How Kansas Nabbed the New Bio- and Agro-Defense Lab

Abstract

If you build it, they will come. The maxim seems to have worked for Kansas State University (KSU) in Manhattan, which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) selected last week as its preferred site for a $450 million facility to replace the aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center off Long Island, New York. What made the university stand out from the competition, KSU and federal officials say, was a recently completed $54 million biocontainment lab on campus for animal research, funded by the state, as well as the lack of any vigorous local opposition to work involving dangerous animal pathogens.