Lurking in the Feedlots of America

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December 15, 2005

 

Lurking in the Feedlots of America

" Agroterrorists " Needn't Bother

By STAN COX

 

" In the war on terrorism, the fields and pastures of America's farmland

might seem at first to have nothing in common with the towers of the

World Trade Center or busy seaports. In fact, however, they are merely

different manifestations of the same high-priority target, the American

economy. "

 

 

That's Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) warning us about " agroterrorism " ,

a

specter that she and others in Washington say is stalking rural

America. Here in the Great Plains, we're all being exhorted to keep a

round-the-clock lookout for agroterrorists lurking around farms or

feedlots.

 

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, Republican chair of the Intelligence

Committee, has been hyping agroterrorism since 1999. But it took the

9/11 attacks to get some action. Roberts recently told the Wichita

Eagle, " At least now, when I talk about agroterrorism, people don't

tell me to talk about something else. "

 

Keeping in mind that terrorists never seem inclined to take targeting

suggestions from US politicians, we know these days to treat any use

the word " terrorism " with deep skepticism. But when a prefix is

attached, we should be especially wary.

 

Given the lack of standardization (the prefix of " bioterrorism "

denoting the means of attack, of " narcoterrorism " the means of finance,

of " ecoterrorism " the beneficiary, and of " agroterrorism " the

target)

it's clear that " terrorism " is simply a device to draw attention to

whatever is in the prefix, and maybe scare up some funding.

 

The Current Research Information System (CRIS) is a database describing

all agricultural research projects funded by the US Department of

Agriculture through grants, contracts, or its own agencies. A search of

CRIS for variants of the terms " agroterrorism " or " terrorism "

turns up

18 agriculture-related projects initiated during the four-year period

1998-2001. For the following four years, 2001-05, there are precisely

100 projects that mention terrorism or related terms.

 

Titles of the projects range from " Semiochemical Management Tactics for

Filth Flies in Animal Production " to " A Partnership for Pharmaceutical

and Economic Development of Wild Lebanese Plants " . Some of the projects

are actually aimed at thwarting or investigating agroterrorism. Many

others simply mention it as one among many applications of research

that the scientists would likely be doing anyway for other reasons.

Either way, agroterrorism is 'in' in Washington.

 

This past summer, the federally funded National Agricultural

Biosecurity Center at Kansas State University prepared a report for the

US Department of Justice entitled " Defining Law Enforcement's Role in

Protecting American Agriculture Against Agroterrorism " (their italics).

It defined " four categories of potential terrorists " , only one of them

identifiably foreign, who might spread foot-and-mouth or other diseases

among cattle, causing billions in economic losses but no human illness:

 

1. International terrorists

 

2. Economic opportunists

 

3. Domestic terrorists (either a Timothy McVeigh type or a " disgruntled

employee " )

 

4. Militant animal rights activists (The report notes that " militant

elements, such as the Animal Liberation Front, could view an attack on

the animal food industry as a positive event. " )

 

It seems that agroterrorism is just a new name for old-fashioned

sabotage.

 

Out here in the red states, we often worry that the average American

has little knowledge or interest in agriculture. But we need to change

our attitude, according to the " Agro-Guard " program sponsored by the

NABC and Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Its brochure

(<http://php.nabc.ksu.edu/images/uploads/Agrobrochure.pdf>pdf) urges

citizens to report to the authorities anyone showing an interest in

agricultural matters who has " no logical reason or purpose " for such

interest. It exhorts rural Americans to " report any activity around

facilities that YOU deem suspicious or out-of-place. "

 

So now I suppose we do things this way:

 

New Jersey traveler: " Say, do you guys give tours? "

 

Slaughterhouse manager: " May I see your papers, please? ... Hey, Merle,

call the sheriff! "

 

In Kansas City each spring, The FBI and federal Joint Terrorism Task

Force convene an International Symposium on Agroterrorism. Relying on

some of the concepts discussed at the 2005 Symposium and other

oft-mentioned scenarios, I composed the following list of six potential

threats.

 

Then I realized that much of the damage agroterrorism is expected to

cause is already a reality:

 

Agroterrorists might sicken or kill thousands of Americans by

contaminating the food supply with biological agents.

 

Thousands of Americans? The federal Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC)

<http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/food/index.htm>estimates that " 76

million Americans get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and

5,000 people die from foodborne illnesses each year. "

 

The flow of food contaminated with nasty microorganisms coming from of

an ever-more-industrialized countryside is heavy and constant. Of the

10 organisms listed by the US Public Health Service as the most serious

threats, 7 are carried by meat and dairy products.

 

In promoting the agroterrorism threat, Senator Collins conjured up a

bucolic image: " the fields and pastures of America's farmland. " But the

overcrowded, filthy conditions of gigantic feedlots and

animal-confinement facilities that produce most of our meat are

well-known, as are the opportunities for contamination in

high-throughput, lightly inspected slaughterhouses.

 

Cattle consuming a grain-based diet in feedlots (and that's the vast

majority of beef cattle in this country) are more likely to have the

deadly bacterium E. coli 0157:H7 in their feces than are grass- or

hay-fed cattle, and meat is frequently contaminated with feces as it

leaves the slaughterhouse.

 

What if someone were to poison the rural water supply?

 

Someone's already doing it. A 1998 CDC report showed that 15% of

domestic wells in Illinois, 21% in Iowa, and 24% in Kansas were

contaminated with nitrates above a safe level. Most of the nitrates get

into wells by escaping the roots of heavily fertilized crops and

leaching into groundwater. Consumption of nitrates is associated with

methemoglobenemia ( " blue baby syndrome " ) in infants. Many, but not all,

studies have shown links between nitrates and various cancers in

adults.

 

A 2004 report by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (pdf)

surveyed 19,500 miles of rivers and streams in the state. More than

half of those miles -- 10,800 -- were " impaired for one or more uses "

by pollution. Of more than 180,000 acres of lakes, 75% were similarly

polluted. More than 40% of stream mileage and lake acreage was unable

to " fully support " aquatic life, and 69% of lake acreage could not

fully support domestic water uses.

 

In the Kansas study, agriculture was by far the biggest cause of damage

to surface waters -- exceeding industry, municipal discharge, sewage,

urban runoff, mining, and oil drilling combined.

 

Terrorists might breed bacteria resistant to most or all antibiotics,

spreading hard-to-cure diseases among animals and humans.

 

But they'd be oo late. According to a study published this year by CDC

scientists, bacterial resistance to multiple antibiotics in human

patients comes chiefly from feeding antibiotics to livestock. The

bacteria that survive and contaminate the meat of such animals are

likely to be resistant.

 

And, the study showed, resistant bacteria are more likely to cause

bloodstream infections requiring hospitalization. A 2004 study found

that an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infections of

women in California was caused by meat-borne bacteria from

antibiotic-treated animals.

 

In this country, antibiotics are widely fed to livestock even when they

aren't sick, because the drugs promote weight gain and profits. That

practice has been banned in Europe because it accelerates the

development of hard-to-kill bacterial strains.

 

Vast acreages of crops could be wiped out by inoculation with plant

diseases.

 

Mother Nature is already busy inoculating crops with a massive array of

fungi, bacteria, viruses, and insects -- some beneficial and some

harmful. Over the past 30 years, Kansas wheat production has been

reduced by an average 30 to 40 million bushels per year by a dozen

different fungal and viral diseases -- and that doesn't count insects

and mites.

 

The disease organisms are natural, but epidemics are not; they result

when vast acreages are sown to one or a few crop species (e.g., corn

and soybeans in the Upper Midwest, wheat in the Great Plains), the

fields are kept as free as possible of any other flora or fauna, and

only a handful of genetically similar crop varieties are grown.

 

As late as the 1960s, the United States bioweapons program worked on

" weaponizing " two crop diseases, wheat stem rust and rice blast, and

the Soviets worked on such pathogens for another couple of decades

after that, but neither seems to have come up with an effective way to

wipe out a nation's crop entirely.

 

Remember, the 9/11 terrorists showed an interest in flying crop

dusters!

 

Yes, and I remember Alexander Cockburn writing in the print edition of

CounterPunch that the grounding of all crop dusters for a few weeks was

probably one of the few post-9/11 government actions that actually

protected citizen's health and lives.

 

Of the 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides (fungicides, insecticides,

herbicides, and others) used in the United States, 75% are used in

agriculture, and that proportion has been fairly constant over the past

20 years.

 

The consequences? The following is reproduced from a report by the

Natural Resources Defense Council:

 

Children living in farming areas or whose parents work in agriculture

are exposed to pesticides to a greater degree, and from more sources

than other children.

 

The outdoor herbicide atrazine was detected inside all the houses of

Iowa farm families sampled in a small study during the application

season, and in only 4 percent of 362 non-farm homes.

 

Neurotoxic organophosphate pesticides have been detected on the hands

of farm children at levels that could result in exposures above U.S.

EPA designated " safe " levels.

 

Metabolites of organophosphate pesticides used only in agriculture were

detectable in the urine of two out of every three children of

agricultural workers and in four out of every ten children who simply

live in an agricultural region.

 

On farms, children as young as 10 can work legally, and younger

children frequently work illegally or accompany their parents to the

fields due to economic necessity and a lack of child care options.

These practices can result in acute poisonings and deaths.

 

By far the most comprehensive epidemiological study of the effects of

ag chemicals is the National Institutes of Health / EPA Agricultural

Health Study, which has been running since 1993. Scientists have been

monitoring the health of private and commercial pesticide applicators

and spouses -- almost 90,000 of them so far. The still-unfinished

research is suggesting that some ag chemicals present risks to humans.

" Outcomes of concern " include cancer, neurologic diseases, reproductive

problems, and nonmalignant respiratory diseases.

 

Meanwhile, the EPA, at industry's urging, continues to permit dosing of

human subjects with pesticides in order to test their effects.

 

A highly trained agroterrorist might infect crops with a

toxin-producing fungus and contaminate our food that way.

 

No terrorists or training necessary. Vomitoxin, produced by the " scab "

fungus Fusarium graminearum, and aflatoxin, produced by Aspergillus

flavis, have been inflicting enormous headaches and costs on farmers

and the grain industry for years. Vomitoxin makes a wheat or barley

crop unusable as human food and drastically reduces or destroys its

value as livestock feed. Aflatoxin, found most often in peanuts or

corn, is carcinogenic.

 

In the state North Dakota alone, scab has cost farmers $162 million

this year and $1.5 billion since 1993. It caused a disastrous epidemic

in the southeastern United States in 2003.

 

Two factors have converged in recent years to make scab much more

severe: (a) farmers concerned about soil erosion have reduced or

eliminated tillage in many fields, leaving infected crop residue on the

soil surface, and (b) grain agriculture in the US continues to

emphasize continuous monocultures or unsustainable rotations such as

wheat following corn.

 

 

* * *

 

Those who are sounding the agroterrorism alarm acknowledge that the

increasing concentration of US agriculture, and its increasingly

industrial infrastructure, make it more vulnerable. But those same,

homegrown forces are already having consequences that are not easy to

distinguish from the results of a hypothetical agroterror attack.

 

With an agriculture like this, who needs terrorists?

 

Stan Cox is a plant breeder ( perennial crops, resistant to terrorism)

and writer in Salina, Kansas. He can be reached at: t.stan

http://www.counterpunch.org/cox12152005.html

 

 

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a

cross.

-Sinclair Lewis