FOOD TERRORISM: HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

[defrog]

In 2004, then-US secretary of health and human services, Tommy Thompson, said on Fox News: “I cannot understand why terrorists have not attacked our food supply. Because it is so easy to do.”

Turns out it’s not, actually.

G.R. Dalziel, at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has written a report chronicling every confirmed case of malicious food contamination in the world since 1950: 365 cases in all, plus 126 additional unconfirmed cases.

Bruce Schneier has the details here, but the basic upshot of the results is this:

Most deliberate food-poisoning happens at home, and large-scale poisonings at best result in far more sick people than dead people. Food poisoning is effective for targeted assassinations (see: Alexander Litvinenko), but not really bioterror attacks.

So if yr afeared that Muslims or Mexicans either (1) deliberately infected pork with H1N1 or (2) might be inspired by the current outbreak to spike everyone’s chicken or tap water with cyanide, you can relax. Yr far more likely to be poisoned by poor food industry practices (see: salmonella-infected peanuts and milk that’s been spiked with plastic additives).

Don't you feel safer now?

Chow down,

This is dF