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Lab denies foot and mouth link
05/08/2007 14:20 - (SA)
London - The director of a British government research laboratory at the heart of an investigation into an outbreak of foot and mouth disease said on Sunday there had been no breach of security at his facility.
But he left open the possibility the infection could have
come from a commercial laboratory located on the same site that
is also responsible for handling foot and mouth and developing
vaccines against it.
"The IAH operates under strict biosecurity procedures,"
Martin Shirley, the director of the Institute for Animal Health
said in a statement. "Checks ... have shown no breaches of our
procedures."
"We have been able to check our records specifically for use
of this strain. Our results show limited use within laboratory
within the past four weeks," he said.
Shirley said the strain that infected 60 head of cattle on a
farm around 8km from the IAH laboratory had been in
production at a laboratory on the same site as the IAH run by
Merial, a US-French joint venture company.
Merial is one of the world's leading animal health firms. It
is jointly owned by US drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. and
Sanofi-Aventis SA.
A spokesperson for Merial said on Sunday it had voluntarily
halted production of vaccines at the site as a precaution.
Defra, Britain's department for agriculture, said in a
statement on Saturday that the strain of foot and mouth that
infected the cattle had been produced by Merial as recently as
July 2007. Merial was not available to comment on that.
The latest outbreak comes six years after a foot and mouth
crisis that devastated British farming, with more than 6 million
animals culled and countrywide tourism affected, at a total cost estimated at £8.5bn.
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