US Agriculture Dept. paid for animals from Chinese wet markets, had them killed, and fed their tongues, brains and other parts to American cats as part of research into food safety.
STEPHEN DINAN: U.S. government medical researchers paid to buy and slaughter kittens from the same kinds of Chinese “wet markets” that are now blamed for spreading the novel coronavirus. Agriculture Department scientists paid for dozens of animals over the past two decades, had them killed, and fed their tongues, brains and other parts to American cats as part of research into food safety, according to the White Coat Waste Project, which exposed the controversial work in a report last year…
It’s not clear how much federal money went to the animal purchases at the Chinese markets, though the overall research cost taxpayers $650,000 a year, White Coat says. The goal of the research was to test food safety. Mr. Goodman said the project was meant to test whether the animals bought at markets were safe to eat…
Just a couple years after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), White Coat says, dozens of cats were bought using U.S. taxpayer money from a pet market in the Guangzhou province. White Coat managed to obtain documents detailing a cat “menu” from 2006 detailing the “donor” cats that were purchased and then reduced to “serum, heart, feces, brain” and other parts, which were brought to the Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, where they were fed to “recipient” cats.
Another 34 cats were bought at a pet market in China in 2014 and then slaughtered and had their parts shipped to Beltsville. In both cases, the researchers who published reports on the results insisted that the slaughters were done humanely according to Chinese law.
Federally funded research also paid for dogs, ducks and chickens, all sold for food at Chinese slaughterhouses and markets in 2008 and 2013, according to papers documenting the research. They, too, were slaughtered and had pieces taken… The dogs’ heart samples were transported in carry-on luggage on a plane, the study says…
Sen. Joni Ernst, joined by Sens. Mike Braun, Indiana Republican, and Joe Manchin III and Jeff Merkley, Democrats from West Virginia and Oregon, respectively, are proposing a permanent ban on federal money being spent at wet markets… “Whether it’s the lab in Wuhan or these repulsive wet markets, Iowans shouldn’t be footing the bill for either,” Ms. Ernst said. SOURCE…
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