- WASHINGTON -- The federal government has recently classified
several scientific studies that show that the U.S. food supply is highly
vulnerable to potentially devastating terrorist attack, experts said yesterday
at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
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- In some cases, making the studies secret has hindered
efforts to inform farm and food companies about the security gaps and how
they might better protect the food supply, the scientists said.
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- In a session on "agroterrorism" -- attacks
against farm crops, livestock, produce or packaged foods -- speakers agreed
that the U.S. food supply may be more vulnerable than skyscrapers, bridges,
nuclear power plants or other high-profile infrastructure targets. A major
agroterror attack might produce substantially greater economic damage,
they said.
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- "It is very easy to do," explained Dr. J. C.
Hunter-Cevera of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in
Baltimore. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist."
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- "Low-tech, high-impact," added Dr. R. James
Cook of Washington State University in Pullman.
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- "These are targets of opportunity," said Dr.
Joseph F. Annelli of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, noting that the
country's 2 million farms extend over 1 billion acres of land. "There
are a lot of unprotected farms out there that you could simply walk up
to."
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- Agroterrorists could release damaging insects, viruses,
bacteria, fungi or other microbes aimed at wiping out crops. They also
could attempt to poison processed foods. Yet agroterrorism has largely
been ignored in terrorist threat assessments, the scientists said.
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- Disease-causing microbes -- such as foot-and-mouth disease
-- are readily available in countries where they naturally infect crops
or livestock. They can be "weaponized" easily, in some cases
by simply walking onto a farm with contaminated shoes. Such an attack might
be confused with a natural outbreak of disease, making it difficult to
detect while providing a terrorist with plenty of time to spread microbes
elsewhere and escape.
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- Most agents suitable for agroterror infect only plants
or livestock, so they would pose no hazard to terrorists. Successful attacks
could trigger quarantines, food shipment cutoffs, destruction of exposed
animals, public panic and huge losses to the $230 billion-a-year American
agriculture industry.
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- Dr. Robert E. Brackett of the Food and Drug Administration
said "many" government studies of the agroterrorism threat have
been classified by the Department of Homeland Security. Among them are
two major FDA investigations that revealed "a lot of vulnerabilities"
in the food supply. "Very interesting results," Brackett said,
declining to elaborate.
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- As a result of the secrecy, FDA officials are finding
it "very difficult" to work with the food industry to close the
security gaps, Brackett said.
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- Yet revealing the vulnerabilities, he said, carries the
risk that terrorists could obtain the information.
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- Cook said the Homeland Security Department classified
an entire chapter in a major agroterrorism study completed last year by
the National Academy of Sciences. That study found that agroterrorism poses
a major threat to U.S. agriculture, and it questioned the country's ability
to protect itself or respond to attack.
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