Foot & Mouth Outbreak GM Vaccine and Biowarfare.

• Author: Ho, Mae-Wan
• Position: Biodevastation - Genetically modified

The foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in the UK has gone on for the best part of a year, with no sign of ending. More than 3.8 million livestock have been culled since February. It has cost an estimated [pounds sterling]27 billion and untold hardship for family farmers and small businesses.

The UK Government has persistently refused to allow the animals to be vaccinated, instead of the massive cullings that have sickened the public in more ways than one. The Government has also refused to conduct a proper public enquiry, amid rumors that biological warfare agents or vaccines were involved in the outbreak. The story is now unfolding from investigations of independent journalists.

In August/September 2000, the company United Biomedical Inc. (UBI) based in the USA had conducted tests on a vaccine for FMD Type O. That is the strain involved in the disease outbreak in the UK(l).

UBI announced on its website www.unitedbiomedical.com, "We have vaccinated pigs, challenged them with infectious FMDV (foot and mouth disease virus), and successfully protected almost all of them (45 of 46 animals) from viral infection and out-performed the commercial product. This has been done by four government laboratories on three continents."

The three continents were Asia, America and Europe. The four governments were the US, the Chinese, the Mexican and the UK. Was the one pig the vaccine failed to protect in a UK government laboratory? All the governments have admitted these trials took place except the UK.

According to UBI, previous studies have been carried out in several biocontainment facilities, including the USDA Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Greenport, NY, the Merial Animal Health Ltd Biological Laboratory, Pirbright, UK, and the Institute for Animal Science and Health, Lelystad, the Netherlands. But Merial UK denied it had any connection with UBI.

Plum Island Animal Disease Center had been researching foot and mouth disease since 1954. It is the repository for the North American Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank, established in 1982, which keeps vaccine for the US, Canada and Mexico (2).

Merial is a Merck and Aventis company that has foot and mouth vaccine production laboratories close to those of the government's institute for Animal Health at Pirbright, Surrey.

Scientists in the Institute for Animal Health have also been trying to genetically engineer a recombinant DNA vaccine against FMDV. FMDV is a member of the family Picornaviridae. Its...