Had the 9-11 hijackers used ice cream trucks instead of jet airliners, the damage, horrific though it was, might have been much worse.

Approximately 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 al-Qaida terrorists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and into a Pennsylvania field.

Yet in 1994, 243,000 people in the Midwest were sickened by a salmonella outbreak traced to the ice cream mix in a single tanker truck. If the contamination had been intentional, and the agent more lethal, 19 hijackers, in 19 tanker truckers, each affecting 243,000 people …

"The impact can be devastating," remarked Col. Gary Vroegindewey, assistant chief of the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, who was in Casper on Tuesday for the "Keeping Wyoming Safe and Secure" conference at the Parkway Plaza.

Vroegindewey used the ice cream truck story to illustrate how the food supply might be used as a weapon of mass destruction and to raise awareness about the havoc that could ensue.

He also showed slides of local people stealing food from the military in Afghanistan, and of host-nation contract workers serving soldiers in Kuwait. How secure is this food, he wondered, and how difficult would it be to contaminate?

"Are these our friends?" he asked. "We hope they are."

When the Soviet Army was fighting in Afghanistan, he noted that entire units were rendered unfit for duty because of disease.

Vroegindewey and others pointed out that after 9-11, everyone must think differently about food safety. Instead of focusing on incidental contamination, more attention now must be paid to intentional tampering.

"There are bad guys out there who want to poison our foods," said Bob Harrington, director of the Casper-Natrona County Health Department.

Harrington said it is easy to be complacent in Casper or other small towns in Wyoming, believing these are not obvious targets for terrorist attacks. But there are cross-country pipelines, major highways and railroads, and bus loads of tourists disembarking at Yellowstone National Park.

"Probably the most chilling idea of what you could do in Wyoming is to say, 'I can get you anywhere,'" Harrington said.

Psychology plays a big role in threats to the food supply, even when the threats are insignificant or overstated or nonexistent. Vroegindewey said that to date, a single Washington state bovine with "mad cow disease" has caused over $6 billion in economic losses.

The food system is vast and complex, he said, and the challenge is to make the system more secure at each step along the way, from production to consumption, from the national government to each individual citizen or troop in the field.

At the retail level, Harrington said security sometimes runs counter to consumer preferences. "We like self-service," he said. "We like our food convenient and available to us."

As for restaurant owners and the like, he offered this advice: "Be cynical about your customers." Restrict access to vulnerable areas, and watch for suspicious activities. This often is very hard to do, he said, because the name of the game for a restaurant is "hospitality."

Retailers also should ensure they have secure doors and windows, they should minimize access to suppliers, and they should have a plan for controlling toxic materials: "Don't put the pesticide right next to the bulk sugar," he said.

Above all, Harrington said, retailers must admit they might be vulnerable so they can do good evaluations and when appropriate, take corrective actions.

Food tampering can come in many other forms. "It may not be a vicious international terrorist," Harrington said. "It may be just a disgruntled employee."

But regardless of the source, he advised retailers to plug as many security holes as possible, using many of the same control techniques one might apply to preventing theft and robbery.

The program was sponsored by the Wyoming Food Safety Coalition.

Business Editor Tom Mast can be reached at (307) 266-0574 or at tom.mast@casperstartribune.net.