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GAO Again Blocks Plum Island Germ Lab Move to Mainland U.S.
In late July 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a unit of the U.S. Congress, declared as unsafe the relocation of Plum Island Animal Disease Center located off the northern tip of Long Island, New York, to anywhere on the mainland United States. (1-2) The GAO’s first similar declaration on the matter was May 22, 2008. (3) By U.S. law, live foot-and-mouth disease (henceforth, FMD) virus may be used only at a coastal island, such as Plum Island, “unless the Secretary of Agriculture specifically determines that it is necessary and in the public interest to conduct such research and study on the U.S. mainland.” (3)
The GAO opposes conducting live FMD research on the U.S. mainland for at least five reasons:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was responsible for Plum Island from 1954 until June 1, 2003. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 transferred Plum Island to [the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)], shifting overall responsibility for maintenance, operations, and security.” “DHS has identified [Plum Island Animal Disease Center] as ‘reaching the end of its life cycle’ and as lacking critical capabilities to continue as the primary facility for such work.” In response to the dour assessment, DHS announced it would meet the obligation of Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-9 by establishing a brand-new facility dubbed the National Bio and Agro-Defense facility, NBAF. (6) After conducting a contest among applicants interested in locating the NBAF on the U.S. mainland, the DHS awarded the contract to Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, in December 2008.
The NBAF will be the largest BSL-4 facility in the world, because its “programs will be expanded to include zoonotic FAD agents, including vector-borne diseases, some of which require BSL-4 large animal biocontainment facilities of sufficient space not currently found anywhere in the world to the extent planned for in this facility,” says the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility Feasibility Study (366 pages, Section 3, p. 1), released August 24, 2007, and available elsewhere. (7)
FMD strikes clove-hoofed animals, including livestock such as cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Nearly 100% of animals exposed to the virus become infected. The virus, called Aphthovirus, causes fever and blisters in the mouth, teats, and feet. Affected animals have difficulty eating and moving and may recover, but have severe losses in meat and milk production. (8)
The virus can spread from infected animals in various ways, including by contaminated animal feed or water, contaminated shoes or clothing, and contaminated vehicles or farm equipment. In some circumstances, the wind can spread the virus from farm to farm. The traditional approach to interrupting the epidemic is to depopulate infected and potentially infected herds. (4) The United States has been free of FMD for 80 years, since 1929. The disease is widespread around the world but North America, Central America, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and some European nations are FMD free. A current list of countries that are FMD free is available elsewhere. (5) A single outbreak of FMD on the U.S. mainland could have significant consequences. Export markets account for approximately $13 billion, about ten percent of the value of U.S. livestock sales of $140 billion in 2007. Politicians and others have raised concerns about moving FMD research off its island location and onto the U.S. mainland, where it would in closer proximity to susceptible animal populations, as opposed to building a new facility on the island. (8) During the summer of 1978, some infected cattle that had been necropsied were being incinerated on Plum Island, when the negative air pressure system malfunctioned that is designed to force air into the laboratory instead of allowing disease organisms to spread outside. (9) An alarm was sounded that triggered an emergency plan. Outside contractors were sent to showers, given laboratory clothing and sent from Plum Island [by ferry; there is no bridge]. Then, most employees working in the laboratory were brought to the showers. They were clothed and hustled off Plum Island, also with clothes provided by the laboratory. Both infected and healthy animals had to be killed,…and the toll reached 200. Of these, 100 were cattle, and the balance included pigs, sheep and ponies. The animals were quartered and burned in incinerators at 1,500 degrees. The only animals kept were the mouse and guinea pit colonies.” (9) Previously, there had been “in-laboratory incidents”—contamination of foot and mouth virus within the facility but not outside it—at Plum Island since 1954, says a recent report. (12) People who support keeping the animal disease laboratory on Plum Island commend the island’s remote location, cleansing salt air and desirable wind patterns as antidotes to accidental or intentional releases of FMD and other animal diseases. If releases unfortunately do occur (and they do occur, as noted above), the natural boundaries of Plum Island mitigate their effects on mainland livestock. “There are no natural barriers at the Manhattan Campus [Kansas] Site. Just last year, the campus was struck by a tornado, and FMD can be transmitted long distances via air,” notes Max Thornsberry. (13) The point here is that when an intentional or accidental FMD virus release occurs, Plum Island will better mitigate its devastating effects than can the middle of mostly flat Kansas livestock-grazing country. Great Britain was free from a major outbreak of foot and mouth disease since 1967 until the disease suddenly surfaced around February 20, 2001, in Essex, United Kingdom, at an abattoir. From there, it rapidly spread to farms throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (14-15) “Army trucks and 200 soldiers were pressed into service in western England to help clear carcasses of 60,000 dead animals from fields in the continuing effort to curb the spread of the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease,” noted a newspaper article on March 21, 2001. (16) The army buried a half a million carcasses of both infected and healthy sheep in a mass grave the size of a football field on a disused airfield. (16)
What was the source of the outbreak? Bobby Waugh, a pig farmer at Burnside Farm in Heddon-on-the-wall, Northumberland, UK, fed his animals with uncooked leftovers (swill) from local restaurants thought to contain leftover meat infected with FMD that had illegally entered the UK. Waugh’s swill-feeding pipeline had frozen in November 2000. Instead of thawing it, he obtained unprocessed swill “from Chinese restaurants.” Waugh’s animals were also living in filthy conditions. The pigs had probably been ill for at least 12 days before the authorities found out, which gave the highly contagious disease many opportunities to begin its spread. Waugh was found guilty of the charges of failing to notify authorities his pigs were sick and for the deplorable conditions in which the pigs were found. (17-20) Mr. Waugh’s farm was about 300 miles from Essex. His farm supplied livestock to Cheale Meats abattoir in Essex where the disease was diagnosed in 28 pigs in February 2001. (19) On February 21, 2001, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs “banned the practice of feeding swill to pigs in the UK, and…set up a range of measures to clamp down on the illegal import of uncooked meats,” noted two BBC articles. (19,22) About four million sheep, pigs, and cows were slaughtered and buried or burned because of the FMD outbreak. On January 14, 2002, the United Kingdom was declared free of foot-and-mouth disease. (21)
The point here is that FMD is ruinous to animals and to nation’s economies. “According to a study by the U.K. National Audit Office, the direct cost of the 2001 FMD outbreak to the public sector was estimated at over $5.71 billion and the cost to the private sector was estimated at over $9.51 billion. BY the time the disease was eradicated, in September 2001, more than six million animals had been slaughtered: over four million for disease control purposes and two million for welfare reasons. Compensation and other payments to farmers were expected to total nearly $2.66 billion. (22) On August 3, 2007, another outbreak of FMD occurred in the UK, this time in cattle on a farm in Guildford, near Surrey, southern England, about 30 miles southwest of London. The British government, horrified of a repeat of the 2001 outbreak, shut down livestock movements. (23) What was the source of this second UK FMD outbreak? “British health inspectors combed two veterinary laboratories at Pirbright village in southern England on Sunday after it was discovered that the strain of foot-and-mouth disease at a farm four miles away was the same as the one used in the production of vaccine at the facilities.” The laboratories house the government’s Institute of Animal Health and a private pharmaceutical company, Merial Animal Health, licensed by the UK government. (24) The strain of virus found at the farm was used in a vaccine batch manufactured in July 2007 by Merial Animal Health. The company is an arm of Merial Ltd., which is jointly owned by the American drug maker Merck & Company and the French company Sanofi-Aventis. The strain of virus—01 BFS67, was first isolated in the 1967 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain. (24)
Slaughter of 600 animals ensued and Great Britain suspended exports of livestock, meat and milk products for three weeks. (25) The government declared the outbreak over, only to backpedal when FMD again leaked from the government laboratory at Pirbright. “Ministers admitted the virus ‘probably’ escaped through a faulty valve at the Merial plant in Pirbright, Surrey,…two weeks after the facility was given the all-clear to start producing foot and mouth vaccine again,” noted journalist David Derbyshire on November 23, 2007. (26) Incredibly, the Merial staff discovered the leak after discovery of a shortfall in the amount of vaccine being produced. “Merial makes the vaccine from samples of live virus nurtured in tanks containing animal-cells and nutrients. The mixture is spun in a centrifuge to separate the virus from the contaminated waste. The virus is killed and turned into vaccine and the waste is flushed away.” “The virus escaped through crumbling drains and leaky manhole covers in Pirbright into a field, where it was picked up by lorries’ tyres and carried to nearby farms,” noted one article. (26) “Under biosecurity rules imposed after the [August 2007] outbreak, waste from the centrifuge must be treated with heat and acid before it can be poured into Pirbright’s internal drainage system.” So what went wrong this time? “Merial investigators found ‘possible technical problems’ with a valve connecting the centrifuge to a waste pipe.” (26) The valve separated the live virus product line from a line providing an outlet for condensation from a steam cleaner. Two operators certified the valve was shut when the machine was used. “Despite these measures Merial judged that the value had been leaking, allowing an unintended probable release of live FMD virus into the contained drainage system, which was then pumped to the final chemical treatment facility without being heat treated.” (26)
On May 29, 2008, the “Pirbright Surrey County Council said it had been advised that a lack of evidence prevented the prosecution of either the Institute of Animal Health or the private company Merial, which share the site at Pirbright, near Guildford. Livestock on eight farms were infected, probably after live foot-and-mouth virus being used to develop a vaccine leaked from faulty pipework. But a series of government reports was unable to pinpoint the exact source of the outbreak, which cost the British farming industry millions. The council considered bringing a prosecution on the ground that the laboratories had breached their licence conditions by allowing the virus to escape. However, it could not prove which laboratory was responsible, because they shared the drainage system. It called for measures to ensure that where laboratories shared facilities, one should have ultimate responsibility for the site.” (27) The point here is that agricultural high containment laboratories do have “accidents” in spite of everyone’s best intentions. If an accident is going to occur, it is better for it to happen on an island somewhere than in farming country. The serious issues surrounding relocation of the NBAF to Manhattan, Kansas, are described at http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=574. (2) Any mainland site has serious drawbacks, contend the GAO and many other observers. Kansas politicians such as Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and Governor Mark Parkinson are anxious to move the NBAF forward as quickly as possible, because it means jobs for Kansans and they do not want the project derailed by the GAO or anyone else. (28) However, the GAO reports were conducted in “response to the statutory mandate in the fiscal year 2009 appropriations act for DHS (Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009 [Public Law 110-329]). The act restricted DHS’s obligation of funds for constructing the NBAF on the mainland until DHS completed a risk assessment on whether FMD work can be done safely on the U.S. mainland.” In response to this mandate, the GAO conducted its study, “specifically assessed the DHS’s risk assessment,” and found it scientifically unsound and therefore unreliable and invalid. (29) DHS officials rebuked the GAO report, saying the GAO failed to comply with its mandate. The directions to GAO were to review DHS’s “risk assessment of whether foot-and-mouth disease work can be done safely on the United States mainland.” Instead, groused the DHS, the GAO “chose to evaluate whether FMD research can ‘be done as safely on the mainland as on Plum Island.’” (30) The Committee on Energy and Commerce held its first hearing on the NBAF on May 22, 2008, as described elsewhere. (31) The second congressional hearing on the NBAF has been postponed as of this writing. (32) Why was it postponed? On July 30, 2009, three days after the Washington Post published its courageous article on the GAO report, Congress demanded an independent finding to support safety of Kansas site selected by DHS. (33-34) The House Appropriations Committee earlier on June 25, 2009, had voted to withhold $36 million in project funds for the NBAF from the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2009. Kansas lawmakers likened the vote to “dereliction of duty.” (35) What organized and apparently powerful political interest is pushing the Plum Island Animal Disease Center away from Long Island, New York, onto the U.S. mainland? What staff inside the DHS has and is enabling this process? If the current Plum Island facility is aging and inadequate, tear it down and build a new one on Plum Island. Notes:
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