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EH PrepCast #1
This is a complete transcript of EH PrepCast #1 : On
Agroterrorism
TRANSCRIPT OF THE FIRST EH PREP CAST
A PRODUCTION OF THE DIVISION
OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
T A P E D P R O C E E D I N G S
MR. STRIPLING: Welcome to the first EH prep cast,
a production of the Division of Environmental Health,
Florida department of Health. I'm Mitch Stripling.
When people think about agroterrorism, they often
think about something like a bomb in a corn field. But
in reality, agroterrorism isn't just about fields.
It's about the question of our food's biosecurity from
farm to table throughout the entire production and
consumption cycle. To talk about the important issues
surrounding agroterrorism today, we have here with us
Tracy Wade, the food and Water Board Disease
Preparedness Coordinator and agency lead for
agroterrorism for the Florida Department of health, and
Art Johnstone, the Director of the Office of
Agricultural Emergency Preparedness within the Florida
Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Thanks for joining us for this EH prep cast. Welcome
to you both.
MS. WADE: Thank you.
MR. JOHNSTONE: Thank you very much.
MR. STRIPLING: Let's start on January the 9th,
2006, Charles Connor Deputy Secretary to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture said this in Senate hearings:
"We will remain steadfast in our belief that the threat to
agriculture is very real."
Mr. Johnstone, would you agree with agroterrorism
is a real threat?
MR. JOHNSTONE: I would, although I would probably
delineate between threats and vulnerabilities. I would
call a threat something more along the lines that we
know someone is plotting to attack U.S. agriculture.
And to my knowledge, there isn't a specific threat at
this time. But there are -- there is an incredible
vulnerability. It's a complex system. It's a very
economically high-price-tagged system in your country.
It's about one fifth of the gross national product
involving food and agriculture. And for that reason,
it's something to really be concerned about.
There is also -- you know,s closest thing we have
to a threat is back in 2002 after our invasion of
Afghanistan, we recovered some documents in some of the
caves there and -- including pages and pages of United
States agricultural documents translated into Arabic
and also some plans on how you would attack U.S.
agriculture. And although those don't say there's
going to be something happening, it definitely tells us
that Al-Qaida has thought about attacking U.S. food and
agricultural systems.
MR. STRIPLING: So we've established that if
there's not a present and coherent threat, there are at
least vulnerabilities in that system. And the
Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, your
agency, defines agroterrorism, Mr. Johnstone, as the
deliberate introduction of a chemical or disease agent
either against livestock, crops, or into the food chain
for the purpose of undermining stability and/or
generating fear in the food chain. And that's a huge
threat matrix.
Can you characteristic that threat or those
vulnerabilities a little more? What do you think the
risk is?
MR. JOHNSTONE: I think -- let me share three
scenarios -- that's probably the easiest way I can
answer that -- that are probably realistic scenarios
where a terrorist organization or individuals could
target the United States.
One would be to attack our animal populations. We
are one of the great producers of beef and pork and a
few other commodities in the world. By introducing a
foreign animal disease, you could do some significant
damage to animal populations and economic damage as
well. So that's one scenario that we think is a
realistic scenario.
And the other would be intentionally introducing a
plant or a crop, pasture disease. We have some of
those devastating diseases in Florida at this time. We
have citrus canker. We recently had a citrus greening
disease introduced into South Florida. We've also
dealt with soybean rust. None of these were
terrorists' introductions, but they show the amount of
damage that could be done if someone were to
intentionally introduce such agents.
And I think the third scenario I would think about
would be intentionally poisoning food somewhere along
the chain, whether in Grocery stores or whether in the
manufacturing or processing plant or in a restaurant
chain with the idea of killing people or making people
sick.
MR. STRIPLING: You talked about the intentional
poisoning of food. Is that just a theoretical concern?
Is there a historical precedent for that sort of
attack?
MR. JOHNSTONE: Certainly from a terrorist
perspective, you know, the definition that you read for
terrorism talks about the intent being political
instability or something of that nature. For that
reason, it's hard to define a lot of the activities
that have happened in the past as terrorist. But
certainly the food supply has been used to poison
people and kill people.
You know, we've had -- we had a case in 19- -- I
believe it was 1984 in Corvallis, Oregon, where a cult
wanting to turn over a local election went into salad
bars at 10 restaurants and introduced a strain of
salmonella there that actually sickened 751 people.
Fortunately, no fatalities in that case, but certainly
the food supply was used as a weapon in that case.
Some people would call that terrorism, some people
wouldn't. But clearly it showed there's a
vulnerability that exists. That's one example. There
are many others.
MR. STRIPLING: So food has been targeted before.
MR. JOHNSTONE: Yeah. And I would share one more
story. There was a story that came out of China in
September 2002 where a snack cart vendor was trying to
undermine a competitor and put some rat poison in his
competitor's snack cart and actually was successful in
killing 38 people and sickening more than 400. Again,
very simple, very nontechnical but with a high amount
of damage so, again, just showing the vulnerability
that exists.
MR. STRIPLING: I want to touch on, for a second,
you outlined three different scenarios for
agroterrorism, not just food poisoning. In terms of
foreign animals or plant diseases, is there any
precedent for those things? Have we ever seen those in
history?
MR. JOHNSTONE: You know, there is -- and I don't
have dates here, but there was during World War I, I
believe it was, Germans introduced glandars into some
of the military horses to try to sicken horses. That's
an example. And I do know -- that's really the one
that comes to mind other than planning documents, like
I said, in the caves of Afghanistan.
And I would mention one other -- both the United
States and the Soviet Union during the height of the
Cold War did a lot of research in using animal diseases
as an agent to cause instability in a country. As far
as we know, no one actually perpetrated an attack, but
both countries spent a lot of time and resources
researching how such things could be done, specifically
looking at both animal and crop diseases.
MR. STRIPLING: So if you break that down, you
start to see a pattern. People talk about "farm to
table" where you have the growing or the production of
agriculture. You have the processing of it, and then
you sort of have the serving of it farther down the
food chain. Looking at that whole continuum, are there
parts of that system that you feel are more vulnerable
than other portions?
MR. JOHNSTONE: The thing about -- you called it
the "farm to fork." The thing about that continuum is
it's so diverse and it's so wide open. You know, you
can drive past farming operations all over this country
where you're passing right next to crops, right next to
cattle, right next to swine. It would be very
difficult to protect. So the production end of
agriculture is wide open. Now, that would be very
difficult to actually kill any people, but you could do
vast economic damage by attacking that end of the
scale.
If you wanted to attack people, you would want to
attack the food supply as close to a meal being served
as possible. You might want to do it in a processing
plant where it gets mixed in with ingredients and flows
through the system. You might want -- a terrorist
might be interested in attacking a restaurant chain to
get high visibility and a newsworthy story. They may
be interested in going into a grocery store and
targeting goods there.
And as we all know from experience, all these are
incredibly vulnerable. We don't have guards at the
grocery store. We don't check IDs at restaurants. We
-- it's very hard to get a handle on the workers at
some of these industries because there's very high
turnover, low pay, people coming in and out.
And that's why I delineate the difference between
threats and vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are
immense. I don't think we'll ever fully erase those
vulnerabilities, but if we look at threats, we can
begin to plan around maybe some realistic threats.
MR. STRIPLING: But, I mean, listening to you, it
certainly sounds like there is at least realistic cause
for concern across a wide breadth of the food chain,
certainly not a cause for fear or anything like that,
but, you know, a lot of things to address.
Looking at the Rand Corporation in 2003, they did
a briefing on agroterrorism. And what they found seems
to agree with what you're saying, which is that the
capabilities to exploit vulnerabilities in agriculture
are not considerable. The food chain, in fact, offers
a low tech mechanism for achieving human death.
It's a huge problem in scope and breadth. So the
question is: What are we doing about it? Especially
the state of Florida, what are we standing up to do to
counter these vulnerabilities?
MS. WADE: Well, Art is a member of a lot of
organizations within the state that are statewide as
the department of health is, also. And kind of mention some
of those.
MR. JOHNSTONE: Yeah. You know, the one thing
that -- I've been involved in agroterrorism for about
three years now. Shortly after September 11th, 2001,
our agency really began to look at these issues deeply.
I joined this office shortly thereafter. And one thing
becomes clear very quick is that we can spend all our
money, billions and trillions of dollars, trying to put
fences around all the food, and there would still be
vulnerabilities.
MR. STRIPLING: Right.
MR. JOHNSTONE: So as much as we'd like to prevent
a terrorist attack, when you look at agroterrorism,
prevention is probably only a small piece of our
picture. In my mind, you do want to look for the
greatest vulnerabilities, and you probably want to
spend some funding protecting and minimizing those
greatest points of vulnerability. But I think we're
very wise -- and that's what we've been doing in
Florida and I think in the country too -- in focusing
our efforts, our money, our dollars, our time on
preparedness efforts.
If a terrorist does do this type of attack, will
we be ready to respond quickly and effectively to
minimize the number of people that get sick and
potentially die. And that is what Florida is doing,
and that's what the nation is doing, too.
MR. STRIPLING: And what have we done in that
regard? If the answer is, Well, let's focus on
preparedness and get ready, what is the state doing to
increase those preparedness efforts?
MS. WADE: There's a strong push for education,
educating farm owners, educating landowners, educating
the public on what the vulnerabilities are and what to
be aware of.
MR. STRIPLING: And what's the message when we're
educating them?
MS. WADE: Just to be aware, keep your eyes open.
In a lot of these incidents if an agroterrorism event
occurs, one of the first things you'll see is people
getting sick. And those people will go to their
doctors or got to their local health departments. And
if it's later determined to be a reportable disease,
and most agroterrorism agents that would affect a human
are reportable diseases or contaminations. Those will
get reported to the health department and to the
Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and we
would be aware that there has been an agroterrorism
event. And that would start the ball rolling on an
investigation.
So it's basically an awareness level of education
that we're training people in.
MR. JOHNSTONE: And I would agree with that. And
I would say another thing we've really done -- I think
the two keys are organization and partnership. I think
before the events of September 11, 2001, different
state and federal agencies pretty much worked on their
own and were very territorial. Since that, the tragic
events of that day, the level of partnership has
changed. That's why I'm sitting here in an office at
the Department of Health, and that's why I know Tracy
Wade. And we've worked together, you know, week in and
week out. We've worked closely together.
Agencies are beginning to see that united we will
win. But if we get separated, we will lose, and we're
starting really work together. You're seeing that.
You're seeing some great partnerships between -- on the
federal level, between the Food and Drug
Administration, the United States Department of
Agriculture, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland
Security, all aimed at pooling our resources, working
together in a coordinated manner to prepare for
catastrophic events.
MR. STRIPLING: Well, let's talk about what I
think is one of those efforts, which is the State
Agricultural Responses Team. Can you talk for a
second about who's on that team and what its purpose
is?
MR. JOHNSTONE: Sure. The State Agricultural
Response Team was formed -- it was spearheaded by folks
within our department, the Florida Department of
Agricultural and Consumer Services, also people in some
of the universities around Florida, and some of the
private and nonprofit organizations, saying, you know,
we need to find ways -- if there's ever a large scale
foreign animal disease, let's say, foot and mouth
disease was introduced into Florida. It's a
devastating animal disease. It has catastrophic
effects on cattle, spreads rapidly, is very hard to
stop.
Folks started looking at a scenario like that.
And that could happened naturally, or it could be
introduced by terrorists. And they said, How would we
respond? And it became clear that nobody alone could
do it. And so the U.S.D.A., the federal partners, the
United States Department of Agriculture, the state
partners, private sector partners, nonprofit partners,
university partners started to meet and put together a
structure so that we are all singing from the same
sheet of music, so to speak.
MR. STRIPLING: That seems like a great example of
the kind of partnership that really has been important
since September 11th. It's good to see that kind of
stuff in action.
MR. JOHNSTONE: Yeah. And I would also say that
the Department of Homeland Security has provided
significant funding for our SART initiative here in
Florida. And so, you know, not only -- it was
spearheaded by state partners but funded and partnered
on the federal level as well, which is really
important.
MR. STRIPLING: If you try to break down those
partnerships and look within them and see what each
agency does -- I know that this is something that DAGS,
the Department of Agriculture and Human Services, does
sort of have the lead on, but how is it different what
they do from what the Department of Health does?
MR. JOHNSTONE: You mean when you say "SART"?
MR. STRIPLING: Well, in general, looking at the
issue in general.
MR. JOHNSTONE: I would say all of us has a piece.
You know, if you think about a disease like foot and
mouth disease, it is not generally thought of as a
zoonotic disease, but there have been human cases. So
health partners are going to get pulled in somebody
shows up with strange symptoms at the emergency room,
might be an animal -- by the way, foot and mouth
disease in the 60 or so reported cases, they've all
been animal handling-type people, farmers, ranchers,
you know, veterinarians. So that would pull in the
necessary expertise and the awareness, network of
health. And the veterinarians would be pulled in
through different mechanisms.
MS. WADE: And anytime a sick person comes to the
health department and they get tested for whatever they
have and it becomes a report and we find out that it is
a reportable disease and if it's on that terrorism
list, terrorism agent list, it starts the ball rolling
on this huge outbreak investigation, which would be
started at the county level and then managed through
the food and water board disease program and its
regional environmental endemiologists. And they we
would assist the counties with any investigations that
would be ongoing. And once we found out it was a
terrorist attack, that brings in the federal partners
and the FBI doing the criminal investigation.
So we have that partnership that we have already
established with the FBI partners and FDLE, Florida
Department of Law Enforcement. They would be called in
to assist with the criminal investigation.
And so if something did happen, you have your
health partners handling the outbreak investigation,
your law enforcement partners handling the criminal
investigation, your agriculture consumer services
partners handling the agricultural investigation. So
all those people who already have established
relationships would be coming together in a great team
to get this investigation underway.
MR. JOHNSTONE: And that's what these interagency
organizations do best. Everything Tracy has said has
always been true. Health would always take the human
health. Ag would always take the animal health. But
now we know each other, and now we talk and interact.
And now instead of finding out about something in the
health world two weeks later by reading the newspaper,
perhaps I would get a phone call the first day of the
event, you know, alerting me that something was going
on.
So all of us by knowing each other, by trusting
each other before an event happens, it helps us to be
so much quicker and more effectively in responding.
MS. WADE: Absolutely.
MR. STRIPLING: So let's talk for a second about
food facilities themselves. We have a lot of food
facilities in Florida. We serve citizens and tourists
all year long to the tune of something like 76 million
people. Those food facilities, what can they do to try
and ensure the safety of their food supplies?
MR. JOHNSTONE: I'll just share two brief things.
One, all food facilities as a result of the
Bioterrorism Act of 2003, I believe it was, are
required to register with the Food and Drug
Administration, and tens of thousands of firms have
already done that. But that's one thing all food firms
in the United States and foreign wanting to import to
the United States need to be registered with the FDA.
And Number 2, all of them should have some kind of
specific terrorism response plan in place. If a
terrorist attack on the food supply happens and it
affects their commodity, what plans do they have to
both recover their product and to respond and to stay
in business and to get in a position where they can
come back and do a viable business a year or two after
the event?
So those are the two most important things I think
businesses should be developing.
MS. WADE: And just from I local level, I would
even say that there isn't a single food facility in the
state of Florida that isn't regulated by someone.
We've got Department of Health regulated facilities,
Department of Business and Professional Regulations
facilities, and DAGS facilities.
And if there's ever a question, they can always
call their regulated agencies representative. They
should all know who their inspectors are. And they can
call them on the phone, and those people can answer any
kind of question or at least get an answer for them.
MR. JOHNSTONE: And the regulatory agencies all
know about the issues surrounding ecoterrorism --
MS. WADE: Exactly.
MR. JOHNSTONE: -- and could answer questions.
MS. WADE: Yeah.
MR. STRIPLING: The other part of that, though, is
the 76 million people who are being served by those
facilities. We talked about educating them, educating
them towards awareness of what's going on. But what
specifically can they do? If a citizen was out there
and saw something that they thought might be an
agroterrorist event, is there any step that they can
take?
MR. JOHNSTONE: Tracy mentioned that already that
people should be aware. And I think they should be
aware. If they see something specific, you know, there
are three different groups that you could call.
Number 1, you could call -- you could inform the
people in the state of Florida. There are seven
regional domestic security task forces in Florida. And
the contact information for those task forces can be
found at www.fdle.state.fl.us. That's the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement web site; again,
www.fdle.state.fl.us.
If you want to get hold of the Department of
Homeland Security, they have a citizen hotline. I
tested it today, and they answered the phone on the
second ring.
MR. STRIPLING: All right.
MR. JOHNSTONE: That number is 202-282-8000. And
if they wanted to contact the Joint Terrorism Task
Force through the FBI, they can go on www.FBI.gov, and
they can find their local FBI office, and they can
contact through their local FBI office. You can also
find the number for your local FBI office in the phone
book.
MR. STRIPLING: And for more information about
those -- that contact information or for more
information about agroterrorism, you can look at our EH
pod cast site at myfloridaeh.com. That's
myfloridaeh.com.
MR. JOHNSTONE: Let me mention one other thing
along the lines of citizen preparedness. We've learned
in hurricanes in Florida that a lot of loss of life and
a lot of injuries happen not during the storm but after
the storm in a panic to get immediate resources.
Florida is trying to take the effort for hurricanes
that citizens should be prepared to take care of
themselves for at least 72 hours after a hurricane.
I think the same thing is prudent for any kind of
terrorist event. If terrorists were to attack the food
supply, we might not know what food it is right off the
bat. So it's probably Prudent that people are prepared
by having canned goods, which are very hard to
contaminate -- by having canned goods, having bottled
water, having some things on hand that will allow them
to get through about 72 hours, about three days while
the dust settles, while the federal and the state and
the local officials find out what's going on. That's
an important thing I think that citizens can do really
to bolster our preparedness for terrorism.
MS. WADE: And the one thing I would add is if a
person happens to see a terrorist event occurring
locally right in front of their face, there's always
911. Call 911, get the local people out there as soon
as possible.
MR. JOHNSTONE: That's a great point Tracy. If
life and limb is in question, don't hesitate to call
MS. WADE: Don't even hesitate.
MR. STRIPLING: So we've looked at vulnerabilities
that we know in the system. We've combated
vulnerabilities, it sounds like, by building
partnerships for preparedness, for education, for all
kind of things like that.
Coming up at the end of this month is the FBI
Joint Terrorism Task Force Joint International
Symposium on Agroterrorism in Kansas City. That's an
example of the federal/state partnerships you guys have
talked about.
So putting all this in context, what's next? The
progress we've done surely is considerable. But what
does it look are the next challenges to face to counter
these vulnerabilities that we've found?
MR. JOHNSTONE: I think the biggest challenge we
have is that the food supply and the food industries
are so diverse. There are still -- as much as we have
partnered, as much as we've organized, there's still a
lot of barriers to be knocked down so that we have one
plan, and so we know how to respond effectively and
quickly. You've got not only different federal
agencies that regulate food but within each state, food
regulation is handled in a different way. There are a
lot of efforts undergoing right now to try to continue
to partner better, but the diversity causes a lot of
challenges that are not easy to overcome.
MR. STRIPLING: Let's look specifically at the
Department of Health. The agency lead on
agroterrorism, I think, is a new position, if that's
right. And what do you see are the main challenges to
look at from that perspective?
MS. WADE: One of the main challenges that we have
as -- being the only person who handles agroterrorism
in our agency, I'm constantly trying to inform the
other people in the agency as to what we do, especially
the emergency responders with our emergency medical
operations group. They need to know -- it's not an
issue they've ever been aware of before with how -- and
because it's an upcoming, emerging issue, I'm
constantly having to educate them or trying to get them
some more information on what we do.
Also, one of the other things we kind of run into
is keeping the county health departments aware that
this is an issue that they need to kind of just keep
their eyes open about. And just in case an illness
comes in that gets tested and that agent comes up as a
terrorism agent, they need to know how to handle that.
And so what we do with the Food and Water Board
Emergency Program is we have trainings that are offered
to health department staff around the state that are
based on intentional contamination, basically table
talks and exercises on how to handle if this were to
happen. We run through a scenario.
And so we've done that around the state for ever
region of the state. And we're going to be doing that
again in the coming years for water, intentional
contamination of water. But that's one of the pushes
that we have is the education.
MR. STRIPLING: So the $64,000 dollar question, or
in this case, the multimillion dollar question, I guess
is: All the work that we've done working against these
vulnerabilities, are we safe? Is the food supply of
the United States safe from terrorist attack?
MR. JOHNSTONE: I would answer that -- I think the
food supply in the United States remains among the
safest in the world. But the fact is there are
vulnerabilities. And people, you know, every day in
this country do get sick. And every year people die
from natural food-borne pathogens. So as much as it's
safe, it's not perfectly safe. And if accidentally
contamination can happen, that tells you that terrorist
introduction could also happen.
We'll never be 100 percent safe. You know, we
would have to all grow our own food in a locked
compound for that to be true. But the more we do to be
organized and to partner and to pool our resources and
the more we plan ahead, the better able to respond we
will be. And that's really the answer.
MS. WADE: And I agree.
MR. STRIPLING: I think from what I've heard, I
feel safer knowing that you guys are on the job, Mr.
Johnstone, Ms. Wade.
Thank you so much for joining us today for our
inaugural EH prep cast on agroterrorism.
MS. WADE: Thank you.
MR. JOHNSTONE: Thank you.
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