By Larry Dreiling

A former U.S. Army colonel skilled in intelligence and bioterrorism issues recently told a Colorado audience that industry, as well as state and local governments, must work together to understand vulnerabilities in the U.S. agricultural infrastructure to develop risk reduction strategies that best suit unique situations.

John Hoffman, program manager for food and agriculture in the Information Analysis and Infrastructural Protection Directorate of the Infrastructure Coordination Division at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, spoke to more than 250 people at the Colorado Agricultural Outlook Forum, held recently in Denver.

Hofffman gave a grim message to forum attendees of the vulnerability of agriculture to attack, while explaining the DHS message of protecting critical infrastructure.

"Forty-three states in this country depend on agriculture to pay the bills," Hoffman said. "What some people do not understand is that people eat everyday. That may sound obvious. Is it worth protecting? You bet."

Hoffman described a strategic plan for managing several presidential directives aimed toward proactively maintaining agricultural "assets" and to react to new incidents as they occur.

The goals of the new plan are for identification and understanding of specific vulnerabilities, successfully deploying protective and mitigation measures, sharing information and best practices across the food chain and to increase research and development of food and ag infrastructure security in an integrated way across government and industry.

The DHS labels these incidents in many ways: Biological, catastrophic, cyber, food and agricultural, nuclear or radiological and oil and hazardous material.

Hoffman used the series of hurricanes in Florida last fall as a case study in disruption in the U.S. food supply. In this case, the disruption was in the dairy industry.

"We thought we'd have to figure out not only how to get milk to places Florida dairies serviced, but how to get milk down to Florida," Hoffman said. "Fortunately, there were plans already in place similar to what we want to have happen all over the country. Industry moved very quickly to ensure the milk supply."

The one most feared attack is terrorism, but Hoffman said DHS is gearing itself for more than just a Red Alert attack.

"It's more than just terrorism. It's more than just an international issue, but a domestic one," Hoffman said. "Just in the last few days, there have been attacks on the food and ag infrastucture in this country by groups like ALF and ELF, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. These attacks are not just overseas."

Because of these attacks, it's more important than ever to take a proactive approach to reduce the suitability of agricultural targets to terrorist attack.

"It's also important, of course, to contain the effects of an attack if they do something," Hoffman said.

A series of 10 presidential directives for homeland security has been issued with five of the 10 directly related to agriculture.

The directives include:

--Management of domestic incidents;

--Critical infrastructure identification, prioritization and protection;

--National preparedness;

--Defense of U.S. agriculture and food, and;

--Biodefense.

Only one of these directives focuses on a single industry--agriculture.

"Interestingly, agriculture wasn't declared a critical infrastructure until 2002," Hoffman said. "When it was identified, it became the first industry to have a specific strategic directive."

Biodefense is likely to be the most secretive, yet most important directive handed down to DHS, Hoffman said.

"There's been a lot of thought put into defending food and agriculture in this nation," Hoffman said, indicating the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Food and Drug Administration are joining with DHS in managing biodefense directives.

"We want agriculture to remain secure, resilient, and oh by the way we want to be prepared. We want to be prepared as we never have been to deal with natural disasters or a terrorist event," Hoffman said.

"If a terrorist understands that we're prepared for him, he's not going to attack you. He's going to find someplace where you're not prepared because he won't have the effect and shock that he wants. If you're prepared, then he's wasting his time because terrorists don't like to fail."

When failure occurs, Hoffman said terrorists lose their standing their community.

"That means they lose their funding and they can't enlist people to work for them. They depend on success," he said.

In the area of management of domestic incidents, Hoffman explained that a national incident management system is under development to set up a core set of concepts to guide in incident command and multi-agency coordination. Also, a national response plan for all segments of the country involving all hazards--including a top-secret bioterrorism plan--has been developed.

"What we did was take a federal plan and make it a national response plan involving industry and all sectors of government," Hoffman said. "This way, we all have a role in security and can work together more efficiently. We'll have a standardized management system based on what you may see in your local emergency preparedness office, with a logical chain of command."

It is hoped, Hoffman said, the new plan would help respond faster to problems than ever before.

"This sort of brings back the Civil Defense response mentality that we seemed to have lost in the 1960s," Hoffman said. "There is an expanded role for local and state governments, along with non-governmental organizations and private industry. We're all in this together, folks. In agriculture, 80 percent of the infrastructure is owned by private industry. We can't take care of each other if we don't work together."

This means more, Hoffman said, than private sector corporations, charities and individuals giving away free supplies.

"The key is to work together to return to normalcy in the event something happens," Hoffman said.

Specific to food and agriculture, DHS is now assessing vulnerabilities within the infrastructure at the lowest possible level detectable. DHS will then prioritize the risks and deploy protective strategies--what Hoffman called shields--as well as mitigation strategies should something go wrong.

So far, an interim infrastructure protection plan was released Feb. 8, with a final plan to be initiated later in the year. As it is now, the plan is being reviewed at all levels of government and by industries involved.

"We don't yet understand what's really vulnerable out there," Hoffman said. "We know at a macro level, but not at a specific level, at the granular level. We have to work with industry and with state and local governments to understand at the particular part of the production chain what those vulnerabilities are and what would happen at the maximum effect if somebody targeted something or it was hit by a natural disaster."

DHS, Hoffman said, is seeking partnerships between states, localities and industry to reduce vulnerabilities. Once developed in final form, the information will be maintained under tight security by DHS in a National Asset Database. Proprietary and sensitive information will be designated as Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) and may not be disclosed to third parties.

DHS plans to put the information together for use in statistical analysis and planning. To ensure the information will not be used for other purposes, DHS regulations prohibit information being used for purposes other than securing critical infrastructure, interdependency study, warning and for informational purposes.

"Our objective is to establish two-way protected communications between our government partners and between industry and government to exchange threat, incident and trend information and to present a shared, common and bio-aware capability," Hoffman said.

"We know this is a major shift on the public side in terms of industry working with us. In the past, industry did not want to share information. If we are going to work together, we have to share."

Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117 or e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com.

Date: 3/24/05