(Psst: The FTC wants me to remind you that this website contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase from a link you click on, I might receive a small commission. This does not increase the price you’ll pay for that item nor does it decrease the awesomeness of the item. ~ Daisy)
Rumors have been circulating about mRNA vaccines in livestock. Fact-checkers have been scoffing, but what’s really going on? Could we be eating animals that have been treated with mRNA? How do we know what’s in the meat at our grocery store?
PORK: Yes, it’s probably been treated with mRNA.
Unfortunately, if you’ve been eating pork from the grocery stores, even organic pork, it’s probably been treated with mRNA because pork producers have been using mRNA products since 2018. Merck’s SEQUIVITY platform is used with different sequences of various porcine diseases, including swine flu, to get immune responses in pigs.
Interestingly enough, sow mortality rates have increased slightly, from 11.1% in 2017 to 12.6% in 2021. However, raising animals in large quantities is very complex; increased mortality could be linked to countless factors, and many producers admit they don’t have enough qualified employees to pay optimal attention to animals. The only certainty here is, new pharmaceutical products have not been a magic bullet for the pork industry’s problems.
I guess we, as a society, don’t have enough money for more agricultural and veterinary workers so that hog farmers can optimally monitor the pigs that will become our food. And yet, it’s still full steam ahead with ever-more-complicated bioengineering solutions. A few months ago, GenVax Technologies, a startup that wants to bring self-amplifying mRNA (saRNA) technologies to animal health, received $6.5 million to begin producing vaccines 100% specific to African Swine Fever variants that may be circulating in pork herds. There always seems to be enough money for mRNA.
Sound familiar?
If this sounds similar to a product widely used on humans the past few years, that’s because it is. As in human mRNA treatments, Merck claims that the RNA can’t replicate itself and only lasts a short time in the animals’ bodies. They also say that animals do not shed any RNA particles. Given the wide range of findings in humans after mRNA treatments, however, I think the public has reason to be skeptical.
Now, my first thought when I heard about this was disbelief. Ed Dowd’s Cause Unknown gives very detailed evidence of increasing death rates from the past two years; I couldn’t imagine anyone responsible for livestock trying out a product with so much potential to negatively affect profit margins.
But most people dying from “unknown causes” have not been dropping dead immediately after receiving medical treatments. Many deaths occur weeks or months later. Age dates for pig slaughter vary somewhat, depending on what the pigs are wanted for, but typically range between 4 and 10 months. Pigs’ natural lifespans, however, are between ten and fifteen years, which means that the pigs used for meat are butchered early in their lives. Who knows what we’d see if the pigs reached even 50% of their natural life span?
BEEF: It’s not treated with mRNA. YET.
Regarding beef, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has pooh-poohed online talk about the potential for mRNA vaccines being used in beef. They released a statement on April 5, saying, “There are no current mRNA vaccines licensed for use in beef cattle in the United States. Cattle farmers and ranchers do vaccinate cattle to treat and prevent many diseases, but presently none of these vaccines include mRNA technology.”
Okay, but that’s as of April 2023. As Dr. Robert Malone noted recently, there are no transparency laws surrounding animal trials, which means facts and figures are hard to come by. But we do know that German giants Bayer and BioNTech have been working together to develop mRNA vaccines for veterinary use since 2016.
What about chicken?
We know that there is international interest in using an mRNA template to develop a universal flu vaccine for humans, swine, and chickens
We know that there is an RNA vaccine licensed for conditional use in chickens to prevent bird flu.
Confusing, right?
With so much money being pumped into mRNA-related research, are we really supposed to think it’s just not going to go anywhere? The biotech companies readily admit that they want to use mRNA technology to treat various zoonotic diseases and many people are not happy about it; why wouldn’t we all be complaining just because there’s not much licensed at the moment?
The industry does not want clarity.
When Holly Jones introduced Missouri House Bill 1169 there was industry pushback. HB 1169 is a tiny little bill; all it does is mandate reporting on whether or not food products have been treated with gene therapy products. Nothing is banned. The bill simply empowers consumers to make the best choices for themselves and their families.
Free markets can’t function when people can’t make informed choices. The past three years have made many people deeply distrustful of the expert class; they don’t want their food being tampered with. They feel strongly enough about avoiding mRNA-treated meat to be willing to look around and shop carefully. HB 1169 would give these people the knowledge to make informed decisions, and that’s exactly what the pharmaceutical giants and industry lobbyists don’t want.
Industry lobbyists want things to be vague. They want the general public confused and willing to do whatever “the experts” tell them.
During the testimony hearing for HB 1169, industry representatives vehemently opposed the bill. They did not treat any of the public’s concerns as legitimate but insisted that any regulation on biotechnology would make Missouri less competitive for industry. They focused completely on how bad it would look if Missourians seemed skeptical about biotechnology, and how it would negatively impact business in their state.
This should really tell us everything we need to know about the push to get mRNA into our food. It’s all about money for favored industries. They don’t want independent producers providing high-quality food for their communities; they want everyone to be part of the same giant system. This isn’t about health, it isn’t about the environment, it’s about generating new sources of revenue for biotechnology companies.
And they don’t want separate labels because, if something goes wrong and people do start getting sick, or the animals get sick, precise labeling would make it easy to pinpoint the problem.
This is yet another reason why you need to secure your food supply now.
We talk a lot about the importance of securing food supplies on this site, both to avoid novelty products like insects, and also for peace of mind. This most recent revelation about pork products already being treated with mRNA and refusal by industry representatives to address anything other than how HB 1169 will affect the business community should serve as yet another wake up call. We cannot assume anything we buy at the store has not been treated with novel pharmaceutical products.
I know some people will disagree about calling mRNA vaccines “novel products.”
“We’ve been researching mRNA for decades!” I’ll hear. We have not been ingesting these products for decades; we’ve been ingesting them for about five years, without our knowledge, and no one has been monitoring results. This is not enough for me to be confident in their safety, and I don’t think it should be enough for anyone else, either.
I haven’t bought meat from the grocery store in a long time, mostly because I produce a lot myself. Of course, meat production is not practical for everyone, but if it is an option for you, you need to think about it.
And if not, ask yourself, are there farms in your area committed to raising clean meat? There might be. These types of places often have some kind of subscription service and are worth checking out. Even if there is nothing very close, there are some places that ship. Or it might be worth a road trip to get a year’s worth of meat. If you don’t already have good meat sources, now is the best time to start looking for them.
If you live in Missouri, I hope you can raise public awareness about this bill. For those of us that do not, we need to take responsibility for our food choices and start looking for meat sources outside the normal system.
What are your thoughts?
Would it bother you to know that the meat you’re eating has been treated with mRNA technology? If given a clear choice, would you purchase meat with or without these vaccines? What do you think about the cloak of secrecy over the introduction of this into our food supply? How can you avoid mRNA-infused meat? If you can’t raise your own and the labels at the store are not clear, where could you acquire it?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Marie Hawthorne
A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.
