Originally published October 1, 2023 1:10 pm PDT
“Ideally, a single plant could produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person,” said an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside.
QUICK FACTS:
- Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) appeared before the Committee of the Whole House to discuss his amendment to H.R. 4368, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
- Massie’s amendment would prohibit funding “related to any transgenic edible vaccine” for fiscal year 2024.
- Transgenic edible vaccine research is currently underway at the University of California, Riverside, as a means of implementing mRNA into plants, such as lettuce and spinach.
- “I don’t think the American people should be funding this,” Massie said.
- Massie cautioned against the research, relaying an incident where vaccine-modified corn meant for pigs contaminated other products.
- “A biotech company was experimenting, growing, in corn, a vaccine to keep pigs from getting diarrhea,” Massie shared, describing that the corn “co-mingled with soybeans” and contaminated hundreds of bushels of soybeans, which were then “co-mingled with 500,000 bushels of soybeans.”
- While the hundreds of thousands of bushels were recalled, Massie warned against the mere risk of contamination, asking, “Do we want humans eating vaccines that were grown in corn meant to stop pigs from getting diarrhea? I don’t think we want that to happen.”
- “I think it’s dangerous to play God with our food,” the representative said. “I think we need a safe food supply.”
- The U.S. House of Representatives passed the amendment.
STUDY FROM UC RIVERSIDE:
- Massie’s concern for transgenic edible vaccines arose after learning about a 2021 study from UC Riverside (UCR).
- The university received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to assess whether DNA containing the mRNA vaccine can be integrated into a plant cell and replicated.
- “We are testing this approach with spinach and lettuce and have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens,” said UCR’s Department of Botany and Plant Sciences associate professor Juan Pablo Giraldo. “Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”
- Giraldo added, “One of the reasons I started working in nanotechnology was so I could apply it to plants and create new technology solutions. Not just for food, but for high-value products as well, like pharmaceuticals.”
- The study focuses on plants’ chloroplasts, structures that convert sunlight into energy.
- Previous studies have concluded that chloroplasts can express genes that are not naturally occurring within the plant, opening the possibility for mRNA molecules to influence the plant’s cells.
BACKGROUND:
- American Faith reported that a Missouri bill requiring the disclosure of products with vaccine ingredients and potential gene therapies failed to pass in the state legislature.
- According to the bill, a product that has the possibility of acting as a gene therapy or could introduce genetic material to the consumer was to be labeled with the phrase, “Potential Gene Therapy Product.”
- The bill also required organizations behind items potentially infecting an individual with a disease or exposing them to genetically modified materials to disclose information about the product.
