Biosecurity Research Symposium highlights work of the NBAF

Earlier this week, the Biosecurity Research Symposium was held in Kansas City. As part of the conference, the work of the NBAF and the Biosecurity Research Institute (BRI) at K-State was highlighted. One of the reasons that Manhattan is such a good fit for the NBAF is because of the work that has already begun at the BRI to protect the American food supply and agriculture economy.

Check out the article here.
“Their names seemed to be pulled out of a science-fiction novel: Rift Valley Fever, exotic blue tongue, Chinese porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome.

“But on Monday at the Biosecurity Research Symposium in Kansas City, Mo., animal researchers warned that those viruses were a very real threat to national security.

“They could arrive by animal or terrorist, cost the livestock industry billions of dollars and put human lives at risk.

“And, one day soon, many of those diseases could come to Kansas as researchers study ways to prevent, diagnose and protect against them.

“That research will take place in high-security labs at Kansas State University’s Biosecurity Research Institute, which is now working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to gain approval to study some of those diseases.

“That lab’s work will prepare for the arrival of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a $650 million project that will be operational in Manhattan in the next decade.

“Right now the country doesn’t have a facility that can study the most dangerous biological agents on animals. That will change with NBAF.

“The work done in these laboratories protects the country, said Larry Barrett, who is the director of Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the aging facility in Long Island, N.Y., that NBAF will replace.

“People think we are the threat. But the threat is the 50 million people coming into the country that could be bringing other diseases in,” he said…”