According to the Clarion-Ledger, Flora is a finalist for a new federal laboratory whose purpose is ostensibly (according to the Department of Homeland Security website):

- to integrate those aspects of public and animal health research that have been determined to be central to national security;
- to assess and research evolving bioterrorism threats over the next five decades; and;
- to enable the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture (USDA), and Health and Human Services (HHS) to fulfill their related homeland defense research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) responsibilities.

The current facility is the Plum Island Animal Disease Center at Plum Island, New York. Display map of Plum Island facility in another window.

The facility was originally—and logically—a part of the Departments of Agriculture until June 2003, when it was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. Now that it is part of the same agency that gave you the Katrina recovery, there is some reason to be concerned about the safety of a facility that will be dealing with highly infectious organisms that can infect humans as well as animals. Up to now, the federal government saw fit to at least partially isolate the lab on an offshore island. 21 USC § 113a prohibits live foot-and-mouth disease virus on the mainland U.S. except under very special circumstances. Now Homeland Security wants to plunk it down near a small town in the most impoverished state in the nation, where it will be warmly welcomed as source of jobs. Whenever this administration tries to justify a questionable policy or activity, it has invariably used the term "terrorism," just as it is doing now.

I am suspicious.

Let's ask some hard questions before this project gets too far along:

1. What is this lab doing under the Department of Homeland Security instead of Agriculture? Is this grounds for confidence in the safety of the lab?

2. Why was the phrase "Animal Disease" taken out of the title and "defense" inserted?

3. Why isn't it cheaper and less disruptive to the employees of the present facility to build a replacement on Plum Island?

4. Will this facility be culturing virulent and dangerous organisms?

5. Is this facility involved with any phase of chemical or biological warfare?

6. Was there local opposition to rebuilding the facility on Plum Island, and if so, was it because the locals believed that with its expanded mission it poses a threat to health?

Sometimes I think that the politicians in this state would welcome a branch facility of Hell, so long as they could brag that it created jobs and made money for real estate developers.

Update 7/21/2007: Question 7 should be "Will security be contracted to a private corporation, such as Wackenhut?" TPM Muckraker is running an article today on Wackenhut's lax security practices:

Wackenhut has the contract to secure the Army's Holston Ammunition Plant in Tennessee. Last year, guards at the plant told lawmakers that boaters were easily able to float into restricted areas at the riverfront facility, and that Wackenhut only bolstered patrols when it knew that Army inspectors were up for a visit. Wackenhut has contracts to secure 31 nuclear power plants around the country. Last year, the Project on Government Oversight reported that Wackenhut nearly got employees killed by not stopping a mock terrorism-response exercise at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in time. Perhaps most egregiously, the Department of Homeland security opted last year not to renew Wackenhut's contract to protect DHS's Washington headquarters after guards told the AP about numerous security breaches -- including a botched anthrax scare. (Wackenhut security officials actually took the "suspicious white powder" into the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff and sprinkled it out of his window into the area below.)