IF YOU want to build the world’s largest laboratory for studying foot-and-mouth disease, put it on an island. That’s the latest advice to the US government, which is keen to site a “National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility” on one of five potential sites on the mainland.
The mega-lab would replace the ageing Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which researches foot-and-mouth disease and other serious animal pathogens on an island close to New York. But in a scathing report issued on 22 May, the General Accountability Office accused the Department of Homeland Security of failing to conduct proper risk assessment studies…
