News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Although no successful attacks on the US agriculture and food system have been reported in the past decade, the nation's efforts to defend the system came in for a barrage of criticism yesterday about a lack of coordination and various other shortcomings.

(CIDRAP News) – A federal assessment of the proposed National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), a biosafety-level (BSL) 4 lab to be built on the Kansas State University (KSU) campus in Manhattan, Kan., is incomplete and should be expanded and updated, the National Research Council (NRC) said in a report today.

(CIDRAP News) – A US House of Representatives committee today explored problems at the nation's biodefense labs, including a lack of coordinated federal oversight and even a lack of knowledge of how many high-containment labs exist.

These concerns have been highlighted recently by aggressive efforts from the Sunshine Project, a watchdog group that monitors biodefense research safety, and by other media reports.

(CIDRAP News) – A graduate student working in a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) was treated for possible anthrax exposure following a laboratory accident Aug 11—two days after a US House committee announced plans to hold hearings on biodefense lab safety.