BBC Newsnight September 5th 2007. ( unofficial transcript by warmwell.com)
An interim report in mid August failed to pinpoint blame for the outbreak
so are the investigators any closer yet to understanding whether the virus came
from Merial or the Government run Institute for animal health?
The government is promising a detailed analysis on Friday but what is clear
so far is that live foot and mouth virus got into a section of underground pipe
running between Merial and central treatment works at Pirbright. I
spoke to one of the authors of the final reports today and he pointed out that
the Institute has a modern animal isolation unit using up to date heat
treatment to kill any virus. The rest of the institute site and
Merial share a waste treatment system but both have chemical inactivation which
should kill the virus before it reaches this central system.
So it appears there could be two failures here; failure to kill the
virus and then failure in the Pirbright site's pipework
Understanding how live virus got into the faulty pipe in the first
place is key to establishing any blame.
It shouldn't have. Dangerous viruses like this should be
inactivated before they get anywhere near a drain.
Dr Julian Hiscox Virology at Leeds University
"You inactivate the virus at source and then you have various other back-up
procedures as well to help you really make sure that the virus isn't living any
more and obviously can't be infectious and can't be released from the
laboratory. Clearly, this HSE report is indicating that there
has been a breakdown of certain stages in handling that live
virus - so whether that's inactivation at source or transfer through this pipe
which has obviously developed some kind of failure to allow live virus
to be released and then spread to the neighbouring farms."
Susan Watts
And there are other factors at play too. This is a map, published by
the Environment Agency, showing a ring of blue around the facility. This
indicates that parts are at substantial risk of flooding. Newsnight
revealed in August that the Pirbright site, including both the
Institute for animal health and the Merial facilities, was built on land known
to be prone to flood - notably part of the Merial complex.
During the extraordinary floods of this summer the Pirbright site did flood
on July 20th so water carrying virus from the faulty pipe could bubble to the
surface . Reports suggest contractors, working on the
site then carried the virus unwittingly on their vehicles along this road
past the first farm to be infected
The "we may never know" refrain was still out there today but
scientists should be able to say a lot more about this. Newsnight
understands that 5 samples of virus - 2 from the Institute, 1 from Merial and 1
from each of the infected farms have now been sequenced in detail. From
these sequences it should be possible to say exactly where the virus came
from.
(Ends)
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