The Change Mariner

U.S. food system said to be vulnerable to terrorism

USAToday:
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, government officials have secured cities, airports, harbors, government buildings and tourist sites, but food experts say more attention should be focused on the country's food supply.

"We have become a nation concerned about receiving anthrax in our mailboxes," said Dr. Tom McGinn of North Carolina Department of Agriculture. "Imagine what it would be like to be a nation concerned about opening our refrigerators and anthrax being in our refrigerators as well."

A terrorist could easily use a handkerchief to spread a disease, such as foot and mouth disease, which affected 2,000 farms in Britain in 2001.

"If you exposed livestock before they were being shipped back to the farm from a state fair, you would have dispersed the disease across the state, frankly, in a saddeningly efficient way," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

Those and other nightmare scenarios show why government officials should pay more attention to the vulnerabilities of America's agriculture system, officials said. And using bioterrorism to attack the nation's food supply could be very attractive to terrorists, said Senate Government Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Such an attack would have a devastating effect on the American economy, with food production accounting for about 10% of the U.S. gross domestic product and generating cash receipts in excess of $991 billion in 2001, said Peter Chalk, a Rand Corp. analyst.

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