Former dean aids top government research on livestock diseases
   
   David Huxsoll takes a boat to work every day.
The former Vet School dean makes a nine mile commute from the Connecticut coast across Long Island Sound to Plum Island, a mile and a half off the coast of Long Island, N.Y.
As director of the Plum Island Animal Research Center, Huxsoll works in the only U.S. lab where certain highly infectious foreign animal diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease, can be studied. By law, those diseases cannot be studied on the U.S. mainland; they must be studied on an island not connected to the mainland by a bridge or tunnel.
“Our interest here is to protect the livestock industry from economic disaster, should one of these disease agents enter the U.S. through natural or intentional means,” Huxsoll said.
Because of his experience in biological warfare research, Huxsoll was consulted by clean-up crews and response teams regarding the anthrax scares last fall. Huxsoll also teaches a bioterrorism course as an adjunct instructor with LSU’s Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education. He taught the course most recently in St. Louis, Mo., Jan. 19-20.
Huxsoll has an extensive history in research on bioterrorist warfare. He began his career in the military as the commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. In 1990, he came to LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine as an associate dean and became dean in 1995. Huxsoll worked with the Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education to develop the training course on bioterrorism before the U.S. Department of Agriculture hired him to work at Plum Island in 2000.
Plum Island goes to great lengths to ensure the diseases they study do not escape the island. They have special safety procedures for filtering air, disposing of waste, and decontaminating lab workers, according to the center’s Web site.
Huxsoll said the island is totally self sufficient, with its own fire department, ambulance service, water treatment plant, waste treatment plant and a power plant in the event of lost power from the mainland.
“The work done at Plum Island is extremely important,” said Vet School Dean Michael Groves.
Groves has worked with Huxsoll since his early days in the Army, and they have been close friends and colleagues since.
“I think the work he does [at Plum Island] is even more important now than it has been in the past, to safeguard our agriculture against foreign animal diseases,” Groves said.
Plum Island is working to develop rapid diagnostic tests to identify foreign animal diseases, and the research center would facilitate management and control of disease should an outbreak occur. They have developed a new test for foot-and-mouth disease that has proven to be effective, and they are in the process of field testing that vaccine.
“Agriculture is extremely important to the economy of the U.S.,” Huxsoll said. “If we should have an outbreak of foot-and-mouth in this country today, we would lose the world market tomorrow for animal products.”
Groves said animal agriculture is no longer an individual farmer industry, and in the past 10 years the industry has concentrated into very small regions.
“When you put animals into these intense environments, the transmission of disease is very rapid,” Groves said.
Kayla Gagnet