What projects has LLNL collaborated on with USDA?
Developing detection systems for crops, water supply, livestock would probably present a different set of challenges when compared with detection in human or environmental samples. We’ve been working with USDA to look at the agricultural bioterrorism issue. We’ve been determining what their requirements are and whether some of the technologies in development for other areas will be of use. Much of our work with USDA will be affected by the cost drivers. The cost that the government is willing to sustain to protect a human population may not be reasonable for protecting millions of cattle. Other issues are how we will go about building a surveillance architecture for that, how the workflow is handled, how the population is sampled, and what the response mechanisms will be. All of these are different for agricultural than they are for human areas. What sort of collaborations have you had with the Department of Defense? We spend a lot of time collaborating with U.S. Army Medical Research
