MSU researchers from the colleges of food safety, packaging and supply chain management are working to develop ways to protect the nation's food supply from any kind of contamination or terrorist attacks.

Throughout the next three years, MSU will receive about $3 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to work with other universities to identify vulnerable areas needing improvement in order to secure food contamination such as anthrax and botulism.

Robert Clarke, MSU associate professor in packaging, already has plans to use some of the money toward developing radio frequency identification tags, which will reduce theft and tampering of goods by tracking packages.