Congress voted in 2009 to sell an agriculture lab that studies livestock disease. The lab is on Plum Island, located just off the coast of New York's Long Island, and local lawmakers from New York and Connecticut are working to halt the sale of the land to private interests. Long Island Rep. Timothy Bishop said,
"Plum Island is one of the natural treasures of the Northeast... My bill would eliminate the wrongheaded requirement that it be sold into private hands for a fraction of its true value to our nation."