Terrorists could poison the precious fluid milk of America's children, sez annoying egghead who wants everyone who works in the dairy industry to undergo security background checks.

WHILE the anthrax scare at Washington post offices this year proved to be a false alarm, it was a reminder of how vulnerable Americans are to biological terrorism. In general, two threats are viewed as the most dangerous: anthrax, which is as durable as it is deadly, and smallpox, which is transmitted very easily and kills 30 percent of its victims.

But there is a third possibility that, while it seems far more mundane, could be just as deadly: terrorists spreading a toxin that causes botulism throughout the nation's milk supply.

Why milk? In addition to its symbolic value as a target - a glass of milk is an icon of purity and healthfulness ....

[H]ere is the situation we consider most likely: a terrorist, using a 28-page manual called "Preparation of Botulism Toxin" that has been published on several jihadist Web sites and buying toxin from an overseas black-market laboratory, fills a one-gallon jug with a sludgy substance containing a few grams of botulin. He then sneaks onto a dairy farm and pours its contents into an unlocked milk tank...

Got Toxic Milk.

Others strongly disagree.

Recently, the New York Times published an opinion piece that served as a bioterrorism threat assessment. Entitled "Got Toxic Milk" and written by Stanford University professor Lawrence M. Wein, it made the claim that a single terrorist could contaminate the milk supply with a lethal toxin by following the instructions in a jihadi manual available on the Internet.

The opinion described large numbers of casualties, was inflammatory and, we think, flawed in its understanding of terrorist capabilities. It was based upon a paper entitled "Analyzing a Bioterror Attack on the Food Supply: The Case of Botulinum Toxin in Milk" which was accepted for publication in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)....

Got Toxic Milk -- A Rejoinder.