Republican warns of vaccines being slipped into vegetables: 'A polio vaccine in there'

A Tennessee Republican voiced concerns that vaccines could be slipped surreptitiously into vegetables or cigarettes.

State Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) claimed University of California Riverside had already perfected the ability to put vaccines into vegetables such as lettuce or tomatoes, just as he said RJ Reynolds had done for tobacco products, and he told a dubious chairman of the House Health Committee that the public had a right to know whether their food was also medicine.

"What I'm saying is there is no law deeming those, that when you go into a grocery store, you should know as a consumer this head of lettuce is a head of lettuce, the head of lettuce right next to it could contain a vaccine in it," Cepicky said. "All we're saying is, if it does have the vaccine in it, make sure it's listed as a pharmaceutical so people can get the proper dosage."

Researchers at UC Davis and other universities are indeed studying whether genetically engineered plants could deliver mRNA vaccines, and tobacco plants have contributed a key ingredient to COVID-19 vaccines, the legislator's concerns are off the mark, and committee chairman Johnny Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) pressed him for more details.

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"I don't think that's allowed under state law presently," Clemmons said. "Are we going to have Walgreens pharmacists with a refrigerated section? I mean, how's this going to play out?"

Cepicky insisted his bill was necessary to protect shoppers and make sure they ate enough of the medicine they needed.

"This is more of a consumer protection bill right here, it's to make sure that if you're going in to buy tomatoes and there's a polio vaccine in there then you're aware that what you're buying has a polio vaccine," Cepicky said.

"The problem you have is if it's not treated as a pharmaceutical being the size and difference between you and me, how many tomatoes do I have to eat to get the proper dosage versus how many tomatoes you have to eat, and if you eat too many you get an overdose. If you eat too less, like we had in the cattle industry with Aureomycin, dosing our cattle properly, and the horn flies were developing an immunity to it. If we don't have the proper dosage of the vaccine it could lead to the efficacy of that drug not working anymore."