Agricultural experts with the Texas Cooperative Extension have created a process to help local jurisdictions across the nation assess the vulnerability of the food supply for terrorist attacks.
The assessment guideline has gone to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Justice, which are expected to recommend its implementation nationwide, according to John Guido, National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center program director.
The training center, an agency of the Texas Engineering Extension Service, would assume responsibility for training localities across the nation on how to use the process.
“This assessment tool will be the national model used by officials in local communities to help determine possible targets for terrorist attacks on agriculture,” Guido said. “It aims at protecting the food supply and the inputs used for agriculture production.”
Guido said the model identifies production processes for the various agricultural industries and uses existing quality assurance and risk analyses to identify critical nodes in the process. Those nodes are then assessed by measuring relative vulnerability to attack. The agricultural vulnerability assessment is comparable to the U.S. Department of Justice urban vulnerability assessment process currently in use throughout the country, Guido said.
He said the process is expected to be implemented in 2003.
The national assessment process was ongoing prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, but rural vulnerability and the U.S. food supply were only partially considered until recently, according to Guido.
Extension experts were assembled after a meeting with Texas A&M University’s Institute for Countermeasures against Agricultural Bioterrorism. The team included Extension specialists from crops, animal science, veterinary medicine, plant pathology, wildlife and fisheries and communications.
“The group focused on identifying those critical nodes in the production process that might be most susceptible, rather than the effects that a particular event would cause,” Guido said. “The intent is that local authorities could use the process to assess what is in their jurisdictions so that they would be more aware of what to watch for and therefore more likely to prevent an act of terrorism from taking place.”
Linking agriculture with emergency response gives the ability to provide the training to assure that vulnerable spots are protected to the fullest extent possible, according to Dr. Neville Clarke, institute director.
The vastness of the U.S. agriculture industry poses a challenge for protection against attacks, Guido noted. But using the process to determine a jurisdiction’s most vulnerable site, Guido said, will help local officials evaluate their capability to respond and identify needs for additional planning, training and equipment.
(This report is based on an article that was first published in Ag News, an online publication of the Texas A&M University Agriculture Program. It was written by Kathleen Phillips.)
