Anthrax tests on Gruinard Island and Operation Vegetarian

In 1942 and 1943 scientists from Britain's chemical and biological weapons center at Porton Down tested anthrax bombs on Gruinard Island, a small uninhabited island off the northwest coast of Scotland. They tethered sheep on the hillside and detonated bombs filled with anthrax spores nearby; the sheep died within days. The trials showed that anthrax spread by bombs could make an area deadly. The same program produced Operation Vegetarian, a plan to drop about five million small linseed cattle cakes laced with anthrax over German pastures, killing cattle and causing human infections and food shortages if Germany used germ weapons first.¹²

The project grew from wartime fear that Germany was preparing biological weapons, and from decades of research on anthrax since the founders of germ theory first isolated it. Vegetarian was never used, and the cakes were destroyed after the war. Gruinard, however, stayed poisoned, because anthrax spores can survive in soil for decades, and the island was placed under quarantine. In 1981 activists calling themselves Dark Harvest left soil from the island at Porton Down to press for a cleanup. From 1986 the government treated the island with formaldehyde diluted in seawater and removed topsoil, and in 1990 it declared Gruinard safe and sold it back to the original owners' heirs.¹²