FRESNO — Federal and local authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect housed an illegal, unlicensed lab full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.
The Fresno County Public Health Department has been “analyzing and evaluating the activities of an unlicensed laboratory” in Reedley, health department assistant director Joe Prado said in a statement Thursday. All biological agents were destroyed on July 7 following a legal process of reduction by the agency.
“The assessment required coordination and collaboration with multiple federal and state agencies to determine and classify the biological and chemical contents at the site, as well as assess jurisdictional authority under this unique situation,” Prado said.
According to court documents, city officials inspected the 850 I St. facility on March 3 for construction violations and found several chemicals stored. On March 16, an inspection by county public health officials reportedly turned up medical devices thought to have been developed on-site, such as pregnancy and Covid tests.
“Certain rooms in the warehouse were found to contain various containers of liquid and various appliances,” the court documents state. “Fresno County public health personnel also observed blood, tissue, and other bodily fluid and sera samples; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspicious biological material.”
Hundreds of mice in the warehouse were kept in subhuman conditions, according to court documents. The city took possession of the animals in April, culling 773 of them; more than 175 were found dead.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronaviruses, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a letter from Health and Human Services dated June 6.
An investigation found the tenant to be Prestige BioTech, a company registered in Nevada and not licensed to do business in California. City officials spoke to Xiuquin Yao, who was identified as the company’s president, through emails included in the court documents.
Yao told the officials that Prestige BioTech moved assets belonging to a defunct company, Universal Meditech Inc., to the Reedley warehouse from Fresno after UMI went under. Prestige Biotech was a creditor of UMI and identified itself as its successor, according to court documents.
Officials were unable to obtain any California addresses for any of the companies except the former Fresno location from which UMI had been evicted.
“The other addresses provided for the identified authorized agents were either vacant offices or addresses in China that could not be verified,” the court documents say.
Prestige BioTech is accused of failing to comply with the orders, including providing a plan for biological reduction and disposal of the materials. Emails sent to Yao and Prestige BioTech requesting comment were not immediately returned Thursday.
Prado told him to Fresno NBC affiliate KSEE, that those associated with Prestige BioTech were unwilling to provide information. Court documents note that they did not provide any licenses or permits that would allow experimentation or other laboratory activity.
Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba told KSEE that officials have cleared the area of hazardous materials but are still working to empty the warehouse.
“Some of our federal partners still have active investigations. I can only speak from the building side,” Zieba said.
This article It was originally published in English by Doha Madani on NBC News. For more from NBCNews enter here.
