ANTI-agricultural bio-warfare and bio-terrorism differ significantly from the same warfare directed against human beings; for instance, there exist a number of possibilities of economic gain for perpetrators and a list of possible perpetrators will include corporations, which may have state-of-the-art technical expertise.

Furthermore, attacks are substantially easier to carry out: agents are not necessarily hazardous to humans; delivery systems are readily available and unsophisticated; maximum effect may only require a few cases; delivery from outside the target country is possible and an effective attack can be constructed to appear natural. This constellation of characteristics makes biological attack on agricultural sector of at least country like Pakistan, a very real threat, perhaps more so than an attack on the civilian population.

Considerations of biological warfare and bio-terrorism nearly always focus on the direct threat of human diseases as weapons. However, possibility of biological attack on plant or animal resources is also increasingly recognized as a serious threat.

Attack on food supply: This is a classical rationale for the inclusion of anti-plant programmes in biological weapons’ programmes. Every major state’s biological warfare (BW) programme includes an anti-agricultural component, from the World War 1’s German use of anthrax and glanders against animals to the Iraqi programme 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 agent to initiate point-source epidemics of highly contagious agents.

Food shortages and unemployment: Disruption in agricultural sector can cause huge dislocations in societies and direct losses of plants or animals could cause food shortages, increase food prices, and unemployment. All of these could, if severe, have serious destabilizing effects on social and political structures.

Many developed countries are quite vulnerable to disruption in agricultural sectors, although their socio-political institutions are fairly robust and the resulting discontent would probably not cause an institutional collapse. Yet the potential for an immense economic damage remains high in a well-planned attack, and the consequences for food supply, export trade, and financial markets could be very serious.

Many developing countries are potentially quite vulnerable to such destabilization, particularly if they depend heavily on a single food crop or animal. For instance, Pakistani economy significantly depends on cotton crop.

Supply and demand patterns: A widespread epidemic, or any outbreak that triggers imposition or relaxation of trade restrictions, could lead to significant changes of supply of affected plant or animal materials on domestic and international markets. This, in turn, would open up or close markets for others (a possible motivating factor). Biological attack could also be used to manipulate futures, and for other manipulations of the financial markets.

Undesirable plant or animal: The use of legitimate, peaceful biocontrol is expanding steadily, and provides an unfortunate body of knowledge and range of ready-made delivery technologies for the interested agricultural bioterrorist or biowarfare programme.

There have been two recent programmes to develop pathogens of drug crops as biocontrol agents. These have been conducted under the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), funded and performed by the US (fungal pathogens of coca), and funded by the US and the UK and performed by Uzbekistan (fungal pathogens of poppy). Both of these programmes involve development of biological agents and delivery devices, and both are 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 biocontrol, and several have stated explicitly that they will not allow it. As a result of this refusal, the UNDCP has withdrawn its sponsorship of the anti-coca project. Although there is no evidence that the agents are being developed for hostile use, the absence of target country approval makes it equally difficult to demonstrate that they are being developed for peaceful purposes.

This ambiguity raises legitimate concerns about compliance with Article I of the BTWC. Furthermore, once effective agents have been developed, the intense concern over the drug trade in drug-consuming states may lead to pressure to use them covertly, regardless of target country approval. Terrorists might also be interested in biocontrol agents. The deliberate and illegal 1997 importation of Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV) into New Zealand is an instance.

Reasons: Countries might consider agricultural attack for military, ideological, or economic reasons. Since there could be quite severe consequences of being recognized as responsible for a biological attack, such efforts would likely be covert. This would entail an effort to make the outbreak appear natural— most probably a point-source outbreak, or multiple outbreaks with an apparently natural common source.

Countries that are actively pursuing a secret military BW capability (thought to number about a dozen) are probably developing anti-agricultural agents for strategic use in the event of war. Iraq, for instance, was developing wheat cover smut as a weapons, presumably intended against Iran. In the 1980, Iraq used chemical weapons extensively against Iran, and internally against civilian minorities, with virtually no political consequences. This has undoubtedly lowered the political threshold for use of BW in a regional or civil conflict.

Corporations: Agricultural corporations, including those of producers, processors and shippers, could benefit immensely from 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. Of course, corporations, like countries, would run enormous legal risks if they perpetrated a biological attack, so if they were to choose to do this, it would be expertly designed to mimic a natural outbreak or to appear to be the work of others.

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 biocriminal activities with agricultural targets.In 1950’s in Kenya, Mau Mau used plant toxins to kill livestock.

Terrorist groups: Terrorist groups might be interested in agricultural bioweapons for a variety of reasons: international terrorist organizations for the harm they could do to enemy states or 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 many cases of ideologically-motivated terrorist attack, there would be willing assumption of responsibility by the perpetrator; in other cases there could be an attempt to disguise the outbreak as natural or as the work of others. In 1980’s in Sri Lanka, Tamil secessionist group threatened to infect humans and crops with pathogens.

Containment: The control of an outbreak of an imported, highly contagious animal or plant disease is routinely done by destruction 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.

A number of important threats to crop plants are from insect pests, rather than microbial pathogens. These outbreaks are usually controlled by use of pesticides rather than destruction of exposed plants, which, as with control of fungal disease, can cost a great deal of money. Widespread broadcast of insecticide may cause environmental or human health damage as well.

Phytosanitary restrictions: 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 (e.g., the European Union (EU) restriction on the import of UK beef due to the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).

Thus, major agricultural exporters are particularly vulnerable. For instance, the Taiwan Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak in swine in 1997 probably only cost tens of thousands of American dollars in direct losses, but it cost $4 billion in eradication and disinfection costs, and a cumulative $15 billion in lost export revenues. An FMD outbreak in Italy in 1993 again had trivial direct costs, but nearly $12 million in eradication and disinfection costs, and $120 million in lost trade revenues.

Alternatively, the introduction of a disease into a country previously free of it would undermine the legitimacy of that country’s import restrictions under the WTO, forcing the lifting of the restrictions and opening up the market. This could bring significant additional losses to domestic producers.

Indirect effects: The substantial market effects of a widespread outbreak, or one that has major impacts on international trade, could have secondary effects, such as share-holder 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.

Agents: 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.

Obstacles: A military style attack by aeroplane on large acreage of crops would require crop dusters and large stockpiles of agent. Nevertheless, nothing would be difficult to obtain on the open market.

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.

Moral barrier: It is often argued that there is an innate human revulsion to the use of disease as a weapon; if so, this could constitute an important disincentive to bioterrorism and biowarfare.

Maximum effect: If the goal is to disrupt trade by introducing a highly contagious disease into territory from which it is absent, the attack does not have to be constructed to cause a large number of cases a handful of cases may be sufficient. Obviously, it is much easier to cause a small outbreak than a large one.

Detection: Because of the high background of naturally-occurring disease, it is possible that a deliberately instigated outbreak could be mistaken for a natural one. If avoiding detection is important, an attack would be constructed to take advantage of this confusion. Especially if the goal is disruption of international trade where few cases are necessary, it is feasible to construct an attack to appear to be a natural point-source outbreak.

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. It also allows the possibility of initiating multiple outbreaks over a large geographic area, in a way that mimics a natural event (such as 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).

States most at risk: The states most vulnerable to economic attack on the agricultural sector are those with several or most of the following attributes:

* High density, large area agriculture,

* Heavy reliance on monoculture fo a restricted range of genotypes,

* Free of specific serious animal and plant pathogens or pests,

* Major agricultural exporter, or heavily dependent on a few domestic agricultural products,

* Suffering serious domestic unrest, or the target of international terrorism, or unfriendly neighbour of states likely to be developing BW programmes,

* Weak plant and animal epidemiological infrastructure.

For such at-risk states, the threat of biological attack against their agricultural sectors should be taken quite seriously, and preventative and punitive measures put in place.

Deterrence: Enactment of legislation implementing the BTWC is required of all states ; however, many have not yet done so. Such legislation can be a significant deterrent to biological attack on the agricultural sector. Origins: Biological attack on the agricultural sector is 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.

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. This would reduce the likelihood of BW in regional conflicts, and the chance that state-supported terrorist organizations would ever get bioweapons. Provision for internationally sponsored epidemiological investigation of possible agricultural attacks would deter covert use in the same manner as national epidemiological capacity.

Reliance: States that engage in high intensity agriculture of a limited range of varieties could reduce their vulnerability to both deliberate and natural disease outbreaks 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.

Conclusions: This analysis shows that anti-agricultural biowarfare 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 do: the agents are not hazardous to humans, delivery systems are readily available and unsophisticated, maximum effect may only require a few cases, delivery from outside the target country is possible, and an effective attack can be constructed to look natural.