A foot and mouth outbreak in Britain has brought into suspicion pharmaceutical company Merial which produces vaccine for the disease.
Merial researches and manufactures animal vaccines, andshares the Pirbright site with the government's Institute for Animal Health (IAH). It has been established that the strain of the highly contagious virus found in the infected cattle was held by both organisations and was used in a vaccine batch manufactured by Merial on July 16.
Both the IAH and Merial insisted yesterday that they had good biosecurity procedures, which had not been breached.
IAH director Martin Shirley said: "In addition to general checks on biosecurity, which have shown no breaches of our procedures, we have been able to check our records specifically for use of this strain. Our results have shown limited use within the lab within the past four weeks."
Merial also insisted that it was innocent of any wrongdoing. "Our centre operates to the very highest international standards, and we insist on stringent adherence to processes and procedures for health, safety and environmental protection, quality control, quality assurance and regulatory compliance," it said.
Last night, the company's managing director, David Biland, said: "We have been operating from this site for 15 years and during that time have produced hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. In all that time we have never had a breach in our biosecurity."
Production of the vaccine has been stopped immediately and a 10 kilometre exclusion zone has been set up which encompasses the farm where 64 cows were infected as well as the production facility.
Guardian
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