ALBUQUERQUE —(AP)— Terrorists who want to create economic chaos in the United States could sneak hoof and mouth disease into the nation's livestock herds or bomb corn fields with blight instead of using car bombs to inflict human carnage.

That's the picture being painted in recent weeks for people such as U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and state Land Commissioner Ray Powell. Both have listened to agricultural experts who are officially telling them it's only a matter of time before terrorists try to wreck the country's food and fiber business.

(Many in the industry would argue that agricultural terrorism has been underway for years, though in a somewhat different manner than those described above. Whether conducted by violent eco-activists who torch livestock auctions, shoot cattle along roadsides and destroy fields of "genetically modified" corn, by their lawyerly comrades who sue to drive stockmen off western lands, or by talk-show mavens who broadcast wild lies about "mad cow" disease, agriculture's enemies are already hard at work. If government officials are serious about dealing with the next phase in the escalating war — or better yet, preventing it — they would be well advised to investigate what is already going on. The best bet for finding tomorrow's terrorists is to look among the ranks of today's. — Ed.)

Despite expert testimony, Bingaman said he's not unduly alarmed.

``The testimony raised a lot of questions in my mind about how real the threat is,'' Bingaman said in a telephone interview. ``It was interesting, but I don't think the answers we got were conclusive.''

Nonetheless, there's a newly coined word for the threat: agroterrorism.

``When we heard about this it just scared the bejabbers out of us,'' said Powell, recently returned from the Foreign Animal and Poultry Disease Advisory Committee's annual meeting. ``I was unaware of the severity of the threat, or of the potential for this happening.''

Terrorists lugging lunch coolers into the darkness near a giant Midwestern feedlot could easily swab the muzzles of a dozen steers with the contagious foot and mouth disease, the experts are saying.

Cattle feedlots, hog and chicken farms are easily accessible and often contain large numbers of animals, said agroterrorism expert and veterinary pathologist Corrie Brown of the University of Georgia, who testified at a subcommittee hearing attended by Bingaman.

``We are sitting ducks for agricultural terrorism,'' she said.

For starters, Brown said, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease or other diseases not frequently found in the United States could cost an estimated $27 billion in lost exports. Even if the prognosis for halting the disease were good, foreign countries would quickly slam the door on imports.

Another scenario the experts talk about could threaten crops.

An airliner with pods of corn seed blight could fly over the nation's corn belt, spraying spores across wide swaths of countryside. The blight would be present in the soil when spring planting occurs.

If the resulting harvest is 30 percent below expected levels, the United States would be forced to import corn for the first time. Food prices would rise sharply, causing inflation. The U.S. agricultural reputation would be seriously damaged, and consumers would see price hikes for all kinds of corn-enhanced products.

And while it hasn't happened in New Mexico or anywhere else in the country, experts already are calling it an insidious and subtle form of terrorism.

The New Mexico Livestock Board has been talking to other agencies about how to cope with a livestock epidemic, and it thinks it has a plan.

State Veterinarian Steve England said it's miraculous that some act of agroterrorism hasn't happened already.

``A few years ago, we didn't talk about this at all,'' he said. ``Now we're deciding what we're going to do about it — how we can stop the outbreak and get the disease under control, and who's going to be involved in the problem.''

The Livestock Board has designated itself the lead agency. It expects to hear about problems from a number of sources, such as practicing veterinarians, diagnostic labs, the state Department of Game and Fish or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A string of things would happen in an outbreak.

The State Police would set up roadblocks, the National Guard would prepare burial sites for dead animals, the game department would look for signs of the disease in wildlife, and the health department would determine whether the disease poses a threat to people in the area.

Crops are a different story.

Jeff Witte, assistant director for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, said the response to such an attack on state crops would likely be led by the USDA.

The state agriculture department has not drawn up an emergency response.

``Crops are different from livestock,'' Witte said. ``Any disease that shows up would probably be handled by the plant protection and quarantine division of USDA.''