Saturday, August 04, 2007

Foot and Mouth outbreak linked to government laboratory at Pirbright

When I first heard suspicions earlier in the day that as Pirbright Institute for Animal Health was close by and thought to be connected I thought no. No way. These people know what they are doing. this is just a wild eyed conspiracy theory. Go see a shrink!

However the strain of the virus has been confirmed as the one used on the site. It does not normally occur in animals naturally. It is unclear whether the Institute of Animal Health actually uses it itself, or if it is just used by the private company on the same site, to manufacture a foot and mouth vaccine. Manufacturing has now been suspended.

I do not as yet have the name of the private company, but have to wonder if they donate to Labour?

The good news is that if the Pirbright site was the source of the outbreak then it may well be very limited. There is much work to do though. As an initial precautionary measure the exclusion zones have been extended so as to center on both sites. Now all animal movements from farms in the area need to be traced, where they cross other cattle movements they need to be traced as well and all monitored.

There is plenty of work ahead.

On another note, I was very disappointed to see that several TV channels turned up over the farms with large wind generating machines (helicopters) presumably to do some rubber necking. They may well have spread the disease further and an air exclusion zone was set up. This is deeply irresponsible behavior.

Incidentally if the Pirbright site turns out to be the source, and foot and mouth has already spread, then there will be hell to pay.

The BBC has this.

Iain Dale has this.

Update 5th of August 00:05

Having checked, the company that runs a facility on the Pirbright site is Merial Animal Health, which is jointly owned by Merck and -Sanofi-Aventis.

There is no connection (that I can find) between these companies and any political party.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Incidentally if the Pirbright site turns out to be the source, and foot and mouth has already spread, then there will be hell to pay.
Don't be a fool, benny.
It will be hushed-up, as all of the cluster-fucks of this gov't are hushed-up.
No heads will roll, rather they will be promoted.
Only if private industry is proven unequivocally to be the source, will there be "hell to pay", then there will be large contributions to socialist curses, er - - causes.
And I will doubt anything "proven" by this mob of bare faced liars.

Anonymous said...

there is enough corruption concerning the previous outbreak of FAM desease, involving the official secrets act gagging certain parties not employed by defra (maff), either directly or subcontract, and some "overseas workers", for me to say that this investigation will be an exercise in corruption, blame allocation, lies, deceit, and profiteering.
But then again, it's politicians, - - they don't know any other way.

Benedict White said...

Hmm.. a lot of suspicion of politicians here.