House Panel Probes USDA for Clearing Chinese Genetically Engineered Soybeans

Soybeans are loaded on to a truck on Feb. 17, 2020. (Jorge Adorno/Reuters)

Republicans on the House China panel probed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding its clearance of a Chinese biotech firm to sell genetically engineered soybeans in the United States.

The USDA said its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service reviewed the new high oleic acid soybean by Qi Biodesign and determined it has no authority to regulate the soybean.

Qi Biodesign is a Chinese agricultural biotech firm established in Beijing in 2021. The company is partially funded by CAS Star, a Chinese venture capital entity directly controlled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China’s official science and research institute.

In a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the lawmakers expressed concerns that the USDA appeared to “have facilitated Qi Biodesign’s regulatory status review in a matter of weeks, raising questions about the level of due diligence and motivation behind the rapid review.”

They asked the USDA to revisit the review and arrange a briefing with the committee no later than Aug. 1 to discuss the complete steps and timeline of the regulatory clearance of Qi Biodesign’s products. In addition, they want to know how the USDA protects U.S. supply chains when regulating foreign agricultural products.

They said that they were “deeply troubled” that the USDA seemed to “swiftly grant” the regulatory review for a Chinese firm while keeping U.S. companies waiting and facing “extensive delay.”

“Make no mistake, Qi Biodesign and other PRC firms like it are directly supported by the PRC government with the explicit purpose to replicate and replace U.S. agriculture biotechnology,” they continued.

According to Chinese media reports, Kevin Zhao, Qi Biodesign’s chief technology officer and co-founder, studied under renowned Harvard professor David Ruchien Liu.

Gao Caixia, another co-founder, returned to China in 2009 to work at CAS’s State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering after working for a Danish company for over a decade, according to her bio on the CAS official website. Last October, she received funds from an official Chinese science foundation for 25 million yuan, or about $3.5 million, for five years.

The Republican legislators’ concerns came at a time when both the United States and China are boosting their investments in the biotech industry as a growth engine for their economies.

In March, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defined “new productive forces” during its annual plenary meeting. Along with electric vehicles, batteries, and other green energy technologies, biotech was included in the top priority industries for the first time.

In the same month, the Biden administration also created a National Bioeconomy Board to invest in the same industry in America.

If China outpaces the United States in biotech, the CCP may repeat its success in dominating the global supply chain as it has in the green energy sectors, such as electric vehicles and solar panels.

“While the PRC is clear-eyed about its desire to never allow its agriculture industry to be reliant on foreign technology, it appears the USDA is approving PRC agriculture biotechnology without concern for U.S. supply chains or trade negotiations,” Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) wrote.

“USDA’s clearance of Qi Biodesign’s products undermines years of hard-nosed U.S. trade demands and could make U.S. farmers complicit in the PRC’s desire to replace them.”

Committee members Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), and Ben Cline (R-Va.) also co-signed the letter to Mr. Vilsack.

The Epoch Times has contacted the USDA and Qi Biodesign for comments.