Paper short abstract:

Agro-terrorism refers to the deliberate introduction of plant pathogens in crops to scare or starve the people. Such an attack has never succeeded. However it as become a matter for a new security agenda. We study how plant pathologists assess that risk and manage its dual-nature.

Paper long abstract:

Globalization implies increased human circulation and exchanges of plants, seeds, and biological material, and hence pathogens. Markets, countries but also science have to face new challenges regarding biosecurity to ensure food quantity and quality. 9/11 gave rise to new fears, in our case, agro-terrorism, meaning the deliberate introduction of plant pathogens in crops or the food chain to starve populations or at least spread panic among them. This risk has never become reality in history. Some American plant pathologists obtained significant funding to assess that risk and prepare a response to it, though. Not to be outdone, EU launched two successive programs to build up "expertise", and develop "awareness" and "preparedness" and to assess possible economic outcomes of such an attack. But how can a risk be assessed without prior relevant data? Does this "awareness" towards a potential future threat change existing plant health specialists' knowledge, missions and networks? Plant pathology is a regulatory science. It committed to face a new puzzle, i.e. to deal with human intentionality, while it commonly regulates accidental or natural introduction of pathogens. This new agenda obliged plant pathologists to innovate in terms of risk assessment methods. But do those innovations do percolate in daily professional practices? The research is threefold. First, it is based on an international comparison between France, Italy and Great Britain. Second: we used scientometric methods in order to explore how scientific communities dealing with biosecurity are structured. Finally, we studied one of the European programs (FP7) mentioned above.