By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - United States defence experts warn that international terrorists may launch biological attacks on the West's farm industries to try to cripple national economies.
The warning lists diseases and viruses endemic throughout Southeast Asia among the potential weapons, and comes as Australian scientists report the discovery of new
gene technology that could make biological agents even more deadly for both humans and farm livestock.
Potential users of such agents include groups linked to Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden, who advocates the use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and who was implicated in a plot uncovered in Auckland to bomb the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney during the Olympics.
Crude forms of biological campaigns have been used in African conflicts by releasing diseased cattle into the herds of enemy countries, and in the early 1980s Australian police thwarted an extortionist who threatened to release foot and mouth disease in the nation's farms.
The former Soviet Union is now known to have planned to attack US crops and livestock with specially developed biological agents - and the scientists who worked on Soviet biological and chemical warfare programmes are now being recruited by rogue states.
American officials estimate the release of soybean rust could cost US soybean producers, processors, livestock producers and consumers up to $US8 billion ($17 billion) a year, and foot and mouth disease costing as much as $US20 billion over 50 years.
In Australia, a foot and mouth outbreak would devastate meat, wool and dairy farmers, slash the value of the dollar by 10 per cent, lift inflation by 7 per cent, cost 85,000 jobs and cut economic growth by 3.5 per cent.
Livestock and plant pathogens listed by the US Defence Department as potential weapons of terrorism included - in addition to foot and mouth and soybean rust - anthrax, rinderpest, classical and African swine fever, sheep and goat pox, Newcastle disease, karnal bunt in wheat, ergot in sorghum and Wirrega blotch in barley.
The US Defence Department said there was a real danger of terrorists using naturally occurring livestock and plant pathogens which could be smuggled across borders with little risk of detection.
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