Agricultural Biosecurity 'Massively Underfunded'

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

The United States' food systems are undoubtedly exposed to a number of risks, like infectious diseases or even intentional attacks. But perhaps the biggest threat to national biosecurity may actually be the lack of funding to defend against these threats. David Stiefel, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, says food and livestock systems are severely under-resourced, which puts our producers and our country at risk.

Stiefel... " I think there are so many threats for agriterrorism, agricrime, agriwarfare that we just don't pay attention to. I think the biggest threat, honestly, is how under-resourced agricultural defense is. So Congress does not fund the way that they should fund agricultural security, and that is a threat. So if you look at the secure national stockpile, which is what Health and Human Services uses to stockpile medications and therapeutics and materials to, if we were attacked through a biological agent, we have the secure national stockpile that keeps all those vaccines and countermeasures. On the agricultural side, we have the National Veterinary Stockpile, which is a fraction of the funding, but has to cover so many species, right? So if we actually want it to be serious about protecting the U.S., we should put our money where our mouth is. So, a massive threat is how underfunded agricultural security is."

Stiefel recently wrote an op-ed in USA Today on this topic, outlining what steps are necessary to overcome these threats.