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Vaccines in food supply still not reality | Fact check

A Sept. 17 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a video about a Canadian pharmaceutical company using plants to help develop and produce vaccines.
“MRNA vegetables,” reads part of the post’s caption. “Solution – Grow our own food – Support local farmers. There is no other solution.
Users took the post to mean vaccines would be distributed covertly through the food supply.
“This should be illegal!!! Vaccinating people without thier (sic) knowledge through food?” one comment said.
The post was liked more than 10,000 times in five days.
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The implied claim here is false. The company in question did not produce edible mRNA vaccines in vegetables. It used plants to grow a vaccine component that was harvested and added to shots.
The post includes part of an informational video explaining how the Canadian pharmaceutical company Medicago uses plants to develop vaccines. In February 2022, the Canadian government authorized a COVID-19 vaccine produced by the company through this method that was determined in clinical trials to be 71% effective in protecting participants aged 18 to 64 against COVID-19.
But less than a year later, the company announced it was shutting down because of changes in the global vaccine market and the challenges it had in transitioning to commercial-scale production.
There is, however, no evidence the company was ever putting vaccines into the food supply or making “mRNA vegetables,” as the post implies.
Medicago’s use of plants in vaccine production is documented in media coverage and Canadian government publications. It used the plants to produce “virus-like particles” that would be added to a vaccine in place of traditional antigens like weakened, dead or partial viruses. There are no credible news reports about the company producing mRNA vaccines in vegetables or growing plants to be eaten.
Even if it did, it is not realistic to immunize people through food. Hugh Mason, an associate professor at Arizona State University who has been studying the use of plants for the production of vaccine antigens for more than 30 years, said there are significant technical hurdles to delivering a precise amount of a vaccine in a piece of fruit or a vegetable.
“Consistency in dosing is a big issue, due to the natural variability of protein production between individual fruits,” he told USA TODAY in an email. “Thus, an orally-delivered, plant-derived vaccine would be processed in some way to produce a pill or tablet that could be tested and validated for potency.”
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Publicly-funded vaccines are closely tracked, and vaccines require informed consent from patients. This means vaccines are administered by medical professionals in a manner that requires clear acknowledgment that a vaccine is being given, making delivery through food off limits.
Charles Arntzen, the founding director of the Biodesign Institute and an emeritus professor at Arizona State, said he believes fears of vaccine-laced vegetables began in the 1990s when his team was investigating plants engineered to produce a vaccine antigen. That research included a published report about an “appropriate,” albeit weak, vaccine response generated after volunteers ate engineered raw potatoes.
“The goal of the work was not to lead to making ‘French fry vaccines’ or any other bizarre delivery,” he told USA TODAY in an email. “Rather – our three human clinical trials were a validation step in showing that plant tissues could indeed produce a protein which had all traditional traits of a subunit vaccine.”
USA TODAY has debunked other false claims that vaccines are in the food supply or on the verge of being so.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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