It was only a matter of time before the British government cottoned on to the fact that we cavalier biological researchers were regularly engaged in perilous international ‘veterinary trafficking’ activities. Yes, you. Put down that rabbit antibody and step away from the bench, nice and slow like.
I always knew our days were numbered: what a luxury, to send and receive that simple Jiffy-padded envelope full of vials of living fruit flies or nematodes, antibodies or plasmids or cell lines, dispatched from far-flung labs with nothing more complicated than the standard marker-pen scribbled mantra: ‘biological samples, non-hazardous’. Such was the collegial nature of such transactions that it would have been a breach of etiquette for the sender to even hint at the possibility of postal recompense, although I once liberated a vial with a cheerful note twisted around it that said “Buy me a beer the next time you see me at Keystone”. To share materials without complication; to desire and request a strain and to have it show up a few days later, no muss or fuss – such opulence. I always knew, in short, that we were somehow operating under the wire, and that if the powers-that-be ever suspected, we’d be in big trouble.
Well, our halcyon days are now officially over, at least in Blighty. Importing scientific reagents into the UK just became a lot more complicated. The laws were passed more than a year ago, but it seems they only decided to start enforcing them very recently. Our lab noticed the winds of change last week when a purified antibody, dispatched by Fedex from the States, failed to arrive on schedule. A few days later, we received an ominous missive from DEFRA (The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), an extract of which I reproduce below for your entertainment and edification:
“The import requirements for this type of import are set out in Importer Information Note (IIN) BAL-Live 1…This states that these animals may be imported with a declaration from the exporter stating that at the time of dispatch the animals showed no obvious signs of disease and that the holding of origin was no subject to any restrictions for reasons of Animal Health. If these animals are being imported from a Third (non-EU) Country it is necessary for it to enter the UK through a Border Inspection Post (BIP). For a list of BIPs and their capabilities please follow the link below. You must give 24 hours prior notification by a Common Veterinary Entry Document (CVED) which can be obtained from your local Animal Health Divisional Office (AHDO) or BIP. Part 1 must be completed and returned to the BIP of entry into the EU. To find your local AHDO please follow the link below. Products included in this requirement include blood products, serum and antibodies. … Once received the original copy of the documentation should be attached to the consignment prior to export so that it arrives with the correct documentation at the BIP. Failures to do so may result in delays to the processing of your consignment and to the eventual re-export or destruction of the consignment.”
(Anyone out there know how to spot a diseased antibody? Tiny sneezes issuing from inside the Eppendorf tube, perchance?)
In parallel, emails started to circulate amongst collaborators and colleagues, tales of lost packages, of delayed frozen materials that had arrived several days after the last of the dry ice had evaporated, of crucial manuscript revisions delayed because an irreplaceable reagent had gone astray, of epic telephone arguments with implacable officials at Stansted Airport (our nearest ‘BIP’, since you ask). People justifiably wondered why no one from DEFRA had bothered to alert any of the major universities and research institutions that the laws had been changed. Darker mutterings were heard too, conspiracy theories that had DEFRA infiltrated by Intelligent Designists or Christian Scientists.
All of this, I must say, was sounding a bit familiar to me after a four-year stint in a lab in the Netherlands. There, I tried three times to order COS1 cells from the American Type Culture Collection. Each time, my consignment was intercepted at Schiphol Airport for seven days as the vials were duly inspected by the official in charge of preventing the illegal trafficking of endangered species. COS1 cells, you see, were originally derived from an African green monkey, which is on the official endangered species list. Never mind that the cells in question were derived many moons ago, and that in importing an immortalized cell line, I was actually helping to perpetuate, not imperil, the species’ genomic existence. But to no avail: the checking procedure took exactly seven days, regardless of the logic of my arguments, and no amount of dry ice could withstand that amount of time.
So heads up, everyone: before you request that crucial perishable reagent from a mate on the other side of the world, gird your loins, obtain and fill our your CVED from your AHDO or BIP, post it to the sender…and ask them to put it in a box the size of a house with enough dry ice to sweat out the inevitable bureaucratic delays. Because, as the DEFRA notice helpfully pointed out, “Please note that the BIP office is not staffed on a daily basis.”
Oh good Lord, the madness is everywhere.
I once asked my previous lab to send a plasmid to me here in Aus. It got held up in Customs (and if you think DEFRA are fascist, you ain’t seen nothing yet), despite it being clearly labelled and the appropriate forms stuck to the padded envelope. They wanted me to pay a non insubstantial number of currency units to release it.
I said ‘sod it’ and found Another Way. cough
This is appalling, especially to an editor like me, who demands, as a matter of routine, that materials used to support conclusions in papers must, as a condition of acceptance, be made available to anyone who asks for them. It’s appalling for another reason, for it shows that the UK is now officially a part of the third world. When I visited Mexico in 1994 to do a feature on science in that country, I was told that the main thing holding up experimental science was the fact that valuable and perishable reagents too often expired in customs sheds where they were delayed by bureaucracy.
I think flies and worms should be exempt from hazardous animal status, and it goes without saying that a purified antibody is clearly a protein, not an animal. What I want to know is if anyone from DEFRA bothered to check with the Science Advisor (then David King) before enacting these rules. And what is behind it all—Health and Safety gone mad, insurance worries, fear of litigation? Because it surely isn’t going to help animal welfare to restrict researchers in this way, or cause any instances of rouge plagues or pestilences.
I am the sniggering at ‘rouge plagues’.
Good to have you back, Jen.
One day Matt will let us edit away our ineptitudes…
Although rouge is a good color for a plague. One induced by a TRITC-conjugated secondary antibody, say, set loose in the green British hills…
If only all ineptitude were so easily ablated.
TRITC? Get into the C21st, girl. AlexaFluor all the way.
Sorry, I’m still mired somewhere in Y2K.
Someone has just pointed out that my post implies that plasmids are also being regulated…not true yet, as far as I know (fingers crossed).
I’ve got a friend who, in her past, has been a mysid smuggler. And I, myself, have transported wheat mildew across national borders.
They could just tell the customs people that they’re sea-monkeys . Nothing evil is ever sold in the back of comic books!
Do flies and worms carry any sort of hazard or risk? I can’t imagine a pure protein would. I do hope you don’t have to take a leaf out of Dr Florey’s book
Nope. They’re the same things you find in the wild (in kitchen and garden respectively)—they are GMO, but not in a hazardous way. Probably wouldn’t last two seconds in the real world.
What a great-sounding book, Scott. I had the immense privilege of meeting Norman a couple of times. One of my scientific heroes.
Good line: “Chain was a very difficult colleague. Sometimes when he and Florey were arguing the very walls of the room seemed to vibrate. “
I didn’t know anything about the other players in this story…thanks for the link, Scott!
“Like many other common pieces of glassware, Erlenmeyer flasks could potentially be used in the production of illegal narcotics. In an effort to restrict such production, some U.S. states (including Texas) have begun requiring permits to purchase such glassware, including Erlenmeyer flasks, as well as chemicals identified as common starting materials.”
(quoted from the Wikipedia article on the flasks
That’s daft. You can mix chemicals in any glass or Pyrex container found in the kitchen! It just doesn’t look as boffin-y and cool.
I seem to recall a story from long time ago when there was this post doc from out East who took his (bacterial cultures) samples next to him on the plane flight… needless to say, he didn’t say a word and this was all prior 9/11.
I wonder if they are going to treat primers the same? I mean, if antibodies/proteins are considered animals – what is primers (not to mention plasmids)? Or, as we did at my old department, send pcr fragments for sequencing in Korea (it was – strangely enough – cheaper than doing it in house…)?!!
Hi Asa, sorry I don’t know how to put the little super-circle on your name. I think DNA is still ok and I can’t imagine this changing anytime soon. But even before 9-11 I was asked by a colleague to ferry an aliquot of rare cytokine on a trans-Atlantic flight and I caved in at the last second, too scared to risk it. I mean, it would be difficult to explain, I think.
Å <- like that.
(alt-shift-A)
Or write it as two a’s, that’s the traditional alternative. It’s like the ä being written as ae. Which was very funny when the BEEB wrote about Anneli Jäätenmäki.
Bob,
there’s a town just one side of the Dutch/German border that has ëë in the middle of the name. Can’t remember the full name, just the ‘eeee’ in the middle.
As long as they don’t smuggle umlauts over the border.
Jennifer, dont worry about that… I go by Asa all the time ‘here in the States’. The Aasa would probably been smarter but then again, I was lazy in the beginning.
Anyhow, thought about your comment about cytokines though. I mean, it’s not really dangerous per se is it? It’s mainly because some people have decided that everything that is a “protein” or “has DNA” is a possible contaminant? On the other hand, I do understand to a certain extent and I am quite happy not sharing a flight with unsupervised vials of bacteria ;) but, and that would be the seriuos part of this, if it is continuing to be this hard, or harder, to send reagents via mail what will happen with the “free scientist”stuff?
I guess some cynics would answer “what free science? that disappeared a long time ago”..
On the umlaut thing. It was very quite though when some of my [English native] friends wrote me a brithday card and had a fight if it was an Å, Ä or Ö as a first letter :D
They settled for Ö, since the pronounciation is somewhat similar to ‘OA-sa’... And I think the umlaut should be exported and shared. It’s not fair that it can be contained to some specific countries :D
Hi Åsa (thanks rpg, it works!)
Sorry to be unclear. When I said ‘dangerous’, I didn’t meant to my fellow passengers; I meant to me, when I ended up in a small holding cell at SeaTac Airport with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and an interrogator called Chuck.