ABSTRACT
The intensive exploitation of agricultural resources and the massive transportation of the produce through intercontinental distances is essential for the current structure of the economic and social life of humanity. The systemic liabilities inherent to such a model, with the disruption of the supply chains (a disruption more impactful and more probable with the length and complexity of the said chains is but one problem), were made clear by CoViD-19 and the war in Ukraine. The much more threatening prospect is the massive emergence and the wide and prompt distribution of new breeds of pathogens that may undermine such enterprises on a planetary scale, thus causing food shortages, if not famines, and social unrest, spontaneously or due to agroterrorism events. But the worst is the probability of the emergence of strains anthropophilic in an opportunistic function. These may evolve and propagate within the host-rich environment presented by the intensive exploitations. As such development would have made them by definition ruggedized against antimicrobial agents, they are to be introduced to human communities as fully-fledged pathogens, and lethal, difficult to contain and erradicate. The fact that many prospective pathogens have an extremely wide host base, fungi being the paradigm, underscores this threat. The above considerations pose an existential biosecurity risk, given the projected emphasis on bioeconomy, with the multitude of engineered microbial strains used for any conceivable purpose – from biomining, biorestoration, biofertilization and recycling through the production of diverse amenities, to the alternative energy sources (such as massive production of high-grade biofuel) and, at a later point, bioelectrism,
