Big row developing tonight between the two Foot and Mouth Disease leak suspects at Pirbright. The whole of Government wants the responsibility to be placed on Merial, the private sector research centre and vaccine manufacturer. It is desperate that the Government owned Institute of Animal Health is cleared by the Health and Safety Executive. Tonight, the IAH has gone public, pointing a noisy finger at Merial. I fully expect Merial to return fire with fire tomorrow. This is serious. Big money and bigger reputations at stake.
Tit bits of information are being leaked which are designed to lead public opinion into finding Merial guilty. A million times more virus being in play at Merial during the relevant time. A bit of the Merial site is in an area of flood risk. The IAH being allowed to carry on working - while more investigation going on at Merial. Now, I just want to know how the virus was leaked. We need the truth - real not convenient. We don't want a scapegoat that suits the Government. We must judge this one on the evidence - and not on what best suits Gordon Brown. Read the small print of any reports.
5 comments:
Shock horror, the government protecting their own backsides :)
What happened to owning up and taking responsibility for your actions, forgotten concept for today's world.
But it has massive financial implications for the responsible party - so Merial will fight tooth and nail.
It's not the amount of foot and mouth material handled by either party, but which party actually leaked it. The Pirbright lab is inherently dangerous in the way it is laid out. Indoor shopping mall type construction should be used with easily disinfectable floors around each building (not grass and earth) with control and cleaning of air flow front the "shopping mall". We build shops inside shopping malls so that consumers can walk between shops without being exposed to inclemantal weather, but we construct labs containing economically damaging pathogens on open field sites.
Sorry ... typo, 'front the "shopping mall"' should read, 'from the "shopping mall"'.
christopher - I don't pretend to have any idea which of the two sites was responsible - or whether it was a deliberate 'leak' or not. But I do agree that the ammount of viruis handled is completely irrelevent. That is the reason I think the Government's references to this aspect of the issue is improper and designed to plant the idea that Merial was to blame in the public mind.
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