Monica Winstanley and Matt Goode on the view from the lab
For scientists who have dedicated their careers to combating livestock diseases there can be few, if any, worse scenarios than suspicion that an outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) has been caused by a laboratory strain of the virus originating from their research site.
Add to that, that they are working into the night to conduct tests to reveal the provenance of the disease and face the prospect of seven-day working to test thousands of samples from potentially infected farms. Within hours, their biosecurity procedures will be subject to two major independent reviews; news crews with satellite trucks and long-range cameras will be at the gates; and the story will make national and international headlines in all sections of the media.
For the scientists at the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) laboratory at Pirbright, these were the conditions they were working under in August 2007.
Events
Late on Friday 3 August, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced the first case of FMD in the UK since 2001. Through that day, IAH Pirbright scientists had worked on the farm with the suspected case to provide Defra with the scientific data.
From that moment, the Institute and its sponsoring body, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), worked closely together to provide as much up-to-date information to the media as quickly as possible. Initially we prepared to respond about a possible new FMD outbreak. But by the evening of Saturday 4 August, a different story was breaking.
Work at IAH to determine the genetic sequence of the FMD virus responsible showed that the strain was 01BFS67: one that had not circulated in Europe in the wild since 1967 and which was used on the Pirbright site. Institute scientists had recently used small quantities of the strain in their research. During the same timeframe, Merial Animal Health, the animal vaccine company that shares the Pirbright complex, had prepared around 10,000 litres of virus to make vaccine.
If ever this had been solely an agricultural or science story, it wasn’t now. By that evening a sizeable media contingent was at the IAH gate. We decided that our most effective way to communicate would be for the Institute Director to provide updates direct to camera. We followed this strategy for the week of the media encampment. When, and only when, significant new information emerged we quickly arranged press calls at the gate where the Director, Professor Martin Shirley, delivered statements – several of which were broadcast live on rolling news channels.
Media presence at Pirbright peaked in the middle of the first week, with up to ten satellite trucks and many journalists’ cars lining the entrance to the site and nearby verges. BBC News used a camera mounted on a high telescopic mast to film over the perimeter fence. Surrey Police kept watch to maintain safety.
Over the following weeks, engagement between IAH and the media changed, with more emphasis on interviews and response to specific queries. We paid particular attention to important stakeholder groups, for example reserving time for local media.
Several factors combined to make the process complicated and challenging.
Timescales
Since 2001, IAH Pirbright scientists have greatly accelerated diagnostic and strain typing techniques for FMD. But it still takes around six hours to make a diagnosis on a sample. This meant that after an initial flurry there was little new to report to a voracious media machine eager for frequent updates. In particular, IAH had no news to report while tests were being conducted and, most significantly, while the two reviews of IAH and Merial led by the Health and Safety Executive and Professor Brian Spratt were in progress and their findings unpublished.
Despite this, media interest in IAH was unrelenting. The Institute was the backdrop for the main evening TV news bulletins whether that day’s news was relevant to the lab or not. Perhaps because there was little to report on the technical side, the story broadened to include unnecessary speculation about deliberate release and accidental transmission off-site by scientific staff.
We now faced an increasingly diverse range of media comment and questioning. To help resolve widespread misunderstanding of biosecurity procedures, we invited the BBC Science Unit to conduct an interview on biosecurity with a senior researcher inside the lab but outside the biosecure area. Site access had become a storyline in its own right.
However, while some press ran critical reports on the perceived ease of access to the site, others pressed persistently for access.
The independent reports were published on 7 September, although part of the content was anticipated by the media. Since publication, further issues have been raised by the media, and through Parliamentary Questions and other avenues, and have been replied to as appropriate by the Institute.
BBC News used a camera mounted on a high telescopic mast to film over the perimeter fence. Surrey Police kept watch to maintain safety
Politics versus science
Only a handful of science correspondents were involved. However, the implication of virus escape from a publicly-funded research lab or a company making vaccines for Defra, both licensed by Defra, made this a political story. This changed the nature of media questioning and understanding of IAH.
Among the angles we were asked to address were the views of a contractor who had worked on the site in an inactive building and was critical of biosecurity procedures. His opinions were reported even though the article stated, ‘As a plumber [he] is not an expert in biosafety.’ It was reported that he thought he had contracted Legionnaire’s Disease at Pirbright. By the time tests showed that neither did IAH have above background levels of Legionella nor the strain that infected the contractor, the story was, of course, old news.
Journalists questioned whether IAH’s technical training courses, which it must offer to the scientific community in its role as the FMD World Reference Laboratory and advertises on its website, were open to the general public. Some even wondered whether people were allowed to handle virus in exchange for payment.
Journalists trawled through recent job advertisements for IAH and asked about the timings and significance of particular vacancies. Were they due to under-staffing or the quiet sacking of complicit staff?
We maintained our strategy of responding as quickly and as fully as possible, and understood that any aspect of IAH was subject to media scrutiny.
We are extremely grateful to everyone at the IAH who provided information to answer these enquiries.
The serious and immediate impact of this virus escape on UK farming and the need for immediate containment, control and eradication measures by Defra meant that several storylines ran in parallel.
The pressing issues were the consequences for farmers and how Defra was controlling the disease. While the cause of the outbreak remained a key part of the story – especially for IAH which, from the start, had reported no evidence of any breaches in the way it handled live virus in its laboratories – the variety and nature of work conducted on the Pirbright site also generated different media leads.
At the time of writing (October) we are still receiving a steady stream of increasingly detailed questions from the media as journalists explore new avenues, including some apparently opened up by briefings from a former contractor to IAH, and comment by politicians.
Issues include information about companies working on the site, who knew what when, and general health and safety practices at other BBSRC-sponsored sites.
The legal dimension
It is possible that individuals affected by the FMD outbreak will seek compensation, and in theory IAH might be a target for claims.
We need to bear this in mind, as well as the need to avoid jeopardising the personal safety of named individuals working on an animal research site. Under considerable pressure to respond quickly on so many aspects and to frequent news deadlines, we benefit from advice from our lawyers, which helps to ensure that our statements are always consistent with our legal position.
This mix of factors continues to pose challenges as we continue to provide as much information as we can to the media. Throughout, our emphasis has been on the underlying science of both the virus escape and the route of its transmission, and the diagnostic and epidemiological work. We believe that much of the detail is still awaiting publication, possibly through formal research papers. A fascinating science story of how sequence data enable scientists to trace the most likely route and timescale of infection is still to be told.
Dr Monica Winstanley is Head of the External Relations Unit at the BBSRC
Matt Goode is Head of Media at BBSRC