Some right-wingers on Truth Social are readying for another anti-vax fight—this time in chickens.
“If the chickens are vaxxed, I won’t eat them,” rebuked one person. “I’ll be buying from local farms.”
The new push comes in the wake of the U.S. Department of Agriculture issuing a conditional license for an avian flu vaccine for use in chickens, as bird flu continues to severely impact the poultry industry.
Zoetis, the manufacturer of the vaccine, said in a press release that the company had begun updating its existing avian flu vaccine in 2022, after the new strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza was identified.
According to Scientific American, since last December, more than 50 million chickens have been infected by the virus or culled to stop its spread, prompting egg prices to soar.
The use of Zoetis’ vaccine would be up to both the federal government and the industry, which historically has resisted vaccinating flocks against bird flu due to concerns about trade restrictions.
But the anti-chicken vax crowd on Truth Social is already making their disapproval clear.
“This is very suspicious. Like someone else commented ‘what part of NO VACCINE don’t they understand,’” wrote one person. “Guess I won’t be eating eggs or chicken. Kennedy, please look into this.”
“Don’t start shooting up our chickens with your voodoo shit. You’ve done enough damage to the food chain as it is,” someone else wrote in a post seemingly addressed to the USDA.
One person asserted that Bill Gates—a frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theory—was behind the bird flu.
“It’s all made up,” the user commented. “Gates and his cohorts have slaughtered hundreds of millions of chickens in the last 6 months to push forward another vaccine. Most of us won’t fall for this shit so they will taint the food you eat instead.”
“If they approve the Avian vaccine for chickens that’s my signal I will never eat chicken or eggs ever again,” echoed someone else. “I’ve already given up chicken hoping Kennedy would start a MAHA movement in the poultry industry but with an Avian vaccine a possibility that’s a big No for me.”
Others pushed the baseless idea that the bird flu was a complete hoax—and that the possibility of chickens getting vaccinated was a guise designed to target people who don’t get vaccinated themselves.
“Is this why we have a supposed bird flu outbreak when no birds are apparently sick except chickens (and cows)?” asked one Truther. “So the USDA can poison us through a chicken ‘vaccine.’ Great. Out with the red dye in with the mRNA through chicken meat.”
Echoed someone else: “They couldn’t get us to take it under their own volition so they’re trying to trick us into taking it. I want a label on that vaccinated chicken and I want a choice of non vaccinated chicken and eggs. Because I’d rather take my chances with the bird flu than to be taking a vaccine I don’t know anything about.”
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