Historical and economic aspects of bioterrorism

Abstract

SummaryThe use of living organisms as weapon has been seen throughout the history of mankind. In our age the growing global tension, the several malfunctional nations and the multitudinous occurrence of low-intensity conflicts increase the risk of biological terror attacks even in Europe. In case of a contingent biological terror attack the veterinarians will become key figures fighting in the forefront, because 60% of the human contagious diseases are zoonotic and the food-chain is an easily vulnerable target which is fundamentally supervised by them. Malicious, deliberate contamination of food and water supplies with different biological agents, including bacteria, viruses, parasites and bacterial toxins for terrorist purposes is a real threat to the civilian populations worldwide. Hence, in the paper the authors review the concepts, history and future trends of bio, agro and food terrorism, and the possible impacts of bioterrorism on food-chain, public health, economy and the whole society.

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“…It was a known practice and sporadically used in history 15 . In the scope of bioterrorism, there are also concepts such as "food terrorism" or "agroterrorism" to describe the use of living organisms as a biological weapon, which happened, for example, during World War I and World War II 16 .…”