Agricultural News
R-CALF USA Wants National Defense Facility Stopped
Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:12:37 CST
A National Academy of Sciences report is critical of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s plans to build the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. According to NAS, Homeland Security’s conclusions were: 1) based on flawed epidemiological estimates; 2) based on a failure to describe how Homeland Security could rapidly detect an FMD release; and, 3) based on a failure to realistically demonstrate how federal and local officials would effectively respond to and control an FMD release.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, R-CALF USA President/Region VI Director Max Thornsberry, a Missouri veterinarian who also chairs the group’s animal health committee, wrote - of special concern to U.S. cattle producers is the NAS’ finding that your Department had inadequately evaluated the risk of working with FMD in large animals, along with NAS’ findings that the Department’s conclusions regarding its ability to contain an inadvertent release of FMD were not realistic.
According to Thornsberry, - your agency, and this Administration, now has ample scientific evidence to suggest that if you do not voluntarily abandon this irresponsible proposal, you will, more likely than not, go down in history as being responsible for reintroducing the FMD virus to U.S. livestock after it had been completely eradicated from the mainland in 1929.
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