And The Winner Is? (foot and mouth disease)

Yea for Kansas. Looks like they are the lucky winners to be the home of the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Lab.

The federal government is recommending a site in Kansas over sites in North Carolina and elsewhere for a new $450 million laboratory to study biological threats such as anthrax and contagious animal diseases, a Kansas senator's office said Wednesday.

This new lab is to replace the Plum Island Animal Disease Lab, off Long Island, in New York State. Seems like a great idea to me to start studying very contagious animal diseases like foot and mouth disease and anthrax in the middle of the continental USA rather than out on an island. Even stranger, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Congressional law stipulates live foot-and-mouth disease virus cannot be studied on the mainland USA.

Why are they replacing the Plum Island facility? Well, it's too old. That begs the question of why they can't modernize it.