"The fiscal downstream effect of a major act of sabotage against the food industry would ... be multidimensional, reverberating through other sectors of the U.S. economy and ultimately impacting directly on the American consumer," -- Peter Chalk, an associate political scientist at the Rand National Defense Research Institute

In the past two decades we’ve seen terrorists exploit our weaknesses by using ordinary fertilizer to create a bomb that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City to the elaborate training and highjacking of commercial jetliners to destroy the World Trade Center.

This type of terrorist activity is known as an "Asymmetric Threat" which means, as the DoD Joint Staff described it, "...unanticipated or non-traditional approaches to circumvent or undermine an adversary’s strengths while exploiting his vulnerabilities through unexpected technologies or innovative means."

The next type of Asymmetric Threat America is likely to face is Agro-Terrorism where terrorists deliberately target a part of our agricultural / food system, with the end goal of destroying, disrupting or altering that system. The result would mean a devastating economic impact to our country that may easily exceed that of 9/11 and there is only a small amount of Federal personnel trained in this type of event that would be able to assist.

While Agro-Terrorism can also include attacks on bio-research labs, fur farms, etc, this article will focus only on the biological attack of our agriculture system.

The best solution is prevention and detection and first responders, such as patrol officers, area vital element to stopping this type of terrorism.