The University of Georgia's Southeastern Poultry Research Laboratory is showing its age, but the federal government is considering a 16 (M) million dollars plan to design a new facility for the lab. The item was included in President Bush's proposed budget for the 2008 fiscal year.

Congress has not yet approved the funds for the plan.

The 552-thousand-square-foot National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility would help confront threats from emerging disease pandemics or bio- and agro-terrorism.

It would be part of the federal Department of Homeland Security and would include biosafety labs where scientists can research and create diagnostic tools for foreign animal and zoonotic diseases, or those that can be passed between animals to humans.

Homeland Security officials are considering proposals for 18 sites. Finalists will be announced in June and a decision on the final site selection would be made next October. The building would become operational in 2013 or 2014, according to the Department of Homeland Security schedule.

Lab director David Swayne says that the research going on at the 46-year-old facility is vital for national security. The scientists there played a large role over in recent years in helping reconstruct the 1918 flu virus that killed between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide.

Now the lab is home to the country's main research on bird flu, a virus that many fear could kill millions of people again.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)