University hopes to lead in strategies against agroterrorism

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- For U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, it's a nightmare scenario -- terrorists taking advantage of Missouri's lonesome back roads to infect cattle with biological agents that could devastate herds, rock farm markets and perhaps kill people consuming tainted meat.

The nightmare could come true, Talent said Friday.

"It seems almost absurdly easy for a terrorist to tamper with that food system," Talent, R-Mo., said. "Just the idea -- sneaking a vial of hoof-and-mouth disease and going up and down the road and injecting a couple of cows."

Talent was a keynote speaker for the first "agroterrorism summit" held by the University of Missouri-Columbia, a symposium that drew more than 100 participants for technical discussions on safeguarding the food supply against intentional harm.

Agriculture not only feeds the world, it enriches Missouri's economy -- which is why the university wants to put its expertise in service of countering the threat of agricultural terrorism, said Tom Payne, dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources at the Columbia campus.

"When I started teaching more than 30 years ago, of course we tried to learn and research all we could about how to fight plant and animal disease. But no one could conceive that a person would take a biological phenomenon and turn it against a population or an individual," Payne said in an interview.

Talent and Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., are working with the university to submit a proposal for making the university the home of one of two planned national centers for agroterrorism, underwritten by the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Federal investment in such a center could run to "tens of millions of dollars a year," Talent said after his speech.

Participants in Friday's session heard about technological advances and shortcomings in detecting biological terrorism -- and they received historical reminders of how devastating blights, plagues and wind-borne spores have been through the centuries.

James Schoelz, chairman of the plant pathology department at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said the Irish potato famine in 1845-1860 was blamed for 1 million deaths from starvation and malnutrition, plus the emigration of more than 1.5 million people from Ireland.

"The consequences of plant disease can be just as significant today," Schoelz said. He cited as examples current efforts to contain citrus canker in Florida, a fruit virus in Pennsylvania and karnal bunt, a foul-smelling fungus threatening wheat. Those problems are caused by nature; Schoelz warned that infections of food supplies caused by intentional acts "present us with the challenge of deterring and eliminating the threats."

One element will be Missouri's cooperation with a new national rapid detection network for plant diseases, Schoelz said. The regional headquarters for that network is at Kansas State University, and other regional offices are on campuses in California, Florida, Michigan and New York.

Another speaker, Robert Barton of the Midwest Research Institute, said another challenge is making equipment, such as sensors to detect biological threats to crops, affordable for farmers. For example, he said one proposed detection unit would cost $25,000 to buy and $10,000 a year to operate, making the expense prohibitive for many smaller operations.

"That's where the breakthroughs are going to have to come and where the research must be focused," Barton said.