Caroline DeWaal Quotations

Very few cattle have been found to be infected. Even in Europe, where many cattle were infected and entered the food supply, only 150 people contracted the human form.

Last year, there was a bumper crop of food-borne illnesses from FDA-regulated foods.

Many more of these plants should be considered failures.

Kids have a right to safe food in school, and parents have a right to know what goes on in the school cafeteria. Until now, many parents had to jump through hoops to track down inspection reports. Posting these reports in schools and on the Internet will be a powerful incentive for schools to run clean and safe cafeterias.

It is good that they are funding new inspectors for overseas, but they haven't begun to grapple with the fact that they need new inspectors for domestic produce and seafood.

Physician-education material like this is a long time coming.

It is far more likely that you will die from a heart attack caused by eating a lot of beef than you would from BSE.

Those who are still concerned despite the extremely low risk can avoid processed meat products, such as hot dogs, because they are more likely to have nervous system tissue, but even those foods have minimal risk.

We'd like it implemented in 2007, not just up for consideration.

Raw meat, poultry and seafood present the greatest risk. However, outbreaks have also been linked to fruits and vegetables.

Bacteria become resistant in the gut of the cow and then, if we become sick from that form of bacteria, we can't be treated with the antibiotic because suddenly we're dealing with resistant strains.

The U.S. has had fire walls in place to protect the cattle population from getting infected with mad cow disease and there are some gaps in these fire walls.

The message is not to do away with fish in your diet. What's needed is a shift away from high-mercury species to those with much lower levels. That should be easy to do for most consumers if they had the right information.

For the industry to step up like this and start the testing program is a very important improvement. But it's critical that USDA ensure that all chicken producers are complying with the same requirements.

You can't have a testing program of this nature where it addresses a public health need and keep the information secret.