WASHINGTON -- While public fears about terrorism have focused on things such as dirty bombs and biological attacks in urban areas, a panel of experts warned on Wednesday that low-tech attacks on the nation's food and agriculture industry would be easier to execute and could be just as deadly.
At a hearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Tom McGinn, director of emergency programs for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said pathogens that cause diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease are easy to obtain and conceal and could be spread quickly through livestock or food processing plants.
"Agriculture is the perfect target and the perfect weapon," McGinn testified. Noting that anthrax attacks made Americans nervous about opening their mailboxes, he said, "Imagine what it would be like to become a nation concerned about opening our refrigerators?"
McGinn said a terrorist could bring foot-and-mouth disease into the country on a handkerchief. If livestock herds in a few places around the nation were infected, the disease could spread to 23 states in five days, causing the destruction of millions of animals and costing billions to the nation's economy, McGinn said.
Similarly, he said, if two different pathogens were introduced into a handful of food processing facilities, by the 30th day nearly 1,100 people could be dead and another 3,000 made ill. "We have a food safety culture in this country," he said. "We need to develop a food security culture."
Peter Chalk, an analyst for the not-for-profit RAND organization, said attacks on farms and the food supply would likely remain a secondary target for terrorists. Nevertheless, he said America's farms are more vulnerable than ever because consolidation in the industry has concentrated so many animals in one place, making them more susceptible to disease. Most farms lack security measures against a terrorist attack, Chalk added.
Chalk elaborated on the ease of a terrorist attack on farms and the food supply. For one thing, many animal diseases aren't contagious to humans so they could be brought to the United States with little worry about sophisticated containment procedures. There also is no need to worry about "weaponizing" the disease or pathogen--"the animals themselves are the primary vector for pathogenic transmission," Chalk wrote in a report on the topic.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee, said the government's ability to respond to a terrorist attack on the food supply would be hampered by the confusing web of government agencies that would be involved.
For instance, she noted an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease would draw a response from more than 30 agencies.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the threat of agroterrorism points out the need to consolidate the federal government's food safety responsibilities into one agency. But he said this idea has repeatedly been rejected by members of Congress, government employees and lobbyists who fear they would lose part of their political turf.
Penrose Albright, assistant secretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, said his agency is trying to build on the food security efforts already in place at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees livestock, and the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees safety for all other foods.
The USDA, for instance, has held training sessions for local and state veterinarians in all 50 states to detect foreign animal diseases, and it is working on an education program for veterinarians and farmers about the potential for terrorist attacks.
The FDA, meanwhile, recently initiated a plan to bolster the nation's food safety and security that includes 800 more employees to monitor U.S. ports of entry and work in government laboratories and a new requirement that domestic and foreign food manufacturers to register with the agency.
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