The first thing that would catch your notice would be the withered crop in the fields. Acres upon acres of stunted plants—in many areas reduced to a crunchy tan carpet of withered stalks and wrinkled leaves because the irrigation spigots had been turned off—would extend across huge vistas. Untended plots, overgrown fields, and rotting harvests would add to the impression of a ghostly landscape where nature itself had gone awry. Emaciated cattle, staggering aimlessly as if possessed, would bring home the reality that some catastrophe had occurred. What had been a bountiful, idyllic landscape had within the space of a single growing season been transformed into a demented nightmare. The pervasive sense of eeriness would be heightened by the pitiful sight of pigs unable to walk or eat due to sores on their feet, teats, and inside their mouths. Sows would refuse to nurse their young. In this scenario, the terrorists have used a “twin venom” cocktail of different plant pathogens and livestock diseases (foot-and-mouth disease, corn blight, karnal bunt, and rice blast) that has caught the country’s agricultural experts, counterterrorism officials, and farmers off guard. (1)

The term “agricultural terrorism,” or “agroterrorism,” may be defined as the introduction of an agent, either biological or chemical, engineered to cause widespread devastation of natural resources, such as water supplies, soil, crops, or livestock, the result of which is damage to the economical, political, and social fabric of the affected society. In contrast to the so-called traditional forms of terrorism, namely the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, agricultural terrorism is considered less likely to mount direct human casualties. Acts of agricultural terrorism are seen as means by which the entire infrastructure of agrarian society, from the individual farmer to the large industrial manufacturers of agricultural products to the industries that rely on the products of agriculture for their success, may be crippled. The damage would not be limited to the economic and industrial sectors; rather, the result of agricultural terrorism would impact the state and federal governments, resulting in a loss of confidence in both the administration and the government departments specifically created to oversee the safety of U.S. agriculture.

This chapter entertains the topic of agricultural terrorism and its impact on the health care system. Traditionally, agricultural terrorism is not expected to have a direct impact on human life, so the health care system’s preparation for an agroterrorism attack must be equally nontraditional. That is to say, it is less important for the clinician to expect mass casualties from an act of agroterrorism; rather, the clinician needs to be vigilant and in close communication with local and regional health-monitoring agencies, in an effort to provide a network of surveillance and early warning against the possibility of an attack promulgated against the agricultural industry.

The best way to deal with threats to the national food supply and agricultural infrastructure is to prevent and deter intentional or unintentional introduction of plant and animal diseases into the United States. I have said many times that pests and animal disease prevention and eradication programs are central to the USDA’s ability to protect the Nation’s food supply and agricultural infrastructure. Simply put, the best defense is a good offense. (2)

To understand how greatly a terrorist attack against the agricultural industry might impact the United States, it is first essential to understand the effects a terrorist attack is expected to have. First, a terrorist attack, in general, is successful if it cripples the economy of the threatened country. In the case of agricultural terrorism, the target is the agrarian economy. Second, success depends on the ability to destroy the livelihood of as many people as possible. In the event of agricultural terrorism, the disruption of the agricultural industry would have far-reaching effects, not only to agriculture itself, but also throughout
other industries that rely on agriculture for supplies. Third, an attack directed against the agricultural industry would likely put the food supply at risk for an indefinite period of time. And fourth, an attack directed against the agricultural industry would likely go undetected before it was recognized and contained (3).

When one considers the impact of zoonotic diseases in the recent past, it is easy to see how agriculture would be an attractive target for economic destabilization by a terrorist attack. Although not an attack of terrorism, the mad cow disease outbreak in the 1990s cost the English government between $9 and $14 billion U.S. dollars in compensation costs to farmers and laid-off employees of the beef and dairy industries (4). It is estimated, moreover, that an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease within the United States would cost the nation more than $27 billion in trade losses alone each year (3).

The United States commercially produced 47,169 million pounds of red meat, 38,500 million pounds of poultry, 7,221 million dozen eggs, and 170 billion pounds of milk in 2002. The cash receipts for livestock and crops in 2003 are estimated to be $202 billion. The total gross domestic product, consisting of both the food and fiber sector and the farm sector, was $10,082 billion in 2001. In terms of employment, 129 million people are employed in the agricultural industry, 1.9 million of which are employed directly within the farm sector (5). It is clear that the United States is a world leader in food production, and many states’ economies thrive because of the direct success of the agriculture industry.

The success of the agriculture industry fosters the success of other industries as well, namely the grocery, food service, restaurant, and lodging and tourism industries, and an attack on the agriculture industry would send ripples through those industries, causing economic catastrophe similar to the economic impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the airline and lodging industries. It is estimated that 2003 sales for the restaurant industry will reach $426.1 billion (6), and that by 2008, the restaurant industry will employ 12.5 million workers and will likely reach 13 million by 2010 (7). This estimate takes into consideration commercial restaurant services as well as noncommercial restaurant services, such as school cafeterias, colleges and universities, hospitals and nursing facilities, and camps and community centers.

Food-based retail is estimated to capture 22.7% of the $3.489 trillion U.S. retail trade, with milk and cheese the second and third highest sellers ($10.6 and $8 billion, respectively) (8). The lodging industry grossed $14.2 billion in 2002, and tourism is currently the third largest retail industry, behind automotive and grocery, employing 2 million hotel property workers, as well as supporting more than 7.8 million travel and tourism jobs (9). Both in terms of economic destabilization and disruption of livelihood across many facets of American society, it is easy to see how attractive the agriculture industry would be to prospective terrorists.

Why, however, would one utilize agricultural terrorism, either in the form of a biological or a chemical agent, as a means of terrorism when so many other forms of weapons, with the capability of producing a direct effect in the form of loss of life and disruption of government activity, are so readily available? The answer, according to Singh, is simple. “While conventional weapons can be detected in metal detectors and other machines, biological warfare agents cannot be detected easily nor do they arouse suspicion. What’s more interesting is that they can be easily targeted. Creating bio-weapons to kill livestock and crops is far easier than devising a missile to kill a few. A study suggests that livestock, particularly in developed countries, have become more susceptible as a result of intensive antibiotic and steroid programs” (10). Another reason why agricultural terrorism is so attractive is that the attack represents a danger to the perpetrator neither during nor after the attack. Chalk notes,

In his manuscript entitled “Agricultural Biowarfare and Bioterrorism,” University of California at Davis microbiologist Mark Wheelis recognizes the special features that an attack on the agricultural sector would have (11). First, like Chalk and Singh, Wheelis notes that with the exception of a small number of zoonotic illnesses, most of the diseases a terrorist might introduce are not harmful to humans, making them much less lethal to produce and disseminate. Second, the equipment necessary to launch an agroterrorist attack is available on the open market, requires no specialized training to use, and costs very little. Third, the targets of agroterrorist attack, namely fields of crops or large areas of soil or animals, are largely unguarded and remarkably widespread. Fourth, the use of a biological or chemical agent against an animal or a plant population, although nevertheless an act of biowarfare, may be more easily justified both morally and punitively. The civil and criminal penalties for such crimes are much less severe than those meted against a perpetrator of an attack in which human lives are lost. Fifth, the number of cases necessary to create turmoil may be relatively few, and although few, the impact may be quite far reaching in terms of economic consequences. Sixth, it is possible to create the appearance of a naturally occurring event. Terrorist groups may evade detection if their activity resembles a naturally occurring event. A number of groups, moreover, had even claimed responsibility for natural disasters that befell the United States: namely, a 1989 fly infestation in Southern California and an outbreak of citrus canker in Florida, which had been attributed to a Cuban biological weapons program (12). Lastly, a terrorist act can be perpetrated without the criminal even entering the United States. The importation of large volumes of contaminated materials used in the agriculture industry, such as straw, animal feed, and fertilizer, may be spread over a large geographical area and may even mimic a naturally occurring event, thus evading detection.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go to the king and tell him that the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says, ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you again refuse to let them go, I will punish you by sending a terrible disease on all your animals—your horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep, and goats.’” (13)

Since antiquity there have been stories of poisoned well water, crops devastated by fire, and livestock either infected or killed during warfare. There exist many reports of biological terrorism during the world wars. The Germans and Japanese had attempted to introduce a variety of plant and animal pathogens, including anthrax, during conflicts surrounding the First World War. During the Second World War, the British accused the Germans of attempting to introduce Colorado beetles in to the potato fields of southern England (10). The United States had even been accused of agricultural terrorism by Cuba during the Cold War, when the Cuban government accused the United States of introducing a variety of biological agents into Cuba’s crops and livestock (14).

Yet in spite of the apparent historical prevalence of the use of biological and chemical forms of agricultural terrorism, and the understanding of the ease and minimal expense with which an act of agricultural terrorism may be perpetrated, it is recognized that very few actual acts of agricultural terrorism have taken place. Carus’s Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents since 1900 recognizes only three cases in which biological agents targeted against plants and animals have occurred (15). The first took place in 1952 when African bush milk toxin was introduced into the livestock population of the Kenyan Kikuyu tribe by the terrorist organization Mau Mau (10,12). The second occurred in the 1980s when Tamil militants threatened to infect rubber and tea plants in Sri Lanka to destabilize the Sinhalese government of that country. The third occurred when the Dark Harvest group threatened to spread anthrax-infected soil throughout the United Kingdom to raise public awareness of the ecological dangers of germ warfare (4,15).

It is recognized, however, that a number of governments throughout the world have experimented with the use of agricultural terrorism during times of conflict. The British government experimented with anthrax-laced cow cakes for use against the Germans during World War I. During World War II, the German, British, Canadian, Japanese, and U.S. governments had biological weapons programs that conducted research on antianimal and anticrop agents including foot-and-mouth disease, rinderpest, and potato beetles (14). The United States had experimented with the use of a number of plant pathogens prior to termination of its biological warfare program in the early 1970s. The South African apartheid government had experimented with agricultural biowarfare in the form of antiplant and anticrop agents for use against neighboring countries (4).

Kadlec, contributing author to the textbook Battlefield of the Future: 21st Century Warfare Issues, writes in his chapter “Biological Weapons for Waging Economic Warfare” that the historical context for the use of biological agents had led to the creation of an international treaty. In 1972 the Biological Warfare Treaty prohibited the research, development, production, and use of biological agents for offensive use (16). The Office of Technology Assessment, although no longer a government agency today, in 1993 offered Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Risks. In its report, the office noted that although 162 countries had signed the treaty, there was no means to ensure compliance. The assessment further listed the nations suspected of pursuing bioweapons and bioterrorist activities, including Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, North Korea, and Taiwan (17).

Policy analyst Greco, in his report Agricultural Terrorism in the Midwest: Risks, Threats, and State Responses, makes note of the fact that the number of terrorist events targeting ecological and environmental sites in the United States over the past 5 years is greater than 500. He notes that the incidents, including the 2001 contamination of an Oregon tree farm by environmental activists and the 1999 destruction of a crop of genetically modified corn in California, may have eluded public attention but nevertheless represented an assault against the integrity of the U.S. agriculture industry (12).