Last updated: 13 August 2007.
The IAH at Pirbright, in Surrey, is suspected to be at the centre of the current foot-and-mouth outbreak.

The present indications are that this strain is a 01 BFS67 – like virus, isolated in the 1967 Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in Great Britain. This strain is present at the IAH and was used in a batch manufactured on July 16th 2007 by the Merial facility.

By the 7th a 2nd farm is contaminated and being culled whilst 'Merial' accused of releasing the FMD contaminant is now supplying anti-FMD inoculations to farms in the area. The much hated farming community (a national not globalist entity) is expected to respond in anger & suspicion as the incompetents or stooges behind this already profitable enterprise begin to rub their hands. The Health Protection Agency confirmed there had been a reported case of legionnaires' disease "with alleged links to the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright, in Surrey". The IAH at Pirbright, in Surrey, is suspected to be at the centre of the current foot-and-mouth outbreak.

The Foot & Mouth Disease (FMD) strain found in Surrey is not one currently known to be recently found in animals. It is most similar to strains used in international diagnostic laboratories and in vaccine production, including at the Pirbright site shared by the (Government's) Institute of Animal Health (IAH) and Merial Animal Health Ltd, a [US-owned] pharmaceutical company. Both are just 3 miles from the outbreak epicentre.

The Russian Itar-Tass news agency on the 5th August says that a number of sources reported that it (Pirbright) hosted an international drill last month during which live viruses of foot-and-mouth disease were used.

The Institute for Animal Health at Pirbright wrote to me this Monday 13 August with the following explanation for the allegation of international drills as cited above by Tass.

"Unfortunately there has been some confusion about activities at the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) at Pirbright in relation to training exercises. The report you refer to is actually describing training courses in FMD diagnosis organised at IAH under its obligations (as) a World Reference Laboratory for FMD.

The delegates accepted onto the courses are known researchers within the tight-knit FMD research community and are known to senior scientists at IAH. Most of the course is lecture and classroom based and only very small quantities of vaccine are used in tightly supervised environments. The course is provided to assist scientists from around the world in understanding how to diagnose FMD infections. All delegates are chaperoned by IAH scientists while in biosecure areas and are subject to the same stringent biosecurity measures as all researchers on the site."