Washington - (AP) - The Bush administration is likely to move its research on one of the most contagious animal diseases from an isolated island laboratory to the U.S. mainland near herds of livestock, raising concerns about a catastrophic outbreak.

Skeptical Democrats in Congress are demanding to see internal documents they believe highlight the risks and consequences of the decision. An epidemic of the disease, foot and mouth, which only affects animals, could devastate the livestock industry.

A simulated outbreak of the disease - part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called "Crimson Sky" - ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation's National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets. In the exercise, the government said it would have been forced to dig a ditch in Kansas 25 miles long to bury carcasses. In the simulation, protests broke out in some cities amid food shortages.

Foot-and-mouth virus can be carried on a worker's breath or clothes, or vehicles leaving a lab, and is so contagious it has been confined to Plum Island, N.Y., for more than a half-century - far from commercial livestock. The existing lab is 100 miles northeast of New York City in the Long Island Sound, accessible only by ferry or helicopter. Researchers there who work with the live virus are not permitted to own animals at home that would be susceptible, and they must wait at least a week before attending outside events where such animals might perform, such as a circus.

Infected animals weaken and lose weight. Milk cows don't produce milk. They remain highly infectious, even if they survive the virus.

The lawmakers set a deadline of Friday for the administration to turn over reports they requested. Otherwise, they warned in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, they will arrange a vote next week to issue a congressional subpoena.
go

And another bad idea comes forth from the Home Land Security group. I find this very disturbing.

We had foot n' mouth a couple of years back in Britain. Didn't do the farming community much good at all...

telling me its not good. it affects farming business ver badly.. euthanising the animals and quarantining the area from the infection spreading further. it has a huge snowball reaction.
what bothers me most of all is that they play god with viruses.. making them mutate into another version and harder to fight (so to speak). this is how parvo-virus came about. laboratory technicians were trying to make a vaccination for a different cat virus (note cat).. this vaccination mutated and parvo-virus was borne

that's rediculous. if you've successfully kept it isolated on that island for all that time, why in the hell would you even risk bringing it to the mainland. what's the point???

Amazes me (no idea why, the higher ya go the more senseless it becomes) how something like this manages to only make the ''Back Page News''...

REBEL is right, this definitely deserves more attention than being on the "back page".....Not to be taken lightly, Plum Island, although confined, is already handling the biological agents of this disease...But if you think of one small mistake, one mishap that could be made, then the consequences are severe....Homeland Security is thinking of building another center on the Mainland, or buildiing a bigger facility at Plum Island...I would be panicing thinking of a facility like this being built in Georgia, or any other large State...Scary situation.....

Just a little note. I thought humans could get foot and mouth disease.

Yes they can, especially infants and children...Layman call it hand, foot and mouth disease or better known as Coxsackie A virus...It usually starts with sores in the mouth, then spreads and is highly contagious...Also very painful for the little ones...

The risk is very low, and it no fatal. The sacrifice of animals is more by an economic aspect, because the animal can feed.

Foot and mouth disease

Other related virus, the Coxsackie A have more posibilities of infecting a human, but as i said, it is not fatal. Is just a little worse then a bad cold.