Plum Island Animal Disease Center

Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) is a United States federal research facility dedicated to the study of animal diseases. It is part of the DHS Directorate for Science and Technology.

Since 1954, the center has had the goal of protecting America's livestock from animal diseases. During the Cold War a secret biological weapons program targeting livestock was conducted at the site. This program has been the subject of controversies and conspiracy theories.

Location

The center is located on Plum Island, off Connecticut, near the northeast coast of Long Island in New York state. During the Spanish-American War, the island was purchased by the government for the construction of Fort Terry, which was later deactivated after World War II and then reactivated in 1952 for the Army Chemical Corps. The center comprises 70 buildings (many of them dilapidated) on 840 acres.

Plum Island has its own fire department, power plant, and water treatment plant. Any wild mammal seen on the island is killed on sight. However, as Plum Island was named an important bird area by the New York Audubon Society, it has successfully attracted different birds. Plum Island had placed osprey nests and bluebird boxes throughout the island and will now add kestrel houses.

History

In response to disease outbreaks in Mexico and Canada in 1954, the Army gave the island to the Agriculture Department to establish a research center dedicated to the study of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.

The island was opened to news media for the first time in 1992. In 1995, the Department of Agriculture was issued a $111,000 fine for storing hazardous chemicals on the island.

Local Long Island activists prevented the center from expanding to include diseases that affect humans in 2000, which would require a Biosafety Level 4 designation; in 2002, Congress again considered the plan.

The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2002 that many scientists and government officials wanted the lab to close, believing that the threat of foot-and-mouth disease was so remote that the center did not merit its $16.5 million annual budget. In 2002, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center was transferred from the United States Department of Agriculture to the United States Department of Homeland Security.

In 2003, a whistleblower who voiced concerns about safety at the facility was fired by the contractor he worked for. He had discussed his concerns with aides to Senator Hillary Clinton. A National Labor Relations Board judge found that the contractor, North Fork Services, had discriminated against the whistleblower.

As a diagnostic facility, PIADC scientists study more than 40 foreign animal diseases and several domestic diseases, including hog cholera and African swine fever. PIADC runs about 30,000 diagnostic tests each year. PIADC operates Biosafety Level 3 Agriculture (BSL-3Ag), BSL-3 and BSL-2 laboratory facilities. The facility's research program includes developing diagnostic tools and biologicals (vaccines) for foot-and-mouth disease and other diseases of livestock.

Plum Island's freezers also contain samples of polio and diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans. In 1991, the center's freezers were threatened following a power outage caused by a hurricane.

Because federal law stipulates that live foot-and-mouth disease virus cannot be studied on the mainland, PIADC is unique in that it is currently the only laboratory in the U.S. equipped with research facilities that permit the study of foot-and-mouth disease.

Foot-and-mouth disease is extremely contagious among cloven-hoofed animals, and people who have come in contact with it can carry it to animals. Accidental outbreaks of the virus have caused catastrophic livestock and economic losses in many countries throughout the world. Plum Island has experienced outbreaks of its own, including one in 1978 in which the disease was released to animals outside the center, and two incidents in 2004 in which foot-and-mouth disease was released within the center. Foot-and-mouth disease was eradicated from the U.S. in 1929 (with the exception of the stocks within the Plum Island center) but is currently endemic to many parts of the world.

In response to the two 2004 incidents, New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Congressman Tim Bishop wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security regarding their concerns about the center's safety: "We urge you to immediately investigate these alarming breaches at the highest levels, and to keep us apprised of all developments."

Lab 257, a book by Michael C. Carroll, Ph.D., has alleged a connection between Plum Island Animal Disease Center and the outbreaks of three infectious diseases: West Nile virus in 1999, Lyme disease in 1975, and Dutch duck plague in 1967.

Building 257

Building 257 located at Fort Terry was completed around 1911. The original purpose of the building was to store weapons, such as mines, and the structure was designated the Combined Torpedo Storehouse and Cable Tanks building. Fort Terry went through a period of activations and deactivations through World War II until the U.S. Army Chemical Corps took over the facility in 1952 for use in anti-animal biological warfare (BW) research. The conversion of Fort Terry to a BW facility required the remodeling of Building 257 and other structures. As work neared completion on the lab and other facilities in the spring of 1954 the mission of Fort Terry changed. Construction was completed on the facilities on May 26, 1954, but the Fort Terry was officially transferred to the USDA on July 1, 1954. At the time scientists from the Bureau of Animal Industry were already working in Building 257.

Building 101

The structure is a 164,000-square-foot T-shaped white building. It is situated on Plum Island's northwest plateau on a 10-acre site where it is buttressed by a steep cliff which leads into the ocean. To the east of the building's site is the old Plum Island Lighthouse.

Construction on Plum Island's new laboratory Building 101 began around July 1, 1954, around the same time that the Army's anti-animal bio-warfare (BW) facilities at Fort Terry were transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Following the transfer the facilities on Plum Island became known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The USDA's $7.7 million Building 101 laboratory facility was dedicated on September 26, 1956. Prior to the building's opening the area around it was sprayed with chemicals to deter insect or animal life from approaching the facility. Upon its opening a variety of tests using pathogens and vectors were conducted on animals in the building. Research on biological weapons at PIADC did not cease until the entire program was canceled in 1969 by Richard Nixon.

On September 11, 2005, the United States Department of Homeland Security announced that the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center will be replaced by a new federal facility. The location of the new high-security animal disease lab, to be called the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), has been recommended to be built in Manhattan, Kansas. However, this plan has been called into question by a recent GAO study which states that claims by the DHS that the work performed on Plum Island can be performed safely on the mainland is not supported by evidence.

Activities

PIADC's mission can be grouped into three main categories: Diagnosis, Research, and Education.

Since 1971, PIADC has been educating veterinarians in foreign animal diseases. The center hosts several Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic schools each year to train federal and state veterinarians and laboratory diagnostic staff, military veterinarians and veterinary school faculty.

At PIADC, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) work together; DHS' Targeted Advanced Development unit partners with USDA, academia and industry scientists to deliver vaccines and antivirals to the USDA for licensure and inclusion in the USDA National Veterinary Vaccine Stockpile.

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) performs basic and applied research to better formulate countermeasures against foreign animal diseases, including strategies for prevention, control and recovery. ARS focuses on developing faster-acting vaccines and antivirals to be used during outbreaks to limit or stop transmission. Antivirals prevent infection while vaccine immunity develops. The principal diseases studied are foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever, and vesicular stomatitis virus.

USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) operates the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, an internationally recognized facility performing diagnostic testing of samples collected from U.S. livestock. APHIS also tests animals and animal products being imported into the U.S. APHIS maintains the North American Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank at PIADC and hosts the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnosticians training program, offering several classes per year to train veterinarians to recognize foreign animal diseases.

Research on biological weapons at PIADC did not cease until the entire program was canceled in 1969 by Richard Nixon.

Bio-weapons research

The original anti-animal BW mission was "to establish and pursue a program of research and development of certain anti-animal (BW) agents". By August 1954 animals occupied holding areas at Plum Island and research was ongoing within Building 257. The USDA facility, known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, continued work on biological warfare research until the U.S. program was ended by Richard Nixon in 1969. The bio-weapons research at Building 257 and Fort Terry was shrouded in aura of mystery and secrecy. The existence of biological warfare experiments on Plum Island during the Cold War era was denied for decades by the U.S. government. In 1993 Newsday unearthed documents proving otherwise and in 1994, Russian scientists inspected the Plum Island research facility to verify that these experiments had indeed ended.

The number of building "257" is a moniker for the entire site in 2004 when Michael Carroll, an attorney, published Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory. Many of the assertions and accusations made in the book are counter to the government's position and have been criticized and challenged. The review in Army Chemical Review concluded; "Lab 257 would be cautiously valuable to someone writing a history of Plum Island, but is otherwise an example of fringe literature with a portrayal of almost every form of novelist style." The book advances the idea that Lyme disease originated at Plum Island and conjectures several means by which animal diseases could have left the island. David Weld, the executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, generically opinionated that "I personally just don't think that has any merit" yet refused to be specific or comment on the number of birds that come into contact with the island and fly back and forth between the mainland, possibly carrying infected ticks.

The testing facility at Plum Island is the subject of a novel, The Poison Plum, by author Les Roberts, and another, Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille. DeMille has said, "How could anthrax not be studied there? Every animal has it." His novel portrays the island as the scene of an incubator for germ warfare.

The center was also mentioned in the movie Silence of the Lambs by FBI agents who offer Dr. Hannibal Lecter a transfer to it in exchange for his help locating a serial killer. Lecter reads over a report on the location, sarcastically saying, "Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center...sounds charming", then, rejecting the offer, Lecter refers to Plum Island as "Anthrax Island."

When Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, a suspected al-Qaeda member, was arrested in Afghanistan in July 2008, she had in her handbag handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" that listed various U.S. locations, including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. In February 2010, she was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill U.S. soldiers and FBI agents who were seeking to interrogate her.