Expert Says Agroterrorism Remains a Real Threat

Despite major strides in safeguarding homeland security following the Sept. 11 attacks, an FBI official says Americans should not discount the threat to agriculture.

Speaking recently at the second International Symposium on Agroterrorism in Kansas City, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said that while this threat may not be widely recognized, the impact from an attack targeted against farming would be potentially devastating.

Such an attack could come from any direction, Pistole said, from foreign or domestic groups.

Pistole added that within the last five years foreign terrorist groups have been weakened, and their finances have been disrupted. Even so, while their safe havens and many of their principal leaders have been removed, they are not dead.

The same holds true for domestic groups, many of which remain loosely defined and organized but that nonetheless harbor extreme anti-government views.

While there is no “specific communicated threat at this time, the absence of a communicated threat does not prove the absence of a threat,” Pistole said.

Dr. Robert Norton, an Auburn University professor of veterinary bacteriology and biosecurity who works closely with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System to educate farmers and the public about the risks of bioterrorism, describes agriculture as a particularly inviting target to terrorists for several reasons.

“Being a complex system of many interlocking subsystems, animal agriculture is especially vulnerable to disruption at many points,” Norton said.

An old saying applies here: The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Simply put, the more integrated a system, the more vulnerable it is to disruption, either through natural disaster or attack, and the strategy of using an enemy’s food supply against him has been used for centuries.

“Castles, towns and villages have been conquered throughout history by severing their food and water supplies,” he explained.

It is a fact not lost on modern nations, including the United States, which conducted biological programs targeting the food supplies of potential enemies until these were abandoned by President Nixon in the 1970s.

Other nations, including the Soviet Union, South Africa and North Korea, did not abandon these efforts. In fact, before its collapse, the Soviet Union employed as many as 16,000 scientists, technicians and staff in its Biopreparat program, which was specifically designed to develop biological weapons for use against the U.S. plant and animal agriculture.

After the breakup of the country in the early 1990s, many of the scientists and technicians who lost their jobs began working clandestinely for other governments and groups, Norton said.

Biological materials also were diverted to the highest bidders on the black market, potentially enabling rogue regimes and other groups to obtain weapons material.

While many of these potential threats were eliminated after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, many threats remain, Norton said.

For example, captured documents from Afghanistan demonstrate that al Quaeda has attempted to develop biological weapons and other means of mass destruction, though it still lacks the logistical means to deliver these weapons.

“The bottom line is that agriculture --- animal agriculture, in particular --- should take these threats seriously and become better prepared to fend off its adversaries,” Norton says.

New safeguards will be needed in the future as the nation’s adversaries evolve and as our food production and distribution system becomes more consolidated, he said.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at October 25, 2006 05:35 PM | TrackBack