By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

Government auditors say the selection of Manhattan, Kan., as the location for a $700 million federal biolab was rushed and possibly political.

This is bad news, because Kansas is counting heavily on construction of the facility, which would research threats to food and livestock safety, to provide jobs and boost the state's bioscience industry.

The selection process took six years and the winner was Kansas -- not a state thought of as a political powerhouse. But when the Government Accountabiity Office says something, Congress usually pays attention. A House committee is supposed to discuss the report on Thursday, according to the Washington Post, which got ahold of a draft copy of the GAO report.

From the Post story:

GAO's draft report said the agency's assessment of the risk of accidental release of toxins on mainland locations, including Kansas, was based on "unrepresentative accident scenarios," "outdated modeling" and "inadequate" information about the sites. The agency's analysis of the economic impact of domestic cattle being infected by foot-and-mouth disease played down the financial losses by not considering the worst-case scenario.

The agency noted that the United Kingdom's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, which resulted from an accidental release at a biological research laboratory south of London. Six million sheep, cattle and pigs were slaughtered to stop the contamination, and the country's agriculture market, comparatively a fraction of the U.S. market, lost $4.9 billion.

So the question is: Can the plant be made safe if the folks in charge use representative accident scenarios, up-to-date modeling and adequate information about the Kansas site?

Rivals in Texas, who have gone to court to try to stop the biolab from being built in Kansas, say no.

"They call it tornado alley for a reason," one of the Texas attorneys sneered in the Post story.

It seems as though a lab could be built to withstand a tornado. And before they get too hopeful in Texas, note that the GAO report says Homeland Security didn't do enough research to determine whether a biolab would be safe anywhere on the U.S. mainland. Last I looked, that includes the Lone Star state.

Anyway, Kansas politicians are supposed to weigh in later today. Should be interesting.

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