Livestock Bioterrorism
As part of the effort to prevent future attacks on our homeland, Americans must continually assess the threat of terrorism against every sector of society. The events of 9/11/01 ushered in a new resolve to secure our borders and property from terror threats. Intentionally introducing a foreign animal or plant disease into the U.S. would not be terribly difficult, according to most terrorism experts.
Agricultural terrorism is not necessarily about killing animals or destroying crops, it’s about crippling an economy. Contributing to the vulnerability of U.S. agriculture are the trends of intensive production methods, vertical integration of food production, and an increasing dependence on import and export markets.
In addition to foreign-based agroterrorism threats, threats from domestic elements exist. Extreme environmental and animal rights activists have often been criminal in their opposition to what they term "factory farming" and "imprisonment and exploitation" of animals. Some also fanatically oppose use of genetically modified organisms, trends in global agriculture and meat consumption in general.
Whether an act of terrorism against agriculture is probable or possible is an issue for anti-terrorism specialists and law enforcement agencies. But, awareness is the first step toward in keeping U.S. agriculture from becoming a direct victim of terrorism.
A study by RAND Corporation researcher Peter Chalk focuses attention on the issue of agroterrorism — the deliberate introduction of a disease agent, either against livestock or into the food chain, to undermine socioeconomic stability and/or generate fear.
Chalk says the capabilities of foreign or domestic threat elements to exploit vulnerabilities in agriculture are not considerable. Despite the ease and implications of a successful attack, agroterrorism is unlikely to constitute a primary form of terrorist aggression because it lacks a single, highly visible point of focus for the media (a primary consideration in any terrorist attack).
However, disrupting the food sector could well emerge as a viable secondary modus operandi to further destabilize an already disoriented society after a conventional terrorist campaign. Being able to use cheap and unsophisticated means to undermine a state’s economic base gives this form of aggression a high cost/benefit payoff that would be very useful to groups faced with overcoming significant power asymmetries.
But, Chalk says, terrorists can choose from a large menu of bio-agents, most of which are environmentally hardy, are not the focus of concerted livestock vaccination programs, and can be easily smuggled into the country. The food chain offers a low-tech mechanism for achieving human deaths. Many animal pathogens cannot be transmitted to humans which makes them easier for terrorists to work with. Finally, because livestock are the primary vector for pathogenic transmission, there is no weaponization obstacle to overcome.
Chalk’s Recommendations
Short- to medium-term recommendations include the following: Conducting a comprehensive needs analysis to determine appropriate investment requirements for the federal emergency management infrastructure.
- Increasing the number of state and local personnel with the skills to identify and treat exotic foreign animal diseases.
- Assessing how to foster more coordinated and standardized links between the U.S. agricultural and intelligence communities.
- Focusing attention on issues of law enforcement and the use of forensic investigations to determine whether disease outbreaks are deliberate or naturally occurring.
- Revisiting the effectiveness of the passive (voluntary) disease reporting system, especially in providing more consistency with indemnity payments to compensate farmers for destroyed livestock.
- Evaluating surveillance, internal quality control, and emergency response at food processing and packing plants to weigh the immediate costs of improving biosecurity against the long-term benefits of instituting those upgrades.
Over the longer term, additional effort should be directed toward standardizing and streamlining food-supply and agricultural safety measures within the framework of a single, integrated strategy that cuts across the missions and capabilities of federal, state, and local agencies.
When compared to other states, Montana has been identified as being uniquely vulnerable to acts of agroterrorism due to:
- The length and porosity of the sparsely–populated Montana/Canada border.
- Significant portions of Montana’s agricultural output are exported.
- Few firewalls are in place in to detect or contain an agroterrorism event.
Back to FMD
A successful terrorist attack using the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) organism does not need to infect thousands of animals. FMD can spread aggressively from site to site, so a small scale attack on a few facilities could balloon into an epidemic spread by the wind or by the movement of animals and equipment.
To infect the largest number of animals at once, terrorists may try to contaminate products, such as feed, that are distributed widely among herds. One publicly disseminated tactic suggested by domestic bioterrorists is to coat feathers with the FMD agent, filling small bomblets and exploding them over the target where they drift on the wind and contaminate a vast area.
In an exercise conducted by the U.S. Army several years ago, agents acting as potential customers infiltrated auction and sale barns and pretended to infect livestock by spraying animals with spray bottles that contained water (to simulate a solution of virus) or dropping handkerchiefs (to simulate a pathogen-soaked rag) into a livestock pen. Both of these methods would be highly effective in spreading diseases such as FMD.
Detection and control is complicated by the variability in the incubation period for FMD — considered to be 2-14 days, depending on the dose of virus, the strain of the virus and the route of infection.
The bottom–line message repeated often at a national conference recently held on agroterrorism: "Be alert to the possibility of agroterrorism, but don’t panic."
Montana Beef Quality Assurance,
2116 Broadwater Ave., Suite 307/11
Billings, MT 59102,
406-896-9068,
cpeck@montana.edu
Montana Beef Network,
119 Linfield Hall
Bozeman, MT 59718,
406-994-4323,
mharbac@montana.edu