Oh Yeah.....well Pirbright Laboratories where told to clean up their act in 2002,quite clearly they did not and considering part of it is Goverment owned and run.....well you might as well use flood damage to your advantage!
They're not saying floods are to blame for FMD. What they're trying to establish is why the leak, which is what they still believe, from Pirbright could have picked that farm at random when there are other farms in closer proximity.
They're questioning whether a leak of live vaccine (incidentally my understanding is that Merial don't have stores of the live form of the virus) down a sink at the Government run lab, for example, could then have been washed through flooded storm drains into the river that subsequently flooded that farm.
The time line for incubation fits. If it was an airborne spread of the infection, we'd have more cases in that locality.