A committee of the National Research Council visited Kansas State University Friday to get a feel for safety concerns for a giant biosafety lab planned for the Manhattan, Kan., campus.
The site designated to become the home of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF, is on the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.
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Plum Island Animal Disease Center, located off Long Island, was the first lab in the U.S. to study Foot & Mouth Disease and other dangerous pathogens. After 9/11, it was deemed "too old and decaying" to serve its purpose.
It’s been three years since the Department of Homeland Security chose Kansas as the site of its National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF, but there’s a growing sense that the project has a precarious future.
Kansas won a fierce three-year competition last week for a multi-million dollar laboratory designed to replace the facility on Plum Island off New York. The new biosecurity lab will study contagious and untreatable pathogens and look for vaccines.
K-State will open a high-level Biosecurity Research Institute and has brought on new faculty to enhance chances to attract a multi-million dollar agro-terrorism facility.