Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [158]
While aid agencies were attempting to deal with that situation, food security in the United States shifted to another aspect of its broader meaning: protecting the food supply against terrorists. Officials soon identified safe food and water as key components of “homeland security,” as indicated by the rather frightening chart that appeared soon after the attacks (see figure 30). The chart demonstrates that security in this sense is no simple matter, as it requires the cooperation of nearly four-dozen federal bureaucracies to protect the nation’s borders, nuclear power plants, and public facilities; fight bioterrorism; obtain intelligence; and protect food and water supplies. Whether this chart demonstrates the need for coordination—or its impossibility—is a matter of interpretation, but one aspect is striking: the minimal role allotted to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Although the DHHS secretary announced that his agency “was more fearful about the safety of the American food supply than anything else,” one critical piece of his domain is noticeably missing: the FDA—the agency responsible for the safety of 75% of foods, domestic and imported. In contrast, the USDA receives detailed attention, perhaps indicating the relative degree to which the two agencies command the respect of Congress.47
FIGURE 30. The byzantine organization of government units participating in the Office of Homeland Security. Agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (shown here as HHS) appear immediately above those of the Agriculture Department (USDA) on the left side of the diagram. The Food and Drug Administration (of DHHS) is conspicuously absent as a separate entity on this chart, despite its responsibility for the safety of three-fourths of the food supply, domestic and imported. (© 2001 Dr. Jay Jakub & The Monterey Institute of International Studies. Used with permission.)
Food as a Biological Weapon
A second result of the events of fall 2001 is heightened awareness of the possibility that terrorists might deliberately poison food and water supplies. Protection against food bioterrorism is difficult because of the long list of agents that can be used as bioweapons and the vast number of possibilities for delivering them. Experts point to the increasing centralization of the food supply as a factor increasing its vulnerability to sabotage. If, as mentioned in chapter 1, an accidental contamination of ice cream with Salmonella can make hundreds of thousands of people ill, it is easy to imagine the damage that could be caused by deliberate tampering.48 The low rate of inspection of imported foods is an especially weak link in the chain of protection. Well before he was appointed director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness, Dr. Donald Henderson, an expert on infectious diseases, smallpox eradication, and now bioterrorism, wrote: “Of the weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, and biological), the biological ones are the most greatly feared, but the country is least well prepared to deal with them.”49
Of particular concern is the role of biotechnology in developing weapons of bioterrorism. The research methods used to transmit desired genes into plants could easily be adapted for nefarious purposes: creating pathogenic bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics or able to synthesize lethal toxins, or superweeds resistant to herbicides. As half the nation’s soybeans resist Roundup, genetic mischief could do a great deal of damage. On this point, Dr. Henderson commented, “At least 10 countries are now engaged in developing and producing biological weapons. What with the growing power of biotechnology, one has to anticipate that this technology, like all others before it, will eventually be misused.”50
Public health experts concerned