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Uneasy on the Range: Food Chain Security

The efficiencies in the system for producing beef create security problems for the food industry, one big slice of the nation's critical infrastructure. Here's a close-up look at bioterrorism risks and solutions.

By Todd Datz

August 01, 2005 — CSO — Is there anything more central to life than food?

The pursuit of sustenance shapes our health, how and where we live, and the structure of economies.

Americans tend to take food for granted. When we roll our carts into the local Piggly Wiggly, we know the grocery shelves will be stocked to overflowing. We also trust that our food is safe, and with good reasonexperts say the United States has the world's safest food supply.

But it's vulnerable too.

Over the years, the growth of new technologies, highly efficient farming methods and large agribusinesses have led to a phenomenally efficient livestock distribution network in the United States. But while the government and private sector have taken steps to ensure food safety, the security of the food supply chainfrom farm to forkhas for years been an afterthought, particularly among smaller producers.

When it comes to livestock production, for example, the huge feedlots, large processing facilities and a rapid distribution network have an unintended downsidethe ease and speed with which a contagious biological agent can spread across the country. That's what agroterrorism experts fear the mostthe introduction of an agent such as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which through the infection of a single animal could lead to widespread infection that would necessitate the slaughter of millions of cattle and a ban on U.S. meat exports, causing billions in economic losses and a loss in public confidence in the food supply.

But the production and delivery of food from farm to fork is only part of the problem. Our nation's wide open expanses of farmlands are, by their nature, insecure. And when you're talking about an economic sector that generates $1 trillion per year in economic activity and $50 billion in exports, that's not a comforting thought.

Tommy Thompson, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, took it on the chin for stating as he left office, "I don't understand why terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." But he had a point: We can't build fences around the nation's cornfields, or put surveillance cameras up in every auction barn or food-processing plant, or prevent a determined terrorist from coming into this country with a destructive virus and lethal intentions.

This article uses the beef industry to examine threats to the U.S. food supply and the domestic economy from a biological attack; identifies vulnerabilities in the agricultural sector and shares experts' ideas for addressing them; details the federal response to agroterrorism so far; and looks at how an FMD attack in the nation's heartland could play out.