Report Warns of Threat to Milk Supply

Children could be hit first and hardest, because milk goes directly from processing plants to schools, avoiding the grocery-distribution system.

"They'd be the canaries," Wein said.

The report concludes that the most efficient ways to reduce such risks are to insist that latches on tanker trucks have locks; improve pasteurization processes; and develop tests that can detect contamination before milk is delivered to outlets -- changes, the team concludes, that are likely to cost just a few pennies per gallon.

Publication was scheduled for the week of May 30, but was abruptly postponed days before that date when HHS officials contacted the National Academies with concerns that the paper might inadvertently aid terrorists, according to an accompanying editorial written by Bruce Alberts, president of the Academies.

Those concerns were discussed in detail on June 7, after which the Academies decided to publish. By then, a preprint of the article had been widely distributed to journalists as part of the journal's standard procedures, and the New York Times had published a summary by Wein in an opinion piece.

Barry R. Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, who oversaw an independent review of the paper earlier this spring, said he is convinced that the report did more good than harm by quantifying the risks posed at each point in the milk-delivery system -- a difficult job that now allows the industry and regulators to concentrate security efforts where they are most needed.

"This paper didn't just slip in with no one thinking about it," Bloom said. "But science depends on openness and the free exchange of ideas. And being aware of threats gives us a better chance of protecting against them than not being aware of them and having only the terrorists aware of them."

A national security directive signed by President Ronald Reagan and still in force demands that fundamental scientific information remain openly accessible unless it is formally classified.

Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation in Arlington, criticized the Academies' decision, saying the information "could inform someone with malicious designs on food safety, even just as a prank."

The need for improved pasteurization "is something that has already been addressed" by the industry, he said, as has the need to keep locks on truck latches.

He acknowledged, however, that those improvements, encouraged by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years, are not mandatory. And although he said the newer standards are being "widely followed," he conceded he had no data to indicate what proportion of dairies and milk processors are adhering to the tougher recommendations.