Just as the country appears to be emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a report out of Florida that a Chinese-based biological research company purchased 1,400 acres to build a “primate quarantine and breeding facility.”
What could possibly go wrong?
The World Health Organization has pretty much pulled a 180 from February 2021 when it published a study concluding the “lab leak” theory was “extremely unlikely.”
In June, NBC News reported that the WHO is recommending further investigation into whether the virus leaked from a research lab.
Science reported in August that Beijing has tried to argue the virus originated outside of China.
“The idea of a pandemic origin outside China is preposterous to many scientists, regardless of their position on whether the virus started with a lab leak or a natural jump from animals,” according to the magazine.
“There’s simply no way SARS-CoV-2 could have come from some foreign place to Wuhan and triggered an explosive outbreak there without first racing through humans at the site of its origin.”
The Washington Examiner reported that there is substantial evidence that the Wuhan lab studied live bats, rats, rabbits and other animals.
Which takes us to a report in the Citrus County Chronicle that Chinese-based JOINN Laboratories bought a 1,400-acre tract of land in Florida in July for $5.5 million.
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The land is located in Levy County about 35 miles southeast of Gainesville, home to the University of Florida.
Stacey Hectus, Levy County’s planning and zoning director, said the company wants to set up a primate quarantine and breeding facility for monkeys.
A saving grace, based on the Chronicle’s reporting, is the land is not zoned for building a research lab, which is only allowed in industrial zoned areas.
JOINN Laboratories is seeking to rezone the land, but that will have to be approved by the state of Florida.
The Epoch Times reported Tuesday, “JOINN Laboratories’ founder and chairwoman Feng Yuxia has a U.S. green card. Feng and her husband Zhou Zhiwen, co-founder of the company, both graduated from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) — a high-level research institute of the Chinese military — with a degree in pharmacology.”
“Feng worked at AMMS’ Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology from 1992 to 1995, whereas her husband worked as a researcher from 1989 to 1993,” the news outlet added.
“Zuo Conglin, the general manager of JOINN Laboratories, also graduated from AMMS and worked at the Institute of Aeromedical Research of the Chinese Air Force from 1989 to 1996,” the Times said.
Earlier this year, many including Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota raised a red flag when a Chinese food manufacturing company bought 300 acres of North Dakota farmland just 20 minutes from Grand Forks Air Force Base.
The base is home to some of the nation’s most sensitive military drone technology.
Grand Forks also houses a new space networking center “the backbone of all U.S. military communications across the globe,” according to a lawmaker.
“I think we grossly underappreciate how effective [the Chinese] are at collecting information, collecting data, using it in nefarious ways,” Cramer told CNBC. “And so I’d just as soon not have the Chinese Communist Party doing business in my backyard.”
And we should just as soon not allow a Chinese “quarantine” facility and lab to open in Florida either.
GOP Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama have also introduced a bill titled “Securing America’s Land from Foreign Interference Act” that would ban China and firms linked to China from buying land in the U.S, Breitbart reported.
The Florida project needs to be shut down and this legislation passed through Congress as soon as possible.
