Foot-and-mouth research may move ashore

PLUM ISLAND, N.Y. – For a half-century, the nation's only experiments on the world's most devastating livestock virus have occurred on this clandestine government-run island, separated from the mainland by more than a mile of choppy water.

Now foot-and-mouth disease may be about to come ashore.

Texas and five other states are competing to win a mammoth biodefense facility – a new $500 million federal research center that would house foot-and-mouth and other highly infectious animal diseases.

The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility is intended to replace the Plum Island labs, which homeland security officials say are outdated, inadequate and difficult to secure. The location will be chosen next fall.

But bringing foot-and-mouth research onto the mainland – a move that requires an act of Congress – has posed a quandary for ranchers and farmers, who want the best possible research but fear a U.S. epidemic.