The Government laboratory linked to the foot-and-mouth outbreak was at the centre of a second biosecurity storm today as it emerged that the deadly Legionnella bacterium has been found at the site.

Health agencies are investigating the Institute of Animal Health (IAH), on the Pirbright site in Surrey, after a contractor who worked on the site contracted Legionnaires' disease.

The worker has now recovered from the disease, which he developed on June 20 this year. But Health Protection Agency (HPA) investigators found samples of the Legionella bacterium that causes the disease at the facility.

The worker is known to have worked at the site in the two weeks up to his illness. He also worked for a number of other laboratories in the area, and it is unclear whether the quantity of Legionella found at IAH would have been sufficient to cause the illness.

The latest investigation into the IAH will increase scrutiny on the health and safety at the research centre - one of the two laboratories on the Pirbright site in Surrey suspected of being the source of the foot and mouth outbreak.

A Government report into the foot-and-mouth outbreak on Tuesday concluded that the Pirbright site was the most likely the source of the foot-and-mouth virus, but could not say for sure whether it was the Government laboratory or a facility run by the private vaccine company Merial that may have suffered a breach in bio-security.

Mike Nevins, Mayor of Guildford and councillor of Pirbright, said today that the local population has lost faith in the safety procedures at the Government’s animal health laboratory.

“What local people have been telling me now, and I totally agree with them, is that there is no confidence in the Institute if it’s true that they have a case of Legionnaires’ disease as well as having caused an outbreak of foot-and-mouth,” he said. “This Institute was supposed to be squeaky clean.”

Legionnaires' disease is a potentially deadly form of pneumonia. The symptoms are similar to flu, with patients suffering fever, headaches, chills and tiredness.

Droplets in the air can carry the dangerous bacterium, which breeds in standing water.

Investigators looking for the breach of bio-security that caused the foot-and-mouth outbreak have also taken water samples from the Merial site at Pirbright.

“Everywhere the patient has been in the 10-14 days before falling ill, including their home, place of work and anywhere they may have travelled to or visited, is assessed to establish whether there is any potential source of infection which may need further investigation and/or testing," a Health Protection Agency statement said.

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