New revelations on Chinese biolab black market emerge as politicians blame each other.
Two California-based legislators are calling for an investigation into a secret Chinese-owned biolab discovered in Reedley, California, and how the company that owned it was approved for government loans and tax credits amounting to more than $500,000.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), who both represent congressional districts in California’s Central Valley, wrote a letter to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee asking for a probe into how and why Universal Meditech Inc., was granted two Payment Protection Program (PPP) loans of $74,912 each in April 2020 and February 2021.
Universal Meditech, Inc. was also awarded a $360,000 tax credit (pdf) in 2018 under California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CalCompetes GO-Biz program, although the company failed to meet guidelines and never actually received those funds.
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The black market lab at 850 I St. was discovered last December when Jesalyn Harper, a code enforcement officer for the City of Reedley fire department, noticed a green garden hose protruding from the back of a warehouse. She told The Epoch Times she inspected the building after receiving an anonymous complaint about a possible business operating in the warehouse which was believed to be vacant at the time.
The secret lab was later found to contain thousands of vials of bacterial and viral agents, including coronavirus. chlamydia, E. coli, streptococcus pneumonia, HIV, hepatitis, herpes, rubella, and malaria, raising grave concerns about biosecurity.
The warehouse space, rented by Prestige Biotech, Inc., housed nearly 1,000 lab mice, 200 of them found dead. The rest of the mice—except for 10 samples stored in a refrigerated facility—were euthanized and incinerated.
The company is believed to have produced COVID-19 and pregnancy test kits.
A spokesperson for GO-Biz told The Epoch Times in an Aug. 10 email that the company “was found to be in material breach of their tax credit agreement and on June 15, 2023, it was terminated.”
“They never received a single dollar,” the spokesperson said.
In 2019, when the tax credit agreement was signed by Cheryl Akin, deputy director of the governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, and Universal Meditech CEO “Zhaoyan Wang,” the company was operating as a licensed business in California and agreed to hire full-time employees and invest in intellectual property and tenant improvements as part of their expansion in Fresno in exchange for the tax credit, according to the spokesperson.
Investigations involving the city, county, state, and federal authorities, including the FBI and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have alarmed residents in this small city about 25 miles southeast of Fresno.
Joe Prado, assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Health, released a chronology of events regarding the company and the biolab at a County Board of Supervisors meeting on Aug. 8. He stressed the facility does not pose an imminent threat to public health and released more details and photographs of biologic materials that were found inside the warehouse.
During the first week of July, the County removed 126 44-gallon containers and one 38-gallon container, but then discovered another 10 44-gallon containers of “biologicals,” he said.
“So, think of this warehouse. It is packed. It is to the ceiling, with boxes,” Mr. Prado said. “And everywhere, as we’re moving things around, we’re finding more chemicals, we’re finding more biologicals, we’re having to deal with more issues as we go through this cleanup.”
Inspections of the site also uncovered 35 freezers and refrigerators, according to court documents. They contained biological material, including blood, tissue, serum, bodily fluid samples, medical waste, and infectious agents.
All the freezers and refrigerators were full of blood and tissue samples, Mr. Prado said.
“Those were a particular concern to us,” he said.
Public Disclosure
The FBI told all agencies on Dec. 21, 2022, “stand by” while they assessed whether or not a federal investigation would be conducted, Mr. Prado said.
Federal and state authorities told the city and county not to speak out publicly about the ongoing investigation as a matter of protocol, he said.
“They were making it very clear to us we cannot speak on this,” he said. “They’ve made that clear pretty much from day one.”
Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba claimed during the meeting that local authorities wanted to disclose information about the biolab discovery sooner but were told not to release it.
“We had to be able to come out with as much information as we possibly could but when the FBI and the CDC and everybody else in the alphabet soup of state and federal agencies tells you we cannot even comment whether we’re doing an investigation, you cannot comment,” she said. “When they tell you that, you’re not going to defy the FBI.”
Ms. Zieba told the board there is good reason to disclose information now to debunk myths about the facility, about which “conspiracy theories abound,” she said.
One such rumor in Reedley is that a grocery store across the street from the warehouse was shut down because mice got out and infected the supermarket, she said.
“No, no, no, no, no. The roof is collapsing in the supermarket and it shut a year prior to this lab coming to Reedley. So, it really behooves us to get out in front of the media now to debunk these myths because the conspiracy theorists are having a field day with it,” she said.
State and local authorities believe the company, Prestige Biotech which originally operated as Universal Meditech, Inc. in Fresno, was not operating as a laboratory but was instead used to store equipment, medical devices, chemicals, and biologic materials such blood, urine, and tissue samples.
“I have heard everything. I have watched a local politician on national television talking about communist Chinese labs that are manipulating viruses. We had to be able to come out to the public to say do not listen to the conspiracy theorists. Do we have a problem? Absolutely. Are they Chinese nationals? Absolutely. Are they manipulating viruses? No evidence of that.”
Ms. Zieba praised Reedley and Fresno County officials for how they handled the crisis.
“This little David city took down Goliath with a green garden hose,” she said. “I’m incredibly proud of our city, our code enforcement officer, and I will stand up anytime and say that we did everything in our power to keep the public safe.”
‘Bad’ Company
Universal Meditech, Inc. was owned by a group of Canadian and Chinese investors and specialized in research, development, and the assembly of diagnostic test kits used in dairy cattle production, according to a 2015 article published in the Visalia Times Delta.
“This was … a bad actor company that was kicked out of Canada,” Ms. Zieba said. “They went to Texas. They got kicked out of Texas. They came to California, recruited with tax credits by the way.”
In California, the company set up operations in Fresno, then moved to Tulare, went back to Fresno, and then moved to Reedley, Ms. Zieba said.
After an electrical fire caused extensive damage at its leased Fresno facility, the company facing financial setbacks and threat of eviction was moved to Reedley when one of two businesses leasing the facility agreed to sublease a vacant warehouse to Prestige Biotech, Ms. Harper, the code enforcement officer, told The Epoch Times.
Public records, specifically Commercial & Government Entity reports, show the business was registered in Tulare City, Calif, but had expired by March 23, 2017. The document lists Wendy Chen as the contact person for the business at the time.
The company’s website posted a notice on Jan. 16, 2023, recalling 56,300 items of SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Test Kits branded as Skippack Medical Lab manufactured from October to December 2021.
The products were distributed in January 2022, in California and Texas “without appropriate premarket clearance or approval which potentially could result in inaccurate test results due to lack of performance evaluation by the FDA,” the announcement stated.
Public records show the company was first registered in Nevada to Zhaolin Wang—also known as Lynn Warner—on April 3, 2019, before Xiuqin Yao, who is based in China and doesn’t speak English, took over as president on May 28, 2021, Ms. Harper said.
Harper interviewed Ms. Wang and a man named David He who both said they were consultants for Ms. Yao.
The company hasn’t cooperated well with authorities in the ongoing investigation which has resulted in the abatement warrants, Harper said.
Blame Game
Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig blamed the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) for allegedly advising the County to suppress information about the lab, keeping the public in the dark.
At the Aug. 8 meeting, Mr. Magsig raised the issue of a “holding statement” that was prepared by the county and intended to be released in case the public or media began to ask questions about activity at the warehouse.
Mr. Magsig told The Epoch Times on Aug. 9 the county wanted to release information about the lab discovery to the public, but “were told not to” by the state, a claim that CDPH has flatly denied.
County Public Information Officer, Sonja Dosti, had prepared the “holding statement” and sent it to CDPH suggesting the information be ready for release in case the public and media asked questions about activity at the warehouse as investigations and cleanup ope
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