News & Perspective

Disclosure: The University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, which publishes CIDRAP News, has produced training programs and materials for the BioWatch program. The news team has no involvement in the center's BioWatch work.

In the wake of a newspaper investigation that questioned the value of the federal BioWatch program for detecting dangerous airborne pathogens, some public health officials familiar with the program acknowledge that it's far from perfect, but they say it's not time to scrap it.

Jul 13, 2013 (CIDRAP News) – A National Research Council (NRC) review on the nation's options for a high-containment lab for studying the world's most contagious animal diseases found that a currently proposed facility set for construction in Manhattan, Kan., or a scaled-back version of it, could meet long-term needs.

(CIDRAP News) – Publicly posting the federal testing and enforcement data on meat, poultry, and egg product facilities could have important public health benefits, as long as the information is accurate, is easy to understand, and protects companies' proprietary information, according to a report today from the National Research Council (NRC).