The "shabby and dilapidated" animal disease research laboratory in Pilbright, UK — the site of last summer's linkurl:foot-and-mouth disease;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53579/ leak — must be replaced by a new, expanded research center for infectious human and animal diseases, an official report said yesterday. The independent inquiry into last summer's outbreak in southeast England said that a "creeping degradation of standards" at the government-funded linkurl:Institute of Animal Health;http://www.iah.bbsrc.ac.uk/ probably led to a live virus, under development as a linkurl:vaccine,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/19550/ leaking from a fractured pipe and spreading from the site. The outbreak resulted in an export ban on British livestock that cost the industry an estimated $200m. The report, Foot and Mouth Disease 2007, described the leak as "an avoidable event... that should never have happened." "The structural and management inadequacies at and around Pilbright must be addressed urgently and comprehensively," Iain Anderson, a businessman and former government adviser who led the inquiry, told...
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