Hannah Thompson-Weeman
Appearances
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
There can definitely be challenges with really pinpointing what was a cause. A very recent example, one of the most extreme groups that we follow, Direct Action Everywhere, they had an ongoing criminal trial in California stemming from various incidents there. And during the trial, they went back to some of the farms that were involved in the trial.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
to say oh this is these problems are still happening you know we still need to keep investigating and then there were avian influenza outbreaks on those specific farms that they had been to so the california department of food and agriculture put out one of their statements saying that that was you know it's hard to say definitively so even the cdfa statement doesn't say we know that this is what caused this because it's hard to your point to pinpoint but they said this is a probable
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
We have reason to believe that this could have been because it's very odd that these two farms, that these same people admitted that they went to within this timeframe, then had an outbreak within this timeframe. Back when this group really came on the scene, there was also similarly, it was on the heels of like the 2014, 2015 high path AI outbreaks.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And they had gone into an egg farm that that barn of birds had to be depopulated out of concern for what could have been introduced there. Unfortunately, it is hard to necessarily pinpoint and say, you know, this is exactly what this is attributable to, which also makes it difficult for them to face consequences.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
There are definitely some examples we can point to. A lot of times it is more small scale incidents. Andrew, I think it might have been the panel that you were on at our conference where I learned the term. It's not catfishing. It's romance fraud. It's the official law enforcement definition for, you know, misrepresenting who you are to strike up relationships. But we have seen that happen.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
where some of these extremists will have fake online personas to strike up relationships with plant and farm workers to get information about operations.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
We've also seen that they will gain access and then get information off of computers, install spyware to, again, be able to piece together the supply chain and figure out when certain things will be happening on the farm that they want to quote unquote document or figure out what major customer restaurant retail this farm supplies to. So we've seen those kind of smaller scale incidents.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And then the other thing we've seen that's somewhat alarming is some of the bigger trends of, you know, we've seen feed mills be disrupted. We've seen, I believe it was JBS, be disrupted because of these large cyber incidents. And we see the activist groups admiring that. So they're saying, oh, we didn't do this, but we'd love it if we had.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And, you know, because if we can shut them down for a day, you know, that's exactly what they want to see happen. So there's definitely some concern. There's a group called the Vegan Hacktivists. They use hacktivist very loosely. They like code websites for people.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
But there's definitely like leanings and, you know, seeing these big trends and how disruptive these ransomware incidents have been and them saying, how can we partner up with those people to do this in the name of our cause?
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
That's great. Hannah, do you want to introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. Hannah Thompson-Wieman. I'm president and CEO of the Animal Agriculture Alliance. We are a nonprofit working to safeguard the future of animal agriculture and its value to society by bridging the communication gap between the farm and food communities.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Well, one of the groups that I mentioned earlier that we follow very closely in order to be like a member of the group, you've got to, you know, show your bona fides. You've got to have your arrest record and you have to sign a liberation pledge that says I will not sit in a table or room where anyone is eating animal products.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
You know, not just yourself, but family members, friends and, you know, obviously ideology behind that. But also it's a way to cut them away from their family members and from anyone that does have different beliefs than them to kind of herd them away. into this very extreme echo chamber. So it's very interesting, again, the way that this extreme mindset kind of permeates.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And back to what Kristen was saying too, you know, it is frustrating for producers that, you know, they're out here just trying to provide a product to people who want to eat it. And they have a lot of hurdles in between getting there. So for us at the Alliance, we're not a checkoff. We're not a trade association. We're not here to market anything. We're about choice.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So making sure that choices are available to people, whether that's animal protein or not. We you know, we love the corn and soy people, too. Whatever you want to eat is fine. Whatever aligns with your values and your budgets. It's when there's these extreme actors trying to influence what people even have the option to buy and eat. is when we get concerned and that's what we focus our efforts on.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Everything we do falls in the areas of connect, so connecting stakeholders from across animal agriculture and the food chain. Engage, so engaging with key influencers on hot topics like animal welfare, sustainability, responsible antibiotic use. And then lastly, the juicy stuff, protect. which is our monitoring of adversarial groups out there.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So keeping choices available to people at a variety of price points is what we are here to do. But for these extremists, it's about the opposite. It's about taking choices away from people.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So there's some common sense things and probably from a risk management perspective, Mike would have things to add too. But a lot of what we talk about is making ourselves a harder target. So we don't want you to be paranoid, but we want you to take common sense measures because according to these people, it's so easy for them to get onto farms.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
They actually released in the wake of the conviction of their leader in that trial I mentioned in California, they released a 149 page investigation manual. about how to get access to farms and plants.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So what kind of drones to buy, what kind of heat sensing cameras to use to know whether people are inside the building or not, how to track trucks going from facility to facility to piece together the supply chain, just a ton of stuff there. And you know how to where to cut the plastic in a barn with plastic curtains so that people won't notice that you've been inside.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So they're putting it out there. They're telling us what they're doing. So it's up to us to be paying attention and mitigating all of those things. So we talk a lot just about basic things, you know, motion sensor lighting, our own cameras, no trespassing signage, locks and keypads that we actually lock. Having a process for verifying visitors to farms and plants.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
being very strict about employees and always checking references and always doing background checks. So just being aware that these things are happening and taking those common sense measures is what we talk about a lot. And then we refer a lot of our members to more specific law enforcement agencies and then security focused firms to really get in the weeds.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
I know some folks will come out and do security audits and actually walk around and tell them specifically what they need to be doing. But a lot of our recommendations are those kind of high level common sense things that we think everyone needs to be doing. Wow. Yeah. Mike, do you want to make any comments?
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So individuals and organizations that just don't believe there's a way to ethically and responsibly raise animals for food and are working very fervently to try to advance that mindset using a variety of different tactics, including some that would fall in the realm of what we're going to be talking about here today.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
we probably have the right skill sets, but are they talking to each other is what our challenge is and what we try to bring folks together. Because a lot of times farmers or even large companies that deal with this, they don't know what they should report. They don't know who to report it to. They don't know what those guardrails are. And then vice versa.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Sometimes law enforcement doesn't know the bigger picture. Like, why is this important? What is the here? Or if they don't know about farms, if they don't know how farms are laid out, if they don't know some of the unique challenges about security in a farm setting, it can be hard for them to give advice.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So I think the knowledge bases are there, but we can definitely do more to connect them, which is we spend a lot of time doing that. We do a lot of presentations to law enforcement groups of what we're seeing in the activism space and then asking them, okay, what can we take back to our members and tell them, you know, we will report incidents when we find out about them to try to raise awareness.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
But I think that's what we see is that the knowledge is there on both sides, but are they talking and are the right people talking to the right people? Probably not always.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So monitoring those groups and informing the industry about security management and other ways that we can make sure that we're protecting our livelihoods. The alliance has been around since 1987. So we have quite a bit of history in this area and we're based in the D.C. area. Great. Thanks, Hannah. Appreciate that. And last but not least, Mike.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Well, we try to play that role a lot and we do a lot like people in agriculture know us. They trust us, I hope, and they know that we have their back on these issues. So quite frankly, we're kind of the pass between of like, hey, can you vouch for me? Or, you know, law enforcement might say we're looking examples of this. Can you pull your membership?
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And then we'll reach out to our membership and then kind of report back and vice versa. So I definitely think we encourage members to do that. So I don't blame them. You know, we tell them if somebody cold calls you or cold emails you, never take that at face value. You've got to vet them. So we encourage that. And hopefully we and others in our network can help.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
make those connections of saying, you know, Hey, I've, I've met Andrew. I've met Mike. I know what their intentions are. I know what they're trying to do. Like we definitely encourage you to talk with them.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Uh, so it can kind of be that pass between some organizations that will join the Alliance just to be able to say like, we're, we're with you, you know, we support them too as kind of their, their credentials, their creds. So I definitely think that think that trust factor is big and we're, we're certainly encouraging that mindset of trust, but verify, uh,
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And if we can help be part of that verification process, we're glad to do it.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Yeah, there's ones like that. And then in Oregon, which might be the same one where, you know, they let these mink free, but then they also destroyed animals. all these breeding records. So, you know, years of records are now gone and impossible to replicate. And mink don't exactly thrive in the wild.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So it's completely counterintuitive that these animals are not only not going to survive themselves, but also harm the ecosystem in that area. And we've seen a resurgence of the mink releases in the last year or two. There's one going on pretty prominently in Pennsylvania right now where an activist was allegedly
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
paid off by an activist group to trespass and release mink from this farm to disrupt the production of fur. So those kind of releases are big ones. And then the ones that really stand out for me are some of the ones that we have followed in Northern California, where it has been in conjunction with an activist conference that typically takes place in that area and kind of their big
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
crescendo of the event will be putting folks on a bus and busing them up to farms or plants so we're talking about hundreds of people and they will have a smaller group that has received training for trespassing and interacting with law enforcement they will wear certain colored armbands based on what level of like security access they have and what level of training they received
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
But then in court, they'll say, we didn't know we were breaking the law. I'm not sure how that works because I don't break the law on a daily basis. And I've also never received training about what to do when I get arrested. But that is what these groups, you know, they'll spend a day training. Here's what to say to police. Here's how to handle it.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
If you get arrested, then they'll go put it in practice. So they'll bus, you know, hundreds of people to camp out for hours outside of a farm, a family farm, most of these incidents. And then they'll have a smaller group that goes inside, trespass, steals birds. And these are what some of those recent trials in California were focused on, some of these incidents.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And to your point earlier, you know, it's really a doomsday scenario for these farmers, but it's been reality for the handful. of folks in that area. And it's just a day long, eight hour, you know, we're watching the live stream. We're trying to coordinate with folks on the ground and help them deal with it as it unfolds.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And it really is a lot of times farmers, most of the time live there on their farm. So it feels very personal. There was another ongoing issue in Iowa where, you know, some of it was the trespass and things like that and the break-ins and surreptitious filming and things. But then they were also going to executives' homes.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So they were going to the home of the chief operating officer of this company. And they had been doing this to others as well. They buried dead piglets in somebody's yard. They claimed to have feces from a manure lagoon that they dumped in somebody's yard. And in this one incident, you know, his grandchildren were visiting at this time. So I picked up the phone.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
I called and said, hey, you know, this guy's he's about to pull up to your house. And luckily, they knew not to answer because they got that call. Those are some of the ones that that stick out to me. This was like, I don't know, circa 2019. It was a very crazy time that that we've kind of watched from afar and tried to help people on the ground manage this incident.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And then, you know, kind of I mentioned the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, too, that the first time people were convicted under that was the Shack 7, the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty. That was a research-focused campaign. But similarly, they were threatening people's families. They were firebombing, allegedly, vandalism, all of that. And those names are still names that we see around.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
They still pop up at activist conferences. They still pop up on social media. So the people that were involved in those... And then again, we have some of the modern activist groups that say that they're inspired by those type of groups, which is very concerning.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So we've really seen kind of a whole gamut of things, you know, some that are more of those reputational concerns, but then, you know, the ones that definitely cross that line to a food chain and food system disruption.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And I don't know who this was. It was an unlisted number, but I got a voicemail once saying that, and it wasn't a threat, but I don't know, a premonition. It said something bad is going to happen to you and you deserve it. So even personally, just doing what we do, we are on the receiving end of emails and phone calls and things. Wow.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So my current hyper fixation is we have a house guest staying with us right now from Spain. And she brought us these chocolate bars is way underselling. In Spanish, it's called Tron. But I don't really know what that exactly translates to. But it's like the fanciest chocolate bar. And she knows that I love Oreos. So she found an Oreo one.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Yeah. And that's part of part of what we're up to, obviously, as a nonprofit where we aren't that powerful. Although if you read, you know, the activist stories they make us, we're the private FBI, quote unquote, of the FBI. big ag industry. It was like, wow, I sound very important. But you know, we're just crowdsourcing information.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
We're just following things closely on social media that are out there. But there is there is definitely a mental health dimension of this and mental health and agriculture. You know, Andrew's worked with Farm Bureau a lot. Farm Bureau has a great campaign at Farm State of Mind looking at mental health issues in agriculture.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
and there's definitely an element of this that comes into play where it is very draining and when you're doing such a demanding job for a public that can be very skeptical of you but then there's these extreme actors making it worse and really playing off of animal welfare and things there's definitely a mental health aspect of this that it can weigh very heavily on producers especially those that are personally targeted
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
there is no i think mike maybe alluded to this earlier like what what is the profile of an activist or an extremist and really there is no like demographic profile there's no oh they're typically this age and they have this socioeconomic background and this education like it's a very broad gamut and we definitely see that there's also different levels you know you've got you've got the true believers that really believe in this and believe that animals should be treated equal to humans
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And then you have others that maybe seem to, at least on the surface, potentially have other motivations, whether it's the fame or the fundraising aspect of it. So sometimes it is like a genuine disconnect or lack of knowledge. But then for some of these people, they just don't believe we should be doing it. So it doesn't matter how well those animals are raised.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So it is a very rich and premium chocolate bar with Oreos in it, which I love. Yeah. I had to bring it into my office and hide it from my husband because she brought him one too. But of course, he started to eat mine first. Of course. I just had to ration it and bring it in and hide it. So that's my current fixation at the moment is my Spanish chocolate bar.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
It doesn't matter what we're doing in terms of animal welfare and sustainability. If at the end of the day, we are using those animals for food, they just don't believe that that should be done no matter how well what standards are in place. So for those extremists, I mean, they will certainly intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent practices. They will exaggerate things.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
But at the end of the day for them, it's not. And we tell our members this, like, don't waste your time trying to engage with those people or educate those people because it doesn't matter how well we're doing it. So there's definitely a lot of different factors at play that bring somebody into this extreme mindset. And Mike, how do you ensure this?
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And then the first thing that popped in my head, not to stay on this international theme, but when you started talking about a food memory, was when I studied abroad in Brazil and we went to like an actual Brazilian steakhouse. And at this point, I had never been to Brazil. you know, the Fogo de Chão and the Americanized version. So it was all new to me.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And just the parade of meat and different types of meat from Brahma hump to chicken hearts to picanha and everything else. And it just kept appearing and we just kept eating it. So that's the first like very distinct food memory. And especially again, I never been to even the American version of one before that. So it was just
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Well, we would love to have folks connect with us. You know, we kind of sit at this unique intersection of animal agriculture and technology. security and activism, activist monitoring. So we have a public newsletter. We're out on social media. A lot of our resources are publicly available. We've got an activist web of who these people are.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
We have a radical vegan activism report we put out every year that's public. And then even more so for members, every Monday we send out a recap of activism and what's going on and what's coming up next. We actually have a conference every year where we have at least half day of programming that's dedicated to activism, security. We always have law enforcement speakers.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
meat as far as the eye can see, which at the Animal Agriculture Alliance, we love that. So that was my distinct food memory was my first authentic in Brazil, Brazilian steakhouse experience. That is awesome. Mike, why don't you go ahead?
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So we definitely welcome those connections because we need to know who those people are that are interested in this so that we can get you in front of our members and then we can refer members. So Christian's raising her hand for the audio only audience. So yeah, we'd love to be that connection point. And again, we do a lot of speaking.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So if we can get in front of audiences to explain to them why this is important and why we need to partner more across law enforcement and agriculture, we're all ears. But Definitely welcome folks to get engaged with the Alliance on social media and our newsletters and maybe even membership if it's of interest. That's great. Andrew, do you have any thoughts on that?
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
We do try to end on a positive because obviously our presentations aren't the most uplifting thing and people look at me the way that you
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
You've looked at me throughout this discussion, but the good news is for the animal agriculture community that the vast majority of people happily consume meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, and seafood, and it's our job to make sure they continue feeling confident doing so.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
there are things we can do with with being transparent answering questions and and opening up the barn door for that 95 of the population and yes we have to be mindful of security we have to follow all the things we've talked about here because there are those extreme perspectives but we always try to level set and say you know people are consuming meat the things that impact their decisions are typically more price and economically driven than they are driven by the concerns that these type of groups are trying to raise
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So there's good news. There's positive things. There's a lot of opportunities in this space. And we have the back of the industry. The industry is working together. We've seen so many deepening relationships between animal ag and law enforcement over the past few years. So I think it's a positive direction that we're going in.
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They're going to get more extreme, but we're also going to get more prepared.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
I spoke at a meeting in Lancaster recently and I'm not that far away, but I legit went up like a day early so I would get to go to the dinner at the Shady Naples. I was like, that's on the agenda. I'll be there the night before, even though I could drive up the morning of. So, yeah, it's definitely worth the trip.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And I found that same definition when Kristen kind of spoiler alert earlier that she was going to be asked to define agroterrorism. I was like, oh, I better like have something at the ready.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And I found that same definition that focused on disease introduction, which I thought was interesting and maybe needs to be updated and probably has been updated in practice because from what we see, it's much broader than that. And we look to like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act from an animal perspective, which does not limit it to disease introduction.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
It's about disrupting the supply chain. So the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act talks about that you're engaging in conduct for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So that would be kind of our definition that we work under when we talk about this concept at the Alliance that, you know, it's about stopping the food supply chain or preventing the ability of getting food to people. And that's when it becomes this definition of agroterrorism.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And then similarly to you guys mentioned, it says a statute covers acts that damage property or cause the loss of real or personal property or places someone in reasonable fear of injury. So from an animal perspective, we really look to that Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act that came about in 2006 because of incidents related to this.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And biosecurity is definitely a big part of it. I mean, that's why we have a big concern a lot of times with trespassing on farms and in operations that there's a reason why, you know, if you've ever been to a hog farm or a broiler farm, you've got to shower in, shower out, suit up at the very least. You can't wear shoes you've worn on another farm. There's restricted access.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And that's not about limiting transparency. That's about limiting disease transfer from farm to farm. So the disease element is definitely still a big part of it. I would just say it's probably not everything that would fall in that bucket. Yeah, that's really interesting.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So we've seen it come up and really what tends to be the hold up to it being applied is, first of all, that documented economic harm. Because for a good thing, the animal agriculture supply chain is very resilient, so it tends to be very adaptable.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So even if there's an activist incident that does disrupt the supply chain, does cause operations to be hindered or become problematic, it doesn't rise to the threshold. I would have to look at what the dollar amount, but exactly what you and Mike were talking about. There is a dollar amount of documented damages you have to show.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So that tends to be a big problem is being able to document that these activist incidents rose to that threshold in the individual circumstances that we can point to. So there's definitely been a lot of interest because we have seen in the last five to 10 years, a big uptick in the more extreme on-farm actions. Thank you so much for having me.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
Or chaining yourself to a U-Haul outside of a poultry plant and literally saying, we want to disrupt the supply chain. We do not want chicken to be getting to the grocery store. That's when it becomes this food access issue for consumers. So we're seeing more and more discussion of this as we've seen the activists become more emboldened.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
And, you know, they're talking about being inspired by groups like the Animal Liberation Front, being inspired by groups like Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty. which are the type of groups and activities, things like arson, things like harassing people's family members, making those kind of threats, which is why the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act came about.
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Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
So we're definitely hearing more concern that these incidents as they escalate are going to get to that point. But a lot of times it's the economic damages that, again, it's a good thing that our food system is resilient and has been able to adapt around these challenges and that they haven't necessarily risen to that level. But that kind of stops cases from moving forward a lot of times.