After a meeting last week, the Montana Board of Regents found a new area of land to lease for a new State Veterinary Diagnostic Lab to test chronic wasting disease.
The Board agreed to lease five acres of Montana State University land to not only create the lab, but help the tissue testing process when it comes to researching C-W-D (chronic wasting disease) in animals like deer. Right now, the tissue is processed here in the state, but state representatives say Bozeman's Marsh Lab isn't accredited to studying C-W-D so tissues must be sent out-of-state.
Tracy Ellig, MSU’s Communications Vice President, tells more details about what the labs are really about. "I think it’s very important for people to understand that it is just a location and its going to be a facility that’s owned, operated and managed by other state agencies,” Ellig says.
The Board hopes to bring state agencies together in the new location, including Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Montana Departments of Livestock and Agriculture.
“There’s been an enormous amount to confusion over the years that people think these labs are University labs and they are not,” says Ellig.
The previous building has been there since 1960, and lawmakers say it may take as long as a year to get funding through legislation.
