The 70s Pirbright virus leak
Updated on 08 August 2007
If the 2007 foot and mouth virus did escape from a research laboratory, it won't be the first time, writes Ben King.
It's not yet certain that this current foot and mouth outbreak did escape from a research laboratory - although there is strong circumstantial evidence.
The strain on the farm is the same as the one kept in the labs, and the site of the first infection is just a few a miles away from two labs in Pirbright which handle the virus.
If the virus is proved to have escaped from a lab, it's not the first time such an outbreak has happened. In fact, it's not even the first time it has happened at Pirbright.
In 1970, just a few years after a major outbreak of the virus caused devastation around the country, there was an outbreak at the Animal Virus Research Institute at Pirbright.
The disease escaped from the experimental areas of the station, and made it through to to a holding pen on the site. Eventually 18 animals had to be destroyed.
An article in Nature that year suggested that faulty ventilation was the cause: "A few virus particles may have escaped through a temporary breakdown in the filters which clean the outgoing air from the experimental compound.
"These filters were checked and found to be working perfectly as soon as the outbreak was confirmed, but it is well known that no biological filter can be more than 99.9 per cent efficient, and this seems the most likely source of the infection.
'The chance of an escape is the danger that all research stations have to live with.'Nature
"The chance of an escape is the danger that all research stations have to live with, but in ten years there have been only two such incidents at Pirbright and both have been confined to the perimeter of the Institute."
The World Organisation for Animal Health confirms that several outbreaks from research facilities have happened over the past few decades.
It said in a statement that: "In recent history, in Europe there have been over 10 different accidental animal infections with FMD virus due to human error. All of these did occur before 1991, time when FMD vaccination ceased in Western Europe.
"These accidental infections were caused by one of two reasons: a) escape from the laboratory due to human error; and b) defective, poorly inactivated vaccines.
'There have been escapes from the laboratory due to human error in the 70s.'World Organisation for Animal Health
Most of these accidental infections did occur due to poorly inactivated vaccines, and only a few were due to the escape of a virus from the laboratory.
"There have been escapes from the laboratory due to human error in the 70s, at the reference laboratory in Tübingen, Germany, Maisons-Alfort, France, as well as one in Pirbright, UK.
There was also a virus outbreak in 1978 at Plum Island, a government research station and vaccine production facility off the coast of Long Island, New York.
"This was due to human error during construction work on site. The virus escape infected animals kept outside the high containment buildings, but still within the island." Around 100 head of livestock had to be destroyed.
Why is the lab situated in farmland, and not somewhere far away from other cattle, such as an island?
This begs some interesting questions: if virus outbreaks are a regular feature at labs holding a bug as virulent and potentially damaging as FMD, why is the lab situated in farmland, and not somewhere far away from other cattle, such as an island?
If the production of vaccine does come with the risk of infecting cattle, through virus escapes or poorly prepared vaccine, does this argue against the strategy of vaccination, which the government is currently considering?
And if such outbreaks were once routine, what happened to biosecurity on those sites which allowed this one to break out?
