Until September 11, bioterrorism seemed to belong largely to the world of pulp fiction and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Sure, there were exceptions every now and then: A hospital lab worker in Texas feeds colleagues pastries laced with Salmonella dysenteriae. An Oregon-based religious cult contaminates restaurant salad bars with Salmonella Typhimurium. But in these and similar cases, the perpetrators fit comfortable profiles. Disgruntled employees. Small ideologically-driven groups without the resources or expertise to cut a significant swath through our food supply.
The possibility of a foreign source posing a significant threat to the food supply seemed pretty remote as well. "The technical barriers for a mass attack are still too great," Roger Breeze, associate administrator of USDA's Agricultural Research Service," observed during a session on bioterrorism last June at the Institute of Food Technologists' annual meeting in New Orleans.