Veterinary Laboratories Agency
The Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) is an Executive Agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It provides a specialist veterinary resource to the UK Government to help it fulfill its aims and objectives in veterinary public health and developing sustainable agriculture and food industries.
The VLA has a large headquarters site near Weybridge in Surrey, where most of the research activities take place. The Weybridge site is a well-equipped facility with high bio-containment level L3+ facilities. In addition, there are 15 smaller Regional Laboratories, which provide a surveillance network throughout Great Britain.
The principal mission of the VLA is to “safeguard public and animal health through world class veterinary research and surveillance of farmed livestock & wildlife”.
Five recent relevant publications:
- D.L.Suarez, D.A.Senne, J.Banks, I.H.Brown, S.C.Essen, C-W Lee, R.J. Manvell, C.Mathieu-Benson, V.Moreno, J.C.Pedersen, B.Panigrahy, H.Rojas, E.Spackman & D.J.Alexander (2004). Recombination resulting in virulence shift in avian influenza outbreak, Chile. Emerging Infectious Diseases [serial online] 2004 Apr. Available from:
- Lau L-T., Banks J., Aherne R., Brown I.H., Dillon N, Collins R. A., Chan K-Y., Fung Y-W. W., Xing J., Yu A. C. H. (2004) Nucleic acid sequence-based amplification methods to detect avian influenza virus Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 313, 336-342
- Capua, I. & Alexander, D.J. (2004). Avian influenza - Recent Developments Avian Pathology 33, 393-404
- L.P.Phipps, S.C.Essen, I.H.Brown (2004). Genetic subtyping of influenza A viruses using RT-PCR with a single set of primers based on conserved sequences within the HA2 coding region. J. Viro. Methods 122, 119-122
- Banks, J., Speidel, E. S., Moore, E., Plowright, L., Piccirillo, A., Capua, I., Cordioli, P., Fioretti, A. & Alexander, D. J. (2001). Changes in the haemagglutinin and the neuraminidase genes prior to the emergence of highly pathogenic H7N1 avian influenza viruses in Italy. Archives of Virology 146, 963-973.
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