Most members of the food industry are keenly aware of safety issues. Food poisoning, cross-contamination, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) strategies�these are all basic buzzwords and essential components in the training of food industry workers and administrators. The recent attacks on our country have made American citizens aware of something those of us at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have long realized: breaches of food safety are not always accidental. Contaminants in food can be placed there purposefully, with intent to do harm. In other words, food can be used as an agent of terrorism.
Before I discuss the relationship between terrorism and food, let�s take a moment to look at terrorism in general.
Terrorism, defined broadly, is the use of violence and intimidation to achieve an end. Historically, most acts of terrorism have been state-sponsored with political goals. But the last decade has seen the emergence of a new breed of terrorist, who is out to settle a grudge or to punish society.
Why has this new breed of terrorist emerged? Two basic reasons:
From the technical angle, it�s simply easier today to get information on how to obtain and employ many destructive agents. The chemical and biological agents themselves are also relatively easy to obtain, manufacture, or grow.
The other factor in the emergence of this new breed of terrorist is psychological. It seems that the moral repugnance to terrorist acts no longer exists throughout society. It is certainly clear that we in the United States are not immune to terrorism, nor does terrorism always originate outside our national borders. The Oklahoma City bombing and the nerve gas incident in the Tokyo subway both showed that a native citizen�s attack against a civilian population is possible. Acts such as these make it clear that certain segments of society have crossed this psychological threshold.
Finally, it is worth noting that terrorist attacks come in a wide variety of sizes. The events of September 11, 2001 showed us all the horrors of terrorism on a large scale. But terrorism can take place on a small scale as well, and the results are no less tragic for each victim and for that victim�s family.
There are three basic types of agents a terrorist might use: nuclear, chemical, and biological. Nuclear weapons have a great killing capacity, but they are very difficult to acquire. Chemical weapons are easy to acquire, but can lack the capacity to achieve mass destruction. Biological agents, on the other hand, have both qualities: ease of acquisition and the potential to affect a large number of people.
Why are we concerned about terrorism associated with the food supply? For starters, some experts say that the historical preference of terrorists for explosives appears to be changing. If a terrorist were looking for a way to cause a tremendous number of casualties without explosives, exposing masses of people to standard biological warfare agents such as smallpox or anthrax might be effective, but the means of delivery poses a problem.
The food supply offers an obvious delivery mechanism for certain chemical and biological agents. After all, we all have to eat. Food production and distribution is a very complex and multi-layered system, therefore it offers many opportunities for the deliberate introduction of toxic agents. The increasingly global nature of the food supply serves to exacerbate this problem.
The FDA and other U.S. governmental institutions, along with food processors and distributors, are keenly aware of this potential problem. We have long understood that our public food and water supplies are among the most likely avenues for terrorist threats.
Malicious attacks using food as a delivery system have already occurred, both in the United States and other countries.
Canada, 1970: A meal served in Montreal, Quebec was inoculated with large quantities of eggs from a parasitic nematode, Ascaris suum. Approximately two weeks after ingestion, four male students were admitted to the hospital with pulmonary infiltrates, asthma, and an increase in a particular type of white blood cell indicative of an allergic reaction or parasitic infection.
England, 1984: A group was charged with injecting a turkey with weed killer containing mercury.
United States 1984: The Rajaneesh cult inoculated items on several restaurant salad bars with Salmonella typhimurium. This act was implicated in causing illness in 751 individuals in and around The Dalles, Oregon.
United States, 1996: A medical laboratory worker in Texas contaminated muffins and donuts in a break room with Shigella dysenteriae Type 2. Twelve people were infected, four of whom had to be hospitalized.
Canada, 2000: In Quebec City, twenty-seven people were poisoned with arsenic after drinking coffee from a single vending machine in the agriculture department at LaValle University.
United States, 2001: In New York City, an individual was arrested for contaminating a salad bar with human feces and urine.
Distinguishing between a deliberate and an inadvertent contamination of food can be extremely difficult. Numerous outbreaks of foodborne illness occur each year; investigations are conducted to discover the cause. During the investigation, clues can arise that would lead investigators to suspect deliberate contamination with a biological agent as opposed to inadvertent or accidental contamination.
FDA is currently working to improve analytical methods and refine surveillance techniques. One of the challenges we face is that rapid assays are not available for a number of potential threat agents. Assays developed for biological warfare situations may not work for the same pathogens when they are mixed into complex food matrices. (From an analytical standpoint, mayonnaise is different than ground beef, which is different than fresh vegetables, and so forth.) Further complicating analysis is the fact that deliberate contamination can be randomly distributed in the food, so sampling is problematic. The bottom line is that you can�t analyze for everything all of the time; there will always be something for which you are not analyzing.
Of course, we would all prefer that food terrorism be detected and stopped before it occurs. This presents a problem, too. When is a threat real and when is it a hoax? Hoaxes themselves are very dangerous. Responding to false alarms can overwhelm public safety response capabilities, engender a sense of nonchalance after numerous repetitions, and incite public fear and anxiety inappropriately. Remember the reports of flesh-eating bacteria in imported bananas? This hoax took an economic toll on the banana industry and also required a significant amount of staff time on the part of FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in answering all of the inquiries.
There are many things food industry managers and workers can do to help insure the safety of the products they manufacture. For starters, we all need to practice the standard food safety protocols to guard against contamination. Then we must expand our thinking to consider ways to minimize the opportunity for intentional contamination.
The FDA is working hard to continue to ensure that the United States has the world�s safest food supply. We focus on three major areas: deterrence, surveillance and threat assessment, and containment through rapid response.
Deterrence can be accomplished by increasing the presence and visibility of inspectors at critical points in the food production and distribution system. Communication is also key to ensuring that we have the information to prevent an event. We have improved and continue to improve our communications with other governmental organizations involved in intelligence and response to food terrorism. These improvements are taking place at the state and local level as well as the Federal level. Communication and cooperation with industry is also critical. Food industry representatives should report all threats of terrorism to the FDA. Sometimes people are reluctant to contact Federal authorities, but this is truly a case where we all must pool our intelligence resources and work together.
Surveillance of imported and domestic foods must be strengthened. The FDA will continue developing and evaluating rapid contaminant detection methods to assist with food safety surveillance and incident response. Cost-effective microassay and biosensor technology is being developed with the goal of making these resources available to everyone involved in food safety. Threat assessments of the food and cosmetic industries are also key to identifying where the vulnerabilities lie and how to close those gaps.
We are developing rapid response teams and detailed risk and communication plans. We are working with government and industry at all levels, communicating one-to-one and through workshops and presentations designed to increase awareness and knowledge of the issues and potential solutions. Working together, we can make a difference and minimize the vulnerability of our nation�s food supply.