‘Lettuce’ consider plant-derived vaccines

Instead of getting a shot in the arm, could a person simply eat a salad to get the same effect? Last month, the Tennesse Senate and House passed a bill addressing that very topic. House Bill 1894/Senate Bill 1903 requires any food containing vaccines or vaccine materials to be labeled as pharmaceutical drugs. It does not prohibit the sale of vaccine-containing foods, but requires these foods to have the same medical labeling as any other vaccine or medication. The bill defines food that contains a vaccine or vaccine material as a drug for purposes of the Tennessee Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

The “vaccine lettuce bill,” as it came to be called, was signed into law by Tennesse Governor Bill Lee on Monday. The bill was not drafted in response to any vaccine-containing foods being sold in Tennessee, but rather in light of a University of California-Riverside project that tested whether pathogen-targeting mRNA, like that used in COVID-19 vaccines, could be implanted in the cells of edible plants such as lettuce, to replicate and then be consumed. The $500,000 project was taxpayer funded through a National Science Foundation grant.

“We are testing this approach with spinach and lettuce and have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens,” said Juan Pablo Giraldo, UC Riverside associate professor of botany and plant sciences, in a 2021 press release. “Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”

“Ideally, a single plant would produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person,” Pablo Giraldo added.

The current status of the project is unknown. UC Riverside is not releasing results yet because the project is not concluded.

“Research into the process of having plant chloroplasts express vaccine chemistry is ongoing. There are no definitive results to report,” Jules Bernstein, senior public information officer for UC Riverside, said in a recent email to News 2.

The idea of administering vaccines through food is not a new one. Scientific literature on transgenic (genetically modififed) edible vaccines goes back to at least 1999.

In 2016, Fort Valley State University in Georgia launched a five-year project to develop transgenic alfalfa plants that could be used in edible vaccination systems.

A 2013 article entitled “Plant Edible Vaccines: A Revolution in Vaccination” by Mohd. Shahid, Anwar Shahzad, Abida Malik and Aastha Sahai1 was published in the journal Spring Nature. This article discusses attempts to put vaccines against various diseases, such as measles, hepatitis B and cholera, into foodstuff s like potatoes, bananas, corn, soybeans and rice. The article also outlines several “potential advantages of plant derived vaccines over other conventional systems of vaccine” including reduced cost of production, making it easier to distribute the vaccine to economically disadvantaged countries; easier administration and no need for refrigeration.

Lawmakers have expressed concern, however, about how to control the distribution and dosage of these edible vaccines, and prevent cross-pollination and cross-contamination. Back in September, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment to an agricultural appropriations bill that would have prohibited government funding for human and animal vaccines grown in genetically engineered plants. The amendment passed but the bill ultimately failed.

In Massie’s research for his amendment, he pointed out an instance of when a transgenic edible vaccine experiment did not go as planned.

“About 20 years ago, they were trying to grow a vaccine to prevent diarrhea in pigs and they were using corn to grow this vaccine. The field the next year was used to grow soybeans, but the corn sprouted again,” Massie stated.

“There were some leftover kernels … and the corn was mixed with the soybeans, and it contaminated 500 bushels of soybeans that were then mixed with 500,000 bushels. And so, they had to destroy all of those soybeans.”

In December 2002, the New York Times reported that ProdiGene, the biotechnology company that developed the corn crop, agreed to pay the U.S. government a $3 million fine “to settle charges that it did not take proper steps to prevent corn that was genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals from entering the food supply.”

In addition to challenges with controlling for cross-contamination, there could be unintended human health consequences to these types of vaccines.

“Plant-produced vaccines will have what is known as post-translational modifications to the intended protein product. You will not end up with just the desired protein product as it exists in its native form in the pathogen. These post-translational modifications will be specific to the plant, and in humans or other animals they will produce dangerous immune reactions,” stated Claire Robinson, managing editor of GMWatch, in an interview with Children’s Health Defense. “Even the responses to the desired protein product — the ‘vaccine’ — will vary from person to person because people respond differently to different proteins. Also, you can end up with proteins that are toxic or that are not folded properly, with the latter property meaning that they could cause prion diseases,” she stated.

Space prohibits me from delving deeper, but suffice it to say there are plenty of safety concerns.

Getting back to the vaccine lettuce bill, one could argue that the Tennesseean lawmakers passed the bill prematurely; however, the bill’s supporters would say that they wanted to get out ahead of the issue and ensure the consumer would be protected in the event a product like this went to market. One thing’s for sure: the technology to create these vaccines is already here and is advancing at a rapid rate. If there are no checks and balances, things will undoubtedly go wrong, and apparently already have. Whether you are for or against vaccines, there are a lot of questions to be sorted out with this. Consumer protection and informed consent should be kept paramount.

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