Federal authorities have not adequately examined whether a proposed federal laboratory to study dangerous animal diseases can be safely located on the United States mainland without risking livestock nearby, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report issued today. All five proposed sites would be operated by universities, either individually or in consortia.

The new facility would replace one now operated by the Department of Homeland Security on Plum Island, a secure, federally owned site off Long Island. Plum Island is the only approved site in this country for research on foot-and-mouth disease, which does not affect human beings but is the most highly infectious animal disease and can kill cattle, sheep, and pigs.

The department views the Plum Island facility as outdated and last year named candidates to house a replacement, to be called the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility. They are Kansas State University and the University of Georgia and consortia in Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas. The department intends to pick a location for the $450-million facility in October.

Moving the facility from an island to the mainland could increase the risk of accidental infection of livestock nearby. A 2002 analysis of the risk, commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security, was “selective” and “inaccurate,” the GAO report says. That analysis, for example, did not consider past, accidental releases of foot-and-mouth virus from labs in seven other countries.

The last natural outbreak of the disease in the United States was in 1929.

A “biosafety” lab proposed by Boston University to study lethal human diseases has drawn community opposition and lawsuits. That facility would study more-dangerous pathogens, under tighter security and physical containment, than would the animal lab. —Jeffrey Brainard