Forcing numeric values as text on HTML table exporting to excel

I'm trying to fix a bug at work where in classic ASP a HTML table is being rendered and then sent to the client as an Excel file. I'll spare the entire source code sample, but essentially we have one column that is alpha numeric, yet when the value starts with one or more zeros, the zeros disappear. I know this is standard Excel behavior for handling numbers, but I want it to treat the value as text. How can I do this?

The Cell In Question:

Response.Write("<td class='tdsmall' align='left' NOWRAP>" & rsPODetail("ITM_ID") & "</td>")

Examples

HTML | EXCEL
00212704 | 212704
00212336 | 212336
00212251 | 212251