The question that’s been resonating throughout Reedley, CA, and indeed across the nation, is why a disreputable Chinese company was clandestinely running a bio-lab right in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley? An eerily silent building, purportedly reserved for mere storage, shockingly housed a covert lab conducting testing of an alarmingly illicit nature.
Large-scale illegal medical lab complete with 1,000 bioengineered mice, infectious agents, nearly 30 refrigerators and freezers found in CA. https://t.co/ajTsdMfhri
— Senator Melissa Melendez (@senatormelendez) July 28, 2023
YourCentralValley.com brings to light the unsettling discovery, which was sparked by a local code enforcement officer who noticed an incongruous garden hose sticking out from the rear wall of the building. On closer inspection, the Public Health staff uncovered an alarming amount of biological material, including blood, tissue, and various other bodily fluids and serums, as well as thousands of vials filled with unidentified substances.
Adding to the shocking discovery, they found 900 genetically engineered mice, living in deplorable conditions and deliberately engineered to contract and carry COVID-19. Tragically, 773 of these mice had to be put down, while 178 were found already dead.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Illegal medical lab discovered in #Reedley CA.https://t.co/PuJaYz8nXn pic.twitter.com/K42mIpRtdi
— John B Wells 11:11 (@JohnBWellsCTM) July 29, 2023
“This is an unprecedented situation. In my 25 years in government, I’ve never encountered anything like this,” expressed a stunned Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba. A sentiment echoed by Assistant Director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health Joe Prado, who, in his 26-year career, had never seen such a spectacle.
The health hazards posed by this illegal operation were vast. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after conducting tests on the substances found on-site, identified at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes, as reported in a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.
The agents also uncovered a multitude of package boxes, many bearing shipping labels from China, further reinforcing the illegal connection to the Chinese company. NBC News investigation pointed to Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada but operating without a license in California, as the tenant. Court documents revealed a tenuous link between Prestige BioTech and a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., whose assets had been relocated to the Reedley warehouse following UMI’s downfall.
A significant issue was that officials could not locate any verifiable California-based address for either company, besides the previous Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted.
Kyle Bass raised pertinent questions via Twitter, pointing out the larger implications of this scandalous find, “Is this rogue lab merely the tip of the iceberg? How many more such bioagent labs will we uncover?”
The serendipitous discovery of this lab was indeed a stroke of luck. It was an alert Reedley, CA city code enforcement officer who noticed the odd garden hose connected to the building that led to this shocking revelation.
This incident, involving an illicit Chinese bio-agent lab, demands the highest echelons of U.S. law enforcement to intervene, investigate, and formulate a comprehensive plan to safeguard U.S. national security from such blatant threats.
