Sharon Thompson, director of UT College of Veterinary Medicine's Center for Agriculture and Food Security and Preparedness, is hailed by Joseph DiPietro, UT vice president for agriculture, as the key factor for the reward of more than $5 million dollars in grants from the Department of Homeland Security. 

"They've never rewarded two grants to one institute in one year before," Thompson said.  "It's a real testament to our track record."

The veterinary college received a $500,000 grant to continue the training program they have already developed for the Dept. of Homeland Security. In addition to this money, they received almost $2.4 million to develop another training program. The college also received $2.3 million to create a training program to help states and localities to utilize the credentialing standards recently adopted by the DHS. 

Their current training program has been taught to more than 1,200 participants in 41 states. 

They've never rewarded two grants to one institute in one year before...It's a real testament to our track record.
-Sharon Thompson on the veterinary college receiving two grants from the Dept. of Homeland Security

"We developed a training program to assess the vulnerabilities in agriculture and Thompson is happy with its success and believes the other training programs will be as successful," DiPietro said.

The CAFSP will be designing a four-hour online course, a one-day instructor-led course and a one-hour training video for the training program to assist the intelligence and information sharing and distribution.

"We want to try to help people to create better networks in private sector to regulatory officials as food moves across the country," Thompson said. "For instance, if a trucker notices something is wrong, he may not know what to do about it." 

DiPietro said, "This grant will let us keep the infrastructure around our food safe and secure. Veterinarians are greatly involved in a lot of food animal safety, from handling animal products and keeping food uncontaminated by microbes."

The DHS adopted new credentialing standards in fall 2007. 

"The standards are adopted but nobody knows how to use them," Thompson said. Regional collaboration is necessary, and states and communities will need to be able to get the experienced help they need, Thompson said.

"What we want to do is catch problems early before they come bigger issues," she said.