Other Names: None
Location: On a farm 12km north of Pretoria, at the juncture of several railway lines
Subordinate to: Agricultural Research Council (before 1992, the Department of Agriculture)
Size: OVI comprises a large block of buildings surrounded by a 512-acre farm, which is large enough to afford sufficient grazing for livestock and provide enough arable land to raise crops for the feeding of the animals stabled for experiments. An additional 1770 acres of land has been leased to the north.
Primary Function: OVI is a veterinary research center affiliated with the Veterinary School at the University of Pretoria, which may have carried out some subsidized BW animal testing under the auspices—knowingly or not—of Project Coast.

Description:
OVI is a large veterinary research facility that may have carried out BW animal testing for Project Coast. The site was originally purchased in 1906 by the British colonial administration, and the original Colonial Dutch-style building complex was completed two years later. Initially OVI was administered by the Department of Agriculture, but in 1992 it was transferred to the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), a semi-autonomous body created to improve the efficiency of research and the provision of other agricultural services. Shortly thereafter, the ARC decided to separate one of the components of OVI from the main institute. This was the Exotic Diseases Division (EDD), which had originally been established in 1984 to work on highly-contagious animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease.

The principal tasks of OVI are 1) to develop and produce vaccines for such diseases as African horsesickness, bluetongue in sheep, botulism, anthrax, lumpy skin disease, ephemeral fever, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, heartwater, and sweating sickness; 2) to do research on the toxicology of poison plants; and, more recently, 3) to research the application of modern techniques of genetic manipulation so as to develop diagnostic probes (as well as improved vaccines). For its part, the EDD does advanced work on highly communicable animal diseases, and has facilities for quarantining infected animals. OVI also helps train veterinarians and laboratory workers in the recognition of dangerous epizootic diseases and appropriate laboratory techniques. Among its 16 departments are Applied Biotechnology, Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Entomology, Immunology, Molecular Biology, Pathology, Parasitology, Rabies, Toxicology, and Virology.

Exactly what role OVI played in the South African CBW program remains to be determined. All that can be said for certain is that some scientists who were later employed at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories (RRL) had previously done research at OVI, such as Mike Odendaal, and that some RRL scientists were hired or rehired by OVI after that BW facility was closed down. Moreover, since Project Officer Wouter Basson testified that almost all of South Africa's key scientific research facilities, universities, and hospitals were involved in aspects of CBW research, it seems reasonable to suppose that OVI too may have carried out some supplementary BW research and animal testing for Project Coast. One curious event surrounding OVI may in fact lend credence to Basson's claim. Shortly after Basson was arrested in 1997, a Natal newspaper reported that there had been a "military break-in" at OVI, in the course of which ten armed white men had removed the facility's computer mainframe. Although OVI spokesman claimed at the time that only some minor equipment had been stolen, in the midst of a legal action against the facility in 2001, personnel from OVI insisted that they were unable to produce the documentary evidence requested by the court because of the theft of that very same computer main frame! This suggests that sensitive information, possibly including some related to Coast, may have been stored on OVI's computer.

Key Sources: Agricultural Research Council website: <http://www.arc.agric.za/institutes/ovi>; Centre for Conflict Resolution, Basson Trial: Weekly Summaries of Court Proceedings, October 1999-April 2002, especially the testimony of Basson; "Curioser and Curioser cried Alice," The Snout 3 (Autumn 1999) [Note: The Snout is the newsletter of South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection (SAAV), an anti-animal testing group.]; "Truth Will Out," The Snout 8 (Spring/Summer 2001).

	Updated February 2004