Plum Island Animal Disease Center Watches as U.S. Selects Site for State-of-the-Art Laboratory

Employees at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York are waiting to hear whether the facility will remain open past 2012 or be replaced by a new facility, Newsday reported yesterday (see GSN, May 3).

The Homeland Security Department has received proposals from 23 states and the District of Columbia to house a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility that would open six years from now. The state of New York has proposed marking Plum Island the new site.

A Homeland Security committee is scheduled to choose five finalists in September, said spokesman Christopher Kelly. The final selection process is expected to take two years, followed by the start of construction in 2009.

The center is at risk, experts say, because the government is looking to develop a Biosafety Level 4 site that could take on expanded research and work with anthrax and other more dangerous pathogens that could be passed from animals to humans. Plum Island, which employs 220 workers, is a Biosafety Level 3 site that studies pathogens such as foot-and-mouth disease.

“We know it’s not a slam dunk and might even be an uphill fight,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said of acquiring a new laboratory. Levy submitted a proposal that promotes the site’s experienced personnel and existing relationships with the Brookhaven National Laboratory and other area research centers.

If the 50-year-old New York laboratory is not chosen, it would have an opportunity to clean up and to make the transition past 2012, while the new facility is up and running.

“We do not have a set time frame,” Kelly said. He added, if Plum Island is not selected, “a carefully considered process will be initiated to assess all of the options” in the use of the island.

Brent Marsh, president of the U.S. Animal Health Association, said his organization does not have a preference as to the location of the facility.

“It’s not as if it has to be on an island,” he said. “We want to be able to have a full-service laboratory so we’re able to take care of those difficult agents and it may be a network of laboratories,” he said (Bill Bleyer, Newsday, June 28).

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