At least five states have introduced bills restricting the use of controversial mRNA technology or gene therapies in livestock or demand full disclosure to consumers on product packaging.
The states considering legislation include North Dakota, Tennessee, Arizona, Idaho, and Missouri.
Idaho House Bill 154 would make it a misdemeanor offense for anyone who provides or administers a vaccine using mRNA technology “for use in an individual or any other mammal in this state.”
Arizona House Bill 2762 requires conspicuous labeling of all aquatic, livestock, or poultry products that received mRNA vaccines, and prohibits these products from being labeled as organic.
Tennessee House Bill 0099 amends an existing law to prohibit the manufacture or sale of livestock or meat that contains mRNA “vaccine of vaccines materials” without a conspicuous label that there are such ingredients in the product.
In North Dakota, state lawmakers filed SB2384, which seeks to ban the use of mRNA vaccines in humans and to introduce a penalty for anyone breaking the prohibition.
Missouri State Rep. Holly Jones, a Republican, is the lead sponsor of a bill requiring product labeling of all livestock meat containing “potential gene therapy products.
“We label everything around the world. We label non-GMO. We label GMO. We label grass-fed. We label no antibiotics used. We label manufactured in a plant that has nuts,” Jones said.
“We should label anything that has not been proven safe and effective. As we’ve seen with the COVID vaccines, they’re neither safe nor effective. Even the CDC has come out with that.”
While HB1169 does not mention mRNA by name, the proposed ban would include all “potential gene therapy products.”
The House Emerging Issues subcommittee will review an amended bill on April 19. Jones is a member of that committee.
The bill would require labeling of any product created to act as a potential gene therapy, or that could “otherwise possibly impact, alter, or introduce genetic material or a genetic change into the user of the product.”
It would include anyone exposed to the product or people “exposed to others who have used the product.”
With the passage of HB1169, the law would require livestock farmers and producers in Missouri to fully display on product packaging mRNA technology used in cows, pigs, and other livestock under the rule of informed consent.
Already In Development
“They would have to tell us if they begin using those things. As it is currently, almost all states do not,” Jones said.
Jones said she confirmed through multiple agricultural sources that mRNA programs for U.S. livestock are “in the works.”
“It is in the pipeline. Australia is already doing that.”
According to a statement from the Queensland government in Australia, scientists are working to develop an mRNA-related vaccine to combat the threat of Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) in beef cattle with $1.5 million invested.
“A new mRNA vaccine would be a game changer as the live virus vaccines currently available overseas cannot be used in Australia,” said Mark Furner—the Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries and Minister for Rural Communities—in the statement.
“Using existing vaccines here would result in us losing our disease-free status,” Furner added.
With mRNA technology, as in COVID-19 vaccines, the injections introduce a virus fragment into cells, teaching them how to produce a specific antibody against the disease.
The Veterinary Microbiology and Preventive Medicine Department at Iowa State University is developing an mRNA-based cattle vaccine for the bovine respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Untreated, RSV can lead to pneumonia in cows.
The federal grant program aims to develop a “novel mRNA system” that provides immune protection against RSV.
“We hypothesize that a [mRNA injection] delivered continuously by vaccine implant will lead to prolonged and robust cellular and antibody immunity,” according to a program summary in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research, Education, and Economics Information System (REEIS).
“Here, we will optimize our vaccine further and then test for potential correlates of protection to examine for in eventually challenged cows.”
No Labeling of Foreign Meat
In 2016, the U.S. Congress removed a labeling law requiring the country of origin on meat products.
“That means we could take beef from Argentina, Australia, China—anywhere around the world—and this gets mixed in because we no longer have to label it as country of origin.
“That strikes an issue with me,” Jones told The Epoch Times.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association recently stated that “there are no current mRNA vaccines licenses for use in beef cattle in the United States.”
“Cattle farmers and ranchers vaccinate cattle to treat and prevent many diseases, but presently none of these vaccines include mRNA technology.”
In August 2022, mRNA vaccine research start-up Genvax Technologies received $6.5 million in grant funding through a coalition of private investors, including United Animal Health.
“The threat posed to producers and consumers by foreign animal diseases like African swine fever (ASF) and constantly mutating variants of swine influenza is extraordinary,” Joel Harris, CEO and co-founder of Genvax Technologies, said in a release published in PorkBusiness.com.
“The goal is to develop a vaccine that matches 100 percent to the specific strain when a disease outbreak occurs.”
While ASF is a viral disease that is almost always fatal in domestic and wild pigs, it does not threaten human health and can’t spread from pigs to people.
“It is not a food safety issue,” the USDA states on its website.
“ASF is found in countries around the world. More recently, it has spread to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. ASF has also spread through China, Mongolia, and Vietnam, as well as within parts of the European Union.
“It has never been found in the United States—and we want to keep it that way.”
The Animal Health Institute (AHI) reports that mRNA vaccines used in veterinary medicine are at least five to 10 years away from deployment.
“New vaccines that use mRNA technologies to control parasites could allow more effective vaccines that can be reliably produced. Parasite vaccines developed through traditional methods are often difficult to reliably manufacture for companies,” the AHI’s website says.
“As a result, only a handful of parasite vaccines are available in veterinary medicines. However, mRNA could allow for more reliable production as these can avoid the difficulties of traditional methods.”
Not All Harmful?
Jones, however, said her bill does not mean she considers all mRNA technology harmful.
“They’re using it in many different medical studies and clinical trials. We do a good job of covering up things that may or may not be the best for us.
“I would like to see is that informed consent for consumers. I will fight for that tooth and nail.”
“What we’re asking is tell us if you are a cattle rancher or a pig farmer—if you choose to go that route with vaccinations—people should have that awareness whether to purchase that meat or 100 percent organic.”
Jones said lobbyists accused her of creating fear among consumers and affecting the “bottom line.”
“That’s upsetting to me. I have a strong moral standing that everyone has a right to choose what they put in their bodies.”
Texas Cites Concerns
On April 3, Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller said his office is working on a “fact-based analysis” of the risks associated with mRNA technology in food and livestock.
“Since news of the development of mRNA vaccines and mRNA-related treatments for livestock came to the attention of the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA), we have been working towards developing a fact and science-based assessment of the risks associated with this technology,” Miller said in a statement.
“Our analysis will include the clinical research, the structure of existing Texas law, and the public policy, economic, and production impact of the different policy prescriptions we may adopt.
“I aim to ensure that Texas agriculture remains safe, trusted, healthy, and wholly uninfected by dangerous or unproven technology.”
“I personally take this issue very seriously. No political hot takes. Just a well-reasoned and well-researched proposal based on a wide range of input from stakeholders, scientists, agriculturalists, and other experts.
“We are looking at this issue at TDA and will share your concerns.”
The Texas agriculture department’s communications director Reb Wayne said many Texans expressed their concerns regarding mRNA technology.
Wayne said the department’s goal is “a safe and abundant food supply.”
“Our work is in its initial stages, and Commissioner Miller wants to make sure that both the [agricultural] industry and the general public are dealing with the facts on mRNA,” Wayne told The Epoch Times.
Jones said the Missouri legislation is for businesses and people who “deserve to know” the effects of mRNA in food and other products.
“We want to make sure people not only have informed consent and transparency in their food supply, but that if something happens without their knowledge, there is a way to stand firm,” Jones said.
“This is spreading like wildfire. And rightfully so.”
Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
