Lawmakers are demanding answers after it was revealed that the United States is sending taxpayer dollars to a Chinese military laboratory to make bird flu viruses more dangerous to people.
Eighteen members of Congress are demanding answers from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) about the project, which was first revealed by DailyMail.com.
It is part of a $1 million collaboration between the USDA and the CCP-led Chinese Academy of Sciences, the institution that oversees the Wuhan lab at the center of the Covid lab leak theory.
In a scathing letter last week to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, the bipartisan group said: “This research, funded by American taxpayers, could potentially generate dangerous new lab-created strains of viruses that threaten our national security and public health.” “.
The White Coat Waste Project obtained the photo above and claims it shows animal experimenters inside the USDA lab that is working with Chinese scientists on bird flu research.
Testing revealed that an unknown number of cows tested positive for H5N1 Avian Influenza A in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. Iowa is currently “monitoring the situation” as it is also a large dairy producing state. It comes after a goat in Minnesota tested positive last week. Avian flu has also been found in foxes, lynx, striped skunks, raccoons and coyotes since the 2022 outbreak.
The research comes as fears about bird flu grow. A farm worker in Texas contracted the H5N1 strain that is spreading to livestock across the United States earlier this month, becoming the second American to be diagnosed, and experts are bracing for more cases.
Earlier this year it was revealed that the US government was funneling $1 million to China to see if scientists could make “highly pathogenic avian influenza” more contagious to mammals through gain-of-function research.
Government records showed the collaboration began in April 2021 and is scheduled to be funded through March 2026. The USDA previously told this website that the project was requested in 2019 and approved in 2020.
The research involves infecting ducks and geese with different strains of viruses to make them more infectious and studying the viruses’ potential to “jump to mammalian hosts,” according to the research documents.
It is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the project’s primary collaborators are the USDA Southeastern Poultry Research Laboratory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, a Wuhan partner laboratory. .
And it has continued despite similar research being restricted in 2022 and growing concerns that dubious Chinese studies may have started the Covid pandemic.
Ironically, just yesterday President Joe Biden’s administration announced that it will work with 50 countries to identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing a pandemic that the United States’ own research could trigger.
Last week’s letter was led by Rep. Nick Langworthy, a New York Republican who sits on the House Agriculture Committee.
It says: “We are concerned by recent reports about the collaboration of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in avian flu research.”
The CAS is the parent organization of WIV and had previously been banned from receiving money from the US government for “blatantly violating biosafety and grant policies, refusing to share laboratory notebooks and other data, and otherwise obstructing investigations into the possible role of the risky laboratory coronavirus.” [gain of function] Investigation into the origin of Covid-19.
‘Recognizing CAS’s problematic behavior, our House and Senate colleagues have called for sanctions against CAS and its affiliates and for taxpayer funding to be cut for all investigations involving CAS.’
The signatories then requested written answers to seven questions about the potential of the research to increase the transmissibility of avian flu viruses, details about specific experiments being conducted, the biosafety levels of the experiments, what oversight it is providing USDA on CAS and whether the FBI conducted a security risk assessment on the collaboration and, if so, what those results were.
Bird flu is of particular concern right now because a Texas farmer recently contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus. The patient contracted bird flu from an infected cow, this being the first time the strain was found in cattle.
They are only the second person to contract H5N1 after someone in Colorado contracted the virus in 2022.
While there is no sign of human-to-human spread (a development that would signal the start of a human epidemic), experts say the ease with which the strain jumps between species increases the risk that it will evolve to infect more people. easily.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports a “low” risk to public health.
The virus, however, is widespread among wild birds, with sporadic infections in poultry and mammals.
Experts have previously told DailyMail.com that H5N1 has the potential to cause a new pandemic.
Dr. Aaron Glatt, an infectious disease expert at Mount Sinai, New York, warned: “It is absolutely true that H5N1 has the potential to cause a pandemic.
‘People who work with these animals must be careful.
“The more this virus spreads, the more likely it is to become a strain that can mutate and begin to spread from person to person.”
The H5N1 that is spreading around the world emerged in 2020 after a bird became infected with both a bird flu from domestic birds and a virus from wild birds.
During infection, the two viruses met in the same cell and exchanged genes (in a process scientifically called recombination) to create the new virus that now had multiple attributes that made it better at infecting bird cells.
It spread rapidly around the world with the first cases being identified in Europe, before infections were also detected in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The above shows a caged chicken that The White Coat Waste Project says comes from inside the USDA lab that is working with Chinese government scientists on bird flu research.
The above shows a caged chicken that The White Coat Waste Project says comes from inside the USDA lab that is working with Chinese government scientists on bird flu research.
This month’s letter is not the first that lawmakers have written to the USDA.
After the February investigation, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa wrote a letter to Secretary Vilsack requesting more information about the department’s current funding of the investigation.
The letter said: “I was concerned to learn from the nonprofit group White Coat Waste Project that the USDA is supporting experiments involving a “highly pathogenic avian influenza virus” that poses a “risk to both animals and humans.” “.
Senator Ernst said in a statement to DailyMail.com at the time: “The health and safety of Americans is too important to improvise, and Biden’s USDA should have been more apprehensive before sending taxpayer dollars to help.” with them”. [China] about risky research on bird flu.
‘You should know by now to suspect a game of “birds” when it comes to researchers who have links to the dangerous Wuhan lab, and simply switching from bats to birds raises concerns that they are creating more pathogens with pandemic potential.
‘Here’s my warning: The Biden administration should tread carefully until cutting off every last penny that goes to our adversaries. “We cannot allow what happened in Wuhan to happen again.”
The specific viruses the investigation said it will study include H5NX, H7N9 and H9N2, WCW reported.
Rep. Nicholas Langworthy (R-NY) speaks to reporters as he walks to the House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol on July 18, 2023.
A 2023 study described H5NX viruses as “highly pathogenic” with the ability to cause neurological complications in humans.
The H7N9 strain first infected humans and animals in China in March 2013 and the World Health Organization said it is worrying “because most patients have become seriously ill.”
The H9N2 strain has been found in pigeons in China and, while it has lower pathogenicity than the other strains, it can still infect humans.
Despite the concerns, a USDA spokesperson told this website that it is “common for international researchers to conduct independent research related to the same end goal” and that the research does not qualify as gain of function.