Wisconsin won't be getting a new federal facility for the research of animal diseases. A site in the Dane County Town of Duun was one of seventeen in the running for the Department of Homeland Security's new National Bio and Agro Defense Facility . Irwin Goldman at UW-Madison's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences is disappointed. "We felt that Wisconsin had a fabulous proposal," said Goldman. The facility will conduct research on foreign animal diseases that can make the jump to humans, such as certain strains of influenza. It was the nature of that research that sparked widespread oppostion to the facility in the Town of Dunn , and Town Chair Ed Minihan is "absolutley delighted" that the lab won't be located in his community: "the present one is on an island now for a reason," he said. The existing facility is on Plum Island, off the tip of New York's Long Island, and is due to close. In addition to the UW, the Dane County site had the support of Governor Jim Doyle and some other politicians, but Minihan says local opposition was widespread. Finalists for the new lab include two sites in Kansas, and one each in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.