The Congressional hearing on CDC oversight of select agent laboratories in early October of 2007 indicated valuable lessons learned from biocontainment facility managment:

• Improvements in our inspection process.are needed. Some of the improvements under consideration include:
  • Expand the scope of interviews to include more types of laboratory workers during inspections, to better assess the implementation of policies and the quality of training;
  • Examine more closely the implementation of biosafety, security, and incident response plans;
  • Review a broader array of documents during our inspections, such as biosafety committee meeting minutes and occupational health records, to identify problems that may go unreported by registered entities; and
  • Assess the composition of our inspection teams, the frequency of our inspections, and whether we need to apply a prioritization system to how often we inspect labs.
  • Improvements in the verification process. Whereas before we relied primarily upon documentation from entities to confirm that deficiencies were corrected, we plan to conduct more verification site visits.
  • Provision of additional outreach and training to the regulated community, including additional outreach and training to Responsible Officials and creation of additional guidance documents related to biosafety, incident response, record-keeping, and theft, loss, and release.

View the PDF of the complete testimony on the Oversight of Select Agents by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.