Hol
Well-known
When Virginia GOP Rep. Ben Cline asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack about the department's continued work with the Chinese Community Party-linked Chinese Academy of Sciences following U.S. debarment of its Wuhan Institute of Virology, for high-risk viral research the feds belatedly acknowledged as such, Vilsack claimed it was not a "collaboration per se."
The former Iowa governor and three-month Democratic presidential candidate told the March budget hearing "everyone is doing their own separate research" in what Cline called a "$1 million collaboration on risky bird-flu evolution lab experiments" among the U.S., U.K. and China, which started in April 2021 and end in February 2026.
Vilsack snapped that there was "nothing to terminate" when Cline asked him to cut off CAS, accusing Cline of "doing a disservice to the professionals and scientists" at USDA by doubting the secretary's claim that "all of this [U.S. data] is basically walled off" from its partners.
Nearly 200 pages of public records obtained by the White Coat Waste Project and published by the animal-research watchdog last week calls into question some of Vilsack's representations, showing that everyone – including the USDA lead – referred to the project as a collaboration.
Full article: USDA virus experiments with China call into question secretary's congressional testimony
The former Iowa governor and three-month Democratic presidential candidate told the March budget hearing "everyone is doing their own separate research" in what Cline called a "$1 million collaboration on risky bird-flu evolution lab experiments" among the U.S., U.K. and China, which started in April 2021 and end in February 2026.
Vilsack snapped that there was "nothing to terminate" when Cline asked him to cut off CAS, accusing Cline of "doing a disservice to the professionals and scientists" at USDA by doubting the secretary's claim that "all of this [U.S. data] is basically walled off" from its partners.
Nearly 200 pages of public records obtained by the White Coat Waste Project and published by the animal-research watchdog last week calls into question some of Vilsack's representations, showing that everyone – including the USDA lead – referred to the project as a collaboration.
Full article: USDA virus experiments with China call into question secretary's congressional testimony
