific diseases. So the agency feels that this new approach,
which focuses on the overall health of livestock, will be more effective
in detecting emerging and new diseases.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Now your team actually went out and looked at swine
facilities for this report. Can you talk about what you learned there?

[ Daniel Garcia-Diaz: ] Yes. In fact, we selected states in the pork
producing regions of the country. We selected those states in particular
because we want to see how one of USDA's new efforts under this
modernized approach was playing out. So we went to markets and watched
swine and how they were being examined by state inspectors. I think the
learning experience for us from those visits was that we were able to
identify some key challenges that USDA will be facing as it implements
its new approach.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What does GAO recommend for enhancing disease
surveillance efforts?

[ Daniel Garcia-Diaz: ] We recommend that USDA develop an overall
strategy with specific goals and measures to show how it supports the
federal government's broader biosurveillance efforts. Specifically, we
found that USDA didn't have a roadmap on how its new approach would
work. It did not include any specific information on what it expected to
achieve through these efforts. Further, USDA didn't always grade its own
performance. So it really had no way to determine whether its individual
initiatives were effective or not. And finally, none of USDA's planning
documents indicated how it would contribute to the national goal of
biosurveillance.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Finally, for taxpayers concerned about the health
of livestock and poultry, what's the bottom line here?

[ Daniel Garcia-Diaz: ] The bottom line is USDA has embarked on an
ambitious and complex effort at modernizing its disease surveillance
program. USDA will have to bring together its separate initiatives under
a comprehensive strategy and, by doing so, it will be better positioned
to address threats to human and animal health.

[Background Music]

[ Narrator: ] To learn more visit GAO's website at GAO.gov. And be sure
to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from
the Congressional Watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.