-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 8:02
Subject: What could go wrong: Bush admin to move animal disease center near food animals?
Dangerous animal virus on US mainland?
Accidents at Disease Lab Acknowledged
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer
Click here to read the whole story at AP
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The only U.S. facility allowed to research the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease experienced several accidents with the feared virus, the Bush administration acknowledged Friday.
A 1978 release of the virus into cattle holding pens on Plum Island, N.Y., triggered new safety procedures. While that incident was previously known, the Homeland Security Department told a House committee there were other accidents inside the government's laboratory.
The accidents are significant because the administration is likely to move foot-and-mouth research from the remote island to one of five sites on the U.S. mainland near livestock herds. This has raised concerns about the risks of a catastrophic outbreak of the disease, which does not sicken humans but can devastate the livestock industry.
Skeptical Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee demanded to see internal documents from the administration that they believe highlight the risks and consequences of moving the research. The live virus has been confined to Plum Island for more than a half-century to keep it far from livestock.
The 1978 accidental release "resulted in the FMD virus in some of the cattle in holding pens outside the laboratory facility," Jay Cohen, a senior Homeland Security official, wrote in response to the committee.
"Detailed precautions were taken immediately to prevent the spread of the disease from Plum Island, and new precautionary procedures were introduced."
Cohen, undersecretary for science and technology, said there also have been "in-laboratory incidents" - contamination of foot-and-mouth virus within the facility but not outside it - at Plum Island since 1954. That was the year the Agriculture Department acquired the land and started the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
One government report, produced last year and already provided to lawmakers by the Homeland Security Department, combined commercial satellite images and federal farm data to show the proximity to livestock herds of locations that have been considered for the new lab.
"Would an accidental laboratory release at these locations have the potential to affect nearby livestock?" asked the nine-page document. It did not directly answer the question.
A simulated outbreak of the disease in 2002 - part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" - ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses.
In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.
"It was a mess," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who portrayed the president in that 2002 exercise. Now, like other lawmakers from the states under consideration, Roberts supports moving the government's new lab to his state. Manhattan, Kan., is one of five mainland locations under consideration. "It will mean jobs" and spur research and development, he says.
Other possible locations for the new National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility are Athens, Ga.; Butner, N.C.; San Antonio; and Flora, Miss. The new site could be selected later this year, and the lab would open by 2014. The number of livestock in the counties and surrounding areas of the finalists range from 542,507 in Kansas to 132,900 in Georgia, according to the Homeland Security Department's internal study.
Foot-and-mouth virus can be carried on a worker's breath or clothes, or vehicles leaving a lab, and is so contagious it has been confined to Plum Island since the research began.
The existing lab is 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound. Researchers there who work with the live virus are not permitted to own animals at home that would be susceptible, and they must wait at least one week after work before attending outside events where such animals might perform, such as a circus. (As if a $10/hr animal technician is going to obey this rule... ed.) [...]
An epidemic in 2001 devastated Britain's livestock industry, as the government slaughtered 6 million sheep, cows and pigs.
Last year, in a less serious outbreak, Britain's health and safety agency concluded the virus probably escaped from a site shared by a government research center and a vaccine maker.
Other outbreaks have occurred in Taiwan in 1997 and China last year and in 2006.
Infected animals weaken and lose weight. Milk cows don't produce milk. They remain highly infectious, even if they survive the virus.
If even a single cow (contracts Hoof and Mouth virus ed.) that signals an outbreak in the U.S.. Emergency plans permit the government to shut down all exports and movement of livestock. (and people?) Herds would be quarantined, and a controlled slaughter could be started to stop the disease from spreading."
Read the entire story from the Associated Press. Good reporting.
