Over the last three and a half days we have conducted intensive internal investigations and, as a result, continue to have complete confidence in our processes and procedures for health, safety and environmental protection, quality control, quality assurance and regulatory compliance. To date, we have not been able to establish any evidence that the virus may have been transported out of our centre by humans.

We share the views that the risk of airborne transmission is negligible however, we do have a point of clarification to make regarding the references made to the role water may have played in this outbreak. There is a suggestion that waste water released to the environment by Merial may have been a possible cause of the outbreak. We wish to clarify that Merial does not release water from the shared Pirbright site. We ensure that the water we use in our virus production is treated, we then transfer it to the IAH who treat it further and release it.

Everyone involved in this investigation understands that this report is part of an ongoing process and that the outbreak is causing farmers hardship. We are committed to playing our role in establishing the cause and, like everyone else, want to ensure that lessons are learned, that measures are taken to control, contain and eradicate this outbreak as quickly as possible and, that future outbreaks are prevented.

Merial Statement