USDA and China CCP lab are creating deadly BIRD FLU viruses as part of $1m ... trends now
Lawmakers are demanding answers after it was revealed the US is sending taxpayer dollars to a Chinese army lab 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 $1million collaboration between the USDA and the CCP-run Chinese Academy of Sciences - the institution that oversees the Wuhan the lab at the center of the Covid lab-leak theory.
In a scathing letter to the USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack last week, the bipartisan group said: 'This research, funded by American taxpayers, could potentially generate dangerous new lab-created virus strains that threaten our national security and public health.'
The White Coat Waste Project obtained the above photo and claims it shows animal experimenters inside the USDA lab that is working with Chinese scientists on bird flu research
Tests revealed that an unknown number of cows have tested positive for bird flu Type A H5N1 in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. Iowa is currently 'monitoring the situation' as it is also a dairy-heavy state. It comes after a goat in Minnesota tested positive last week. Bird flu has also been found in foxes, bobcats, striped skunks, raccoons and coyotes since the 2022 outbreak
The research comes as fears about bird flu rise. A farm worker in Texas caught the H5N1 strain that is racing through cattle across the US earlier this month, becoming only the second ever American to be diagnosed - and experts are bracing for more cases.
Earlier this year it was revealed the United States government was funneling $1million to China to see if scientists could make 'highly pathogenic avian influenza' more contagious to mammals using 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 the project was applied for 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 into mammalian hosts,' according to research documents.
It is being funded through the US Department of Agriculture and the main collaborators on the project are USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute - a Wuhan lab partner.
And it has been ongoing 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 it will work with 50 countries to identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing a pandemic that the US' own research could actually spark.
Last week's letter was spearheaded by Rep Nick Langworthy, a Republican from New York who serves on the House Agriculture Committee.
It states: 'We are disturbed by recent reports about the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on bird flu research.'
The CAS is the parent organization of WIV and has previously been prohibited from receiving US government money for 'blatantly violating grant and biosafety policies, refusing to share lab notebooks and other data, and otherwise obstructing investigations into the likely role of the lab's risky coronavirus [gain of function] research in the origin of Covid-19.
'Recognizing the problematic behavior of CAS, our House and Senate colleagues have called for sanctions against CAS and its affiliates and for taxpayer funding to be cut for all research involving CAS.'
The signatories then requested written answers to seven questions inquiring about the potential of the research to increase
