Georgia Implements Plan to Protect Food Supply

The state of Georgia is recruiting thousands of people to help protect the U.S. food supply from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Dec. 23, 2004).

The state’s agroterrorism committee plans to train 3,500 emergency workers, farmer sand veterinarians to identify and respond to agricultural emergencies by June 2006. That would include checking on unusual animal or plant sickness that could be the result of a terrorist attack.  

“Any time you have an impact on the food supply, you get a lot of people upset,” said Bill Thomas, an agricultural economist who serves on the committee. “If people have no meat or milk to drink, people are going to get upset. That’s why we need people to respond quickly and effectively” (Elliott Minor, Associated Press/Yahoo!Finance, March 9).

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