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By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anthrax is still the main biological threat facing the United States, and poisons put into the food supply run a very close second, officials said on Thursday.

They said the United States remains vulnerable to a range of attacks but is moving to patch many holes.

"I still believe that anthrax is the greatest threat agent that we have," said Jerome Hauer, an assistant secretary for Health and Emergency Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.



"We don't have enough vaccine against anthrax at this time," he told a conference on weapons of mass destruction organized by consulting firm E.J. Krause & Associates.

The United States is in the process of vaccinating up to one million troops and health and emergency workers against smallpox, but Hauer said the window of opportunity for treating anthrax victims is smaller than for smallpox.

"With anthrax, the detectors are humans," he added.

That was seen in October 2001, just after the September 11 attacks against New York and Washington. A series of anthrax-laced letters killed five people and sickened 13 more, closing much of Congress for weeks and forcing thousands of people to take antibiotics.

Safer, more acceptable vaccines are needed against anthrax and smallpox, Hauer said. Better detector systems are also needed.

"The technology will catch up. It's just not there yet," he said.

SLOW PROGRESS

Progress to protect against a smallpox attack is also going slowly, Hauer said. He said 38,700 health care and emergency workers have been vaccinated against smallpox in the latest campaign -- compared to a target of more than 400,000.

"We need a lot more," he said. "But a lot of folks feel the threat is low and they are not willing to take the risk."

Once a newer and safer smallpox vaccine is approved -- and that is in the works -- they may become more willing to get it, he added.

Food and Drug Administration deputy commissioner Lester Crawford said there is plenty of time.

"We are in the age of terrorism," Crawford said. "We don't think it will ever go away."

Crawford said every food contamination incident is now treated as a terrorist attack, or a rehearsal for one. New legislation that will go into effect in December will add to the agency's power to protect the U.S. food supply, he said.

"We are going to be a much safer country as a result," Crawford said. "For the first time ... we can actually detain food products at the border."

The FDA has added 655 new employees to watch for an attack on the food supply. Foods that Americans eat most, such as eggs and milk, are the most closely watched, he said.

Hauer said hundreds of million of dollars are being spent to shore up the nation's creaky health care system but progress was slow.

The biggest concern, he said, is in the lack of capacity in already stretched U.S. hospitals, which would be overwhelmed by any large attack or epidemic.

Doctors and nurses will have to be brought out of retirement and provided with malpractice and liability coverage. "Because we simply don't have enough people to go around in case of one of these events," he said.