Foot in Mouth Disease?

The report on the Pirbright Foot and Mouth disease outbreak in Surrey has failed to reach any definitive conclusions but the favoured scenario appears to be possible damage (caused by plant roots?) to the waste pipe connecting Merial to the Institute of Animal Health. This failure was perhaps compounded by localised flooding, perhaps releasing the virus to the surface via a loose manhole. The suggestion is that the agent was then carried to adjacent farms on the wheels of vehicles of contractors brought in to carry out major (and much needed) improvements to the aging laboratories. This is viewed as a potential failing of 'biosecurity'. All this is very feasible and does emphasise how a chain of difficult to envisage events can disrupt an otherwise apparently safe process ('sods law'). Apparently DEFRA didn't make the monies available (as is now a priority) for repairing the said pipe. This is hardly remarkable, as agencies are generally not given all the funding they require to make improvements. Choices have to be made and I suspect that drains did not rate very highly in terms of 'sexiness'. For the same reasons, the needed storage space is always the first item to be axed by budgetary concerns from the plans of new laboratories even if it is clear that their absence will make the whole construction less effective.