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New Conspiracy Theory About COVID Vaccines Falsely Claims They're Hiding In Food

Anti-vaccine advocates have for years used foreboding imagery of syringes to paint immunizations as dark and dangerous. But recent vaccine conspiracy theories are casting an air of fear around more mundane things — like cows and lettuce.

In widespread posts online in recent weeks, misinformation purveyors have spread false claims that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are being quietly added to the food supply, threatening staunch vaccine holdouts.

"The Unvaccinated Won't Be Unvaccinated for Long With mRNA in the Food Supply," reads one tweet shared thousands of times. Another asks: "Did you know they will be giving all of our livestock the covid vaccine this year?"

A TikTok video shared on Instagram, meanwhile, questions whether Whole Foods customers are unknowingly being vaccinated with "the C19 mRNA shot via food products" and shows pictures of arugula and lettuce packages.

In reality, COVID-19 vaccines are not being passed along through livestock or produce, and experts say that would not be an efficient way to immunize someone anyway.

In some cases, conspiracy theorists misrepresented the limited use of RNA-based vaccines in animals. In others, they distorted a company's research into using plants to grow proteins used in vaccines.

The truth is there are no COVID-19 mRNA vaccines licensed for animals, said Marissa Perry, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She noted that the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service "has not approved and does not have any vaccines under trial to vaccinate livestock for COVID-19."

Some animals, particularly those in zoos considered susceptible to the coronavirus, have received vaccines against COVID-19. But those immunizations do not rely on mRNA technology, said Suresh Kuchipudi, a veterinary scientist and chair of emerging infectious diseases at Penn State University.

In terms of vaccines more generally, there are some RNA-based vaccines licensed for animals. For example, the pharmaceutical company Merck offers a customizable vaccine against the flu and other viruses in pigs to protect a specific herd as needed. That approach predates the advent of humans' COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, and the technology is not the same.

There are no mRNA vaccines for any disease being used in cattle in the U.S., the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. Emphasized in a recent statement addressing online misinformation. Farmers and ranchers ultimately choose which vaccines, if any, to give their animals.

Regardless, the notion that an mRNA vaccine could be transmitted to humans through eating meat is not rooted in science.

"No, it could not be transferred," said Ted Ross, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Georgia and director of the Center for Vaccines and Immun- ology. He said mRNA vaccines have a very short duration in living organisms.

In addition to the mRNA breaking down quickly, it's unlikely it would survive the cooking process to hypothetically be passed along to consumers, experts said.

Additionally, regulators require something called a "withdrawal time," a minimum amount of time that must pass between a food animal getting a vaccine and entering the food chain, said Alan Young, a professor of veterinary and biomedical science at South Dakota State University.

There is also no evidence to support the notion that COVID-19 vaccines are being added to produce.

The TikTok video about Whole Foods homed in on a clip of a co-founder of New Jersey-based AeroFarms, an indoor vertical farming company that grows leafy greens.

But the video misrepresented the work described by AeroFarms co-founder David Rosenberg.

Rosenberg was discussing early research into growing proteins that could theoretically be used for vaccines, not making edible vaccines that would be on a store shelf.

"Couldn't be further from the truth," Marc Oshima, AeroFarms co-founder and chief marketing officer, said of the claim that the company's vegetables contain a COVID-19 vaccine.

The research initiative Rosenberg discussed, which is no longer active, was part of a research and development arm of the company and separate from its commercial products, Oshima said.

While some researchers have explored the possibility of growing edible vaccines — an appealing idea for use in countries where vaccine storage can be an issue — that concept is "far, far away from being proven," said Shawn Chen, a professor at Arizona State University's Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy.

Chen said scientists have used plants to grow vaccines that can be extracted and used for injections. But producing edible vaccines is tricky in terms of getting the right dosage and delivering the medicine through the gut. That approach, he said, would require more work before it could even theoretically enter the market.

FACT FOCUS: COVID Vaccines Are Not In The Food Supply

In widespread posts online in recent weeks, misinformation purveyors have spread an erroneous narrative that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are being quietly added to the food supply, threatening staunch vaccine holdouts.

In some cases, users misrepresented the limited use of RNA-based vaccines in animals. In others, they distorted a company's research into using plants to grow proteins used in vaccines.

But experts confirm there are no COVID-19 vaccines in your steak or salad. Here are the facts.

CLAIM: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are being added to the food supply through livestock and produce.

THE FACTS: COVID-19 vaccines are not being passed along through livestock or produce, and experts say that would not be an efficient way to immunize someone. A flurry of social media posts are falsely suggesting otherwise.

In reality, there are no COVID-19 mRNA vaccines licensed for animals, Marissa Perry, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told The Associated Press. She noted that the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service "has not approved and does not have any vaccines under trial to vaccinate livestock for COVID-19."

Some animals, particularly those in zoos considered susceptible, have received vaccines against COVID-19. But those immunizations do not rely on mRNA technology, said Suresh Kuchipudi, a veterinary scientist and chair of emerging infectious diseases at Penn State University.

There are no mRNA vaccines for any disease being used in cattle in the U.S., the National Cattlemen's Beef Association emphasized in a recent statement addressing online misinformation. Farmers and ranchers ultimately choose which vaccines, if any, to give their animals.

Regardless, the notion that an mRNA vaccine could be transmitted to humans through eating meat is not rooted in science.

"No, it could not be transferred," Ted Ross, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Georgia and director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology, said in an email. He said mRNA vaccines have a very short duration in living organisms and degrades.

In addition to the mRNA breaking down quickly, it's unlikely it would survive the cooking process to hypothetically be passed along to consumers, experts said.

Additionally, regulators require something called a "withdrawal time," a minimum amount of time that must pass between a food animal getting a vaccine and entering the food chain, Alan Young, a professor of veterinary and biomedical science at South Dakota State University, recently told the AP.

There is also no evidence to support the notion that COVID-19 vaccines are being added to produce.

The TikTok video about Whole Foods homed in on a clip of a co-founder of New Jersey-based AeroFarms, an indoor vertical farming company that grows leafy greens.

But the video misrepresented the work described by AeroFarms co-founder David Rosenberg. Rosenberg was discussing early research into growing proteins that could theoretically be used for vaccines, not making edible vaccines that would be on a store shelf.

"Couldn't be further from the truth," Marc Oshima, AeroFarms co-founder and chief marketing officer, said of the claim that the company's vegetables contain a COVID-19 vaccine.

The research initiative Rosenberg discussed, which is no longer active, was part of a research and development arm of the company and separate from its commercial products, Oshima said. The farms for research and commercial products are separate spaces.

Chen said scientists have used plants to grow vaccines that can be extracted and used for injections. But producing edible vaccines is tricky in terms of getting the right dosage and delivering the medicine through the gut. That approach, he said, would require much more work, including trials and approvals, before it could even theoretically enter the market.

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This is part of AP's effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

A Century-Old Vaccine Fails To Protect Against Covid

An old tuberculosis vaccine known to bolster the immune system did not prevent Covid infections among health care workers, scientists reported on Thursday.

But the trial was shorter and smaller than originally designed, and the investigators said that the results did not rule out other potential benefits associated with the vaccine, known as B.C.G. For bacille Calmette-Guerin.

The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was the largest clinical trial of the vaccine's potential to protect against Covid infections. B.C.G. Was developed in the early 1900s to combat TB, but has since also been shown to confer protection against other illnesses, including respiratory diseases.

The trial of health care workers began in March 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, when no effective treatments for Covid were available and a new vaccine against the highly infectious disease seemed to be a remote fantasy. The hope was that the old vaccine might be repurposed to save lives.

Six months after vaccination with B.C.G., however, there were no significant differences between the two groups of health care workers: While 14.7 percent of those inoculated with B.C.G. Developed symptomatic Covid infections, 12.3 percent of those who received saline placebo shots got sick.

Five participants in each group were hospitalized, and one participant who got the placebo died. The differences were not statistically significant.

The remarkably rapid development of mRNA vaccines made it impossible to complete the B.C.G. Trial as designed because health care workers were first in line to get the newly available mRNA shots.

The goal of the B.C.G. Trial had been to follow 10,000 participants from five countries — Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Britain and Brazil — for 12 months, but the new paper reports on only 4,000 adults who were followed for six months.

The mRNA vaccines were "an absolute miracle of modern science," said Dr. Nigel Curtis, the trial's chief investigator, who is a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. "But from the trial's point of view, it was fairly disastrous."

A still larger trial would have been required to see whether the vaccine protected against not just infections but also hospitalizations and deaths from Covid.

The vaccine is still widely used in the developing world, where many babies die before their first birthdays. Scientists have found that B.C.G. Inoculation reduces infant mortality. In addition to protecting babies from tuberculosis, the vaccine appears to train the immune system to respond to other pathogens, and reduces rates of respiratory illnesses and other diseases.

"The conclusion of our trial — that B.C.G. Does not protect health care workers against mild or moderate Covid — is true," Dr. Curtis said.

But it may still hold promise, he added: "This doesn't tell us anything about the ability to protect people in other age groups against infections. B.C.G. Is still a very important concept in infants."

Additional analysis of the data collected from inoculated health care workers is continuing. The vaccine's effects may vary depending on the virus or bacterium it is pitted against, Dr. Curtis said.

The B.C.G. Vaccine contains live modified bacteria that have been cultivated in labs around the world for decades, introducing mutations that have led to a number of strains. Differing strains of B.C.G. And varying inoculation regimens may account for inconsistent results in other studies, some experts say.

One of the most successful so far has been a small study of adults with Type 1 diabetes who received multiple B.C.G. Inoculations before the pandemic in an effort to improve their blood sugar levels and to reduce infections.

That study found that those who received B.C.G. Had far fewer Covid infections than participants who got placebo shots.

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