US panel on China urges closer look at American biosafety after ending probe into unlicensed lab

“The CDC’s refusal to test any potential pathogens … makes it impossible for the Select Committee to fully assess the potential risks that this specific facility posed to the community,” it said in a report released on Wednesday, referring to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The development came after the panel in September issued local officials a subpoena as part of its inquiry into the medical warehouse.

But the CDC also said there was “no evidence of select agents or toxins”. Select agents are biological agents and toxins the US government has determined “to have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety”, according to the CDC website.

Per protocol, the public health agency refused to test unlabelled samples found in the lab, according to local officials.

Unlicensed California lab housing pathogens tied to China firms: US House panel

The criminal charges related to federal health regulations, and were unrelated to online conspiracy theories about China purportedly trying to engineer biological weapons in rural America.

The select committee had previously determined that the medical device firms that set up the facility – Universal Meditech Inc. and Prestige Biotech Inc. – had “ties” to Chinese companies and Chinese nationals.

In the report released on Wednesday, the committee stated that Zhu had served at a Chinese state-controlled enterprise.

However, to date there has been no indication that the Chinese government was behind the lab, which first came to the attention of local officials last December.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Democratic congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member of the select committee, said: “We need to make sure that the CDC and other federal actors have the tools … they need to proactively make sure that something like this … doesn’t occur.”

Local officials from Reedley were also present on Wednesday, along with former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, and Jim Costa, a Democrat representing the congressional district where the lab was located.

Speaking virtually, city manager Nicole Zieba pushed for closing “serious legal loopholes and protocol issues” that allowed the lab to exist.

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“I specifically asked why the CDC refused to test any of the vials found in the sub-zero freezer and particularly the bottles that did not have labels on them,” she said.

“Their direct response to me was that the CDC does not have authority to test things without a label.”

Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and chair of the select committee, on Wednesday said the report was not meant to lay out policy recommendations, but to “stimulate discussion about potential solutions going forward so that we never have this happen again”.