European officials are taking a closer look at the safety of food supplies. Britain’s infrastructure safety agency released a warning about the growing threat of agroterrorism. A recent E. Coli outbreak in Germany has killed 25 people and sickened more than 2,700 as of June 8. Some are wondering whether the outbreak was calculated.
So how much of a threat is food terrorism in the United States?
“Contamination of our food supply is a matter of great concern to the U.S government,” Barry Kellman, director of the International Weapons Control Center at DePaul University, said in an e-mail. “That doesn’t mean there’s an imminent threat, but officials understand our vulnerability.”
Agroterrorism is not new. It’s an issue that goes back centuries, without the fancy name. Think of the final scene of Hamlet, when a poisoned cup and sword tip brings death to the main characters.
Yet 9/11 brought a heightened awareness to all kinds of terrorism. And food terrorism is a simple attack.
“It’s one of our greatest vulnerabilities in terms of ease of carrying out an attack,” Kellman said.
A potential major concern within the food industry is the poisoning of the milk supply. Richard Gray, science reporter for the London Telegraph, discussed this in a June 4 article:
“US experts have warned that the dairy industry is particularly vulnerable, as adding just a few grams of botulinum toxin or ricin to a tanker load of milk could poison or even kill thousands of consumers.”
Stanford University released a mathematical analysis in 2008 predicting the number of casualties in the event of adding toxin to a milk supply. It predicts that just one gram could affect more than 60,000 people and 10 grams could affect more than 400,000 people. The report doesn’t predict how many of those casualties would be fatal.
Some scientists are skeptical of Stanford’s findings. Although he’s a lawyer, not a scientist, Kellman works closely with researchers to access international terrorist threats.
“A lot of scientists I’ve talked to say [the Stanford report] is nonsense,” Kellman said. “I’ve got to leave it with some ambiguity.”
The U.S. government is prepared in the event of a food terrorism attack. The Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration would regulate a food supply cut-off, regardless of what food was contaminated.
There’s also an annual International Symposium on Agroterrorism, held in Kansas City several months ago. At that weekend gathering, people from the food and agricultural sector, health care industry and researchers convene to discuss food terrorism.
With natural disasters – think Mad Cow Disease – federal food agencies are trained to shut down supplies. It would work the same way with an intentional contamination. The only difference would be that law enforcement would need to get involved, which would pose an organizational challenge, Kellman said.
