11 May 2005

The use of threats to release foot-and mouth disease in an attempt to extort money and policy changes from the Government is terrorism, says Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton.

" This is a case of terrorism," he told NZPA after a letter written to Prime Minister Helen Clark demanded a huge sum of money and changes in taxation policy, with the threat of releasing foot-and-mouth virus in a mainland farming area.

The letter, received yesterday, said the virus had already been released on Waiheke Island within the previous 24 hours, apparently to prove the extortionist's capability.

"Probably it's somebody with an unbalanced mind and they're just crazy, but possibly it is being done from a basis of sanity in which case: it is an act of terrorism," Mr Sutton said.

"It is trying to extort money and particular responses from the Government by threatening an economic catastrophe on the people of New Zealand."

A senior Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry official, its group director of compliance and enforcement, Jockey Jensen, last week attended the United States' first international conference on "agroterrorism" in Kansas City.

At the conference, the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller warned that all Americans needed to be alert to the potential for the farm sector and food supply to be attacked. "It's very important that if we do encounter an exotic pathogen in the United States, we be instantly alert to the possibility of agroterrorism".

According to an American scientist, Professor James Cook at Washington State University, agroterrorism is considered to be "low-tech, high-impact" .

And the chairman of the United States Senate's intelligence committee, Sentator Pat Roberts, dismissed criticism at the conference that discussing the threat of agricultural attacks would give terrorists ideas. Six of the 19 al Quaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001 had agricultural training. Some had taken an interest in aerial spraying of crops: "those crop dusters were not intended to be used on people," he said.

He specifically described concerns over the ease with which foot-and-mouth disease could be brought to American livestock from countries where it was endemic, such as Afghanistan, with minimal cost or difficulty.

But MAF's group director of Biosecurity New Zealand, Barry O'Neill, said today that he did not want to canvass ways in which foot-and-mouth disease could be deliberately introduced to New Zealand.

"I don't believe getting viable foot-and-mouth disease through our border biosecurity systems into New Zealand and infecting animals is an easy undertaking," he said.

But a noted epidemiologist, Professor Roger Morris of Massey University, told Radio New Zealand that it would be easier to smuggle foot-and-mouth virus across New Zealand's borders than it would be to bring in an illicit salami.

"You're most unlikely to get a salami through, but if you were deliberately trying to cheat the system, then there are ways and means of doing it," he said. Prof Morris said that the Waiheke threat was most likely to be a hoax, and that a similar threat had previously been made in Australia.

In 1984 an extortionist sent a letter to Queensland's Primary Industries Department threatening to release foot and mouth virus unless state jails were reformed.

Mr Sutton said the options for countering terrorism were limited, but it was possible to prepare for a disease outbreak.

"Of course we've thought about the possibility of something like foot and mouth being an instrument of terrorism deployed against New Zealand and it's clearly possible," he told NZPA.

"This is sort of a rather clumsy attempt to extort money and other things from the Government," he said. "There isn't much that you would or could do to counter it as a terrorist thing - you've just got to really prepare for an incursion".

Whether the disease was deliberately brought in or whether it was accidentally brought in, agricultural authorities had to respond the same way.

"If you had a deliberate terrorist incident, presumably they might potentially release it in a number of locations simultaneously, in which case you've got a more difficult task in responding, you need more resources".

Source Information

Fairfax New Zealand Limited 2005.