CEPI published its first Biosecurity Policy and accompanying FAQ, operationalising its September 2024 Biosecurity Strategy. The policy applies globally to all CEPI-funded third parties—including grant recipients, contractors, subcontractors, and sub-awardees—working with biological pathogens, materials, or data. It establishes nine requirements: legal compliance; mandatory risk assessment; organisational oversight; secure sample collection, storage, and management; emergency response; protection of sensitive information; assessment for viruses with enhanced epidemic or pandemic potential; responsible nucleic-acid synthesis procurement; and responsible development of emerging and converging technologies.[1][6][8]
For a lunar settlement, the policy provides a transferable governance model for managing biological risk across an entire workflow: collection, transport, processing, storage, analysis, disposal, data security, and incident response. Its explicit focus on enhanced epidemic or pandemic potential, nucleic-acid synthesis, and emerging technologies addresses failure modes that could compromise a closed habitat, contaminate irreplaceable archives, or enable deliberate misuse after Earth-based oversight weakens. The requirement for continuing reassessment and accountable institutional oversight is particularly relevant to autonomous or multi-generational operations.[6][8]
The Ark team should adapt CEPI’s nine-area framework into a lunar biorepository and life-sciences control standard. Require documented biorisk assessments for every biological asset and experiment; assign named accountable officers; maintain chain-of-custody records for samples and genomic data; define quarantine, waste, and emergency-response procedures; screen synthesis orders and dual-use work; conduct recurring audits; and establish thresholds for suspending projects or isolating facilities. Monitor CEPI implementation, especially its integration of biosecurity into pre- and post-award review processes and its treatment of viruses with enhanced epidemic or pandemic potential, as a benchmark for Ark governance.[4][6]