First tested as a biological warfare agent by the Japanese during the 1930s in Manchuria. The United States also used the pathogen as a weapon in war until it signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972.
It is believed to be stored in the US at the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick in Maryland, formerly the centre for the US biological weapons programme. It was supposedly the location where the alleged 2001 anthrax attacker stole the bacteria, killing five people. It is stored in numerous bio-research labs in the US and overseas.
The botulinum toxin has been a concern as a potential biological warfare agent since World War Two. It is extremely potent, easy to manufacture and transport, as well as being colourless and tasteless when in solution.
Several states are known to have produced botulinum toxin as a biological weapon, including the Soviet Union and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo tried to use botulinum toxin as a weapon in the early 1990s.
In 2008, the US Food and Drug Administration officials issued a rare warning to consumers that the botulinum toxin was suspected in hot dog chili sauce made by Castleberry's Food. The botulism outbreak, the first in a US-made canned food in 33 years, eventually sickened eight and lead to a recall of tens of millions of cans of food.
Plague is a disease that mainly circulates among small animals and their fleas, however the bacteria yersinia pestis can also infect humans and is transmitted through a bite or direct contact of infective materials. Plague is endemic in many countries in Africa, in the former Soviet Union, the Americas and Asia.
In 2008 cases were noted in Algeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Libya, Madagascar, Peru, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda, USA and Zambia. Laboratories play vital roles in surveillance and diagnosis of the disease.