US, UK, China Collaborating on ‘Newly Emerging Avian Influenza Viruses’: Report

Microbiologist Anne Vandenburg-Carroll tests poultry samples collected from a farm located in a control area for the presence of avian influenza, or bird flu, at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on March 24, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Four years after a global coronavirus pandemic was allegedly unleashed from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overt design to “dual-purpose” militarize agricultural research, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues to collaborate with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in avian flu research.

Since April 2021, under the Biden administration, USDA has been engaged in “wet-lab virology” to study “newly emerging avian influenza viruses” in a $1 million five-year collaborative effort with its Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia., the CCP-run CAS, and the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, according to a February report by the White Coat Waste Project.

“This amounts to, essentially, whistling past the graveyard,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) said on March 21 during a hearing on USDA’s proposed $25.1 billion Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request.

“I was pretty shocked to learn about this $1 million continued cooperation between USDA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences on risky bird flu evolution lab experiments,” he said. “Beyond the obvious, this is extremely concerning.”

Mr. Cline said the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party have acknowledged that “the CAS is a state-controlled entity that reports to China’s State Council.”

Plus, he added, the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission reports the CAS conducts “dual purpose” research for the Chinese military, nuclear, and cyber espionage programs, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has expressed “growing concerns … about China’s bioweapons capabilities.”

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“The national security threats raised by the USDA’s collaboration with the CCP-controlled Chinese Academy of Sciences on dangerous bird flu experiments aren’t hypothetical,” Mr. Cline said before launching into a series of questions directed at Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

“Is the USDA sharing data and virus sequencing from bird flu evolution experiments conducted in high-containment USDA labs with collaborators at the CAS?” he asked.

“And, if so, how can the USDA ensure sensitive data on lab-created bird flu strains is not used for malign purposes by the CCP, for example, for bioweapons development?”

“To my knowledge, there’s not the sharing that you’ve suggested and that all of this is basically walled off. So everything we’re doing stays with us. It doesn’t necessarily go to the UK [United Kingdom] or to China,” Mr. Vilsack said.

“Do you have confidence in these walls that you are speaking to?” Mr. Cline asked.

“Yes.”

“The Wuhan Institute of Virology had ‘walls’” too, Mr. Cline said, adding the House Foreign Affairs Committee has proposed sanctions against the CAS due to the Wuhan lab’s gain-of-function research in violation of the NIH [U.S. National Institutes of Health] grant terms and subsequent cover-up” about the coronavirus leak.

“Why is the USDA still collaborating with the CAS on risky virus research when it has violated U.S. grant and gain-of-function policies, obstructed COVID-origin investigations, and refused to share critical data on U.S.-funded coronavirus research at its lab in Wuhan?” he asked.

“It’s really not a collaboration, per se, because everyone is doing their own separate research,” Mr. Vilsack said.

Mr. Cline said the federal government spent nearly $1 billion in USDA Commodity Credit Corporation resources trying to help our turkey, chicken, and egg layers industry survive” avian flu outbreaks “so we got  to figure out how to solve it and how to stop it.”

But, he added, while there are “a lot of challenges” for poultry growers and processors in his Congressional district solutions should not be at the expense “of our national security.”

“This is your [position] that our national security is not being compromised” through this collaborative program?

“Will you commit to terminating the involvement of the CAS?” he asked.

“No,” Mr. Vilsack said. “There’s nothing to terminate. There is no USDA risk. There’s nothing to terminate. You’re doing a disservice to the professionals and scientists who work for USDA when you say that.”

“You’re doing a disservice to the national security of our country,” Mr. Cline responded.

Concerns about the U.S.–U.K.–China avian flu program were first raised in February by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in a letter to Mr. Vilsack, demanding to know why USDA was funding “collaboration with a Chinese Communist Party-linked researcher involving dangerous bird flu experiments and recent support for other animal labs in adversarial nations.”

She cited the White Coat Waste Project’s investigation of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that USDA is supporting experiments involving “a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus” that poses a “risk to both animals and humans” in collaboration with CAS “and a researcher affiliated with the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

A non-profit that opposes using animals for research, and experiments, White Coat Waste Project said the collaborative effort “involves experiments that use the gain-of-function technique of repeatedly infecting ducks, geese, quail, and other animals with wild bird flu viruses to force the pathogens to evolve into unnatural lab-created strains and study their ‘potential to jump into mammalian hosts.’”

The specific bird flu viruses being experimented on (H5NX, H7N9, and H9N2) “are dangerous to humans and have already caused deadly outbreaks,” it said.

Senior Vice President Justin Goodman said CAS is continuing to conduct gain-of-function research with viruses and pathogens.

“It’s reckless and indefensible for bird-brained USDA bureaucrats to bankroll dangerous avian flu gain-of-function studies involving virus experimenters from the notorious Wuhan animal lab that likely caused COVID and its CCP-run parent organization, the Chinese Academy of Sciences,” Mr. Goodman said in Ms. Ernst’s letter to Mr. Vilsack.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for animal experiments with foreign adversaries that soup up viruses and can cause pandemics or create bioweapons,” he said.