Covert Biological Weapons Attacks against Agricultural Targets: Assessing the Impact against U.S. Agriculture

CIAO DATE: 01/02

Covert Biological Weapons Attacks against Agricultural Targets: Assessing the Impact against U.S. Agriculture

August 2001

International Security Program
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA)
Harvard University

Since 1995, analysts, policymakers, and the news media in the United States have focused unprecedented attention on the threat of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particularly chemical and biological weapons (CBW). The Aum Shinrikyo attack in Tokyo in March 1995 and the Oklahoma City bombing the following month significantly contributed to this phenomenon in two important ways. First, Aum proved that subnational groups could obtain CBW, previously only a theoretical possibility. ₁ After the Tokyo incident terrorists using CBW appeared to be an evolving and dangerous threat that required creative new thinking in counter- and antiterrorism policy. Second, the Oklahoma City bombing brought the threat of terrorism to the American heartland. No longer was terrorism a foreign phenomenon characterized by media accounts of masked Islamic fundamentalists taking hostages, hijacking planes, or bombing far-away buildings. The terrorists in this case were Americans targeting Americans: not only had terrorism reached the center of the country, but the terrorist threat originated much closer to home.

In an effort to address this "new" terrorist threat, the United States has tripled spending for CBW counterterrorist programs since 1995. Threat analyses have focused on the vulnerability of American society to attacks involving CBW as well as the spread in the information era of the technologies and know-how associated with such weapons, and many government programs designed to address the CBW terrorist threat reflect this approach. In 1996, Congress passed the Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act (the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic Preparedness Program) in an effort to make the United States better prepared to respond to an attack involving CBW. This effort has been characterized by scenario development and training of the first-responder community, under the assumption that an attack would affect primarily civilians in urban areas.

More recently, the threat of a biological attack against an agricultural target, often labeled "agricultural terrorism", has been discussed, although programs to ensure preparedness for such an attack remain largely the purview of a limited part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has begun to improve its capabilities to respond in the event of disease in animals or crops. ₂ In an effort to address the potential threat of attacks against agricultural targets, USDA has developed a six-point strategy to ensure the security of U.S. agriculture, including terrorism prevention and deterrence, international cooperation, domestic consequence management planning, research on counterterrorism capabilities, protection of critical infrastructure, and protection of food supply. ₃ This wide-ranging and somewhat vague list resembles many other agencies' counterterrorism plans. Interagency groups have proliferated, also characteristic of U.S. CBW counterterrorism planning in recent years. Several other U.S. agencies besides USDA now have some role in preparedness for agricultural terrorism, including the National Security Council and the Department of Justice. ₄ USDA requested a total of $41.3 million for counterterrorism in Fiscal Year (FY) 2001, $39.8 million of which (or 96 percent) is devoted to defense against WMD. ₅ In FY 2000, WMD defense accounted for $7.3 million of $12.3 million, or 59 percent of the total. ₆ Clearly, USDA has focused significant resources on addressing this problem. For comparison, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for public health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), requested $265.4 million for counterterrorism activities for FY 2001, all of which was WMD-related, representing a decrease in funding from $277.6 in FY 2000. ₇ The HHS FY 1999 figure, however, was $173.1 million, indicating either that HHS was able to capitalize sooner on the attention given the WMD threat or that the threat was perceived as more pressing in HHS's jurisdiction. ₈ The Department of Justice (DOJ) requested $254.7 million in WMD-related funding in FY 2001, an increase of $37.5 million over the previous year. ₉ In the U.S. national security community, funding for WMD-related programs has tripled since 1998, but the figures remain a small portion (less than 10 percent) of the total for counterterrorism generally. ₁₀ Other agencies' funding for WMD defense programs has also increased, but in no case has the proportion of WMD funding in the total counterterrorism budget been so great as in the case of USDA. That said, USDA's funding levels, seen as a proportion of the U.S. budget, trail those of other agencies dramatically in WMD-related appropriations, because the Domestic Preparedness Program until very recently has focused on preventing and mitigating attacks targeted directly at humans. The heightened focus on terrorism against agriculture represents a new stage, one with the object of protecting U.S. strategic assets, such as agriculture.

In addition, USDA has requested funding to upgrade a research facility at Plum Island, New York, to Biosafety Level 4, capable of and dedicated to the study of animal and plant pathogens, although local public opinion and congressional representatives have mixed views on the issue. ₁₁ Building on these indicators of growing official attention to the threat of attacks against agricultural targets, including congressional hearings on the issue, news articles have begun to reflect concerns that U.S. agriculture is vulnerable to attack using biological weapons, and arguably this vulnerability, as well as the theoreticalease of carrying out such attacks covertly, makes agricultural targets particularly appealing to terrorists. ₁₂ Terrorists may also find these types of targets appealing because they do not target humans directly and may therefore be more easily justified. Indeed, a recent influential US government report asserted that the "U.S. agricultural sector is especially vulnerable to agroterrorism" and that "a successful attack could result in local or regional economic destabilization" and affect international commerce. ₁₃ The U.S. agricultural sector, including all elements directly or indirectly related to agriculture, represents about 13 percent of the U.S. gross national product and is enormous and diverse; few specific threat assessments of vulnerability exist. ₁₄

It would be extremely difficult for a terrorist group to perpetrate a significant biological attack against the agricultural economy in the United States, however, for several reasons. First, obtaining and effectively delivering a biological agent against an agricultural target is a task fraught with technical hurdles. Although some agricultural agents can be obtained relatively easily and crudely delivered, to cause a catastrophic incident would require a more sophisticated approach. Second, because crops and livestock in the United States are generally not concentrated, eliminating a segment of the agricultural economy would require a multipronged attack and a sophisticated understanding of the economy. Although not impossible, this type of attack presents significant obstacles. Third, the U.S. agricultural economy has in place networks and plans to respond to an attack once detected, and surveillance of crop and animal disease in the United States is extraordinarily sophisticated. Even if a terrorist group managed to deliver a biological agent effectively against a target, the effects of the attack would likely be severely limited by the U.S. response. Fourth, although a determined group could conceivably carry out a devastating attack, there is no evidence of terrorist groups with the motivation to carry out a catastrophic attack against U.S. agriculture. It is clear however that more research is required before an accurate assessment can be made of the threat terrorism poses to the U.S. agricultural economy.

The purpose of this paper is to assess what economic impact an attack using biological weapons would have on the U.S. agricultural sector. There have been very few instances of what could be deemed "agricultural terrorism" in the United States; the empirical data is therefore quite limited. Although there have been some well-known cases of agricultural product contamination, these cases targeted people more directly rather than the crops or livestock themselves and were thus not examples of subnational actors seeking to eliminate a specific crop or portion of the agricultural base. Without a set of cases to examine, it is extremely difficult to predict accurately what an incident of agricultural terrorism would involve, how it would present itself, how it would be detected, and what its consequences would be.

By looking at natural outbreaks of disease in segments of the agricultural economy in the United States however, it may be possible to identify and quantify the actual impact of an attack against U.S. agriculture. These outbreaks, although they do not carry with them the same level of psychological impact that is normally associated with terrorism, do provide a baseline for economic analysis and estimates of disease impacts on local, regional, and national economies.

The paper discusses definitions of agricultural terrorism and talks about some theoretical reasons why U.S. agriculture may not be particularly vulnerable to an attack. The ideas proposed along these lines are similar to those in theories about the difficulty of perpetrating an effective attack using CBW against any target. After taking a look at the historical record of agricultural terrorism cases and making some observations, the paper reviews a number of naturally occurring outbreaks to provide a basis for determining the impact disease in the agricultural sector might have. To assess the vulnerability of the vast U.S. agricultural economy to terrorist attacks using biological weapons (BW), the paper then analyzes the diversity of U.S. agriculture and comments on the feasibility of attacking regionally focused crops. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions from the data.

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Endnotes

Note 1: Although Aum was not the first subnational group to use a chemical or biological agent, the group's acquisition and use of sarin and VX nerve agents, agents thought to be restricted to state-level CW programs, was unprecedented. Back

Note 2: "The Threat of Biological Terrorism to U.S. Agriculture", U.S. Department of Agriculture, undated. Back

Note 3: Statement by Floyd P. Horn, Administrator, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, before the U. S. Senate Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, October 27, 1999, pg. 5.Back

Note 4: Ibid. Back

Note 5: "Federal Funding to Combat Terrorism, Including Defense against Weapons of Mass Destruction FY 1998-2001," available at http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/terfund.htm. Back

Note 6: Ibid. Back

Note 7: Ibid. Back

Note 8: Ibid. Back

Note 9: Ibid. Back

Note 10: Ibid. Back

Note 11: David Ruppe, "Battle Over Plum Island", available at ABCNews.com, accessed January 20, 2000. Back

Note 12: Steve Goldstein, "'Agroterror' Fears Awake; U.S. Crops Seen as Vulnerable," The Arizona Republic, June 26, 2000, p. A12; and "Experts Warn of "Agroterrorism" Threat," Associated Press, December 2, 1999). Back

Note 13: "First Annual Report to the President and the Congress of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, 1: Assessing the Threat," December 15, 1999, p. 12, available at http://www.rand.org/organization/nsrd/terrpanel/ and accessed on June 23, 2000. Back

Note 14: Statement by Floyd P. Horn before the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, October 27, 1999, p. 3. Back