By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

The Kansas GOP Congressional delegation is mounting a united front to discredit the Washington Post story and, presumably, the GAO report, that raises questions about the safety of a proposed biolab in Manhattan to study threats to the nation's food and livestock supply.

I'm posting the statement below. Note the jab at Texas, which is using the threat of tornadoes as one reason to derail the Kansas selection.

I agree with Brownback, Roberts et al that the lab can be safely constructed in Manhattan.

Can't help but wonder, though: Why are Kansas leaders so quick to discount the possibility of a worst-case scenario when it comes to the biolab, and so willing to contemplate the worst of the worst when the administration proposes moving Guantanamo detainees to the federal prison at Leavenworth?

The statement, from Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts along with Representatives Lynn Jenkins, Jerry Moran, and Todd Tiahrt:

Building a new, state of the art facility in Kansas is significantly safer than using the current deteriorating and limited facility. Level four bio-security research on human pathogens is already conducted in several other locations in the continental United States.

Kansas won on the merits after a 6-year long transparent selection process conducted by career civil servants including numerous public meetings in all five of the states that were finalists. Manhattan, Kansas, is the center of plant and animal research worldwide with the expertise and experience to be the best and safest research lab in the world.

Arguments about tornados are disingenuous. The county in Texas that competed for the lab has more than double the tornado touchdowns than Riley County, Kansas; and Texas is the number one state for tornadoes and number two for hurricanes.

Texas politics should not interfere with the ability of the United States to aggressively protect plant and animal health.

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