Regulatory Oversight for Biocontainment Facilities

Guidelines and trends.

Published April 2008

Do not take the BMBL as a design document. It establishes the goals, not how to get there. Make sure to document your rationales for system decisions including questions that were asked, the discussed consequences of decisions, and control issues so that you will have a basis of design and analysis document that could be used in communicating with legislators and the public. And in the U.S., keep your eyes on the USDA as an increasingly active approval agency due to increasing U.S. concern about the vulnerability of the food chain and links between human and animal pathogens.

- From Tradeline's International Conference on Biocontainment Facilities 2008