President George W. Bush will meet Friday with makers of vaccines and treatments for bird flu, his spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The US president was also due to meet Wednesday with top aides on how to cope with potential for a global outbreak of the disease, the spokesman said.
The spokesman could not say which drug companies would be on hand, but said they were US and international companies.
Democratic senators on Wednesday submitted legislation to combat bird flu, and slammed the Bush administration for what they said has been a lethargic response to preparing to fight the deadly virus.
"We need to act, because the administration has failed to prepare adequately for a flu pandemic," said US Senator Ted Kennedy, one of four Democrats who are the main sponsors of the bill.
"The danger of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was ignored until it was too late. We can't make the same mistake with pandemic flu," Kennedy said.
The legislation, co-authored by senators Barack Obama, Jack Reid and Evan Bayh, would require the Secretary of US Department of Health and Human Services to finalize an immediate national preparedness plan and stockpile enough anti-viral medication to treat half the US population.
The bill also would expand capacity for vaccine production, would step up US global surveillance of the illness, and would strengthen international cooperation to speed up detection of and response to the illness.
The legislation also creates a director of Pandemic Preparedness and Response in the White House who would be responsible for coordinating the federal response to disease outbreaks.
Bush on October 4 said his administration was considering various plans for dealing with a possible outbreak, including boosting vaccine stockpiles, imposing quarantines and using the military to enforce such an option.
Since 2003, avian flu has killed 63 people in Asia who had contact with infected birds. If the H5N1 virus mutates and becomes transmissible among humans, it could spark a worldwide epidemic that could kill millions of people.
The US Senate last month adopted a bill that calls for spending 3.9 billion dollars to stockpile vaccine and bolster detection efforts against a possible global avian flu epidemic.
