Foot-and-Mouth Wars.(foot-and-mouth disease research)

Peter Mason may have the strangest commute in America. Every morning, the balding scientist with the salt-and-pepper ponytail boards a ferry for a 45-minute ride across the Long Island Sound. Signs mounted on pilings warn the public to keep out. The boat pulls up on a gray, windswept island where sinister smokestacks dot the horizon and the air smells faintly of caged animals. Mason enters the lobby of a nondescript two-story building, walks through an airlock, sheds his clothes and strolls buck naked into the restricted area to his laboratory. (Garments worn into the lab are not allowed out.) Each time he leaves, he has to blow his nose, spit and take a shower. "In some studies, I've had to take six or seven showers a day," he says.

As foot-and-mouth disease rages through the countryside, thousands of British farmers are learning the hard way about the dangers of this highly contagious and fast-acting disease. But deep in the bowels of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center a few miles off the farthest tip of northern Long Island in New York, Mason has been doing battle with the foot-and-mouth virus for 10 years. It's a lonely job, and one that can't be rushed. Scientists here have been trying to find the perfect vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease since 1954. Mason doesn't expect to have one ready "for years." Despite the acknowledged slow pace of scientific inquiry, the crisis in Europe is adding new stress to a workplace about as removed from the rest of society as one can get in these global times. There's a palpable fear in the windswept air of Plum Island that, despite all the safety precautions and hard work, it may now be only a matter of time before Mason's longtime viral nemesis invades American farms. "The feeling is sheer horror--seeing all the animals destroyed," Mason says of the English epidemic. "Do I feel dread? That goes without saying. It must be terrible over there."

It is terrible, and it's getting worse. Foot-and-mouth disease has already spread to Ireland, France and the Netherlands, and possibly Germany. Meanwhile English authorities have stepped up their efforts to contain it, putting up a "firewall" killing zone around infected farms. They have already slaughtered or marked for slaughter more than 834,000 pigs, sheep and cattle. Britain's chief scientific adviser warned that the epidemic could grow tenfold in the coming months and wipe out one half of the country's livestock. Some farmers have resorted to suicide. British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Parliament to brace for a long fight. "This is like tracking a common cold in the human population," he said last week. U.S. Customs officials are on the alert, but there's only so much they can do. Random spot checks at Miami International Airport yield about 2,000 pounds of illegal meat products a day. On a recent visit, Texas State Veterinarian Linda Logan saw a locker full of sausage, salami and half a pig from a confiscated suitcase. Although foot-and-mouth disease poses no danger to people, it is highly contagious--one blister on an infected pig's hoof contains hundreds of millions of doses. "The accidental introduction is a big worry especially for people like me that are going to have to do all the extermination," Logan said. "A place like Plum Island is critical for our ability to diagnose the disease."

It may also be the best hope for a cure. Opened in 1954 by the U.S. Agriculture Department, the research facility is the only laboratory in the country, and one of only a handful worldwide, currently developing and testing a vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease. Security is extreme. U.S. lawmakers were so nervous about the disease's wreaking economic havoc when the facility opened that they banned any samples of the virus from the continental United States. Sewage and waste from the island is heat treated to kill any virus. Air leaving the lab is filtered. New workers often report fatigue because the air inside the lab has been thinned to create a suction that keeps it from migrating out. Overall, the security precautions add $11 million a year to the budget--about 10 times the lab's budget for vaccine development. For more than 40 years, few people outside the government were allowed on the island.

The secretive approach has led to bizarre rumors in communities across the water in Long Island. One local story has it that eight-foot chickens have free run of Plum Island. ...