FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:
Heather Larson
Hammersmark Books
Phone: 712-363-1917
heatherlarson@smunet.net
Disaster Novel Comes to Life for US Author
Hartley, Ia. -- Aug. 5, 2007 -- When the ringing phone woke author Kate Iola Sunday morning, she heard a horrific scene from her agroterrorism novel: "It's back, Kate, it's back. It's FMD, an FMD outbreak."
The only good news: FMD, or foot-and-mouth disease, subject of Iola's 2006 thriller, Deadstock, wasn't in the US...yet.
Unfortunately, the Sunday morning caller was right. An FMD outbreak was confirmed Saturday in the UK, where the most recent outbreak, in 2001, lasted a year and cost over $15 billion.
"I hadn't heard the news," says Iola. "I was on a photo shoot Saturday, shooting for a commodities calendar I produce."
In the US, the explosively contagious FMD virus would devastate agriculture and rock the commodities markets. With no FMD outbreak in the US since 1929, no preventative vaccine, and little public awareness about the need for extreme control measures--including quarantines, export bans, and mass livestock slaughter--the US is much more vulnerable than the UK. FMD is considered the most contagious virus known; it has been proven to travel 35 miles or more by wind, and can survive a month in mud or manure. It is produced by every fluid of an infected animal, including milk, and could survive an international plane ride on wet muddy boots.
And FMD is officially major bad news: It is illegal to have the FMD virus, classified as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, anywhere in the US other than the high security national FMD lab, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, on a mile-square island off the shores of Long Island, New York.
"It's an economic virus," says Iola. "It's not about 'those poor farmers, boo hoo' or 'some sick cows.' It's about disruption, long-term and possibly permanent disruption, of a major US economic engine. Our ag economy is ten times the size of that in the UK. And we have a record wild deer population that could become a permanent host for the FMD virus."
In her novel--caution: spoiler ahead--a savvy con man takes advantage of the US vulnerability to FMD and makes tremendous profits on the commodities markets before disappearing into the night.
In the UK, the bad news this weekend was bad enough, and not fiction: The UK outbreak was only four miles from the UK national FMD laboratory, Pirbright. The strain of highly-infectious FMD virus found at the infected sites hadn't been seen in the wild for years, but had been used at Pirbright and a nearby vaccine plant within the month.
"How ironic," says Iola. "There's a campaign underway in the US to move our own national FMD lab, Plum Island, to the mainland. There's a reason we put our FMD lab on a remote island 50 years ago, as inconvenient and expensive as that is. The Plum Island lab leaked once, in 1978, and nothing got off the island. I bet the UK wishes Pirbright and the vaccine plant were on an island. It'll be interesting to see what kind of liability issues come up now, as well."
Early this year, the Department of Homeland Security, which had recently taken control of the USDA's isolated Plum Island lab, announced they were taking bids to move the facility to the mainland. The new facility, the NBAF, or National Bio- and Agrodefense Facility, would be the new national FMD lab, and host other disease work as well.
Universities and economic development groups around the country jumped at the chance to host the federal facility--and the well-paying jobs it would generate. The list of NBAF contenders was narrowed recently to five:
Flora Industrial Park, Madison County, Miss.
· Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan.
· Texas Research Park, San Antonio, Texas
· Umstead Research Farm, Granville County, N.C.
· University of Georgia/South Milledge Ave., Athens, GA
All five sites are in major livestock production areas. However, no economic risk assessment is planned as part of the NBAF site selection process.
When dealing with explosively contagious FMD, the risks are high.
"It may not be a huge security breach," says a UK microbiologist in one news story about the UK FMD leak. "It may just be one incident which let a puff of virus out."
Iola agrees. "Maybe the 2007 UK outbreak will give Homeland Security some data about what can happen when you have an FMD lab on the mainland," she says. "When I got to visit Plum Island last year, going through all the security, riding the ferry to the island, showing my ID to the armed guards, I kept thinking, 'thank goodness we have this place.' Of course, that's why I blew it up. In the novel, I mean. They forgave me. We all want my book to stay fiction, just a story."
Meanwhile, Iola keeps her phone close. The number: 1-712-FMD-FMMD.
MEDIA NOTE: Information and 300 dpi images are available at www.kateiola.com or
Contact: Heather Larson, heatherlarson@smunet.net, Phone: 712-363-1917.
More information:
Kate Iola and novel Deadstock:
http://www.kateiola.com
UK's national FMD lab, Pirbright (the BBSRC Institute for Animal Health, Pirbright Laboratory):
http://www.iah.bbsrc.ac.uk/info/labs.HTM#pirbright
the UK agriculture agency DEFRA (the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/latest/2007/animal-0803.htm
the US national FMD lab, Plum Island (the DHS/USDA Plum Island Animal Disease Center):
http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=19400000
NBAF, the National Bio- and Agrodefense Facility:
http://www.dhs.gov/xres/labs/editorial_0762.shtm
FMD news database and mailing list, a UC Davis service:
http://fmd.ucdavis.edu/index.php?id=1
US FMD modeling and livestock survey:
http://cadms.ucdavis.edu/adm/index.php?id=2
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