For months local and federal authorities have been investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California.
Investigators suspected that the building was an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of hazardous materials, lab mice, and medical waste.
Court documents show that city officials inspected the suspected facility on March 16, 2023 allegedly finding an alarming amount of medical devices they believed were created on site.
“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”
According to court filings, hundreds of mice were also found at the warehouse being kept in disgusting conditions. The city did take possession of the animals in April and had all 773 of them dispatched.
Joe Prado, assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said that the company operated under the name Prestige Biotech. Officials who investigated for the city claim that Xiuquin Yao, an alleged Chinese national, operated the lab. The Daily Mail went as far as to describe the warehouse as a “Chinese-run virus laboratory.”
“They never had a business license,” Nicole Zieba, Reedley City Manger, told USA TODAY. “The city was completely unaware that they were in this building, operating under the cover of night.”
This next part is a direct excerpt from USA Today:
Hundreds of mice also were found at the warehouse, where they were “kept in inadequate conditions in overcrowded cages” with no food or water, according to court documents. An associate with Prestige Biotech told investigators the mice were “genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID virus,” the documents added.
