GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • Daily Digest
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Cornell videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
    • How donations will help us
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
      • 2021 articles
      • 2020 articles
      • 2019 articles
      • 2018 articles
      • 2017 articles
      • 2016 articles
      • 2015 articles
      • 2014 articles
      • 2013 articles
      • 2012 articles
      • 2011 articles
      • 2010 articles
      • 2009 articles
      • 2008 articles
      • 2007 articles
      • 2006 articles
      • 2005 articles
      • 2004 articles
      • 2003 articles
      • 2002 articles
      • 2001 articles
      • 2000 articles
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • How donations will help us
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Cornell videos
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
  • Donations
SUBSCRIBE TO REVIEWS

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE-EDITED CROPS & FOODS

Help stop the new threat

GM Fed pig

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

2007 articles

GM vaccine lab likely source of UK foot-and-mouth

  • Print
  • Email
Details
Published: 05 August 2007
Created: 05 August 2007
Last Updated: 22 October 2012
Twitter

1.Lab Likely Source of UK Foot-and-Mouth
2.UK Foot And Mouth Disease Outbreak Near FMD GM Vaccine Research Lab

---

1.Lab Likely Source of UK Foot-and-Mouth
By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press, 5 August 2007 [shortened] http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/05/ap3988208.html

LONDON - Hopes rose Sunday that a potentially disastrous foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain could be contained, as scientists grew increasingly suspicious that the disease came from a government animal laboratory near the infected farm.

The agriculture department said late Saturday that the strain of foot-and-mouth disease found on a farm in southern England was identical to one used at a research laboratory a few miles away. The department said the strain had not recently been seen in live animals.

---

2.UK Foot And Mouth Disease Outbreak Near FMD GM Vaccine Research Lab
NLPWessex, 4 August 2007 [shortened] www.nlpwessex.org/docs/fmdlab.htm

"Chief veterinary officer Debby Reynolds has confirmed that the biosecurity arrangements at the Pirbright Laboratory are being investigated as a possible source of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. At a Defra briefing at 3.15pm today (Saturday), Mrs Reynolds said it was too early to favour any hypothesis of where the disease might have come from over another. But she said: 'Pirbright has been asked to review its biosecurity arrangements.'..."

Vet confirms Pirbright is under investigation Farmers Guardian, 4 August 2007

NLPWESSEX: The new outbreak, the first since 2001, is on a farm at Wanborough, Nr Guildford, Surrey, in the south of England.

The farm is a relatively short distance from the UK's leading Foot And Mouth research laboratory at the Institute of Animal Health, Pirbright...

With the suddenly renewed focus on public policy in relation to the management of this highly contagious animal health disease, which occurs throughout much of the world, it is worth considering the following from our earlier bulletin of 10 September 2001:

"..... a paper submitted to the Journal of General Virology 31 October 2000 by UK government scientists from the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright indicates that they had been working on a genetically engineered recombinant DNA vaccine [for FMD]...

In the trials described in the journal in which pigs were challenged with live virus, the recombinant DNA vaccine only provided protection for some of the animals tested and 'was not as effective as conventional virus vaccine'. The paper also states: 'A particularly serious problem is that several outbreaks in Europe have been attributed to incomplete inactivation of the virus or to the escape of live virus from vaccine production laboratories'. The paper in fact makes passing reference to the UK outbreak [in 2000], because although the paper was originally submitted in October 2000 it was not accepted for publication (presumably with interim revisions required by the journal review panel) until 30 March 2001(http://www.sgm.ac.uk/JGVDirect/17505/17505ft.htm ).

It would certainly be regrettable if, in attempting to produce a new genetically engineered vaccine only a less effective type had been created, and in the process a foot-and-mouth virus had escaped into the environment - irrespective of whether the virus itself was naturally occurring or man made."

A wide range of interest groups, including the leading UK organic certification body the Soil Association, has long advocated vaccination as a primary control method for FMD outbreaks. However, awareness that such an approach is increasingly heading in the direction of genetically engineered options is not widespread.

For more on this area of biotechnology (including the claim by former US veterinary consultant Dr Patricia Doyle that synthetic FMD vaccine trials had been going on in the UK in the months leading up to the 2001 outbreak) see our bulletin of 10 September 2001 "Losing Control of Global Biosecurity".
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/losingcontrolbiosecurity.htm

These issues are part of a growing broader concern about the inability to effectively control the biotech sector, particularly given the potentially lethal combination of radical genetic engineering techniques and human error.

It is not possible to ban the latter. So what about banning the former?

NLPWESSEX, natural law publishing
nlpwessex.org

"They wanted to make a contraceptive vaccine by altering the genes of the mousepox virus. But in January the project gained notoriety after the pair inadvertently created an unusually virulent strain of mousepox. If a similar genetic manipulation were applied to smallpox, the scientists realized, this feared killer could be made even more dangerous."

The Bugs Of War

Nature 411, 232 - 235 (2001), 17 May 2001

  • Prev
  • Next

Menu

Home

News

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

How Donations Will Help Us

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

RSS

Content 1999 - 2021 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design