Biosecurity in the UK

In the course of reading reference 1, already noticed in passing, I find out on page 130 about a serious lapse of biosecurity at about the time that Blair was passing the baton to Brown in 2007. So it is not just failed states which don’t get this sort of thing quite right. And then we have the Australian accident already noticed at reference 7. But at least in this state, I can read three authoritative reports about the lapse, available at references 2, 3 and 8. From which I extract the following timeline:

20010219. The much more serious outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001, starting with an abattoir in Essex. Noting in passing the common use of the euphemistic ‘abattoir’ (from the French) in place of ‘slaughterhouse’.

20070802. IP1 (Infected Premises No.1). Outbreak of foot and mouth at a farm near Pirbright.

20070806. IP2. Outbreak at another farm near Pirbright.

20070809. Decision not to vaccinate.

20070907. Spratt report (reference 2). Probable source of the outbreak identified as a leak from a badly maintained & secured effluent pipe at the Institute for Animal Health at Pirbright. 

20070907. Final report from HSE (reference 8). Pictures of the offending pipe are to be found at the end.

20070908. Chief Veterinary Officer declares the outbreak over. With hindsight, a bit too quick off the mark.

20070911. IP3. Outbreak at another farm near Pirbright.

20070915. IP4. Outbreak at another farm near Pirbright.

20070917. IP5. Outbreak at another farm near Pirbright…

20070930. IP8. The eight and last outbreak.

20071119. Another leak of viral flavoured effluent at Pirbright. Contained on site.

20080222. Outbreak finally declared over and all restrictions lifted.

This was a small outbreak with a small number of premises and animals affected. Nevertheless, as it progressed there were tensions between public health and commercial interests – particularly those in faraway livestock areas like Scotland and Cornwall. Commercial interests which are important too and which not should not just be pushed aside.

A commercial vaccine factory, then run by a company called Merial, and a public animal health laboratory, then called the Institute for Animal Health, were co-located at Pirbright, quite possibly once a collection of army barrack huts. Both did important and necessary work with live foot and mouth viruses. But given the quite different nature of their operations, this sharing and blurring of responsibilities was not appropriate. Furthermore the funds for some aspects of biosecurity were stinted – in particular for the drains.

The reports make it very clear that biosecurity is a complicated and expensive business. You need seriously skilled people to do the work in the first place – and seriously skilled people to have oversight. Ticking a few boxes on a form on a clipboard does not meet the case. From where I associate to the practise during my time in government, when you had relatively junior people doing just that sort of thing when checking up on large, complicated and important computer projects. A product of the cost-saving myth that process is a substitute for knowledge – when really it is only an aid, albeit a very useful one. I believe the large accountancy firms subscribe to this same myth when conducting their fat-fee-generating audits.

You need fiercely pedantic chief biosecurity officers, with direct access to chief executives, a bit like service managers of large computer facilities, heads of security of important buildings or internal audit people in many large organisations. People who are going to stick to the rules and protocols, come what may. Real traffic wardens. Something which our fat leader would not be much good at, preferring management by bluster and boost.

Furthermore, Ord suggests that biosecurity at places like the Pirbright laboratory should be upgraded to something more like the security afforded to places doing work for the nuclear industry, or, indeed, in the industry. But if the snap above from Street View is indeed their front door, it does not look as if we are quite there yet. And I might add that once happening to drive near the back of the Drax power station, quite a big power station in the scheme of things, I could not see any security at all, although I dare say there was a chain link fence.

But a more serious problem may be in the open nature of science. The tools needed to engineer viruses are getting cheaper all the time and the information needed by the engineers is pretty freely available on the Internet. Building a razor wire fence is a lot easier than striking the right balance between open and closed science. We need open science to develop the vaccines and to manufacture them at scale. We need closed science to keep the bad guys out.

It might well be that a lawyer (that is to say Starmer) would be more likely to get all this right than a journalist, let alone a columnist (that is to say Johnson).

References 

Reference 1: The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity – Toby Ord – 2021.

Reference 2a: Independent review of the safety of UK facilities handling foot-and-mouth disease virus – Spratt, B. G. – 2007. 

Reference 2b: http://www.b-safe.ch/downloads/spratt_final.pdf. 

Reference 3a: Foot and mouth disease 2007: A review and lessons learned – Anderson, L. – 2008. See Annex I for a (partial) list of similar escapes.

Reference 3b:  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/250363/0312.pdf.

Reference 4: https://www.pirbright.ac.uk/. The successors to the Institute for Animal Health. With a glimpse of old asbestos to the right?

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boehringer_Ingelheim_Animal_Health. The successors to the Merial people.

Reference 6: https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/our-schools-and-colleges/atc-pirbright/. Two or three miles northwest of the viral people.

Reference 7: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-cautionary-tale.html. 

Reference 8a: Final report on potential breaches of biosecurity at the Pirbright site 2007 - Health and Safety Executive – 2007.

Reference 8b: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_09_07finalreporthsefandm.pdf. The location of this copy of report being a reminder why governments are apt to get cross with the BBC. It was at the top of the Bing list. The five page summary at the front is accessible and starts:

‘Following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Surrey on 3 August, the government asked the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to lead an investigation into biosecurity issues at the Pirbright facility – a site occupied by the Institute of Animal Health (IAH) and also by two private companies called Merial Animal Health Ltd (Merial) and Stabilitech Ltd (Stabilitech). The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had established that the virus strain causing FMD in the first infected herd of cattle at a farm in Normandy, Surrey was O1 BFS67 (also known as 01 BFS1860 and hereafter referred to as O1 BFS). This is a laboratory strain not naturally found in the environment and was one upon which work was being carried out by all three occupants of the Pirbright site ahead of the first outbreak. HSE’s job was to lead a team to investigate…’.