Fresno does not need another round with Chinese-run lab and its unsafe history | Opinion

Many cities are helpful to businesses that want to open in their limits. That’s because new businesses bring employees, who have wages to spend and homes to buy. Businesses buy locally sourced goods and generate tax revenues, which supports city services.

But in the case of Prestige Biotech, the city of Fresno should put out the “no vacancy” sign. The company is not the good business partner that any city would want.

An investigative story by Bee staff writer Tim Sheehan carries a scary headline: “Secret Chinese-run lab hid COVID, other infectious diseases.”

As outlined by Sheehan, Prestige Biotech was operating a private lab in Reedley that was a warehouse of horrors. Ostensibly, it was producing test kits for COVID, pregnancy, drugs and more. But a city of Reedley inspection last December uncovered “almost the stuff of science fiction: Dozens of refrigerators filled with vials of blood, viruses and bacteria; containers of chemicals; hundreds of laboratory mice; and an array of stored laboratory equipment — all inside an unpermitted business operating illegally,” Sheehan reported.

Biological agents in refrigerators included coronavirus and other contagions used to produce test kits — malaria, Hepatitis B and C, chlamydia, human herpes and rubella.

Reedley officials got a tip about the business operating in an old warehouse without necessary permits. When the city’s code enforcement officer arrived on scene in the 800 block of I Street, she found a garden hose sticking out of a hole in a rear wall and a fan blowing foul-smelling air to the outside.

Subsequent reporting by Sheehan uncovered how Prestige Biotech’s owners live in China. The Reedley site was not their first lab operation in the region. Previously, the company operated under the name Universal Meditech in Fresno.

There, on Fortune Avenue, lab walls and electrical wiring had been put in without the proper permits, a city fire report said after blaze broke out. Subsequent inspections and issues with the landlord led the business to shut down in Fresno and relocate to Reedley.

The Reedley operation was shut down in March after officials deemed it unsafe. It will take another month or two to clear out and clean up the site.

Fresno should say no

Meanwhile, Sheehan learned that the company wants to come back to Fresno. The city’s planning department received two proposed operational plans — in March 2022 and June — for a new location at 3900 N. Blattella Lane, just north of the airport.

For now, the city is not issuing an operating permit because the company has not provided key information needed to ascertain if it can properly operate.

It would seem difficult to imagine that Prestige Biotech can actually meet local, state and federal requirements, given the unpermitted, illegal actions it took at two previous operations.

Perhaps the negative news coverage of the past few weeks is enough to slow the company’s plans, or dash its designs entirely. A business that handles dangerous viruses and the like, in unsafe working conditions, should not be welcome anywhere in Fresno County.

Greater oversight needed

The issue has also brought to light another problem, namely that no government agency is exercising enough oversight on private labs like Prestige Biotech.

“We’re finding out that with these private labs, there really isn’t as much regulation as there is for publicly funded labs, labs that receive grants,” Jesalyn Harper, Reedley’s code enforcement officer who has been involved in the investigation since Dec. 19, told Sheehan. “There’s no one technically looking for them.”

In fact, the Prestige Biotech case might be the first of its kind in the nation.

Clearly, this is a situation that warrants more action by city, county and state officials. No lab using highly infectious viruses or bacteria should operate in local neighborhoods in secret, illegally and unpermitted. That is an experiment just waiting to go bad.