fred avolio's musings

The Fox News Network headline said, “US Prepares for Possible Terror Attack Using Livestock.” Now, anything having to do with terrorism demands some attention. But, I admit that what first came to mind was the scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the French catapulting livestock—cows, chickens, etc.—down on King Arthur and his knights.

Then I got to thinking… If livestock was some how infected, would that really be considered terrorism? Terrorism, by definition, is meant to cause terror. Infected bovine in the UK caused problems in that segment of the economy, as people who didn’t understand “mad cow disease” avoided beef. Given all of the sources of food the US has, I don’t think such an attack would cause terror. But, then people do talk about cyber-terrorism.