Cross-Campus Initiative on Food Security
Historically food security has meant ensuring enough food for the populace to eat. Now, food security covers every aspect of production, supply, safety, processing, distribution, and consumption of food to ensure a healthy, adequate, cost effective supply, without disruption. The United States has enjoyed unprecedented food security over the last half-century or more, but there are multifaceted dangers facing the U.S. today.
The introduction of pathogens, known or unknown, accidental or deliberate, can potentially devastate an entire segment of U.S. food production, with far reaching effects. Consider the economic impact if either foot and mouth disease (FMD) or soybean rust disease were introduced to the U.S. Production and yield losses could devastate farmers and ranchers, reverberating to meat processors, distribution and retail businesses, food service, grain processors and distributors, rural banking, and even the financial markets. Even though these diseases are not harmful to humans, the economic dislocations alone, such as farm and ranch bankruptcies, distribution and retail losses, and the like, could imperil our overall food supply. The economic cost of the foot and mouth disease outbreak in the United Kingdom has been estimated at $5 billion U.S. dollars each for the agricultural and rural tourism sectors. In California alone, an outbreak of FMD would cause an estimated $5 billion direct loss plus an additional $6 billion in lost export markets. Losses to tourism are almost incalculable. New pathogens that have appeared around the world, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease), could seriously disrupt the U.S. food supply with major economic dislocations, even if people are not actually affected by the disease. If a virulent food-based pathogen caused an epidemic via large-scale introduction to the U.S., a severe interruption in the food distribution system could potentially occur due to sudden and massive changes in eating habits and banning of exports by other nations. With such an epidemic, the U.S. health care system would face unprecedented assault, affecting far more lives than those imperiled by the food crisis. For example, an E. coli infection affecting 10 thousand people would require more kidney dialysis than is available in the entire U.S. Therefore, the economic, social, and health consequences of newly introduced pathogens provide a powerful incentive to view food security as a priority for the United States of America.
The importance of food security is not limited to catastrophic dangers. Despite the high quality of the U.S. food supply, normal pathogens often enter the food system undetected and result in significant health and economic losses. The latest USDA Economic Resource Service (ERS) estimates of household medical costs and productivity losses for diseases caused by the five leading food borne pathogens are $6.9 billion per year. The five bacterial pathogens are: Campylobacter (all serotypes), Salmonella (nontyphoidal serotypes only), E. coli O157:H7, E. coli non-O157:H7 STEC, and Listeria monocytogenes. Additional losses are associated with pathogens that exist at lower hazard rates. Estimates of the number of people sickened run into the millions, resulting in tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths, with the very young and old most at risk. Therefore, efforts to protect the food supply against pathogens of all types would reduce current economic losses and save lives, providing further incentive to make food security a priority.
In agricultural production, new resistant strains of crop diseases, insects, or weeds could rapidly reduce crop yields and alter farming practices, especially if they are exotic and deliberately introduced, increasing the cost of foods made from the affected commodities. On a lesser scale, crossover of genetically engineered crop strains or the presence of pesticide residues in final food products can damage a segment of the farm economy, as has happened on at least two recent occasions. The Animal & Plant Disease and Pest Surveillance & Detection Network has been established to enhance bio-security by rapid detection of diseases and pests introduced into the U.S. agricultural production system. The major problem, though, is that the current U.S. food chain has no comprehensive tracing system for foodstuffs at critical control points in the system. Pathogens could enter the food system at any number of points, such as production, processing, distribution, import, or consumer sales points, with a multitude of potential economic or health impacts. Origin and destination information is not carried along with the physical products, so rarely is the point known where a pathogen, say Listeria or E. coli that caused public health problems, entered the food system. The most advanced systems in use today in the U.S. are in the private domain. The U.S. may be at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the European Union or other markets, where as a result of FMD and BSE, effective commercial tracing systems are being established. The U.S. may lose access to those markets unless traceability is augmented throughout the food supply system. With globalization of the world’s food supply, the loss of market access could lead to permanent damage to segments of U.S. food production.
Finally, agricultural and food-targeted terrorism presents several serious threats to our food security. Terrorists can introduce new pathogenic genes into normally harmless carriers that are rapidly spread through plants and animals: the “weaponization” of plant and animal pests. The result could be swift with widespread illness and contamination of economically vital crop and livestock species. They can easily introduce dangerous, but naturally occurring, agents into the U.S. They can economically devastate the U.S. food supply, without actually harming large numbers of our citizens, by secretly introducing relatively mild, long acting agents such as carcinogens or naturally occurring toxins into the food supply. Once discovered, economic ruin could follow. Thousands of people around the world have the training, knowledge, and access to develop compounds and vectors to weaponize existing pathogens that destroy crops and animals. Indeed, the former Soviet Union developed extensive biological and chemical weapons designed to destroy the U.S. food system. What crops, animals, or foods might be terrorist targets? How long might it go undetected? What should the response be? These are important questions that must be addressed to protect our food supply. As dire as the consequences are from a bioterrorist attack on crops and livestock, a bioterrorist attack on the food system using pathogens that directly affect human health, such as the five common food-borne pathogens listed above, would overwhelm the health system and have an immeasurable impact on the short- and long-term economies.
The main problem with all these dangers is that the food supply in the U.S. is a strong, distributed, robust system, which can lead to complacency, and at the same time is more vulnerable than virtually any other segment of our society. Food is widely dispersed and distributed in a system with literally millions of susceptible points for harm to occur. Unlike water, communications, and transportation systems with central monitoring, there is not a uniform or collective mechanism to immediately determine if something has gone wrong. Diagnosis and the response could be very slow, with recovery potentially measured in several growing seasons, if the damage is widespread. Food security would then become the number one priority of the nation. However, unlike many other dangers to our society that would require prior knowledge to prevent, knowledge of the current state of the food system and strengthening of current capabilities can head off disasters with active intervention before problems become widespread. Until now, public and private intervention capabilities have largely been designed to address natural or accidental occurrences. While that has served the U.S. well to achieve the safest and most secure food supply in the world, the threat of deliberate and sophisticated contamination requires a different set of assumptions and capabilities. There are a number of diagnosis and response issues that need to be resolved. One has to do with the role of the states and the different response protocols that are in place. Do we need to develop a federal command and control center model, and if so, how should this be done? Or should the states and localities have primary responsibility? How do we respond appropriately, knowing that too slow could make an epidemic much more serious than it needs to be, but that too fast could cause immense damage, should it be a false alarm? There is growing concern nationwide that Food Security be made a top priority.
The National Academy of Sciences has completed a comprehensive study, “Biological Threats to Agricultural Plants and Animals”, to evaluate the ability of the United States to deter, prevent, detect, thwart, respond to and recover from an intentional, biological attack against the nation through its supply of food and fiber. It looked at a selected set of biological agents, representative of various types of potential threats under different scenarios, and the probable response and efficacy of the current agricultural protection system and related health, law enforcement and intelligence systems. These organizations include public health agencies, the intelligence community, law enforcement and other agencies that partner with the U.S. agricultural system. The study committee concluded that scientific research is needed to enhance agricultural defense capabilities, microbial forensics, vaccine/drug development, biochemical detection, decontamination technology, molecular epidemiology, and other technologies as tools to deter, prevent, thwart or resist a biological threat.
In comparison to the security of airports, water supplies, cities, roads and railroads, telecommunications, power distribution, and military installations, little is being done to collectively secure our food supply from deliberate threats. Security is important for private industries that produce foodstuffs, but the information is often confidential and there is limited coordination between companies and governmental agencies. Given food’s importance to survival, there is a growing belief that much more must be done to collectively increase food security, from soil to seed to consumption: “farm to fork.” Food security is now being considered vital due to the threat of terrorism facing us. Recently, it was discovered that Al Qaeda had plans for disrupting our food supply, and that the former Soviet Union had extensive biological and chemical weapons aimed at U.S. crops and animals. Food is part of federal and state Homeland Security plans, and both the Departments of Agriculture and Health & Human Services have made food security a high priority.
Even without terrorist threats, food security is rapidly gaining in importance for the U.S. and the world due to globalization of food trade and the ease with which diseases, insects, noxious plants and weeds can pass over borders. Moreover, knowledge gained to make food secure has applications towards improving crop yields as well as the supply and distribution of food, which will directly aid in increasing the amount, quality, and variety of food available to sustain world’s population growth in the next century: a critical issue facing the U.S. and world.
Preserving the identity of foods through the entire food chain is an important, but costly, method of addressing safety and security issues. High volume and rapid throughput is essential for efficiency and profitability of the food system and low food costs for consumers. Other rapid means of detecting problems and anomalies, monitoring variables in the food system, and managing information are needed to enhance food security and add value to the system. Agribusiness and food processing companies are intensely interested in this issue, as are growers. The key to any successful approach to address food security issues is to create systems that provide additional economic value to farmers and businesses, rather than imposing draconian measures of regulation and control. Farmers and businesses must be willing to participate in any monitoring, tracking, or information system requiring that it facilitate and not inhibit future marketing systems.
To ensure the security of the food supply for the U.S. and the world, we need to be able to (i) identify points of particular vulnerability in the entire food system, and determine robust strategies for reducing the vulnerabilities, (ii) track the vulnerable pathways for food, from seed through processing to consumers, (iii) know the chemical and biological constituents of foods and any sudden changes that may have occurred due to contamination, (iv) provide a collective early warning of manmade and natural contamination, alterations, infestations, and infections in the food supply, (v) improve the infrastructure for testing and tracking genetic material, raw and processed foodstuffs, as well as feed and animals raised for consumption, to make it economically viable to increase surveillance of the food supply, (vi) standardize databases and develop the information science needed to use the data for determining if an insult to the food system has occurred, and (vii) develop acceptable and robust strategies for dealing with physical, health, and economic insults to the food supply. A great deal of research must be done to achieve these objectives. Essentially, we must increase our knowledge of the state of food at each level and develop strategies for responding to information gained about the food system. There are fundamental questions that need to be addressed by a multitude of academic fields, new technologies that need to be developed, and new policy and management strategies developed to process and utilize information about the state of food security to effectively respond to danger or threats to the food system.
There are also key infrastructures of critical importance in the U.S. and Illinois that are related to Food Security: 1. Disruptions to the commodities exchanges that trade futures and options to manage risk for agricultural and food commodities would lead to greater worldwide financial risks, affecting the capital that producers, processors, and distributors depend on to sustain the food supply. Futures and options markets, banking, and other financial services, as well as the computer and electronic systems that support them, need to be considered in protection and response strategies. 2. Transportation infrastructure, ports, rivers (locks and dams), highways, and railroads, and storage infrastructure (silos, warehouses) are key to the whole food distribution system and are potential targets for disruption, and need to be considered for protection and response. 3. Huge amounts of food, particularly fruits, vegetables, and other perishables are imported daily into the U.S. and Illinois. Increased monitoring of imported food for contamination is critical for maintaining food security: securing U.S. produced food alone is not sufficient.
While the main focus of this argument is the threats to Food Security, equally important for a cross-campus initiative is the potential to create new economic opportunities through application of technology, new knowledge, and novel approaches to management of the food system. No system will be fully sustainable if it relies solely on public financing. Readiness will not be optimally robust if the approach is solely defensive in nature, waiting for events that hopefully will seldom if ever occur. Hence, the unique opportunity for this initiative is to conceive of approaches that will create new tools, new systems, new knowledge, and new ways of doing things that provide valuable information, ideas, and technology to the people and organizations that grow, market, process, transport, and sell food in the marketplace.
Food is pervasive throughout every aspect of society, touching on a large number of fields and areas of study within academia. The University of Illinois is perhaps unique among the country’s research institutions in its ability to comprehensively address food security. The fields that impact food security are Agriculture, Food Science, Crop Sciences and Plant Pathology, Animal Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Microbiology, Genomics, Physiological & Molecular Plant Biology, BioInformatics, Human Pathology and Medicine, Human Nutrition, Chemistry (Analytical, Physical, and Organic), Engineering (Agricultural, Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical, Material Science, Civil), Economics (Agricultural, Commodities), Business (Commerce, Agriculture), Public Policy, Law, Policing and Emergency Response Planning, and Information Science (Computations, Information Technologies, Networking and Communications). UIUC is dominant in many of these disciplines. In the areas that it does not dominate, the University is making strides to expand, such as with the Post Genomic Institute. No other university or national research laboratory can cover these fields with the depth that UIUC can.
Partnerships with the public and the private sectors will be critical to the success of any initiative addressing Food Security. Academic approaches alone will likely fail to provide solutions that can be applied both short-term and long-term. The university has extensive partnerships with most of the key players in the food and agricultural sector in Illinois and across the nation, including some of the largest and most important firms and organizations in agribusiness and the food sector globally. In addition, the university has local coverage statewide through UI Extension, and very strong relations with food and agricultural stakeholders through the Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR). The Urbana-Champaign campus also has significant partnerships with many of the most important technology companies and organizations in the world. Perhaps more than any other institution, the university can bring together unique combinations of partners to create innovative approaches to Food Security.
The field of Food Security cuts across the entire campus, with the Colleges of ACES, LAS, Commerce, Veterinary Medicine, and Engineering expected to be heavily involved. Moreover, the importance of food security to the State of Illinois is critical, due to the large economic and human investments in agriculture and food processing within Illinois. Funding for research into various aspects of food security has already begun, with the university's being approached by Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Health & Human Services to address these issues. However, right now the efforts are diffuse and uncoordinated. What is needed is a cohesive initiative that will bring together the diverse elements on campus to propose far-reaching and sustained research in Food Security. This is an immense job, with initiatives springing up at Urbana-Champaign, in Springfield, at numerous federal agencies, and in company boardrooms. For a campus that is known for being decentralized, indeed whose strength lies in providing opportunities for professors to “let a thousand flowers bloom”, a Cross-Campus Food Security Initiative that enables several complementary efforts to go forward under one banner would provide the focus that is needed now, when the time is ripe for making significant contributions.
Numerous research and education initiatives related to Food Security can be addressed at Illinois. An incomplete list below gives a flavor of topics for research and education that are needed to comprehensively address Food Security.
(1) Nanotechnology and Biology: Advances in technologies for determining threats to food from all sources need to occur, to be able to monitor the state of food security. A large number of analytical methods for toxins, proteins, carbohydrates, pathogens, and so on need to be developed, as well as sensors for animal health markers, field contamination, pathogens, etc. Both advances in nanoscience and technology are needed to answer these questions, as well as concerted efforts in Microbiology and Genomics. Much of the efforts on campus in these areas in Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics can be applied to answering the fundamental science and technology questions that have to be answered in order to realize affordable Food Security. In addition, large numbers of students must be educated in order to fill out the emerging work force in this field.
(2) Agriculture and Animal Science: The heart of Food Security resides in maintaining animal and crop biosecurity. Important questions must be addressed throughout the fields of agriculture and animal science, from the health of animals to identifying each species of pathogen present in crops, so that alterations and insertions of contaminants can be detected. Questions related to sensing and detecting threats, as well as how to respond to old and new dangers remain. Obviously, a whole host of questions must be addressed in the College of ACES, from threats to responses to agricultural economics in order to comprehensively address Food Security.
(3) Food Science and Human Nutrition: Food technology, food microbiology, and food process engineering are the fields closest to the consumers of food. These and related disciplines of human nutrition will provide much of the first line defense for consumers of food, where the risks to human health and well being are most critical.
(4) Health and Medicine: As food impacts human health, a concerted effort to identify the threats and treatments for threats to the food supply must be addressed. Although many toxins and pathogens have already been thoroughly examined, questions related to new threats must be addressed.
(5) Sensing, Tracking, and Information Science: In order to meet the objectives to achieve a measure of security in the food system, large amounts of information have to be gathered and processed in near real time. How can networks be established to monitor hundreds of millions to billions of foodstuffs from the seed to the market, and to process that information to give early warnings of dangers and threats to avert disasters? Questions of handling massive amounts of distributed data, processing and alerting the appropriate authorities, while maintaining privacy and competition need to be addressed. Methodologies are needed for the type of tracking and data required for crops, animals, and processed food. Animals are essentially disaggregated and pieces sold – tracking the disassembly in real-time requires sensing, communication, and data to be combined in new ways. Crops are essentially aggregated in the collection and milling processes. Biophysical attributes are blended, small samples contaminate large quantities (a bushel of GMO corn contaminates several rail cars), and tracking genetic information from seed bag to field to grain bin to elevator and beyond requires innovative thinking about sensing and attribute measurement. Information science and decision management is also needed to rapidly determine what response is required for a given threat or response.
(6) Economics of Food Security: Many outcomes to threats to the food supply can cause massive dislocations in the farm and processor sectors. Questions such as how to handle direct and indirect threats to the economy, and how best to provide insurance, safety nets, and capital in the face of a potential food crisis have to be answered. In addition, how to pay for Food Security is a vital issue, as costs are unlikely to be born by producers, industry, consumers, or taxpayers, unless a clear value is seen in the process. The economic benefits of developing food security technology and networks for improved crop and animal yields, improved distribution networks, reduced health costs for citizens, and the like, need to be accessed. Regardless of the eventuality of a bioterrorist attack, the return on the investment in building an information backbone that can handle “normal” issues in crop and herd epidemiology, food-borne pathogen eradication, traceability of high-value quality attributes from genetic source to retail, organic channel preservation, segregation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from non-GMOs, etc., needs to determined. The metaphor is the U.S. interstate highway system. Eisenhower sold it to the people to move troops and material across the country in response to invasion and attack threats. Today, the interstate moves the vast majority of commercial goods, and the economic return has been enormous. Would this also be true for a Food Security system?
(7) Infrastructure, Transportation, and Distribution: The transport and storage of all aspects of food production, from seeds, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticides, crops, animals, pre- and post-processed foodstuffs account for many, if not most, of the points of vulnerability to the food supply. In addition, these distribution points also provide the greatest opportunity for testing and tracking. Many questions related to methodologies for improving the infrastructure of transportation (water, road, rail) and distribution (silos, warehouses) need to be addressed by civil and transportation engineers, business and economists, in order to reduce vulnerabilities in food transportation and storage.
(8) Public Policy, Law, Policing, Psychology, and First Responders: Approaches to handling threats to the food supply are expected to be different from other civil defense responses. As recently witnessed in Great Britain, large-scale destruction of animals to contain epidemics is currently seen as the only viable method. Questions on how might that and other scenarios play out in the U.S. need to be addressed. If large-scale disposal of food is proposed to counter an immediate threat, how will governments respond to food shortages? Much of our laws and public policy is set to address criminal and civil behaviors. What are the implications of responding to food issues involving large segments of the population? Moreover, what collective behaviors are expected of people in such a crisis, and what are appropriate responses, in law, policing, mental health, and economy?
Conclusion
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign can rapidly be the central university in the U.S. and the world that addresses Food Security. It is an important topic for the State of Illinois, the region, and nation. There are many important intellectual issues that need to be resolved, and there are funding opportunities that can help Illinois have impact in this area. Due to its importance, the broad impact across the campus, its relation to biology and nanotechnology, and to the university’s depth in agriculture, engineering, and the life sciences, Food Security may be an ideal Cross-Campus Initiative. This initiative can best be sold if the economics for developing a comprehensive food security network to the U.S. food system and consumers can be shown to benefit producers, distributors, consumers, and the taxpayer, while at the same time, providing the security to our food supply that the people of the United States have rightly come to expect. The underlying issues for Food Security are not going to disappear any time soon, but the time to act is now, when the security of the American people is forefront in the national conscience.