Food safetyFDA proposes rules to prevent terror attack on U.S. food supply

In order to prevent or reduce the risk from a potential terror attack on the nation’s food supply, the FDA proposed new rules to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The updates apply to food processors and manufacturers, including foreign companies shipping to the U.S. market. While the food supply has been untouched by terrorism, “we’ve certainly studied it since 9/11 to assess what the potential impacts might be,” says Don Kraemer, deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “And they can be catastrophic,” he says.

According to the FDA, “intentional adulteration of the food supply can result in catastrophic public health consequences, widespread public fear, loss of public confidence in the safety of food and the ability of government to ensure food safety, and significant adverse economic impacts, including disruption of trade.” The proposed rules focus largely on facilities that maintain bulk storage and handling of liquids for human consumption. Industrial bakeries where several ingredients are mixed together are also a concern.   

NPR reports that industry analysts have cited poor security practices among facilities operators along the food supply chain. “A lot of food processing manufacturers don’t practice rigid biosecurity,” says Peter Chalk, a terrorism analyst with the RAND Corporation, a policy think tank. Owners fail to lock up warehouses or invest in 24/7 surveillance, and often hire temporary workers without performing background checks. “So actually, introducing a contaminant — salmonella, botulism, mercury — into the food chain would not be particularly difficult,” Chalk says.

The most recent large-scale bioterrorist, food related attack in the nation occurred in 1984 in The Dallas, Oregon, when members of a cult infected salad bars with salmonella; more than 700 people became sick.

Food terrorism could have drastic economic effects. A DHS risk assessment discovered that should a pathogen like foot-and-mouth disease be introduced to Great Plains ranchers, total damages would exceed $50 billion, affecting U.S. beef exports and dramatically reducing consumer demand for beef products. NPR notes that infiltrating the American food supply has been on the terrorism blueprint as evident in 2002, when U.S. troops raided an al-Qaeda storehouse in Afghanistan where they found documents detailing instructions for targeting American agriculture as a way to damage the U.S. economy.

Experts suggest that the United States has avoided a nationwide terror attack on agriculture because such an attack does not carry the same shock effect as a suicide bombing or a mass shooting. “It lacks a visible point for the media to latch on to, [except for] the possible images of burning cows,” Chalk says. “Really, it doesn’t have the same blood lust appeal of carrying out a suicide attack in a shopping mall.”