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BIOTECHNOLOGY Home Biotechnology
Importance of Defensive Biological Weapons in Agro-terrorism
Ijaz Ahmad Rao
Considerations of Biological warfare and Bio-terrorism nearly always focus on the direct threat of the use of human diseases as weapons. Biological warfare is the intentional use of micro-organisms, and toxins, generally, of microbial, plant or animal origin to produce disease and/or death in humans, livestock and crops.
The attraction for bio-weapons in war, and for use in terrorist attacks is attributed to their low production costs, The easy access to a wide range of disease-producing biological agents, their non-detection by routine security systems, and their easy transportation from one location to another are other attractive features. Their properties of invisibility and virtual weightlessness render detection and verification procedures ineffectual and make non-proliferation of such weapons impossibility.
Consequently, in the developed countries - national security decision-makers defense professionals, and security personnel will increasingly be confronted by biological warfare as it unfolds in the battlefields of the future. However, the possibility of biological attack on the plant or animal resources of a country is increasingly recognized as a serious threat. It is important for Pakistan to understand how Bio-terrorism activities are carried out especially in agriculture sector and what are the possible motives behind them.
Attacking the food supply
This is the classical rationale for inclusion of anti-plant programs in national biological weapons programs. Every major state biological warfare program we know of includes an anti-agricultural component, from the World War I German use of anthrax and glanders against animals to the Iraqi program on wheat cover smut. For most agents, effective use would require large stockpiles and extensive delivery efforts; however, there is potential for delivery by secret agents to initiate point-source epidemics of highly contagious agents.
Disruption of the agricultural sector can cause profound dislocation of societies. Direct losses of plants or animals can result in shortage of food supply, increase in food prices, and unemployment. All this, if severe, can bring about serious destabilizing effects on social and political structures. Many developing countries are potentially quite vulnerable to such destabilization, particularly if they depend heavily on a single food crop or animal. Nevertheless, the potential for immense economic damage is high in a well-planned attack.
A widespread epidemic, or any outbreak that triggers imposition or relaxation of trade restrictions, can cause significant changes in supply of affected commodities or materials in domestic and international markets. This in turn may open up or close markets for others (a possible motivating factor). Biological attack can also be used to manipulate futures, or financial markets.
Bio-Control
The use of legitimate, peaceful bio-control is expanding steadily. Recently, there have been two programs to develop pathogens of drug crops as bio-control agents. These have been conducted under the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) auspices. One of the programs was funded and performed by the US (fungal pathogens of coca); and another was funded by both the US and the UK, and performed by Uzbekistan (fungal pathogens of poppy).
Both of these programs involved development of biological agents and delivery devices, and were presumably intended for use principally or entirely in other countries. However, none of the potential target states has agreed to allow the use of these agents for bio-control, and several have now stated explicitly that they will not allow it.
Terrorists and individuals may also be interested in bio-control agents. The deliberate and illegal 1997 importation of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV) into New Zealand constitutes a past instance.
Who might be tempted to initiate an attack on the agricultural sector?
States: Countries may consider agricultural attack for military, political, ideological, or economic reasons. States that are actively pursuing a secret military bio-warfare capability are probably developing anti-agricultural agents for strategic use in the event of war. Iraq, for instance, was developing wheat cover smut as a weapon, presumably intended against Iran. In the 1980, Iraq used chemical weapons extensively against Iran, and internally against minorities, with virtually no political consequences. This has undoubtedly lowered the political threshold for use of bio-warfare in a regional or civil conflict.
Corporations: Agricultural corporations, including producers, processors, and shippers, could benefit immensely from the economic impacts, market share changes, and financial market effects of a successful biological attack. Many also employ expert plant pathologists or veterinarians and have large collections of pathogens. The combination of motivation, expertise, and materials within a single, closed organization is worrisome.
Organized crime: Because of the huge financial stakes in the agricultural sector, and because the foundation of the drug industry involves crop cultivation, organized crime may take an interest in bio-criminal activities with agricultural targets. 1950's in Kenya, Mau Mau used plant toxins to kill livestock.
Terrorist groups: Terrorist groups may also be interested in agricultural bio-weapons for a variety of reasons: international terrorist organizations to harm their enemy states or its peoples; millennial groups for their potential contribution to societal collapse; local extremists for their potential value in deterring farmers from raising particular crops or using particular technologies. In 1980, Sri Lankan Tamil secessionist group threatened to infect humans and crops with deadly pathogens.
Individuals: Individual perpetrators (bio-criminals) may include disgruntled employees or ex-employees in the agricultural sector, ideologically motivated individuals, speculators on the commodities market, or individuals with a profit motive (such as the New Zealand farmer[s] assumed to have covertly imported RHDV). In Florida, USA on the October 12, anthrax virus was released by a letter, which caused several casualties.
The attacks on agricultural sector may result in direct or indirect economic losses due to various factors, such as:
Disease: Direct financial loss due to mortality or morbidity of domestic animals or crop plants can vary from insignificant to catastrophic. In many cases the direct losses would be modest and would fall on a small number of farms. One of the major determinants of the magnitude of the direct losses will be the rapidity with which the disease is noticed and diagnosed. In developed countries most of the foreign diseases of greatest concern would likely be identified fairly early, allowing the direct disease losses to be kept modest.
Epidemics: The control of an outbreak of an imported, highly contagious animal or plant disease is routinely done by destroying of all potentially exposed healthy host organisms. With animal diseases, this normally means the slaughter of all host animals in the immediate vicinity. With plants, thousands of acres of crop plants may have to be destroyed to contain an outbreak. Thus the losses attendant on outbreak control can exceed, often by several orders of magnitude, the direct losses due to the disease itself.
Destruction of exposed hosts is often the only option when the agent is bacterial or viral. However, for fungal agents, destruction of exposed crops may be reduced by the use of fungicides. However, this is an expensive process itself, so it adds significantly to the cost of the outbreak, and it may cause environmental damage.
Restrictions on international trade: Under the World Trade Organization (WTO), member states are allowed to impose import restrictions on agricultural products to prevent the importation of pests or disease agents. Thus, importing countries free of a particular disease are usually quick to block imports from countries in which that disease breaks out.
This happens frequently, as these diseases periodically resurface in areas from which they have been absent; trade restrictions typically last a month or two when control of the outbreak is rapid, or they may endure much longer if disease control is slow and difficult. For instance, the European Union (EU) restriction on the import of UK beef due to the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
Similarly, major agricultural exporters are also particularly vulnerable. For instance, the Taiwan Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak in swine in 1997 probably only cost tens of thousands of US dollars in direct losses, but it cost US$4 billion in eradication and disinfections costs, and a cumulative US$15 billion in lost export revenues. An FMD outbreak in Italy in 1993 again had trivial direct costs, but nearly US$12 million in eradication and disinfections costs, and US$120 million in lost trade revenues.
Market destabilization: The substantial market effects of a widespread outbreak, or one that has major impacts on international trade, could have secondary effects, such as shareholder losses, revenue losses to processors and shippers, etc. In the extreme, if losses are very large and if future losses appear likely, significant levels of investor panic could lead to market destabilization.
What are the special features of attack on the agricultural sector?
Agents not hazardous to perpetrators: With the exception of a few agents of zoonotic disease, most of the diseases that are likely to be considered for an attack on the agricultural sector are completely harmless to humans. They are thus much less challenging to produce, stockpile, and disseminate than lethal human pathogens.
Technical obstacles to weaponization: A military-style attack by airplane on large acreage of crops may require crop dusters and large stockpiles of agent. Nevertheless, nothing would be difficult to obtain on the open market.
Less ambitious attacks would require much less in the way of equipment or agent stockpiles. If the goal is to cause only a few cases in order to disrupt trade, then no special equipment and only a few microliters of agent are needed. And, as discussed below, it is possible to introduce biological agents without even entering the target country.
Low security of vulnerable targets: Many potential sites for release of an animal agent, such as auction houses, have very low security. Access to large numbers of animals with destinations all over a country or region is simple and easy. Seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides provide routes for infection of crop plants, although of somewhat higher security. And of course pastures and fields themselves have essentially no security at all.
Point source to mimic natural introduction can be effective: Multiple point source outbreaks can be initiated by contaminating imported feed or fertilizer, without even entering the country. Many countries import materials such as straw, animal feed, or fertilizer.
This provides an opportunity for introducing serious pathogens, without having to even enter the target country, in a way that mimics a natural event. The recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Japanese cattle in two widely separated prefectures, thought to have been introduced on straw imported from China.
The states most vulnerable to economic attack on the agricultural sector are those with several or most of the following attributes:
1. High-density, large area agriculture;
2. Heavy reliance on monoculture of a restricted range of genotypes;
3. Free of specific serious animal and plant pathogens or pests;
4. Major agricultural exporter, or heavily dependent on a few domestic agricultural
products.
5. Suffering serious domestic unrest, or the target of international terrorism, or unfriendly neighbor of states likely to be developing BW programs;
6. Weak plant and animal epidemiological infrastructure.
Safety measure
Enact appropriate legislation: Enactment of legislation implementing the BTWC is required of all states parties; however, many have not yet done so. Such legislation can be a significant deterrent to biological attack on the agricultural sector. The legislation should, among other provisions, provide for substantial criminal penalties for the hostile use anywhere of biological agents against plants or animals as well as people, and it should provide for extradition for anyone charged with using such agents against the agricultural sector of another state.
Ensure effective epidemiological investigation to determine origin of outbreaks: Biological attacks are likely to be covert. Such attacks will be options for perpetrators only to the extent that they are able to maintain the plausibility that such events are natural events. Increased epidemiological capacity, especially in strain identification from molecular sequence data, makes it increasingly difficult to escape detection, and thus would act as a substantial deterrent.
Negotiate an effective BTWC protocol: A BTWC protocol that establishes effective measures to deter states from developing or possessing biological weapons would provide a powerful tool in making progress towards the goal of complete biological disarmament. Provision for internationally sponsored epidemiological investigation of possible agricultural attacks would deter covert use in the same manner as national epidemiological capacity.
Reduce reliance on monoculture and expand the diversity of genotypes cultured: By increasing the use of intercropping, expanding the diversity of genotypes utilized, reducing the size of plots, and a variety of other agricultural changes designed to reduce susceptibility to disease outbreaks. However, these constitute substantial changes in established practice, and are probably not likely to be instituted without sustained and forceful political leadership.
Conclusion
This analysis shows that anti-agricultural bio-warfare and bioterrorism differ significantly from the same activities directed against humans: there exist a variety of possibilities for economic gain for perpetrators, and the list of possible perpetrators includes corporations. Furthermore, attacks are substantially easier to carry out: the agents are not hazardous to humans, delivery systems are readily available, delivery from outside the target country is possible, and an effective attack can be constructed to look natural. This constellation of characteristics make biological attacks on the agricultural sector a real threat, perhaps more so than attack on the civilian population. The conference of States Parties to the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention should thus take this threat seriously and consider if any actions by individual states parties are advised.
In this scenario Pakistan must have defensive Biotech programs to combat any possible biological attack on our agriculture sector.
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