Meat + Poultry - September 2006 - 56

AGROTERRORISM

tainment procedures are unnecessary.
Many diseases are environmentally hardy.
And they are inexpensive and easy to
obtain in other countries.

A case of
poisoned food
In 1984, the Rajneeshee
cult contaminated salad
bars in several Oregon
restaurants with Salmonella. Their goal was to
make people too sick to
vote in a local election.
No one died, but about
750 people were
affected. It took the FBI
one year to trace the
attack back to the cult.
This was the first
recorded bioterrorism
event in this country.

6 FSI

FOOD SYSTEMS

Risk and vulnerability
But vulnerability does not equate to risk, and
risk is what matters. Is food a likely target?
That's a matter of debate. "For those driven
by extreme ideology - it doesn't satisfy the
blood lust," Chalk says. "It doesn't grab the
media the same way as a suicide bomber in a
mall. If you want to sicken or kill people,
there are more effective ways to do it."
The real draw would be as economic
warfare. "You'd lose a lot of jobs," Busta
says. "There would be different kinds of
health concerns if a lot of people lost their
jobs, and other supporting industries would
start to go down. You start losing tax structure and the state starts having problems."
And as we harden up other components of our infrastructure, the food system
may become a more attractive target.
Another factor that might increase the
attractiveness: many terrorist organizations
are decentralized - they may be ad hoc cells
or even individuals who gravitate toward a
particular ideological framework. They may
not have the capabilities for attacking hardened targets. An attack on some part of the
food system could be a good alternative -
low cost and high yield.
Most experts say they are less worried
about the processing sector, with its morecontrolled environment and better security.
"It would be harder to infect a lot of product," Houghton says. "We can always pull
products from the shelves. There, you'd be
more worried about an inside job, so vetting employees is important."
Retail and foodservice vulnerabilities
include a lack of investigators and a reliance on self-regulation. Food at this stage is
susceptible to tampering, but again, it's
harder to organize a catastrophic attack. "If
it's just a one-person tampering event,
that's a crime," Busta says. "It may be done
for a variety of reasons, including terrorism.
It might have a dramatic effect, but not catastrophic, compared to finding low levels
of anthrax in a commodity at several locations. When people found out, that food

ınsıder

SEPTEMBER 2006

product would be done. It might never
recover, even if no one were injured."

Defending food
The key to strengthening defense is an
understanding that it is everyone's responsibility, from farmers implementing biosecurity and knowing disease-reporting channels to consumers being aware of products
that look unusual.
"While USDA and others are looking
at this problem, the private sector is where
there can be the most impact," Houghton
says. "The industry should stand up and
realize it's in their business interests to provide recommendations and standards, or
the feds may mandate policies that will
affect them. I'm a firm believer in the local
side - all terrorism is local."
Large companies will be better able to
do those things than their smaller counterparts, which may change the shape of the
food system. "Unfortunately for people's
dream of American agriculture, it will be
agribusiness doing it," says Roger Breeze,
CEO of Centaur Science Group. "Fifteen
years ago, ConAgra had a system for ensuring the quality of red meat to dictate to
suppliers what crops they could buy, what
pesticides they could use. Mom-and-pop
operations will take anything. The kind of

Who does what?
■ The Department of Agriculture's
Food Safety and Inspection Service
monitors meat and poultry and plans
for responding to outbreaks of foodborne illness.
■ A division of the Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service is responsible
for protecting agricultural plants and
crops from disease.
■ At the Department of Health and
Human Services, the FDA is in charge of
ensuring the safety of seafood, plant
and dairy foods and other food products.
■ The Homeland Security Department
has taken over the duty of inspecting
food and agricultural products entering the U.S.

Meat + Poultry - September 2006

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