US research lab 257, Plum Island, and the Monty Python team at NZ National Centre for DIsease Control at Wallaceville:

- Attributed -

Update on the history of MAF's National Centre of Disease Investigation at Wallaceville and Isolation Unit at Silverstream.

SECRET BIO-WARFARE RESEARCH LAB 257 PLUM ISLAND...FOR SALE

IT WAS KNOWN BY MANY NAMES...PLUM ISLAND ANIMAL DISEASE CENTER, BUILDING 257, FORT TERRY 257... AND ITS EXISTENCE WAS DENIED FOR DECADES. WHAT REALLY WENT ON THERE IS STILL A MATTER OF SOME SECRECY AND WHETHER OR NOT IT IS MOVED TO KANSAS, AS WAS ONCE PLANNED, IS ALSO RATHER 'UP IN THE AIR'. 

WHERE TO PUT SUCH A NIGHTMARE?  [New Zealanders should be horrified to find out that it's at Wallaceville - 100 yards from a school, right next to the main trunck railway line, in the middle of a residential area and on top of about five major seismic fault lines!]
WE NOW KNOW THAT THE U.S. CONDUCTED BIOLOGICAL WARFARE RESEARCH THERE, AND SINCE ALMOST EVERY NATION HAS SEVERAL SUCH LABORATORIES, ONE MIGHT CONCLUDE THAT THIS LAB WAS BASICALLY "HARMLESS".
ONE MIGHT NOT EVEN CARE WHAT WENT ON THERE, OFF THE COAST OF NEW YORK. 

PLUM ISLAND, LAB 257, AN INDEFENSIBLE LITTLE PLACE, FULL OF VERY LETHAL PATHOGENS, DEADLY, STILL A THREAT TO ALL WHO LIVE NEAR IT, STILL A READY SOURCE FOR ANY TERRORISTS, REAL OR FBI-CREATED(?), WHO MIGHT WANT TO GATHER FROM IT TO ATTACK AMERICA.
PLUM ISLAND'S LAB 257 WAS "'the only type of research lab authorized to handle diseases that are communicable between humans and animals and for which there is no known cure'"...NO KNOWN CURE.


THE NEW YORK TIMES WAS A BIT IRATE OVER ITS FATE IN 2005.
<Homeland Security took over from the Agriculture Department in 2003, "was not designed to be a highly secure facility." >>

CNN DID A SMALL PIECE ON PLUM ISLAND IN 2004
< The Army later handed over control of the facility to the USDA.
DHS official McCarthy told the AP that Lab 257 was closed in 1995, and "right now it poses no health hazard.">>  
THEY GO ON TO INSINUATE THAT ANYONE WHO THINKS PLUM ISLAND IS A DARK MYSTERY MIGHT BE NUTS (THOUGH THEY NEVER, EVER SAY SUCH THINGS OUTRIGHT, PERISH THE THOUGHT).
IN CONSIDERING CNN, OR ANY AMERICAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA, AS I HAVE ALWAYS SAID HERE IN THE TEA ROOM, CONSIDER WHO OWNS THE MEDIA...
<>
[READ, CERTAINLY, BUT ALWAYS DIG INTO THINGS FOR YOURSELVES, AND DIG DEEPLY AND LONG!]

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF A NAZI SCIENTIST NAMED ERIC TRAUB, BROUGHT TO THE U.S. AS SO MANY OTHERS WERE UNDER OPERATION PAPERCLIP AFTER WORLD WAR 2.
<for the U.S. Navy from 1949 to 1953, Traub returned to Germany >>

ONE OF TRAUB'S SPECIALTIES WAS VECTOR DISEASES AND THEIR USE IN BIOLOGICAL WARFARE.  
Traub visited the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) in New York on at least three occasions in the 1950s. The Plum Island facility, operated by the Department of Agriculture, conducted research on foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) of cattle, one of Traub's areas of expertise. Traub was offered a leading position at Plum Island in 1958 which he OFFICIALLY  declined.

IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT PLUM ISLAND'S LAB 257 GAVE US LYME DISEASE, QUITE LITERALLY.
In the mid-1970s, a mysterious disease broke out in the area around the town of Old Lyme, CT.
This severely debilitating syndrome was given the name Lyme disease. At first, doctors were mystified as to why the disease was clustered around this particular town. This leads us back to Erich Traub, the German scientist who participated in research at Plum Island. Once they had the genetic footprint of the Lyme disease germ, researchers began to comb through disease cluster histories. It didn't make sense that Lyme would suddenly emerge, seemingly out of nowhere, in one town in rural Connecticut. Some of these investigators believe they found traces of borrelia in preserved insect and animal samples taken from nearby Shelter Island, as well as Long Island.

The samples dated from the late 1940s to the early 1950s—the time frame in which Erich Traub was infecting ticks on Plum Island. Most interesting and troubling to birdwatchers and other outdoors-y types is the author’s investigation into the unproven but nonetheless highly suspicious connections between Plum Island and the sudden appearance of Dutch duck plague (1967), Lyme disease (1975) and West Nile virus (1999) on the East Coast. All of these disease outbreaks were first documented within a few miles of the labs.
IT HAS ALSO BEEN SAID THAT THE PLACE IS STILL SO CONTAMINATED THAT NO HUMANS SHOULD BE ALLOWED NEAR IT.
EVEN THE EPA HAS CITED THE ISLAND FOR ITS WASTE, AS HAS THE NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION.
EVERYBODY SEEMS TO WANT THE ISLAND CLEANED UP, BUT NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW WHERE ALL THAT WASTE IS BURIED, NOR HOW TO GET IT OUT OF THE GROUND AND OFF THE ISLAND.  

IN ITS PRIME, LAB 257 WAS INVOLVED DAILY WITH "HOT VIRUSES", LIVE, HIGHLY INFECTIVE ORGANISMS WITH WHICH THEY CONDUCTED "ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS".

A BIT OF HISTORY FOR THE PLUM ISLAND LAB 
(FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS SEGMENT IF YOU REALLY DON'T GIVE A HOOT FOR HISTORY.)
Completed in 1911, Building 257 at Fort Terry,New York, designated the Combined Torpedo Storehouse and Cable Tanks building, and weapons were stored there.
But then, in 1952, the ARMY CHEMICAL CORPS (which had been called the Chemical Warfare Service) took over the facility and a thing called "anti-animal biological warfare testing" began there.
During World War 1, the U.S. had managed to develop a rather small arsenal (compared to today's standards) of CHEMICAL WEAPONS. Some of those, too, were stored on Plum Island, and the President and many in the general population, were nervous about that, wanted them destroyed, or maybe moved to a safer place away from populated areas.
Major General Amos Fries, the head of the Chemical Warfare Service for almost 9 years was convinced that plans to end the development of chemical weapons entailed a COMMUNIST PLOT, and he fought it with everything he had.
He was successful and, thanks to the pull, the power, of some whom he knew , including like-minded Congressmen, well known chemists and those who owned the chemical companies, Congress was influenced to NOT RATIFY the 1925 Geneva Protocol...they just said NO. So development of new and better chemical warfare marched on...on Plum Island.

In 1939, then President Roosevelt got more than a little pissed-off when the name change came up. He made that clear by stating:
"'I have a far more important objection to this change of name. It has been and is the policy of this Government to do everything in its power to outlaw the use of chemicals in warfare. Such use is inhuman and contrary to what modern civilization should stand for.

I am doing everything in my power to discourage the use of gases and other chemicals in any war between nations. While, unfortunately, the defensive necessities of the United States call for study of the use of chemicals in warfare, I do not want the Government of the United States to do anything to aggrandize or make permanent any special bureau of the Army or the Navy engaged in these studies. I hope the time will come when the Chemical Warfare Service can be entirely abolished.

To dignify this Service by calling it the "Chemical Corps" is, in my judgment, contrary to a sound public policy.'"

Maybe FDR's anger caused "bad ju-ju" for the Corps, but after that, it was plagued with "accidents" and those accidents showed us what they were up to...some of it, at least.
The Dugway sheep incident, March 1968, was one of several really big events that stirred the boiling pot of growing public furor against the corps. An open air spraying of VX was blamed for killing over 4,000 sheep near Dugway Proving Ground. The Army eventually settled the case and paid the ranchers.
Then, another incident involving Operation CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink 'Em) was also exposed. Operation CHASE sought to dump chemical weapons 250 miles (400 km) off the Florida coast, spurring concerns over the damage to the ocean environment and risk of chemical munitions washing up on shore.
DIDN'T THE CORPS, DIDN'T THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT KNOW THOSE RISKS? DIDN'T THEY CARE?
OBVIOUSLY  NOT.
The CORPS continued to be beleaguered  with bad press and with "mishaps". A 1969 incident, in which 23 soldiers and one Japanese civilian were exposed to SARIN on the island of Okinawa while cleaning sarin-filled bombs, created international outcry, while also revealing the presence of chemical munitions in Southeast Asia to the world.

Things gradually got better for the corps, it "restructured" itself, by 1969, had developed seven "standardized biological weapons": agents that cause anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever, VEE, and botulism. Maybe as an afterthought, Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B was produced as an "incapacitating agent"
The Corps marched on, it lived, it thrived, and beween 1979 and 1989 the Army established 28 active duty chemical defense companies.
Way to go, Team Gas and Hellfire! (one of its pet names in WW2).

The United States Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) School is the home of the Army's Chemical Corps, located at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. There are approximately 22,000 members of the Chemical Corps in the U.S. Army, spread among the Active, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard.
The school trains officers and enlisted personnel in CBRN warfare and defense.
BACK TO THE LAB ITSELF
With remodeling and restructuring ongoing, the facility was updated in the 1950s, but an odd thing happened then...the USDA (United States Department of AGRICULTURE, yes, AGRICULTURE), took over at Fort Terry,
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.

Just FYI, that "bureau" was formed way, way back in 1884, was abolished by Secretary's Memorandum 1320, suppl. 4, on November 2, 1953, and reestablished as the Agricultural Research Service, The ARS currently the principal in-house research agency of the USDA.
Clever of our government to shuffle the cards and come up with this plan.
The citizens were much happier knowing their "protective service", the good old USDA, was watching over things out on Plum Island.
What could possibly be wrong with the USDA doing a little research, EVEN IF THAT RESEARCH WAS HIDDEN, WAS "TOP SECRET", AND STILL INVOLVED CHEMICAL WARFARE RESEARCH?
It wasn't like before...the USDA was testing on ANIMALS, cows, horses, and the like, right?

WAKE UP AND TAKE NOTES, CLASS, BECAUSE THE ARS MAINTAINS A VAST STORAGE OF CHEMICAL/BIO-WEAPONRY. AND THEY KNOW HOW TO MAKE USE OF IT!
HERE IS WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO FIXATE UPON: "Microbial cultures are foundational and basic diagnostic methods used extensively as a research tool in molecular biology. Microbial culture collections focus on the acquisition, authentication, production, preservation, catalogueing and distribution of viable cultures of standard reference microorganisms, cell lines and other materials for research in microbial systematics.
Culture collection are also repositories of type strains."

WHAT THAT DOES NOT TELL US IS THAT EACH STRAIN OF ANY OF THESE CAN BE USED, AND SOME HAVE BEEN USED, AS WEAPONS IN WAR.
AND THE USDA HAS A CLOSET-FULL.
WE ARE TOLD THAT THE MAJORITY OF THESE CULTURES NOW "LIVE" IN MANASSAS, VIRGINIA., AND ARE HELD FOR US BY ...
ATCC , a private nonprofit organization in the biotechnology field whose mission focuses on the acquisition, authentication, production, preservation, development and distribution of standard reference microorganisms, cell lines and other materials for research in the life sciences. Established in 1914 as the American Type Culture Collection and originally incorporated by scientists in 1925.
ATCC ALSO STORES OVER 8 MILLION CLONED GENES, INCLUDING HUMAN GENES.
AND DISEASE VECTORS..."Vector-borne disease" is the term commonly used to describe an illness caused by an infectious microbe that is transmitted to people by blood-sucking insects.
18,000 strains of bacteria from 900 genera, as well as 2,000 different types of animal viruses and 1,000 plant viruses have been ISOLATED, STORED, AND ARE ALIVE AND WELL, THANKS, IN GOOD PART, TO THE RESEARCH AT THE LAB ON PLUM ISLAND, AND OTHERS LIKE IT.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE, PLEASE BE AWARE:
ATCC supplied Iraqi organizations, including Baghdad University, with several pathogens between 1985 and 1989. These include Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax), Aspergillus fungal cultures producing the mycotoxin aflatoxin), Brucella melitensis (causing brucellosis), Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium perfringens, E. coli and Salmonella cholerae-suis. 

YES, THE U.S. CONGRESS APPROVED THIS SHARING WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN, THROUGH THE CHANNELS OF THE U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, IN THE NAME OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT...AND IRAQ GOT ENOUGH OF THESE STRAINS TO KILL AS MANY PEOPLE AS THEY CARED TO.
ASK THE KURDISH PEOPLE.
IT WAS ALL DOCUMENTED, ALL WELL-KNOWN, WASN'T REALLY "HIDDEN", JUST WASN'T ADVERTISED.
UCLA HAS A PAGE ABOUT THE CDC's INVOLVEMENT IN THAT AS WELL.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE DOCUMENT.
IT MAKES A BIT TOO LIGHT OF THE FACT THAT WE SENT SUCH OVER TO IRAQ, BUT I OFFER IT FOR THE SKEPTICS, WHO ABOUND.

In 2002 American forces in Afghanistan found a dossier of information about the Plum Island laboratory in the Kabul residence of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Western-educated nuclear physicist and former chairman of the Pakistan Nuclear Energy Commission who has been identified by American officials as an associate of Osama bin Laden.
But Plum Island has a major and unfixable problem: it's an easy target for terrorists, indeed a sitting duck - and, frankly, Long Island has room for only one big duck on the East End. In the wake of 9/11, the center, housing highly virulent disease agents a mile and a half off Long Island, constitutes a serious risk not just to New York, but also to Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which are all within 100 miles of Plum Island.
Homeland Security knows that the outmoded laboratory, which it described as too "costly to maintain," is a problem. In the press release announcing the news, it highlighted "growing concerns about accidental or intentional introduction of foreign animal diseases into the country.

IT'S BUILDING.
THE WHOLE THING IS COMING FULL CIRCLE...
PLEASE TAKE NOTE AS WE CANNOT BUT IMAGINE HOW THIS ONE SMALL PLACE WHICH IS SO NEAR TO LARGE POPULATIONS, SO VERY NEAR TO ONE OF AMERICA'S MAJOR CITIES, SO UNPROTECTED, CAN BE USED TO WIPE OUT LARGE NUMBERS OF HUMAN BEINGS AND FOOD ANIMALS...WHETHER BY FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC TERRORISTS (LIKE HOMELAND SECURITY?).
THE FOLLOWING WAS REPORTED BY COLUMBIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY'S "HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS WIRE" ON JULY 20, 2010...
The bio lab on 840-acre Plum Island, a mile-and-a-half off Long Island’s Orient Point, is a Biosafety level 4 facility — the only type of research lab authorized to handle diseases that are communicable between humans and animals and for which there is no known cure; from a boat, terrorists armed with shoulder-fired rockets would have a clear shot, or a plane could dive into the laboratory, dispersing deadly germs into an area from Massachusetts to New York; DHS has decided to build a new lab in Kansas to replace the aging Plum Island center, but some local politicians object, citing the local jobs that would be lost.
[As reported by Karl Grossman in the Huffington Post, ]

• In 2002 U.S. Army commandos and CIA agents found a “dossier” containing “information on a place in New York called the Plum Island Animal Disease Center” in a raid on the Afghanistan residence of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a nuclear physicist from Pakistan and an associate of Osama bin Laden.
• In 2003 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported there is a substantial risk that “an adversary might try to steal pathogens” from the center and use them against people or animals in the United States. GAO noted that a camel pox strain researched at the center could be converted into “an agent as threatening as smallpox,” and the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus studied there could be “developed into a human biowarfare agent.”

Grossman writes that it can never be. “Plum Island sits exposed amid busy marine traffic lanes. The main Plum Island laboratory sits just behind a beach along which pass a line of boat traffic including ferries taking passengers between Orient Point and Connecticut,” he writes. From a boat terrorists armed with shoulder-fired rockets would have a clear shot, or a plane could dive into the laboratory, dispersing deadly germs into an area from Massachusetts to New York.
DHS has already chosen Manhattan, Kansas, as the location of new biolab to replace the aging Plum Island research facility (“DHS is searching for buyers for Plum Island facility,” 4 August 2009 HSNW), but New York politicians want the lab — and its jobs — to stay. In any event, it will take years to build the new lab.
The threat of a terrorist attack on Plum Island, sitting between Boston and New York City and just south of New London and Groton, Connecticut, remains. “Work on highly toxic pathogens should only be done at a heavily guarded facility inland, perhaps constructed underground — not on an island out in the open so close to this crowded area of the United States,” Grossman concludes.>>  

Is that the "set-up" being prepared in our media, the initial phase of everything coming undone?
WILL WE SEE PLUM ISLAND, LAB 257, BLOW UP IN OUR FACES?

AND REMEMBER, THEY ARE MOVING THE LAB TO KANSAS, TO KANSAS WHERE GREAT HERDS OF FOOD ANIMALS ARE RAISED FOR AMERICAN MARKETS.

ALSO REMEMBER THAT THERE ARE

At Fort Detrick, the USBWL consisted of various labs and divisions, including:

• The Safety "S" Division, first to be activated (1943)
  • Biological Protection Branch
• The Special Operations Division (1949–68), conducted hundreds of field tests of aerosolized simulants
• The Crops Division (called "Plant Sciences Laboratories" after 1966), evaluated thousands of compounds for herbicidal activity (including Agent Orange; see Herbicidal warfare)
• The Basic Science [Division?]

The USBWL was also a parent facility overseeing testing and production centers elsewhere, including:

• Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas
• Horn Island, Mississippi
• Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, including Granite Peak Installation
• Vigo Ordnance Plant, near Terre Haute, Indiana

Steve Erickson, director of the Citizens' Education Project in Salt Lake City, Utah said, IN ABOUT 2002, "This expansion of laboratory capacity within the Defense Department and other departments of government has been in the works for a number of years, probably dating to about 1995. Certainly, the intensity and speed of these developments is picked up since 9/11/2001. The last count we had was about 14 [labs] that were being proposed in various locations by any one of four Cabinet level departments within the US Government. There are some indications now that the National Institutes of Health will be backing off in terms of the numbers of Biological Safety Level Four laboratories, but intends instead to renovate and perhaps build additional Biological Level Three laboratories."

The Department of Energy wants to build a BSL-3 facility at its Los Alamos lab in New Mexico. On December 16th, the DOE released the final Environmental Assessment of plans to build a BSL-3 lab at Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
THIS IS A LIVE ANTHRAX LAB. 
SEE ALSO: http://www.nukewatch.org/media/more_media/01-00-02/01-03-02/University-President-Defends-Anthrax-Shipment.html
The draft environmental assessment for the proposed lab says that current plans call for the facility to handle the DNA and RNA of a wide array of organisms. The lab could also engage in the chemical separation of DNA, RNA and proteins, and in sample amplification, which the assessment defines as "the process to rapidly and significantly increase the number of microorganisms in a sample." The environmental assessment also states that "the proposed facility would have the unique capability within DOE/NNSA to perform aerosol studies to include challenges of rodents using infectious agents or biologically derived toxins (biotoxins)."

Prof. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Chair of the Working Group on Biological Weapons of the Federation of American Scientists, has said "when various types of weapons are being researched at the same place, it means that if there is any kind of oversight or investigation or inspection of one type, it puts at risk classified information about the others. And this is a reason why this government frequently objects to any kind of oversight. And this is also, in my view, a reason why different kinds of weapons research should be conducted at different locations, rather than piling them all in the same place."
WE MAY NEVER KNOW WHAT HAS "ESCAPED" LABS LIKE THE ONE ON PLUM ISLAND, BUT WE DO, MOST DEFINITELY, KNOW HOW SUCH LABS HAVE USED US AS HUMAN GUINEA PIGS BEFORE.
<

• In one such test, travelers at Washington National Airport were subjected to a harmless bacterium. Traps were placed throughout the facility to capture the bacterium as it flowed in the air. Laboratory personnel, dressed as travelers carrying brief cases, walked the corridors and without detection sprayed the bacterium into the atmosphere.
• In the New York Subway, a light bulb filled with the same harmless bacterium was dropped on the tracks. The organism spread throughout the system within 20 minutes. Traps and monitoring devices showed the amount of organism�if it were one of the predictable, dangerous organisms, could have killed thousands of persons. No one was injured or became ill as a result of the test.
• In San Francisco, a U.S. Navy ship, equipped with spray devices operated by Fort Detrick personnel, sprayed serratia marcescens, a non-pathogenic microorganism that is easily detected, while the ship plied the San Francisco Bay. It spread more than 30 miles to monitoring stations.
• A jet aircraft equipped with spray devices, flew a course near Victoria, Texas, and the harmless particles were monitored in the Florida Keys.

There were 456 cases of occupational infections acquired at Fort Detrick during the offensive biological program, at a rate of less than 10 infections per million hours worked. The rate of occupational infection was well within the contemporary standards of the National Safety Council, and below the rates reported from other laboratories. There were three fatalities due to occupationally acquired infections; two cases of anthrax in 1951 and 1958, and a case of viral encephalitis in 1964. The mortality rate was lower than those of other contemporary surveys of laboratory-acquired infections. There were 48 occupational infections and no fatalities reported from production and testing sites. The safety program included the development and use of new vaccines as well as engineering safety measures.



JUST WATCH THIS WEE PLACE ...THIS LITTLE-KNOWN AMERICAN "SECRET". 


OTHER RESOURCES:
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?us_military_weapons_of_mass_destruction=us_military_biologicalWeapons&timeline=us_military_tmln

http://140.139.42.105/content/BioWarCourse/HX-3/HX-3.html  

ESPECIALLY THE FOLLOWING FILE:
http://140.139.42.105/content/BioWarCourse/HX-3/HX-3.html  


http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/DVNS_CBW.htm 

AND AN "IFFY" SITE, IFFY BECAUSE IT SOMETIMES TENDS TO GO "OVER THE TOP" SANS PERFECT DOCUMENTATION...STILL, INFORMATIVE:
http://www.knowthelies.com/node/9589


NOTHING GOOD ON THE TELLY TONIGHT?
WATCH THIS?

OR WATCH HERE, IF THE YOUTUBE LINK DOES AWAY...
http://globalelite.tv/2013/10/16/shade-the-motion-picture/


I'M NOT ENDORSING ANY FILMS HERE, JUST POST THEM SO WE CAN EXERCISE OUR OWN MINDS, LET IN SOME NEW IDEAS, MAYBE...AND, AS ALWAYS, JUST THINK ABOUT THINGS IN A NON-BIASED, LOGICAL MANNER...
OR NOT..

The Secret Life of Information 2: Ponygate - MAF sells infected animals to local meat works:

The Secret Life of Information part one shows a copy of the police apologies for failing to turn up to Court for the Billsticking hearing in 2003. The issue was a civil one in the first place and nothing to do with the police.

This is Part Two, it's about  serious questions being asked in parliament regarding MAF's disastrous experiment into an "unknown organism with the potential to cause international trade disruption", and the fact that MAF sold several horses infected with an unidentified organism which MAF themselves had classified as having the potential to cause major international trade disruption - to a local meat company in Masterton, Farm Meats. 

Here are the records of the experiment, drafted by Project Manager Mark Bosson.   You'll notice that they are extremely unprofessional, and in fact, they look like they've been drawn up by a standard one science student- not someone doing a Masters Degree at the taxpayer's expense! You'll also notice that the horses, and in particular the one referred to as Alpha, the only male horse of the four used in the "fatal fiasco" (Dominion Post November 29 1999 I think, will check soon) failed experiment Bosson was in charge of, were definitely infected and exposed to the unidentified disease, and it was indisputably recorded that this was so, in BOTH sets of records, the original set, and the second set of records Bosson made up to try and ameliorate his culpability.

The Minister lied in Parliament, saying the horses had not been exposed to infection, and it was "standard procedure" to sell them to a meat works. The Animal Ethics Committee were rightly horrified, but the Minister thought it was fine.  Here are the records, which show that every one of the horses exhibited symptoms of being infected with the organism:



After the serious injuries suffered by the horses, and the obvious neglect and lack of appropriate or skilled or experienced care for the four horses was revealed by the report of the Maidstone Vet (up soon), another set of records was drawn up, this one:

This also confirms that the horses were showing symptoms of being infected with an unidentified disease, they were all exposed to infection and they were all infected to some degree.

Now look at how MAF reacted to the complaint, click on the images to enlarge them.  

This email makes a mockery of MAF's claim that nothing was transmitted to the horses.

Not to mention MAF's dishonest claim that there are no photographs of the experiment. There were many of these jpg files, they were the photographs taken on the National Centre for Disease Centre digital camera.  There is a record of this email - government email systems are archived.  MAF lied to parliament about this serious biosecurity breach!  Incompetent AND corrupt!  Oh, and taxpayer funded!

Colin Wilks makes the point that even if it is not a mutant form of Foot and Mouth Disease (as he jokingly suggests), the point is that it is definitely something, and not nothing as MAF are now trying to claim.

This little "love, Nicci" rubbish from "Administration Team Leader" Nicci Rowswell refers to a conversation after she contacted me to tell me that I had been the victim of a constructive dismissal by the National Centre for Disease Investigation, that I wasn't very happy about it, and that I also had concerns about what she refers to as the animal ethics issue. MAF decided to make

up a story about me being a mad woman and suffering some sort of vague mental illness, thereby conveniently diverting attention away from the scandal.

The Ethics Committee report will be up soon, it validates and supports my complaints totally, but fails to address the fact that MAF sold three horses with an unidentified organism with the potential to cause major international trade disruption.

This is the next damage control masterpiece from Nicci Rowswell.

And one of the most REALLY damning pieces of evidence of the level of arrogance and ignorance common among our overpaid self important, unprofessional, devious, corrupt public servants that there is on this site, because of the way she spells out the strategy to just sack me and shut me up for raising legitimate concerns about the serious injury to the four horses at Silverstream, and the utterly appalling circumstances of Mark Bosson's "experiment", which we'll go into later. It proves that there was no intention by MAF of a proper inquiry, just a cover up and a nasty attitude.This next page consists of two emails, half way down the page the one dated 7th July (from Vicki Bee) begins:

"Well Nicci I suppose as Finola said, we weren't ever going to write the perfect script. Just one step at a time to shut down as many avenues as possible."

"In terms of the animal ethics issue, if you and Hugh feel there is any legal risk if she were to take up an issue, I would move to deal with it, otherwise just ignore it again."

And on it goes . . . click on it and read it for yourselves, it's outrageous!


"She rang Rhoda today (Thursday).

Having talked with Vicki Bee, George Capes, Hugh and Grant, I told Rhonda to try and fob her off "
"
Unfortunately she threatened to go to the papers, so I spoke to her"

Then they realised I wasn't going to just go away and shut up.

Head Office staff directed other staff "Do not engage in dialogue with her" as they realised that I was serious about my complaints and was not going to accept their corrupt cover up.

When we discovered that the horses had been sold to to a local meat works in Masterton - who were rightly horrified, like everyone else - we went to local MP Georgina Beyer, explained the situation to 'her' in simple terms, providing evidence to back it up.

The two sets of records of the experiment show beyond any doubt that the horse Alpha was infected, the other horses were in close contact and therefore definitely EXPOSED to the highly contagious disease and therefore likely carriers, it was absolutely unacceptable to sell them to a meat works!

Shortly after this, in 2000, there was an outbreak of Foot and Mouth in Europe. We discovered that the meat company in Masterton was an agent for another meat company, and when I rang them to enquire where these particular horses might be I discovered that the company exported rather a lot of horse meat to Europe annually, much of it for human consumption, to countries like Holland and Germany and others, apparently.

So we approached Georgina Beyer, as MP for Wairarapa.

Here are emails between her, MAF's 'Human Resources Manager' Peter Stipkovits, and I.

Note Stipkovits displays the same dismissive arrogance as 'love Nicci Rowswell'.

There are more of these emails, they go on and on with time wasting waffle, instead of admitting yes we did sell them to the meat works.

Note also that Beyer's message is clear: (1) How were the horses disposed of exactly? and (2) When are you going to give her the rest of the information she's requested (and the Ombudsmen have ordered you to provide)? Now read the rubbish from the 'Human Resources Manager'.

What's really outrageous is that MAF classified it as a 'human resources' issue!

As bad as the Green Party classifying it solely as an animal welfare issue - when the real issue was the serious biosecurity breach.

Beyer spun this out for months and then refused to deal with it - read for yourself her waste of time emails and the contemptuous way they are fobbed off by Stipkovits!

Original message

From: “G Beyer” gbeyer@wise.net.nz

To: Peter Stipkovits stipkovitsp@maf.govt.nz

Sent: Tuesday 31.10.2000 12.32.17 pm

Subject: Re: Fw: horse experiment

Peter,

I have not yet received the information on the disposal of the horses, as discussed by telephone. You said you would be able to fax me the details of where, when and how the horses were disposed of. Could you please do this ASAP. Fax 06 370 1556. Also are you any closer to answering all the questions as outlined in the letter to Katie Raue. I believe most of them are straight forward and could be answered easily. To bring a speedy resolution to the matter raised by Katie, could you please send me a copy of the 306 pages you released to her under the OIA. The address is PO Box 913 Masterton. I appreciate your time and look forward to your prompt reply.

Jo Seddon, Electorate Agent to Georgina Beyer MP>

2

Original message

From: Peter Stipkovits stipkovitsp@maf.govt.nz

To: gbeyer@wise.net.nz

Sent: Tuesday October 31,2000 4:12 pm

Subject: Re: horse experiment

Hi Jo

Sorry we must have misunderstood each other. I thought that when I advised that I was attempting to seek clarification from Ms Raue on what she actually wanted under the OIA and you suggested that all she wanted was information as to the final disposal of the horses, I then advised that I would look forward to her clarifying this in response to my letter of 19 October 2000 to her (it appears at odds with the variety of requests contained in her emails of 4, 9, 10, 12 and 17 October) that I would fax you a copy of this letter which I have done and which I assume you have received?

I think I also implied that if this was all she wanted then I would probably have no difficulty providing it (although I would have to request the information from NCDI) and that I would probably not charge her.

Currently we have such far ranging questions bundled together that to answer them requires us to expend quite a bit of resources which we will seek to recover under the Department of Justice guidelines,. As you can appreciate we have expended significant resources on this matter to date answering Ms Raues questions and that of two other individuals that she appears to have requested also seek information from us. I thought I was clear in my letter to Ms Raue, that I faxed you, that I am seeking clarification as to what is available, what can be released under the OIA and Privacy legislation and what if any funds may be sought to reimburse the Ministry to some degree the costs we will incur. If you think this is unclear in our letter to her I would welcome this view. On a point of clarification, I assume that you are seeking the information regarding the disposal of the horses on behalf of Ms Raue. This would circumvent the OIA procedure we are currently engaged in with Ms Raue and the Ombudsmans office (which has been ongoing since June 1999). In discussion with the Ombudsmans office yesterday it was agreed between us that the best way to seek final resolution to the matter for all parties was to await the response from Ms Raue to my letter and then action the requests appropriately under the OIA. It is possible if Ms Raue is taking advice from you, that you could help bring this about by assisting her respond to my letter of 19 October 2000, hopefully confirming the only information sought is the information on the disposal of the horses, and as you state, this could bring “a speedy resolution” to this long running situation for which I’m sure we would all thank you. It would also be possible for you to obtain the papers previously released to Ms Raue from her directly. Should Georgina Beyer have any specific concerns on this matter I would be happy to arrange a verbal or written briefing and provide any specific documents such as the independent MAF Enforcement Unit Investigation file, or the AgResearch Animal Ethics Committee report that would allow an assessment of the matters to be made. Such an assessment would be difficult to gain from the 306 pages you request and in fact I am unable to release them to you without first arranging the deletion of significant amounts of information personal to Ms Raue, at significant cost, which is of course, able to be released to her, as their release in current form to others is restricted by privacy legislation.

Feel free to ring me to arrange a briefing.

Regards Peter Stipkovits.

Peter Stipkovits, and his mates, have got their snouts deep in the trough, sucking up our money, to write rubbish like this to cover up serious incompetence and corruption. The infected horses were sold to a local meat works, all very hush hush, from the National Centre for Disease Control for heavens sake! A P3 containment lab, host to smallpox, anthrax, mad cow disease and goodness knows what else. The Evening Post printed an article titled "Killer Bug Store Planned For Hutt" in about March 2000 about how a National MP, Eric Roy, had just discovered what I had been pointing out for ages, he was horrified about it, as was the editor who wrote an scathing editorial in the following days, and the editor of the Dominion, and the reporter (Jonathon Milne, who won an award for the articles I think) who wrote the articles titled "Mismanagement Claimed in MAF Experiment", Death of the Horses", MAF's Fatal Fiasco, etc. Peter Stipkovits should just own up that the infected horses were sold to the local meat works, because the Team at the National Centre for Disease Control at Wallaceville is lead by a totally incompetent Team Leader, and Manager, who think that it's fine to sell these infected animals to a meat works. This is as serious a breach of biosecurity as is possible!

There is no provision in the legislation for public consultation.

Then this in 2001: "The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) is pressing ahead with its plans import some deadly animal diseases to hold in containment near Wellington, as part of its biosecurity work.

MAF is applying to the Environmental Risk Management Authority for permission to import 24 organisms, including a "vaccine form" of anthrax, and another swine influenza, against which laboratory workers will have to be vaccinated to minimise the chance of infection.

It today released a public discussion document on the proposal so that neighbours of the National Centre for Disease Investigation (NCDI) containment laboratory, and the nation’s farmers could comment.

The ministry last month backed down on holding live infectious material for two transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) diseases – mad cow disease found in cattle, and scrapie, found in sheep.

Neither disease is in New Zealand and animal breed societies, veterinarians, and academics questioned why the Government would run even a tiny risk of such agents escaping into the environment and possibly infecting livestock."

Update - July 2012 - MAF slammed in Kiwifruit disease report - nothing's changed, the Ministry has been restructured so many times and deconstructed and fragmented that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing!

The New York Times is a bit behind the times on this one ;)