Posted on 07/27/2023 9:53:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A group of Republican senators are probing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over its partnership with Chinese biotech firm BGI, warning that the collaboration could give China a competitive edge while putting U.S. security in danger.
The Chinese genomics giant, which has been blacklisted by both the Defense and Commerce Departments, has been working with the USDA since as early as 2018 on the Earth BioGenome Project, which aims to sequence the genomes of over 1.5 million species over a 10-year span to catalog the earth’s biodiversity.
Following the partnership’s announcement, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service awarded $1 million to BGI. The Chinese firm and the state-funded China National GeneBank it runs occupy leadership roles in four of the project’s nine subcommittees, including chairmanship of the subcommittee of IT and Informatics.
The lawmakers said they are “gravely concerned” about BGI’s participation in this “massive effort to sequence all of life,” a partnership they said was uncovered while tracking U.S. government funding during a probe into COVID-19 origins.
As much as genomic modification is important to agriculture, safeguards are necessary to protect the security of U.S. genomic research data, the lawmakers wrote on July 25 in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.
“Our government must take extreme caution to prevent sponsoring research that gives any sensitive materials and intellectual property to the Chinese Communist Party,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who leads the letter, told The Epoch Times.
“The CCP views biology as a domain of warfare which includes the study of all plant and animal living organisms,” he said, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party. “The USDA and all government agencies involved in cutting edge biological research must have better oversight when corresponding with CCP-sponsored organizations that are not immediately obvious.”
In the letter, co-signed by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the lawmakers highlighted the growing concern over China’s aggressive national strategy of military-civil fusion that mobilizes civilian sectors to enhance its military power.
Beijing, they said, has been “weaponizing biotech in preparation for strategic advantage in a new domain of biological warfare.”
Chinese scientists have engaged in controversial experiments such as creating genetically-altered babies and inserting genes from a micro-animal known as water bears into a human stem cell. Both of these cases, the lawmakers said, have exposed a lack of regard for scientific ethical boundaries in China.
Last year, the Department of Defense placed the firm on a sanction list for supporting the “modernization goals of the People’s Liberation Army,” and the Department of Commerce imposed trade restrictions on it in March. Two of its affiliates are also put on the Commerce Department’s blacklist in 2022 for their role in “conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.”
Read more here...
They’re a bunch of traitors from my perspective. Everything we see, purchase and touch is from Communist China. They’ve created a national security/economic nightmare for all Americans, all while supporting and funding our enemy, Communist China.
Indeed they keep passing contracts to help them in any way.
Who let them into the freed trade arena.
Make China 1959
Because nothing bad would happen. I'm sure a facility in Wuhan could be repurposed. Maybe we can have Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak oversee it.
I'm sure Bill Gates would also be happy to be involved.
Pfizer can expand into the Ag sector, and I understand Hunter Biden is looking for a job.
I just checked my handy dandy U.S. Constitution and I can’t find where anyone has the power to create a U.S. Department of Agriculture. There would be zero problem with the USDA funding commies if there was no USDA.
The DC SWAMP detests the American people! They HATE US!!!!!
"Senators Sound Alarm Over US Funding To Chinese Biotech Firm Over National Security Threats"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
The corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate whines about unconstitutional Biden foreign aid funding, but will predictably stubbornly refuse to remove him from office for foreign and and other impeachable offenses if the House impeaches him.
“If the tax be not proposed for the common defence, or general welfare, but for other objects, wholly extraneous, (as for instance, for propagating Mahometanism among the Turks, or giving aids and subsidies to a foreign nation, to build palaces for its kings, or erect monuments to its heroes,) it would be wholly indefensible upon constitutional principles [emphases added].” — Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2 (1833).
Democrats Are Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public (3.12.23)
The remedy for the corrupt, constitutional undefined political parties who have pirated control of state and federal governments is that Democratic and Republican Trump-supporting patriots need to effectively "impeach and remove" ALL incumbent state and federal lawmaker and executives from office by primarying them in 2024.
After all, lawmakers and executives continue to show that they do not have the patriotism and leadership skills necessary to find legislative support for effective remedies for unconstitutional government policies.
Freshman patriot federal lawmakers running the country? (Oh-noes!)
The constitutional reality concerning freshman lawmakers supporting Trump 47 in running the peacetime, limited power federal government is this. Since one of the very few powers that the states have expressly constitutionally given to the big, bad federal government to dictate domestic policy is to run the Mail Service (most federal domestic policy actually based on stolen state powers imo), the worst problem that the country would otherwise be looking at with a new Congress of freshman lawmakers supporting Trump is arguably a delay with mail delivery.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
The definition of insanity is reelecting your beloved career state and federal lawmakers and executives over and over again, expecting those same politicians to find remedies for unconstitutional government policies every time.
Patriots, let's not allow ourselves to be fooled for a third time in 2024.
I don’t hate them but I surely don’t like them. They are angry unhappy and uppity. Besides, they are not fun to be around.
The communist party and its leaders don't even care about their own people and causing suffering for them. Why would they care about anyone else?
Aaaannddd, the illegal Biden regime continues to give away all our money to our enemies, give access to sensitive material to our enemies, sell our very land to our enemies, render our sovereign borders meaningless, give away most of our armaments, destroy our economy, and turn our military into a prancing tutu-wearing joke.
There’s just no end to Biden treachery. His evil administration should be overthrown and all locked up. Throw the RINOs in with them.
The USDA is headed by tom Villsack. Tom was a longtime Iowa governor and even longer occupant of USDA. Knowing that he has always been a democrap it is not difficult to question the deals and motives of those in his organization that set policy.
Do not even imagine an organization displaying integrity or devotion to American security interests. NOT IN THE CARDS.
warm up the guillotine
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