A US agricultural biosecurity laboratory to be built in Kansas still hasn’t been adequately vetted for safety, according to a US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report
released today.
The National Bio- and Agro- Defense Facilty (NBAF) is meant to replace the US government’s ageing biosafety laboratory in Plum Island, New York, which studies foot and mouth disease and other animal diseases.
However, the selection and risk assessment of NBAF, which is scheduled to break ground in Manhattan, Kansas by 2012 and open in 2018, has been anything but smooth. Representatives for some of sites that weren’t selected have complained that the Kansas site received favourable treatment. A 2009 Congressional investigation raised concerns over the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) initial safety assessment of the risks posed by the NBAF finalists.
Before ponying up for construction of the $650 million facility, Congress asked DHS to complete another assessment focused on the potential safety risks of a facility in Manhattan, Kansas. The new NAS report finds the latest assessment better, but still wanting.
In a conference call to reporters, committee chair Ronald Atlas, a biodefence expert at the University of Louisville, said that DHS information puts the chances of an accidental release of foot and mouth costing $9 to $50 billion at 70%, over 50 years of NBAF operation. “The committee actually finds that the risks could be significantly higher,” Atlas said.
In response, DHS spokesman Chris Ortman told Nature that the National Academies’ calculation is based on a preliminary concept of the facility that did not account for any of the recommended mitigation measures that DHS has committed to incorporating into the final design. “DHS will not build or operate the NBAF unless it can be done in a safe manner,” Ortman added.
Atlas’s team also found fault with the government’s estimation of its ability to detect an accidental release at NBAF and to deal with its consequences. Despite this, Atlas called the latest assessment “a huge step forward,”compared to previous efforts. The US clearly needs a lab like NBAF, he told reporters.
Richard Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, is more pessimistic, particularly over the potential for an accidental foot and mouth outbreak. “The conclusion is inescapable that constructing this facility would be counterproductive, potentially catastrophic,” he says. “You don’t mitigate risks of an illness that’s not present in your country by insuring that it will become present in your country. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Ultimately policymakers will need to decide whether the risks are acceptable related to constructing and operating the NBAF in Manhattan, Kansas,” the NAS report concludes.
This post has been updated to include comments from the Deparment of Homeland Security.
Image of a cull that followed a 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak in the UK courtesy of Wikimedia Commons