Humans blamed for foot and mouth cases

Tania Branigan, political correspondent
The Guardian

Humans are to blame for carrying the foot and mouth virus from laboratories in Pirbright, investigators into the outbreak in Surrey believe.The initial, inconclusive report from the Health and Safety Executive says there is a “strong probability” that the origin was either the government-funded Institute of Animal Health laboratory or the commercial Merial facility, which share the same site. Both were working on the strain involved in the farm outbreak, although Merial was producing it in large quantities while the IAH was using tiny amounts for research.

“There are various routes for accidental or deliberate transfer of material from the site,” the report says. “We have investigated site management systems and records and spoken to a number of employees. As a result we are pursuing lines of inquiry.” It adds: “Release by human movement must … be considered a real possibility.”

HSE investigators need another week’s work to analyse the exact virus types used by each organisation. Both organisations insisted they had found no evidence of a breach in biosecurity. Researchers said there was no evidence of working practices or incidents such as lab spillages which could have caused a release of the strain.

Environment secretary Hilary Benn admitted the government had to look at the possibility the outbreak was the result of sabotage. Asked if deliberate human contamination was the cause, he said after the publication of the report: “The truth is, we don’t know. We’re very anxious.”

The report came amid continuing concern about the potential spread of the virus, after a second outbreak was confirmed within the protection zone - prompting Gordon Brown to return to Downing Street from Chequers to chair meetings of the Cobra emergency committee. After the publication of the report, Mr Brown said: “The work goes on to isolate, to contain, control and eradicate the disease.”

Last night’s report rules out airborne transmission of the virus and suggests that the risk of waterborne transmission alone is negligible. But it does not rule out the possibility that flooding may have played a role. If surface water on the Pirbright site became contaminated, someone moving from there to surrounding land could have carried the virus on their footwear.

Defra said last night it would investigate unconfirmed reports that a worker at one of the Pirbright labs has an allotment near the farm where the outbreak was first detected on Friday.

Merial has halted production at the site voluntarily, but is producing 300,000 doses of foot and mouth vaccine for the government. Experts say this poses no risk because the vaccine does not involve the use of a live virus.

Martin Shirley, director of the Institute for Animal Health, said: “The institute is obviously concerned about the lack of unambiguous evidence at this stage of what has happened and will continue to review our own biosecurity systems as new data becomes available … We continue to be concerned about the effect on the farming community in the UK and you can be assured our staff are working hard to provide evidence for these inquiries.”

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers’ Union, said it was considering legal action for compensation if a commercial company is found to be responsible.

“It is important to understand that farmers who have lost livestock at the moment are only being compensated for the value of that stock, there’s no [compensation for] consequential loss,” he said. “If this turns out to be a commercial company, that has been and can be shown to have been careless in any way, my members are already very loudly saying, ‘We’ve lost money, our businesses are no longer able to function, we’ve got animals, extra feed costs, problems with capacity being squeezed on farms’. There are many, many costs that have been incurred by farmers through no fault of their own.”

Peter Ainsworth, shadow environment secretary, said the HSE’s report was “bland and inconclusive”. He added: “It is no surprise but nonetheless shocking that the report identifies a major biosecurity failure at a government laboratory and a laboratory licensed by Defra as the two most likely sources of the outbreak.”

Microbiology expert Hugh Pennington said: “My impression is that they haven’t found any technical fault and flooding is a potential, but only negligible. What you are left with is human movement.”

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