Research Highlights

Animal Disease and Agro-Terrorism

EPA is conducting several projects concerning foreign animal disease (FAD) pathogens, agricultural terrorism, and agriculture disaster management. These projects will help define EPA’s supporting role in the agricultural emergency response efforts led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). EPA’s National Homeland Security Research Center (NHSRC) is coordinating its efforts with EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances.

Plant and Animal Disposal Best Practices Handbook

With support from the Department of Defense’s Technical Support Working Group (TSWG) and with technical guidance from USDA/APHIS and EPA, researchers from Texas A&M University are developing a best practices handbook to help decision makers and emergency planners handle large-scale disposal of contaminated agricultural products. Several of the project scientists are from Texas A&M’s National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Center of Excellence.

The Handbook on Best Practices and Guidelines for Contaminated Plant and Animal Disposal covers the following disposal methods: thermal destruction, burial/landfilling, composting, rendering, alkaline hydrolysis, digestion, anaerobic digestion, and ocean disposal. The handbook includes biosecurity/safety, environmental, regulatory, infrastructure, and economic factors, and follows a comprehensive literature review of animal carcass disposal published in 2004 by the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center Consortium Carcass Disposal Working Group. The project includes an exercised option to transform the handbook into a software tool that permits the user to identify and enter data to create bioterror/natural disaster scenarios.

Transportable Agricultural Waste Gasifier Prototype

EPA personnel recently started building a prototype mobile gasifier that can process 25 tons of biologically contaminated agricultural waste per day. The dual-chamber unit can be trucked into contaminated areas and can incinerate any diseased plant or animal material at temperatures greater than 850°C, leaving only inert, pathogen-free ash residues and producing minimal air emissions. The unit, intended to destroy prions and all less hardy biological agents, will then undergo performance testing.

Avian Influenza Virus Persistence and Decontamination

EPA researchers are studying the persistence of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI and AI) virus on several types of outdoor materials under varying ambient conditions (temperature, relative humidity, and UV level). They plan to conduct decontamination experiments where persistence occurs and test low-pathogenic AI under the same conditions to assess its use as a surrogate for the HPAI. A literature review of AI persistence in the environment is also under way. EPA is also investigating the use of low-cost, widely available, non-corrosive, minimal-impact decontamination agents.

Prion Surrogate Development

Sufficient disposal infrastructure must be in place to handle routine animal mortalities and to manage carcass disposal resulting from emergency response activities. The effectiveness of large-scale disposal technologies must be tested while deactivating the thermally and chemically resistant prions that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), such as mad-cow disease. EPA is working on a surrogate prion to safely assess the effectiveness and environmental impacts of large-scale carcass disposal technologies. If a technology can deactivate TSE-causing prions, we can effectively deal with all viruses and bacteria of concern.

For more information, please visit the National Agriculture Compliance Assistance Center's Web site at www.epa.gov/agriculture.

Technical Contact: Paul Lemieux