By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            A San Francisco, California company based in China has purchased about 1,400 acres of agricultural land in Levy County off County Road 326 with secondary access off SR 121 for the purpose of housing quarantined primates.

            JOINN Laboratories, based in Beijing, China, says the primates will be quarantined at the Morriston site to make sure they are healthy before being sold to other companies in the United States.

            The company’s website said the primates are treated humanely during quarantine and research. Primates fall into the category of apes and monkeys.

            Levy County Planning and Zoning Director Stacey Hectus has informed the company that the county has no category in its land development code for a quarantine facility.

            “Therefore, by virtue of it not being permitted, it is prohibited,” she wrote in a June 3 email to Dustin Calderon of Saunders, Ralston, Dantzler Real Estate in Lakeland, the firm that brokered the sale to JOINN Laboratories.

            JOINN bought the 1,400 acres from L&T Cattle based in Levy County for price of $5.5 million. The company specializes in the development of drugs used for medical treatment of people.

            The land is zoned forestry-rural residential and much of it is protected by a conservation easement, but Calderon said in emails to Hectus that timber and cattle grazing are allowed on the conservation area.

            Calderon said there are 20 acres inside the conservation easement that can be used for construction of buildings, but he said outside the easement, the owner has purchased 90-plus acres adjacent to the property, 51 acres plus on one side and 40 acres plus on the other side.

            “The question is could they do a primate quarantine facility on the 51-acre tract where the improvements are now and possibly on the 40 acres that are not encumbered by the conservation easement?” Calderon said in a June 2 email to Hectus. “The quarantine facility would be just that – they would bring perceivably healthy animals that go through customs to the property and put them in humane and well-maintained confinement areas.”

            He added, “The process & operations of the proposed facility would be described here below. The non-humane primate quarantine farm shall be the exclusive business activity at this site that is not encumbered by the conservation easement. This is the primary intended use of the property.”

            He said the length of time for the animals to be quarantined at the facility will vary depending upon several factors such as supply & availability, U.S. market demand, animal inventory, etc. In general, the animals shall be staying in the confinement area for a few weeks but not more than three months for each batch of arrivals, prior to being sold to various purchasers around the country.

            “The imported animals are purchased with a guarantee of being healthy (health paperwork) since there are a series of inspections and a quarantine process before getting on board the flight from the export country to the U.S. These animals will also be given health inspections upon arriving at the U.S. port destination during the hold at customs,” Calderon added in the June 2 email. “Just in case an animal gets sick during the quarantine period, the attending veterinarian will treat the animals accordingly. If any death occurs, the body will be sent to a professional contractor for cremation.”

            An attorney for JOINN, Nicole Zhou, gave this background information to Levy County Planning and Zoning in an email to explain the basics of how the company would operate at the Morriston site.

            “Our client will import the laboratory animals like monkeys; quarantine these laboratory animals in the land in question for a certain period of time; may raise and breed these animals as well,” Zhou said in the May 23 email.

            County Coordinator Wilbur Dean said the land in question can’t be used for animal quarantine as currently zoned.

            “It does not fit the zoning as is, not with what they want to do,” he said.

            Dean was made aware that Spotlight sent JOINN an email asking what the company intended to do at the Morriston site. The email noted the COVID-19 pandemic allegedly started at the Wuhan Laboratory in China and spread worldwide. With this background in mind, the email asked if the company intended to conduct medical research on viruses at the Morriston site. The company didn’t respond to the email.

            “I don’t know what their thoughts were, but I don’t think Levy County is the right place for any kind of lab like this,” Dean said.

            Dean said the county’s planning and zoning department has taken the position that the county’s land development code doesn’t provide for this type of quarantine area.

            “It’s in their hands right now,” Dean said. “I think we need to be guarded.”

            Dean noted that Chinese companies are buying large tracts of farmland in the United States.

            The emails provided to Spotlight are public records and were provided to Spotlight by the planning and zoning department as the result of an on-site verbal public records request.

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt August 24, 2022; Posted August 24, 2022