Posted on 09/27/2005 12:33:48 PM PDT by Cautor
The US Army has asked companies to bid for contracts to produce large quantities of anthrax and equipment to produce other unnamed biological agents, according to New Scientist, but has not said what it needs the facilities for. [snip]
One contract specifies: "The company must have the ability and be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at 1500-litre quantities." Others call for a 3,000-litre production capacity for unnamed biological agents and sheep carcasses to investigate incineration of infected animals.
The non-virulent Sterne strain of the bacterium is the only one specified in any of the documents. It is not thought to be harmful to humans, and is used in vaccination. However, the same equipment could easily be put to use to grow spores of the lethal Ames strain, and it is this that has raised eyebrows.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Sounds good: I'll stand in line...after ALL of the Elderly, Infirm, Young children and Medical Personnel are inoculated First and Foremost, Naturally.
Bad F'ing ju-ju. We've already seen how well the U.S. government controls it's stockpiles.
Looks like we may be getting ready to start major investigations of theft and lost spores.
Weeeelllll... I think active anthrax spores will be guarded pretty well. This isn't Russia.
Does the govt collect taxes on itself for all of its shopping sprees?
"The company must have the ability and be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at 1500-litre quantities." Others call for a 3,000-litre production capacity for unnamed biological agents and sheep carcasses to investigate incineration of infected animals."
Saddam Hussein had facilities capable of producing much greater quantities, but this didn't concern the europeons.
Yikes! That looks positively horrible. What is it?
"Does the govt collect taxes on itself for all of its shopping sprees?"
I think they wait for those tax holidays before shopping. If they did collect taxes, I'm sure they would spend them.
I thought the "active spores" released after 9-11 were traced back to U.S. military grade anthrax, is this incorrect?
Sounds like another Jayson Blair story to me. If we were going to produce anthrax, we would do it a little more discretely.
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