WASHINGTON - If a bird flu pandemic breaks out the U.S. Agriculture Department could stagger work shifts and close down day-care centers to help keep operations running, the department's coordinator said on Wednesday.
But he acknowledged there are no guarantees that key functions, including meat inspections and grain shipments, would not be crippled.
"I got to be honest with you, this can't be 100 percent," Peter Thomas, USDA's human pandemic coordinator, told Reuters in an interview. "What we're trying to plan for is a worst case scenario and have the plan in place."
As part of government-wide effort to prepare for a flu outbreak, the USDA has devised its own emergency plan to cover programs and services involving 100,000 employees in nearly 30,000 facilities. It expects to release final details in June.
"It's a very big task," said Thomas, adding that the plan would cover everything from food stamps and school lunches to meat and grain inspections.
He said some business may be barely affected, but operations in other parts of the country could be dramatically hampered if a bird flu pandemic spreads among humans.
The government released a broader pandemic response plan on Wednesday defining specific tasks for each federal government agency to help minimize disruptions.
Focus on Poultry
It directed the USDA to focus on monitoring and testing for the virus in poultry while ensuring it can quickly respond, together with states and industry, if bird flu is found.
The Bush administration assumes that 40 percent of the workforce would be absent at the peak of a pandemic.
The USDA's human response plan for the H5N1 virus will be largely based on input from hundreds of employees in the field who would be responsible for implementing emergency preparedness measures.
Local directors could use staggered work shifts, close day-care and cafeterias to reduce the chance of H5N1 spreading and allow some employees to work at home. They also could turn to retired employees and contractors for reinforcement.
Critics said the government still has not done enough to address the impact of a pandemic on businesses.
"I haven't seen a credible plan on business continuity," said one agribusiness official. "Telecommuting is fine if you're a bureaucrat. You can't telecommute to a hands-on job like meat inspection."
There are some 7,600 federal inspection personnel assigned to about 6,000 meat, poultry and egg products plants in the United States.
USDA staff meetings will take place in local offices over the next few weeks to examine how the measures in the draft plan compare to real-life work conditions.
This is one of the "different things you can have in a toolbox for how to respond to this and then getting that out to the lowest decision-maker level possible," said Ed Loyd, a USDA spokesman. "It certainly is a very comprehensive effort that gets a lot of people involved."
A bird flu outbreak would hit all sectors of industry, energy and transportation. The World Bank has estimated that if such a pandemic lasts a year it could cost the global economy up to $800 billion.
The latest bird flu strain is known to have killed 113 people and forced the destruction of more than 200 million birds worldwide. So far, the virus has remained largely in birds as it spread through Asia, Europe and parts of Africa.
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