This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Agro-terrorism is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Terrorism |
| Definitions History International conventions Anti-terrorism legislation Counter-terrorism War on Terrorism Red Terror White Terror |
| By ideology |
| Communist Eco-terrorism Narcoterrorism Nationalist Racist |
| Types and tactics |
| Agro-terrorism Bioterrorism Car bombing Environmental Aircraft hijacking Nuclear Propaganda of the deed Proxy bomb Suicide attack |
| State involvement |
| State terrorism State sponsorship |
| Configurations |
| Fronts Lone wolf |
| Lists |
| Designated organizations Incidents |
Agroterrorism, also known as Agriterrorism, is "the malicious use of plant or animal pathogens to cause devastating disease in the agricultural sector. It may also take the form of hoaxes and threats intended to create public fear of such events".1
From a BBC article on the subject: When Tommy Thompson stood down as US health secretary in 2004, he delivered a stark warning. "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do," he said. In the same article, Larry Wein from Stanford University describes the scenario of poisoning a milk tanker with 10 grams of botulinum toxin, and is quoted concluding: "If we didn't realize what was happening, half a million people would drink this milk... most of these would be poisoned, roughly half of them would die"
A terrorist attack on the food chain on that scale has never happened. The purported ease with which such an attack could be executed is controversial. Historically, there have been at least five acts of agro-terrorism in the United States and 17 worldwide. In one attack, a radical group released Mediterranean fruit flies in California.citation needed The Medfly attacks more than 250 varieties of fruits, nuts and vegetables. A similar attack with a corn or soybean pest could devastate South Dakota's agriculture industry.2
References
- ^ Agriterrorism Homeland Defense Stocks
- ^ The threat of agri terrorism South Dakota Department of Agriculture
External links
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 19 September 2008, at 14:18.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Agro-terrorism".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.