Mitigating Public Health Risks from an Agroterror Attack

The list of potential agents that could be used in an agroterror attack on crops and vegetation is quite broad. Although food monitoring has theoretical potential to prevent an outbreak of disease due to the natural or intentional contamination of foods, many practical issues make it unfeasible to build a robust monitoring program to safeguard the supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Given our limited ability to detect contaminated food products before they enter commerce, the interval between the occurrence of a food system event, its detection, and the subsequent response by the public health system is a key determinant of the potential impact. Although most foodborne outbreaks are localized and are investigated and controlled by local or state public health authorities, multi jurisdictional events may be large, widespread and require coordination between multiple state and federal agencies. However, strong leadership by individual states in multi state investigations will promote faster and better targeted mitigation strategies. Following an attack on the food system, the size, scope, and severity of the event will be the key elements involved in the move from response to recovery. The speed with which such an attack is recognized and controlled will affect all these measures. In this regard, enhancing the capacity of our foodborne disease surveillance system to rapidly investigate all foodborne disease outbreaks will be critical to positioning our food system for a rapid recovery from an agroterrorism event.