Irony alert – Hoof-in-mouth has Congress with hoof-in-mouth

Six years ago, Sen. Pat Roberts did not want a federal animal research laboratory anywhere near being on mainland U.S. soil. But, now that Preznit Bush seems determined to establish a new National Bio-and Agro-Defense Facility on the mainland, Kansas Republican Roberts is determined to see Manhattan, Kan., site of Kansas State University, win the competition among five finalists.

That’s despite the fact that current work with hoof-in-mouth disease is kept closely sequestered at an island in Long Island Sound and that the U.S. has been officially hoof-in-mouth free for decades.

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, N.Y., for more than a half-century — far from commercial livestock. The existing lab is 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound, accessible only by ferry or helicopter. 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 a week before attending outside events where such animals might perform, such as a circus.

That’s also despite the fact that two outbreaks in the last decade in Great Britain have shown how easily the disease can spread, and how bad the agricultural losses can be.

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.

But, that’s not the only problem/issue. hoof-in-mouth, and many other of the diseases studied on Plum Island are not of the nature to be terrorism bioweapons. Plum Island should never have been moved from the Department of Agriculture to Homeland Security in the first place. If new research is added about which Plum Island allegedly doesn’t have high enough security, either don’t move that research there or else beef up Plum Island. The other alternative, moving the upgraded facility to Long Island, which has no commercial livestock industry, is the second-best option.