The following article was published in the New York Post, January 7, 2017:

FEAR in your FOOD: It’s alarmingly easy for terrorists to contaminate our food supply, by Hank Parker

http://nypost.com/2017/01/07/its-alarmingly-easy-for-terrorists-to-contaminate-our-food-supply/

Back in 1984, in a rural town near Portland, Ore., a woman lurked by a salad bar at a restaurant with a plastic bag in her hands. After checking that no-one was looking, she opened the bag and emptied a brownish liquid over the food.

A recent report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology highlighted growing national concerns about the potential application of advanced biotechnology to the development of horrific biological weapons. The Council (or PCAST) consists of nineteen leading scientists and engineers appointed by the President to advise on matters of science and technology.

PCAST’s concerns are widely shared in the scientific community. Until recently genetic engineering technologies focused on transferring recombinant genes between organisms to confer desirable traits (e.g. disease resistance) or to manufacture quantities of valuable biomedical products like insulin. This can be an inefficient and time-consuming process, taking months or years to complete. But new advances in biotechnology have greatly speeded up—and simplified—genetic engineering of life forms.