The future of biocontainment is for more regulatory oversight, not less, and more safety categories. So BSL-3 will become 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, etc. Be aware that there are an increasing number of government agency groups now gaining power whose goals are something other than making it easy for you to do biocontainment work. Anticipate a future in which risk assessment will be a bigger, more time-consuming part of design and operations. In Canada, two regulatory bodies (Public Health and Food Inspection) work closely together to designate a single point of contact for the certification of biocontainment facilities in order to simplify life for research organizations. (NIH, USDA, CDC take note).

- From Tradeline’s 2007 International Conference on Biocontainment Facilities