Is SA prepared for bioterrorism?

It has now become a vital responsibility of Government and the food industry to prepare strategies and processes for food defence: the threats are legion, resources and experience limited - how can South Africa ensure that it will be able to respond to the possibility or reality of bioterrorism?

Not a chimera

"Bioterrorism is not a chimera," stressed Buchanan, an expert in food safety and defence with over 400 publications to his name.

"Intelligence sources as well as multinational corporations indicate that terrorist bodies have discussed the potential of the food sector as a terrorist goal extensively, and the Internet swarms with manuals on achieving intentional contamination of food."

Not only are the food and agricultural industries critical assets to any country, but they are soft targets, and attacks on them have the capacity to cause devastating mass casualties while inflicting even greater economic and psychological damage.

So huge is the task of providing defences to the food chain that vulnerabilities need to be carefully assessed, targeting the foods, sectors and agents which pose the most glaring risks.

"This needs to be undertaken with intimate involvement of the food industry itself," Buchanan emphasised.

Three main reaons

"Manufacturers and other stakeholders should evaluate their own processes, facilities and individual systems and approach a food defence strategy which considers the three main reasons for terrorism: extortion, social causes, or so-called "country against country."

South Africa has already experienced the effects of extortion on a retail store, so has an understanding of the hugely negative economic, social and psychological repercussions of such events. And these tend to be perpetrated at a relatively unsophisticated level, which is not the case with "country against country" terrorism.

The US has developed a number of strategies to assess vulnerabilities and gather knowledge to develop food defence measures, training industry people to look at their own systems, identify how they would beat them and then using that information to figure out how to protect the industry. "We have identified potential contaminating agents, foods and food/agent scenarios, looking at the varying levels of severity if an attack is carried out and then building defences against those agents and scenarios which produce the highest risk," he continued.

Critical factors

Among the most critical factors are the batch size, a short shelf life, the uniform mixing of the contaminant into the food, and agents with delayed or confusing symptoms.

"Typically, certain food toxins can be similar to bacteriological diseases and victims appear to be recovering after a day or two, but then into day four, they go into liver and kidney failure as select toxins shut organs down," Buchanan explained. "So if you have a case where products are quickly consumed and there is a delay in identifying contamination, there could be mass casualties."

New regulatory requirements must now be observed by American roleplayers in the food industry, including registration, record-keeping and prior notice of imports into the country according to the bioterrorism Act of 2002. "Among emergency and recovery planning measures are decontamination and disposal of equipment, food and facilities, the actual ability to say that the food supply is safe and the essential role of communicating with consumers to restore public confidence."

Integrated, not competitive

Food safety and food defence, he stressed, must be integrated and must not be a competitive issue. "Many of the agents and approaches are the same, and there are common resources and activities," he pointed out. "Ignoring food safety at the expense of food defence or vice versa could lead to disaster. Government and multinationals must play a role in providing intelligence.

"The food industry itself must harness all its resources, research and assess its vulnerabilities, train its people to spot deviation and counterfeiting in products and encourage them to think like terrorists and develop strategies to their potential threats. And don't succumb to secrecy!" Buchanan admonished in conclusion. "Letting everyone know that you are proactive, that you are on the alert, that you are developing counter-measures and are prepared for eventualities is a very effective way of letting terrorists appreciate that they should go elsewhere."