OUR summer “archive series” continues with an interview culled from Derek’s radio program on The Eagle 93.9 (KSSZ-FM) in Columbia, Missouri. His guest on Friday, May 25 was agroterror expert Kate Iola.Kate has a master’s degree in Molecular Pathology from the University of California, San Diego, and three issued patents. She started reporting on FMD (foot-and-mouth disease) in 1999. In 2000, she decided someone needed to tell the bizarre — and, unfortunately, true — story of the threat of FMD.
Just as Sharon did with avian flu in The Armageddon Strain, Kate chose to spread the word about FMD with fiction. Her novel Deadstock is a chilling look at the ease with which America’s agriculture industry could be brought to its knees.
Derek and Kate also talked about the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed new bioweapons lab, the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility (NBAF). Columbia is one of 17 contenders to host this BSL-4 laboratory, and Kate is raising a red flag. Placing a lab that studies FMD in the middle of America’s beef and pork producing territory raises some serious security issues.
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