NATCHEZ — Homeland security means more than just protecting people from bombs — it can also mean protecting their livestock.

Natchez Police Lt. Tom McGehee recently completed basic agricultural emergency response training at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Center for Domestic Preparedness — in other words, he was trained in how to respond to agro-terrorism.

An attack on the country doesn’t have to be violent or even targeted directly at humans, McGehee said.

“Some of the diseases that can affect animals would cause us serious agricultural and thereby economic impact,” he said.

Though it wasn’t a terrorist attack, McGehee pointed to a 2001 instance in Great Britain where a million animals had to be killed to stop a disease outbreak.

“If we get one case of hoof and mouth disease in the U.S., all transportation (of U.S. livestock) stops outside the U.S.,” he said. “Figure the economic impact on that.”

The training he received focused largely on quarantine and depopulation of the contaminated animal population.

“If the bad guys get a hold of some of this stuff and release it, the quarantine for hoof and mouth disease is three miles. Everything in three miles is killed,” he said.

But even then, those dealing with the contaminated animals have to be careful to make sure they don’t spread it further.

“With hoof and mouth disease, if you don’t have a respirator on the bug that does that can live in the nasal cavity of a human for two days,” McGehee said. “It doesn’t affect people, but it can be transported to any herbivore.”

Disposing of depopulated animals is no small task either — they have to be buried.

“Burning takes a lot of fuel and a lot of energy,” McGehee said. “Depending on the disease, you don’t want to burn because if the fire is hot enough it will lift it elsewhere.”

Finally, everything has to be decontaminated.

That means that those involved with the quarantine have to have to scrubbings with captured water and everything they are wearing is destroyed or dipped in disinfectant.

Even the mud from the heavy equipment they use to bury the animals has to be captured and left at the site, McGehee said.

But even if these measures might seem a little drastic from the outside, they have a definite goal.

“It’s all about protecting our agricultural livelihood,” McGehee said.