Top Concerns About NBAF
Will NBAF be a bioweapons facility?
No! The development of bioweapons was outlawed by United Nations convention in 1972, and the U.S. is a party to this treaty. The mission of NBAF is to develop diagnostics and therapeutics to protect the U.S. from animal infectious diseases that are present in other parts of the world and that could come to the U.S. via stowaway insects, infected animals, migratory birds, food products, or through terrorism. In addition, NBAF will have the capacity to study newly emerging animal diseases that occur anywhere in the world to help prepare us to protect our animals.
Will NBAF study human diseases?
The mission of NBAF is to study animal infectious diseases that threaten our agricultural livestock and agricultural economy. Because a subset of animal infectious diseases can transmit to humans (zoonotic diseases), NBAF also will research how to prevent this from occurring. The goal of NBAF is to prevent animal infectious diseases from spreading in the U.S. It will accomplish this goal through the development of diagnostic tests, vaccines and other therapeutics, and through research into the transmission of these diseases.
Will NBAF be studying some of the most dangerous diseases on the planet?
NBAF will study diseases that are dangerous threats to our agricultural economy and also to public health. However, to describe them as the most dangerous diseases on the planet is an exaggeration. Many people do not appreciate that Foot-and-Mouth virus does not infect humans, that the diseases targeted for study by NBAF do not transmit from human to human, and that DHS has explicitly stated that NBAF will not study hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola (which is studied at the CDC). The CDC, which has operated safely in Atlanta for decades, works on human infectious diseases (in contrast to NBAF’s focus on animal diseases), including some that are of greater direct threat to humans.
Will NBAF bring into the U.S. diseases that would not be here otherwise?
No – All of these diseases are already being studied in the U.S., at the existing Plum Island facility, or at academic laboratories, or at CDC.
Will NBAF conduct secret research?
No! Just as is the case at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which NBAF will functionally replace, research at NBAF will be published in publicly available scientific journals. DHS Under Secretary Jay Cohen, the top NBAF official, has repeatedly stated that there will be no classified research at NBAF.
Will NBAF be receptive to community input?
Yes. The DHS lead for the NBAF project, James Johnson, has said he would welcome formation of an NBAF-community liaison committee to facilitate understanding of what NBAF does.
Will it be safe having NBAF in our community?
High-level containment facilities have been studying infectious diseases for decades now, often in the midst of densely populated cities like Paris, London, Winnipeg, and Atlanta. In the highly developed western world where public records are available, there has never been a documented incident in which community citizens have been infected as a result of accidental release of infectious agents from one of these facilities. The primary danger posed by these facilities is to the researchers who handle infectious agents while working there. Careful laboratory practices and procedures, continued safety training, engineering controls, use of personal protective equipment, vaccination and other measures are in place to minimize any risk. Indeed, workers in these highly sophisticated and highly monitored facilities are at less risk than those who work in high-risk occupations, including agriculture and industry.
Doesn’t this work need to be on an island to be safe?
No. This is an antiquated concept, just like the out-of-date notion that we had to banish victims of leprosy to islands in order to keep the rest of society safe. Today, work at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center is safe not because of the fact that it takes place on an island, but because of the use of appropriate procedures and protocols backed up by state-of-the-art biocontainment engineering.
Haven’t I read that there have been dozens of citations for safety violations at Plum Island?
Yes. However, it is important to understand that work in high-containment facilities is among the most heavily monitored and regulated in the U.S. The number of violations is an indication of how robust this regulatory process is. The vast majority of these citations are for “procedural errors” that pose no serious threat to the safety of the workers in the facility. Plum Island has never posed a significant threat to the health of nearby communities, despite constant traffic on and off the island.
Will there be a large number of heavily armed guards at NBAF?
The level of security at NBAF will be similar to other federal facilities such as the CDC that house potentially hazardous agents. The presence of armed security guards is no surprise in our modern era, when armed police officers are present at schools, supermarkets, etc. DHS has said that as is the case at the CDC, security measures will be subtle and largely invisible to passersby.
Isn’t DHS inexperienced at running facilities like NBAF?
Actually, DHS has been the owner of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center since June 2003. The USDA is the primary tenant at Plum Island, and DHS has stated that USDA will be the primary tenant at NBAF.
Don’t we have too many of these biocontainment labs already?
Due to globalization and the tremendously enhanced and well-documented risk of diseases moving from country to country or one continent to another (e.g., West Nile virus, SARS, and bird flu), the federal government deemed it essential to build up the U.S. capacity to study and defend itself from infectious diseases that emerge in various parts of the world. Special funding has been available to build biocontainment labs at universities across the country. Whether we have satisfied the perceived need is a topic worthy of study. However, even if we have sufficient academic labs, we still need a federal facility to prepare for and respond to potential emergencies arising from introduction of foreign animal diseases. Just as we need the CDC to control human diseases, so we need NBAF to control animal diseases.
Will NBAF require a large amount of water?
According to DHS, NBAF will use between 60,000 and 98,000 gallons of water a day. This would be a relatively small addition to the approximately 12 million gallons of water that Athens-Clarke County delivers each day. It is less than a chicken processing plant would use.
Will UGA benefit directly from having NBAF in Athens?
UGA will not derive any direct financial benefit from a local NBAF and in fact is donating a major parcel of land in order to recruit the facility. However, the University does expect to benefit in various ways from collaborations between researchers at the two institutions as well as educational opportunities provided to UGA graduate students who may be involved in projects performed in collaboration with NBAF.
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