Food and Agriculture Defense

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In response to the National Security Memorandum-16 “Strengthening the Security and Resilience of United States Food and Agriculture,” the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) established a Food & Agriculture Defense Matrix Team to unite its work in this area and streamline its support to the mission. The matrix team aligns the Food & Agriculture Defense efforts within S&T and ensures that the Directorate is prepared to respond to gaps and requirements to defend the food and agriculture systems of the United States.

S&T’s Food & Agriculture Defense Matrix Team conducts and coordinates research, development, test, and evaluation on technologies, techniques, procedures, and capabilities necessary to protect U.S. food and agriculture from agricultural pests and crop diseases; transboundary animal diseases; intentional or unintentional occurrences of food contamination or adulteration; natural, accidental, or intentional biothreats which may present harm to animals or plants; and other high-consequence events that pose a risk to homeland security.

S&T’s food and agriculture defense work includes risk assessments; threat characterizations; countermeasures to defend against pathogens, pests, and toxins; food defense and ingestion threat modeling; characterizations of chemical threats for food contamination and adulteration; laboratory experiments and foundational research; diagnostics; veterinary medical countermeasures; decontamination strategies; trainings; and coordination with partners for joint efforts that defend food and agriculture systems.