Expert's ‘worse than Covid' warning after fungus smuggled into US from China
A top expert on China has warned that Fusarium graminearum, a fungus feared to have been smuggled into the US by two Chinese nationals, poses a potential agroterrorism threat, saying that the country could be hit by 'something worse" than Covid.
According to an FBI criminal complaint, 34-year-old Zunyong Liu, a researcher in China, brought the fungus into the US in July 2024 while visiting his girlfriend, 33-year-old Yunqing Jian.
Gordon G Chang, the author of 'China Is Going To War', has suggested catastrophic consequences if the US does not sever relations with China over the incident.
'The only way to stop this is to sever relations with China. And I know people think that's drastic, but we are being overwhelmed. We are going to get hit eventually. We are going to get hit really hard, not just with Covid, not just with fentanyl, but perhaps with something worse," he was quoted as saying by Fox News.
According to Chang, the couple 'should be sent to Guantanamo" – the infamous US military facility linked to abuse and torture after the 9/11 terror attacks. He said this amounts to China waging war against the US.
This comes five years after the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus, which many alleged was engineered in a Chinese lab. The outbreak had brought the world to a standstill and affected millions of people, killing hundreds of thousands.
Agricultural experts, however, doubted the claims that the crop fungus is a threat, as it is already widespread in the US and poses little food safety risk. According to the experts quoted in a report by news agency Reuters, it will be ineffective as an agricultural terrorism weapon and can be managed by fungicides, resistant wheat strains, and testing.
The US Department of Justice has said that the Fusarium graminearum fungus is a dangerous biological pathogen with the potential to be used as an agricultural terrorism weapon.
The department said in a statement that the fungus causes 'head blight" in some crops and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses globally each year.
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