For Plum Island, see Plum Island (New York).

DHS logo

Buildings 100 and 101 on Plum Island

Established 1954

Budget $16.5 million

Field of research

Foreign animal diseases

biological warfare (until 1969)

Director Dr. Larry Barrett

Location

Plum Island, New York, U.S.

Operating agency United States Department of Homeland Security

Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) is a United States federal research facility dedicated to the study of foreign animal diseases of livestock. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security Directorate for Science and Technology, and operates as a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.^[1] The facility's director is Dr. Larry Barrett.^[2]

Since 1954, the center has been tasked with protecting America's livestock from animal diseases. During the Cold War, a secret biological weapons program targeting livestock was conducted at the site, which ended in 1969 when President Nixon declared an end to the United States' offensive bioweapons program. Today the facility maintains laboratories up to biosafety level 3, but has remained controversial as a result of its high risk work and proximity to the New York metropolitan area.

The facility is slated for closure in 2023, with work moving to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility under construction in Manhattan, Kansas.

Location[edit]

See also: Plum Island (New York)

The center is located on Plum Island near the northeast coast of Long Island in New York state. During the Spanish–American War, the island was purchased by the government for the construction of Fort Terry, which was later deactivated after World War II and then reactivated in 1952 for the Army Chemical Corps. The center comprises 70 buildings (many of them dilapidated) on 840 acres (3.4 km²).^[3][4] Plum Island has its own fire department, power plant, water treatment plant and security.^[3][4] Any wild mammal seen on the island is killed to prevent the possible transmission of foot and mouth disease.^[3] However, as Plum Island was named an important bird area by the New York Audubon Society, it has attracted different birds. Plum Island has placed osprey nests and bluebird boxes throughout the island. As of 2008, new kestrelhouses were planned to be added.^[5]

History[edit]

In response to disease outbreaks in Mexico and Canada in 1954, the US Army gave the island to the Agriculture Department to establish a research center dedicated to the study of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.^[3]

The island was opened to news media for the first time in 1992.^[4] In 1995, the Department of Agriculture was issued a $111,000 fine for storing hazardous chemicals on the island.^[4]

Local Long Island activists prevented the center from expanding to include diseases that affect humans in 2000, which would require a Biosafety Level 4 designation; in 2002, the US Congress again considered the plan.^[3]

The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2002 that many scientists and government officials wanted the lab to close, believing that the threat of foot-and-mouth disease was so remote that the center did not merit its $16.5 million annual budget.^[3] In 2002, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center was transferred from the United States Department of Agriculture to the United States Department of Homeland Security.

In 2003, a whistleblower who voiced concerns about safety at the facility was fired by the contractor he worked for. He had discussed his concerns with aides to Senator Hillary Clinton.^[6] A National Labor Relations Board judge found that the contractor, North Fork Services, had discriminated against the whistleblower.^[6]

In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security plan to put the island up for auction after the conclusion of laboratory activities in 2023 was blocked by Congress. As part of ongoing COVID-19 pandemic relief legislation, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York negotiated a provision in the CARES Act that protects the island from being sold. Environmentalists had opposed the sale of the island because of its extensive wildlife habitats. After the final draft of the legislation was announced, Schumer said “It would have been a grave mistake to sell and develop Plum Island’s 840-acres of habitat, which is home to many endangered species, that’s why preventing the unnecessary sale requirement was a top priority of these negotiations."^[7]

Replacement facility[edit]

See also: National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility

On September 11, 2005, DHS announced that the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center will be replaced by a new federal facility. The location of the new high-security animal disease lab, called the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), is being built in Manhattan, Kansas.^[8]

NBAF site development before construction in 2013

The plan was controversial almost immediately when it was unveiled, following a cost assessment by DHS and prime contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in which the agency determined that the cost of maintaining or moving the facility would be comparable.

Those conclusions, as well as claims about the safety of the facility proposed were called into question several times, first by a 2009 Government Accountability Office study, which stated that claims by DHS that the work on foot and mouth disease performed on Plum Island can be performed "as safely on the mainland" is "not supported" by evidence.^[9]

In 2012, DHS completed a risk assessment of the Kansas site that called the proposed facility "safe and secure".^[10] In response, a 2012 review of the risk assessment by the National Research Council called it "seriously flawed".^[11]

Despite controversy, the new facility is nearing completion, and transfer of laboratory contents from Plum Island to NBAF is to be complete by 2023. The USDA has named former director of Canada's Centers for Animal Disease Dr. Alfonso Clavijo as the director of the new facility.

Activities[edit]

PIADC's mission can be grouped into three main categories: diagnosis, research, and education.^{[citation needed]}

Since 1971, PIADC has been educating veterinarians in foreign animal diseases. The center hosts several Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic schools each year to train federal and state veterinarians and laboratory diagnostic staff, military veterinarians and veterinary school faculty.

At PIADC, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) work together; DHS' Targeted Advanced Development unit partners with USDA, academia and industry scientists to deliver vaccines and antivirals to the USDA for licensure and inclusion in the USDA National Veterinary Vaccine Stockpile.^{[citation needed]}

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) performs basic and applied research to better formulate countermeasures against foreign animal diseases, including strategies for prevention, control and recovery. ARS focuses on developing faster-acting vaccines and antivirals to be used during outbreaks to limit or stop transmission. Antivirals prevent infection while vaccine immunity develops. The principal diseases studied are foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever, and vesicular stomatitis virus.

USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) operates the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, an internationally recognized^{[citation needed]} facility performing diagnostic testing of samples collected from U.S. livestock. APHIS also tests animals and animal products being imported into the U.S. APHIS maintains the North American Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine Bank at PIADC and hosts the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnosticians training program, offering several classes per year to train veterinarians to recognize foreign animal diseases.

Research on biological weapons at PIADC ceased when the United States Biological Warfare program was ended in 1969 by President Richard Nixon.^[12]

Biological weapons research[edit]

The original anti-animal biological weapons mission was "to establish and pursue a program of research and development of certain anti-animal (BW) agents".^[13] By August 1954 animals occupied holding areas at Plum Island and research was ongoing within Building 257.^[14] The USDA facility, known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, continued work on biological warfare research until the U.S. program was ended by Richard Nixon in 1969.^[12] The bio-weapons research at Building 257 and Fort Terry was shrouded in aura of mystery and secrecy.^[15][16] The existence of biological warfare experiments on Plum Island during the Cold War era was denied for decades by the U.S. government. In 1993 Newsday unearthed documents proving otherwise and in 1994, Russian scientists inspected the Plum Island research facility to verify that these experiments had indeed ended.^[16]

Diseases studied and outbreaks[edit]

As a diagnostic facility, PIADC scientists study more than 40 foreign animal diseases, including classical swine fever and African swine fever.^[3] PIADC runs about 30,000 diagnostic tests each year. PIADC operates Biosafety Level 3 Agriculture (BSL-3Ag), BSL-3 and BSL-2 laboratory facilities. The facility's research program includes developing diagnostic tools and biologicals for foot-and-mouth disease and other diseases of livestock.^[3]

Because federal law stipulates that live foot-and-mouth disease virus cannot be studied on the mainland, PIADC is unique in that it is currently the only laboratory in the U.S. equipped with research facilities that permit the study of foot-and-mouth disease.^[17]

Foot-and-mouth disease is extremely contagious among cloven-hooved animals, and people who have come in contact with it can carry it to animals.^[6] Accidental outbreaks of the virus have caused catastrophic livestock and economic losses in many countries throughout the world. Plum Island has experienced outbreaks of its own, including one in 1978 in which the disease was released to animals outside the center, and two incidents in 2004 in which foot-and-mouth disease was released within the center.^[6] Foot-and-mouth disease was eradicated from the U.S. in 1929 (with the exception of the stocks within the Plum Island center)^[3] but is currently endemic to many parts of the world.

In response to the two 2004 incidents, New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Congressman Tim Bishop wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security regarding their concerns about the center's safety: "We urge you to immediately investigate these alarming breaches at the highest levels, and to keep us apprised of all developments."^[6]

In 2012, two researchers at the facility, Dr. John Neilan and Dr. Michael Puckette, developed the first Foot-and-mouth disease vaccine which does not require live virus cultures in the manufacturing process, allowing vaccine development to occur safely and legally on U.S. mainland for the first time.^[18]

Historic buildings[edit]

Building 257[edit]

Main article: Building 257

Building 257, located at Fort Terry, was completed around 1911. The original purpose of the building was to store weapons, such as mines, and the structure was designated as the Combined Torpedo Storehouse and Cable Tanks building.^[19] Fort Terry went through a period of activations and deactivations through World War II until the U.S. Army Chemical Corps took over the facility in 1952 for use in anti-animal biological warfare (BW) research. The conversion of Fort Terry to a BW facility required the remodeling of Building 257 and other structures.^[12] As work neared completion on the lab and other facilities in the spring of 1954, the mission of Fort Terry changed.^[14] Construction was completed on the facilities on May 26, 1954, but Fort Terry was officially transferred to the USDA on July 1, 1954. At the time, scientists from the Bureau of Animal Industry were already working in Building 257.

Building 101[edit]

The structure is a 164,000-square-foot (15,200 m²) T-shaped white building.^[14] It is situated on Plum Island's northwest plateau on a 10-acre (40,000 m²) site where it is buttressed by a steep cliff which leads into the ocean.^[14] To the east of the building's site is the old Plum Island Lighthouse.^[14]

Construction on Plum Island's new laboratory Building 101 began around July 1, 1954, around the same time that the Army's anti-animal bio-warfare (BW) facilities at Fort Terry were transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.^[19] Following the transfer, the facilities on Plum Island became known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.^[19] The USDA's $7.7. million^[14] Building 101 laboratory facility was dedicated on September 26, 1956.^[19] Prior to the building's opening the area around it was sprayed with chemicals to deter insect or animal life from approaching the facility.^[14] Upon its opening a variety of tests using pathogens and vectors were conducted on animals in the building.^[14] Research on biological weapons at PIADC did not cease until the entire program was canceled in 1969 by Richard Nixon.^[12]

A modernization program in 1977 aimed to update both Building 101 and another laboratory, Building 257, but the program was canceled in 1979 because of construction contract irregularities.^[19] PIADC facilities were essentially unchanged until a new modernization began in 1990.^[19] Two-thirds of the laboratory facilities inside Building 101 were renovated and operations from Building 257 were consolidated into Building 101.^[19] Building 257 was closed, and a major expansion, known as Building 100, was completed on Building 101 in 1995.^[19] According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Building 257 currently poses no health hazard.^[15]

Controversy[edit]

Conspiracy theories[edit]

Prolific but unfounded conspiracy theories have alleged that Lyme disease, first documented in nearby Lyme, Connecticut, was a biological weapon which originated in the Plum Island laboratory.^[20] A discredited 2004 book entitled Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory fueled the conspiracy theories.^[15][21] Archived specimens show that Lyme disease was endemic well before the establishment of Plum Island laboratory.^[20] Additionally, Lyme disease was never a topic of research at Plum Island, according to the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Agriculture. ^[22][15]

On July 12, 2008, a creature dubbed the Montauk Monster washed ashore at Ditch Plains Beach near the business district of Montauk, New York. The creature, a quadruped of indeterminate size, was dead when discovered, and was assumed by some to have come from Plum Island as a result of the currents and proximity to the mainland. Palaeozoologist Darren Naish studied the photograph and concluded from visible dentition and the front paws that the creature may have been a raccoon.^[23] This was also the opinion of Larry Penny, the East Hampton Natural Resources Director.^[24]

Terrorism[edit]

When American educated Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, a suspected al-Qaeda member, was captured in Afghanistan in July 2008, she had in her handbag handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" that listed various U.S. locations, including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.^[25] In February 2010, she was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill U.S. servicemembers and FBI agents who sought to interrogate her.

In popular culture[edit]

• Plum Island and PIADC are the subject of a fictional murder-mystery novel, Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille. DeMille has said, "How could anthrax not be studied there? Every animal has it." While addressing popular culture fears of a germ warfare lab at Plum Island, overall, the facility is presented as doing the job described by the Federal Government—research into animal diseases that would either decimate our national livestock or jump to humans and decimate us. The novel portrays the investigation into the murder of two Plum Island scientists. The motive, initially thought to be germs for terrorists or germs for a biotech company, is really the search for the lost treasure of Captain Kidd, who sailed the waters around Long Island prior to his capture. Kidd's treasure has never been found.

• Plum Island is also referred to in the 1991 psychological thriller The Silence of the Lambs, when the character of Hannibal Lecter is offered a transfer to a different psychiatric institution, as well as the promise of annual week-long supervised furlough to Plum Island, in exchange for his assistance in helping the FBI locate the whereabouts of the missing daughter of a prominent US Senator. It is later revealed in the film that the offer is bogus in the first place, used only as a ruse to elicit Lecter's cooperation.

• The Plum Island facility served as the inspiration for the Mount Dragon research facility in the 1996 techno-thriller Mount Dragon, written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

• The testing facility at Plum Island is the subject of a novel, The Poison Plum, by author Les Roberts.^[26]

• Plum Island and the facility there figure prominently in the 2014 horror novel, The Montauk Monster, by Hunter Shea, in which a bizarre carcass found on a beach in 2008 is an early version of vicious creatures now terrifying the Montauk community.

• The Plum Island facility is mentioned in the television show Emergence as the take off point for a flight that crashes in Southold, New York. This is impossible, as there are no airstrips on Plum Island.

Further reading[edit]

• The Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory (1956)

• U.S. General Accounting Office. (2003). Combating bioterrorism: actions needed to improve security at Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Washington, D.C.: Author.

• U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2005). Plum Island Animal Disease Center: DHS and USDA are successfully coordinating current work, but long-term plans are being assessed: report to congressional committees. Washington, D.C.: Author.

• U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2007). Plum Island Animal Disease Center: DHS has made significant progress implementing security recommendations, but several recommendations remain open. Washington, D.C.: Author.

• U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2008). High-containment biosafety laboratories: DHS lacks evidence to conclude that foot-and-mouth disease research can be done safely on the U.S. mainland: testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.: Author.

• U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2009). Biological research: observations on DHS's analyses concerning whether FMD research can be done as safely on the mainland as on Plum Island: report to congressional committees. Washington, D.C.: Author.

• U.S. House of Representatives. (2008). Germs, viruses, and secrets: government plans to move exotic disease research to the mainland United States: hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, one hundred tenth congress, second session, May 22, 2008. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Alarmed at what the Clinton Administration views as the growing threat of biological terrorism to America's food supply, the Agriculture Department is seeking money to turn the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, one mile off Long Island, into a top security laboratory where some of the most dangerous diseases known to man or beast can be studied.

The Agriculture Department already operates here at Plum Island, just across Gardiners Bay from the wealthy Hamptons, a laboratory where such dreaded foreign animal diseases as foot-and-mouth and African swine fever are examined. But the department is seeking $75 million this year and $140 million over the next two years to upgrade the center to handle even more dangerous animal diseases that can affect humans.

While there are four civilian and military laboratories in America equipped to study such diseases -- technically known as Biosafety Level Four facilities -- their work is focused on germs that primarily affect humans, not domestic animals or plants.

Officials say the proposed expansion and upgrading of Plum Island is part of a new effort by the Clinton Administration to deter terrorists who might spread germs to destroy American crops or livestock for political purposes or financial gain, a threat they now see as equal to that of terrorist attacks aimed at people.

''Given the contribution of crop and animal exports to the nation's prosperity, we must do far more to protect our plant and animal resources,'' said Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican and co-author of legislation in 1991 and 1996 that provided money to bolster defenses against unconventional terrorism and stop the proliferation of such weapons.

''This is not about food per se; Americans would not go hungry if we were attacked,'' said Floyd P. Horn, the administrator of the Agricultural Research Service, who helped persuade the Administration to include his agency in January in its counter-terrorism plans and programs. ''But such an attack, or even a credible threat, would severely disrupt America's economic and social infrastructure for weeks, if not months or years.''

Plum Island, which was once operated by the United States Army Chemical Corps, was designated as an animal-disease research center and transferred to the Agriculture Department in the early 1950's. It is already what scientists call an agricultural ''Biosafety Level Three'' center, which means that its containment areas, which hold germs dangerous to animals, have filtered air, sealed doors and negative air pressure that prevents germs from leaking out of the labs. Liquid waste is decontaminated.

All who enter the labs wear white lab coats and slippers. After leaving the containment areas, they are required to shower, shampoo their hair, scrub their nails and rinse their mouths, since lethal germs can live in human throats and infect animals up to two days later. To stop viruses or microbes from escaping to the mainland, no clothing or articles, even eyeglasses, are permitted to leave the labs without being soaked in disinfectant, said Dr. Alfonso Torres, the deputy administrator of the Agriculture Department's Veterinary Services Division and former director of the center, who conducted this reporter on a tour.

The building's perimeter is also tightly guarded. While Dr. Torres declined to discuss specific security measures, the shores of this pork-chop-shaped, 840-acre island are said by Federal officials to be monitored by electronic sensors and patrolled by boats and helicopters. Once a year, deer and other animals that have swum across to the island are killed in what island officials call a controlled hunt.

Despite an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease on the island in 1978, which led Plum scientists to abandon their holding areas for large animals, ''there has never been a leak of a dangerous pathogens to the mainland from Plum Island,'' Dr. Torres said.

Moving to the next level of bio safety would require that scientists working with dangerous pathogens wear the protective decontaminated suits portrayed in movies like ''Outbreak,'' and breathe only filtered air pumped into their hoods. Such precautions would allow scientists to work with even more dangerous animal pathogens that can affect humans, like the Hendra virus, which afflicts horses, and the Nipah pig virus, named for the Malaysian village in which it was first isolated this year. The virus has already killed more than 100 people.

''We intend to work closely with local officials and community groups to allay any concerns about safety,'' said Dr. Horn, who acknowledges that Plum Island has long been shrouded in mystery and plagued by what he and Dr. Torres call unfounded rumors and fears.

The 850-acre island was opened to news organizations only in 1992 in response to concerns about safety at the center. In 1995, the Department of Agriculture was fined $111,000 for illegally storing hazardous chemicals here. Since then, the agency has changed the contractor who operates the island, and there have been no violations.

The extent of the threat posed by agro-terrorism remains in dispute, even within the Clinton Administration. Some scientists and terrorism analysts argue that there is little reason to believe that terrorists would attack American agriculture or livestock.

But intelligence reports increasingly conclude that several countries, including Iraq, have developed germs to attack the food supplies of their adversaries. And senior American officials now believe that an outbreak of screwworm, a parasite that afflicts animals and people, was spread deliberately 14 years ago in Mexico less than 50 miles from the Texas border by workers who were employed in a screwworm eradication program and feared the loss of their jobs.

Although no one was ever arrested or charged in the incident, John Wyss, an Agriculture Department veteran of 25 years who supervised the project from Washington, said that the agency's investigations showed that the outbreak, given its nature and location, had to have been deliberate.

In recent interviews in Russia and Kazakhstan, former Soviet scientists also disclosed that they had developed weapons specifically aimed at crops and livestock. Sadigappar Mamadaliyev, the director of the Scientific Agricultural Research Institute, now in the Republic of Kazakhstan, said that in Soviet times, his was one of four centers dedicated to developing lethal germs as weapons against foreign crops and animals.

''The Soviets here concentrated on cow and sheep pox and blue tongue,'' he said. ''We also cooperated closely with the All-Russian Institute of Animal Health in Vladimir, Russia, which worked on foot-and-mouth disease, and with the Pokrov Institute of Veterinary Virology, which specialized in African swine and horse fevers.''

Dr. Mamadaliyev said he had more than 200 strains of dangerous animal pathogens at his institute, whose former scientific staff of 150 has shrunk by half from budget cuts and which is struggling to survive.

There were more than 10,000 Russians working on plant and animal pathogens in the former Soviet germ warfare program, said Ken Alibek, a senior germ researcher who defected to the United States in 1992 and who recently wrote a book, ''BioHazard'' (Random House), in which he describes the vast scale and depth of the Soviet Union's illegal germ offensive warfare program. Many of those scientists are now without jobs.

Several Russian scientists said that Iranians had recently visited their institutes, some offering huge salaries to work in Teheran and specifically expressing interest in research on animal and plant microbes.

Fueled by growing concern about the proliferation of such expertise and such dangerous germs, President Clinton ordered the Government last year to prepare defenses against germ and other unconventional attacks on the nation's plants and animals. In January, Dr. Horn recruited four former Pentagon intelligence analysts and terrorism experts to form the Agricultural Research Services' first unit to evaluate such threats. In April, the White House formally included the Agriculture Department in the group of agencies that meet regularly under National Security Council aegis to weigh plans to deter or respond to unconventional terrorism, a $2.8 billion effort.

At a public meeting in September in Washington, Dr. Horn discussed his concern about the nation's growing vulnerability to agro-terrorism, mentioning his desire to upgrade Plum Island and make it a centerpiece of the Government's effort to protect the nation's food supply.

Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, plans to hold hearings on agro-terrorism in October that will explore the Administration's plans for Plum Island.

Plum Island has 300 employees, 60 of whom are scientists, 70 buildings, many of them closed or deteriorating, independent power and water treatment plants, and a fleet of four boats. Dr. Torres calls the $14.5 million that the Government spends a year on Plum Island a ''small investment'' in the nation's food security given the $140 billion earned from commodities exports.

As disease after disease has been eradicated, Dr. Torres said, Washington has reduced the budget for veterinary services, which now stands at $116 million a year. Yet demand keeps growing. Agriculture scientists now conduct about 500 investigations of foreign animal diseases a year, more than half of them in birds brought back to the country by the millions of American travelers each year. ''Our emergency response systems are becoming very, very thin,'' Dr. Torres said.

David R. Franz, a vice president of the Southern Research Institute and former director of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a Biosafety Level Four center, maintains that recent changes in the structure of American agriculture have heightened vulnerability. Increased trade and international travel, reduced genetic diversity in farm animals and the high concentration of animals in yards have increased the risk that highly infectious diseases will emerge and spread, ''be they naturally or deliberately introduced, '' Dr. Franz said.

The changing nature of terrorism also heightens the threat, says Thomas W. Frazier, president of a consortium of private companies called GenCon.

''There are now hundreds of attacks a year on agricultural targets in the United States, Canada and Britain as a form of violent protest by extremist environmental protection or animal rights groups,'' he said. Plus, the nation's intelligence analysts expect increased assaults by state-sponsored bioterrorists, militant religious cults and other extremist groups on such targets as food and agriculture.

The largest animal disease outbreak in America in recent history, wrote Corrie Brown, the head of the pathology department at the University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine, was one caused by avian influenza that erupted in Pennsylvania some 15 years ago. A deadly viral variant spread quickly, prompting Agriculture officials to kill all exposed chickens at a cost of $63 million to the Federal Government. Economists estimated that had they not been killed, the cost to United States agriculture would have been as high as $5.6 billion. Even so, Dr. Brown concluded, the six-month outbreak caused poultry prices to rise by $349 million.

IN a high-security laboratory suite at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Dr. Luis Rodriguez, a microbiologist, was explaining the ''layer upon layer of precautions'' that researchers took to contain the highly infectious animal viruses they study.

After samples of infected animal tissue arrive inside air-tight transfer boxes, Dr. Rodriguez explained, they go into a specially designed cabinet with an elaborate air-filtering system.

Donning a surgical smock and snapping on protective gloves, Dr. Rodriguez reached inside the cabinet, moving with all the care of an explosives expert disarming a bomb.

Every instrument, cleanser and container he would need was meticulously laid out so his hands could stay inside until he was done working with vials and bottles that might have contained virus samples. ''Everything you do requires planning,'' he said.

And then, as he walked away from the cabinet, he dropped one of the bottles.

There was no harm done. The bottle was closed and empty, and should have withstood the short fall in any case. Even if a virus had escaped, the negative pressure in the room, and indeed throughout the entire biocontainment area of the Plum Island center, would have captured any contaminated air and routed it into the lab's air-filtering system.

But still, as the bottle clattered to the floor it sounded a reminder that even in the most careful hands, accidents do happen, and that even in the most controlled environment, uncontrollable events may occur.

As the federal Agriculture Department considers whether to seek congressional approval to make the 45-year-old Plum Island center the only government laboratory in the country to study extremely virulent animal diseases that can also kill humans, questions of safety and security are suddenly looming large.

The department and its highest-ranking experts have said that an animal disease center with labs that have the highest security rating, biosafety level four, are an absolute necessity for combating viruses that could attack cattle, pigs, sheep and other domestic herds, with the potential to devastate the country's $90 billion livestock industry.

Some of the diseases -- the kind scientists call zoonotic -- can also spread to humans with lethal effects, making them a double threat if they were used in a bioterrorist assault.

Fears of bioterrorism prompted the Clinton Administration to direct the Agricultural Department and other agencies to take steps to protect the country, and changes at Plum island could be part of the response.

Because Plum Island is now rated at biosafety level three for studying foreign animal viruses, the department has made no secret that the island is its first choice for the level four labs.

As the wheels begin turning, critics are already questioning the wisdom of importing viruses for which there are no known cures to an island off crowded Long Island and 95 miles from Manhattan.

Robert S. DeLuca, the president of the Group for the South Fork, said the level four labs were a remarkably bad idea for an island less than 15 miles from the Millstone nuclear power complex in Waterford, Conn., in the path of hurricanes and in an area of Long Island that could not be evacuated in an emergency.

''Short of being on a geological fault, I don't think you could find a worse place,'' he said.

In anticipation of such criticism, the seldom-visited laboratory invited local officials and members of the news media for a tour earlier this month to learn more about the 840-acre island fortress, which is ringed with signs warning away intruders. Even before arriving on one of the laboratory's boats, from Orient Point or Old Saybrook, Conn., the visitors had been told they had to be prepared to strip naked before entering a realm of inner-sanctum labs and animal pens, to shower thoroughly upon exiting and to sign an oath promising to avoid all animals except domestic dogs and cats for five days.

In the lobby of the lab's main research building, displays posted on the crisp white walls told, among other things, of the center's genesis in the 1950's as the country's front line against foot-and-mouth disease, a disaster for American cattle herds in the 1920's and still a problem in the world today.

In a spacious conference room, Wilda Martinez, the area director for the Animal Research Service, one of two Agriculture Department agencies at Plum Island, extended a welcome but minced no words.

Recent news reports, she said, have been inaccurate in their details, and have blurred the reasons the level four labs are needed. ''Bioterrorism aside,'' she said, ''it is apparent that the protection afforded by ocean barriers and geographic separation will no longer prevent the introduction of foreign animal diseases.''

Dr. Alfonso Torres, a native of Colombia and the deputy administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the other Agriculture Department agency at Plum Island, followed with a slide lecture intended to leave no doubt about the importance of the lab in protecting agriculture, the county's largest industry.

[Dr. Peter Keith Murray (born 1946)], the director of the Animal Research Service national animal disease center in Ames, Iowa, said Plum Island was already equipped to protect the public from exposure from even so dangerous a virus as the Nipah virus. That virus, hitherto unknown, spread among domestic swine in Malaysia, and then to farmers and farm workers. More than 250 people died and millions of swine were slaughtered to eradicate the outbreak, he said.

[Dr. Peter Keith Murray (born 1946)], a former head of what is now the world's only level four animal disease lab near the Australian city of Geelong, said the Nipah virus could be studied now in level three labs at Plum Island without endangering the public because lab safety systems would prevent the virus from ''escaping into the environment.''

But safety level three was ''not good enough,'' he said, to protect the laboratory's staff of 14 research scientists and more than 160 other employees, and therein lay the need for the upgrade to level four.

Researchers and others working with viruses in level four labs wear so-called ''space suits'' that are connected to external air supplies. The suits are not required in level three labs.

[Dr. Peter Keith Murray (born 1946)] and others said the need for the level four labs had been urgent and obvious for some time. ''Nobody is sure why, and there's a lot of speculation, but we are encountering more and more of these new diseases over the past 15 years,'' said Dr. Murray, citing the Nipah virus and mad cow disease in England as examples.

''Frankly, given the nature of emerging threats from around the world and here at home, it is very clear that U.S.D.A. must have access to BSL4 facilities,'' he said. ''We're all here today because of the talk Plum Island might be that site.''

With that, and following a safety lecture by a Plum Island safety officer, Thomas Sawicki, men and women on the tour entered separate locker rooms to strip down for a naked walk into the biocontainment area.

There, the visitors were issued underwear, socks, Nike footwear and one-time-use filmy white Tyvek suits. Scientists and staff, who had been clad in jackets and ties or skirts and pant suits in the conference room, reappeared in informal attire including mechanic's jump suits and hospital-style tunics.

Group by group, the press contingent made the rounds through rooms and corridors that few outsiders ever see.

Among the most jarring were the pens where horses, hogs and sheep that arrived disease-free on the island are infected with viruses to study the result. A forlorn pig foraged behind a thick glass window in one of the sealed pens.

The animal supervisor, Jeff Babcock, ushered visitors into an empty pen with a floor drain. The metal door opened with a hiss as an air gasket sealing it deflated, revealing a barren, perfectly spotless cement room. A pair of ear plugs on a table told of conditions when the pen was occupied. About 250 large animals are brought to the lab each year. None leave.

Mr. Babcock said the animals met a common end: Death by a pistol bullet or drug overdose. Carcasses, dung and bedding are burned, and the ashes burned again, in specially designed double-chamber incinerators that vent, ultimately, to the atmosphere after extensive filtering.

Dr. Douglas Moore, a tour group leader and microbiologist, said there was no risk to the public from air emissions. ''If anything escaped, it would be diluted to such an extent that it would not be considered a risk,'' he said.

The lab has its own drinking wells, oil storage tanks and sewer treatment plant. Under a state permit, it can dump 60,000 gallons of effluent into Long Island Sound each day. Now the lab is planning to build a five-megawatt power plant to rid itself of dependence on mainland power and its backup generators.

In an eerie birth-and-death sequence, visitors enter the biocontainment area naked and empty-handed and depart the same way. Even notes are left, to be faxed out from within.

All else that is to be removed or disposed of is baked in autoclaves or incinerated, treated in caustic baths, fumigated with formaldehyde or otherwise scoured or disinfected to kill any living cell.

The lab also says it pays close attention to what comes into the lab, and how.

On the tour Carmen Farrugia, a lab employee involved with shipping and receiving, demonstrated how viruses are shipped. First, a small amount of virus contained in a small vial was placed in a slightly larger vial with absorbent material, which in turn was placed in another container with more absorbent material.

The container was then packed in a box with a hard plastic liner, and capped with a spongelike material and often with dry ice. The box, she said, was designed to withstand a fall of 27 feet. The boxes, which bear labels warning of an infectious substance inside, are shipped by air.

''This gets shipped like cargo, like you were sending a package to grandma or something,'' Ms. Farrugia said.

In this way, viruses collected from other parts of the world were transported to Kennedy International Airport, where they are met by couriers with cell phones, decontamination kits and training in cleanup. The couriers then drove east on the Long Island Expressway ''except when there are traffic jams,'' Ms. Farrugia said, eventually taking Route 25 down the North Fork to Orient Point; the packages then traveled by boat to Plum Island.

Dr. Michael Kiley, the Animal Research Service safety officer at the lab, said the packages were designed to withstand a plane crash. Dr. Kiley also said that other government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would be involved in assuring shipment and lab security if Plum Island was upgraded to a level four center.

At the conclusion of the tour, a young staff employee directed visitors to strip again, blow their noses, scrub under their nails and spit. Most managed the last step no better than Rose in the movie ''Titanic.''

After a minimum three-minute shower and hair washing under strong water pressure, visitors at last emerged from the biocontainment area.

Then, after a short tour of the island and its now crumbling gun emplacements and unused barracks and buildings -- including one building for the island's only fire truck -- the visitors boarded the boat back to the mainland, impressed by the island's raw beauty and sweeping views of Gardiners Island, Little Gull Island, Great Gull Island, Montauk Point, the North Fork and, on the Connecticut shore lighted up by the late afternoon sun, the Millstone nuclear power plants.

The surf had grown far rougher as the sun set, and the boat back to Orient Point rose and fell like a bucking bronco in slow motion, sending out huge billows of salt spray.

It was a cold comfort to know any virus aboard would perish along with the passengers if the boat sank.