Plum Island Animal Disease Center

The center is located on Plum Island near the northeast coast of Long Island in New York state. During the Spanish–American War, the island was purchased by the government for the construction of Fort Terry, which was later deactivated after World War II and then reactivated in 1952 for the Army Chemical Corps. The center comprises 70 buildings (many of them dilapidated) on . Plum Island has its own fire department, power plant, water treatment plant, and security. ==History==

In response to disease outbreaks in Mexico and Canada in 1954, the US Army gave the island to the Agriculture Department to establish a research center dedicated to studying foot-and-mouth disease in cattle. A National Labor Relations Board judge found that the contractor, North Fork Services, had discriminated against the whistleblower. ==Activities==

. PIADC's mission can be grouped into three main categories: diagnosis, research, and education. Since 1971, PIADC has been educating veterinarians in foreign animal diseases. The center hosts several Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic schools each year to train federal and state veterinarians and laboratory diagnostic staff, military veterinarians, and veterinary school faculty. At PIADC, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) work together; DHS's Targeted Advanced Development unit partners with USDA, academia, and industry scientists to deliver vaccines and antivirals to the USDA for licensure and inclusion in the USDA National Veterinary Vaccine Stockpile. USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) conducts basic and applied research to develop countermeasures against foreign animal diseases, including strategies for prevention, control, and recovery. ARS focuses on developing faster-acting vaccines and antivirals for use during outbreaks to limit or stop transmission. Antivirals prevent infection while vaccine immunity develops. The principal diseases studied are foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever, and vesicular stomatitis virus. USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) operates the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, an internationally recognized facility performing diagnostic testing of samples collected from U.S. livestock. APHIS also tests animals and animal products being imported into the U.S. APHIS maintains the North American Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank at PIADC and hosts the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnosticians training program, offering several classes per year to train veterinarians to recognize foreign animal diseases. Research on biological weapons at PIADC ceased when the United States Biological Warfare program was ended in 1969 by President Richard Nixon. By August 1954 animals occupied holding areas at Plum Island and research was ongoing within Building 257. The existence of biological warfare experiments on Plum Island during the Cold War era was denied for decades by the U.S. government. In 1993, Newsday unearthed documents proving otherwise, and in 1994, Russian scientists inspected the Plum Island research facility to verify that these experiments had indeed ended. ==Diseases studied and outbreaks==

As a diagnostic facility, PIADC scientists study more than 40 foreign animal diseases, including classical swine fever and African swine fever. Foot-and-mouth disease is extremely contagious among cloven-hooved animals, and people who have come in contact with it can carry it to animals. Laboratory accidents Plum Island has experienced outbreaks of its own, including one in 1978 in which foot-and-mouth disease was released to animals outside the center, and two incidents in 2004 in which the disease was released within the center. In response to the two 2004 incidents, New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Congressman Tim Bishop wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security regarding their concerns about the center's safety: "We urge you to immediately investigate these alarming breaches at the highest levels, and to keep us apprised of all developments." ==Historic buildings==

Building 257 Building No. 257 at Fort Terry, on Plum Island near Long Island, New York, was completed around 1911. The original purpose of the building was to store weapons, such as mines, and the structure was designated the Combined Torpedo Storehouse and Cable Tanks building. The Chemical Corps planned a laboratory for the fort, to be housed in Building 257. Construction was completed on the facilities on May 26, 1954, but the post was transferred to the USDA before the military could utilize the new laboratory facilities. Construction on Plum Island's new laboratory Building 101 began around July 1, 1954, around the same time that the Army's anti-animal bio-warfare (BW) facilities at Fort Terry were transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Building 257 currently poses no health hazard. ==Controversy==

Conspiracy theories Prolific but unfounded conspiracy theories have alleged that Lyme disease, first documented in nearby Lyme, Connecticut, was a biological weapon that originated in the Plum Island laboratory. This is despite the fact that Lyme disease has been known to occur in human populations for thousands of years, with the earliest evidence even predating the Last Glacial Maximum. A 2004 book entitled ''Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory'' fueled the conspiracy theories. Archived specimens show that Lyme disease was endemic well before the establishment of Plum Island laboratory. This was also the opinion of Larry Penny, the East Hampton Natural Resources Director. Terrorism When American educated Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, a suspected al-Qaeda member, was captured in Afghanistan in July 2008, she had in her handbag handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" that listed various U.S. locations, including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. In February 2010, she was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill U.S. servicemembers and FBI agents who sought to interrogate her. == Replacement facility ==

in Manhattan, Kansas (2020) On September 11, 2005, DHS announced that a new federal facility would replace the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center. The location of the new high-security animal disease lab, called the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), is being built in Manhattan, Kansas. The plan was controversial almost immediately upon its unveiling, following a cost assessment by DHS and prime contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, which found that the costs of maintaining or relocating the facility would be comparable. In 2012, DHS completed a risk assessment of the Kansas site that called the proposed facility "safe and secure". In response, a 2012 review of the risk assessment by the National Research Council called it "seriously flawed". Despite controversy, the new facility is nearing completion, and transfer of laboratory contents from Plum Island to NBAF is to be complete by 2023. The USDA has named Alfonso Clavijo, former director of Canada's Centers for Animal Disease, as the director of the new facility. == In popular culture ==

• Plum Island and PIADC are the subject of a murder mystery novel, Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille. DeMille has said, "How could anthrax not be studied there? Every animal has it." While addressing popular culture fears of a germ warfare lab at Plum Island, overall, the facility is presented as doing the job described by the Federal Government—research into animal diseases that would either devastate our national livestock or jump to humans and devastate us. The novel portrays the investigation into the murder of two Plum Island scientists. The motive, initially thought to be germs for terrorists or germs for a biotech company, is really the search for the lost treasure of Captain Kidd, who sailed the waters around Long Island before his capture. Kidd's treasure has never been found. • Plum Island is also referred to in the 1991 psychological thriller The Silence of the Lambs, when the character of Hannibal Lecter is offered a transfer to a different psychiatric institution, as well as the promise of annual week-long supervised furlough to Plum Island, in exchange for his assistance in helping the FBI locate the whereabouts of the missing daughter of a prominent US Senator. It is later revealed in the film that the offer is bogus from the start, a ruse to elicit Lecter's cooperation. • The Plum Island facility served as the inspiration for the Mount Dragon research facility in the 1996 techno-thriller Mount Dragon, written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. • The testing facility at Plum Island is the subject of a novel, The Poison Plum, by author Les Roberts. • Plum Island and the facility there figure prominently in the 2014 horror novel, The Montauk Monster, by Hunter Shea, in which a bizarre carcass found on a beach in 2008 is an early version of vicious creatures now terrifying the Montauk community. • The Plum Island facility is mentioned in the television show Emergence as the takeoff point for a flight that crashes in Southold, New York. In reality, this would be impossible, as there are no airstrips on Plum Island. ==References==