TOWN OF DUNN, Wis. -- Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were in Dane County on Monday to scout out a home for a new $400 million human and animal disease research lab.

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If the University of Wisconsin gets its way, the national lab will be located at its Kegonsa Research Campus just off Highway 51 in the Town of Dunn.

However, some nearby residents said that is no place for such an enormous and high-security facility. They continued their effort on Monday to take the UW site out of contention. Some critics of what would be the largest facility of its kind in the U.S. staged a small protest at the site near Stoughton on Monday, WISC-TV reported.

The protestors said that they hope the show of community concern will mean the UW site won't make the federal government's final list of three to seven sites, which is due out next month.

Protest signs and cars lined Highway 51, and some roads reading "No National Bio And Agro Defense Facility!"

The UW farmland, sandwiched between some other UW lab facilities, is one of 18 places in the running for the lab.

On Monday afternoon, Homeland Security and possibly other federal officials from U.S. departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture looked at the land on foot and by bus. Escorted by UW police, the group, which included UW officials, zoomed by protesters who set up near a UW physics lab right next to the site without ever getting out.

Some of the proposals critics said that they worry about the rural location and the lab's infectious diseases.

Ann Christianson, a mother who has a 3-year-old son, said that she's very concerned.

"The fact is that there are mistakes that can be made. Everyone is human, and I don't want to live a half a mile from something like that," Christianson said.

Protest organizer and part-time town resident George Corrigan said that the lab runs in contrast to the area's development philosophy.

"The Town of Dunn has a long-standing policy of preserving farmland ... and we've got acres and acres of farmland here and building a 500,000-square-foot building with 16 to 30 acres of parking lot around it is as far from farmland preservation as you can get."

The Town of Dunn board has already voted against using the site for a national lab. The Dane County Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution regarding the project on Thursday. That measure aims to support the idea of building the lab in a Dane County site but not the UW one, WISC-TV reported.

Those against the project said that they have 18 votes on the board and 19 are needed to pass the resolution.

According to the Homeland Security Web site, the lab will "integrate all aspects of public and animal health research … central to national security," and investigate "evolving bioterrorism threats over the next five decades."

The lab will create 400 jobs, and the UW has touted its economic and research benefits, WISC-TV reported.

UW officials said on Monday afternoon that they "felt good" about how the tour was going. They said that protesters are free to express their opinions.