Does this video show cows dying after being given the Covid-19 vaccine?

By June 14, 2023 COVID-19, Vaccine

This footage of cows dead or dying on a farm in Italy has been circulating on Twitter and other social media platforms alongside the claim that an entire herd died shortly after being vaccinated against Covid-19 by “the Government.”

This tweet garnered over 500k views and included the hashtag #diedsuddenly, which is a hashtag used by proponents of the conspiracy that the Covid-19 vaccine has caused numerous unexplained, sudden deaths across the world. Other posts on Instagram and Facebook soon followed, all directly linking sudden cow deaths to the Covid-19 vaccine.

However, a reverse image search of stills from the video reveals that it is actually from August 2022, rather than a recent event as some tweets have suggested. Articles from that period report that the cow deaths were caused by acute prussic acid poisoning.

A drought during this period likely caused young sorghum plants to develop higher than typical concentrations of a naturally occurring substance, dhurrin. When consumed and digested by the cows, dhurrin released prussic acid – more commonly known as hydrogen cyanide – which can be lethal.

The onset of symptoms is rapid, with death coming within 15 to 30 minutes after ingestion, and the only cure is an injection of cyanide-neutralising sodium thiosulfate. Some cows were saved with this method, further confirming prussic acid poisoning as the cause of death.

Additionally, none of the articles indicate that the Covid-19 vaccine was administered at all in this case – much less that “the Government came and vaccinated cattle,” as stated in the original post. While multiple fact-checks have debunked claims about livestock receiving the MRNA Covid-19 vaccine, these claims persist – with unrelated events and media being deliberately misrepresented to further the narrative and spread misinformation.

Vaccines to prevent illness and disease in animals are extremely common and well-regulated worldwide. However, the development of Covid-19 vaccines for animals is still relatively small in scale, with a similarly limited demand. Claims of mass vaccinations and plans to enforce mandatory vaccines for livestock are therefore completely unfounded, as repeatedly confirmed by official sources such as the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA). Similarly, no mandates exist in the EU or Italy which would allow the Government to enforce sudden Covid-19 vaccinations on livestock as claimed.

We therefore give this claim that cows in Italy died suddenly after receiving Covid-19 vaccinations from the Government a rating of false.

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