Cows in video died after eating toxic sorghum, not from COVID-19 vaccines | Fact check

Isabella Fertel, USA TODAY
·3 min read
2

The claim: Video shows cows killed by COVID-19 vaccines

A June 4 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a video of dead cows that was originally posted on Twitter.

“WARNING,” reads the text in the tweet. “Graphic Footage. Northern Italy. Government came and vaccinated cattle against cv19. Look at the result all dead or dying the next day #diedsuddenly.”

The post garnered more than 1,000 likes in a week. Other iterations of the claim were shared on Instagram and Twitter.

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Our rating: False

The video shows cows that died after eating sorghum plants with toxic levels of prussic acid, according to veterinarians and news reports. While some of the social media posts claim the event was “breaking news,” the cows died in August 2022.

Video shows cows that died after eating sorghum plants

The video in the post was taken on a farm in Sommariva Bosco in Italy’s Piedmont region and was published by Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera on Aug. 8, 2022.

“Sommariva Bosco, 50 cows die in a few minutes poisoned by sorghum,” reads an English translation of the video’s title.

The cows in the video were not vaccinated against COVID-19, nor did they perish as the result of being vaccinated, said Stefano Giantin, a veterinarian at Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale in northwest Italy who handled the case.

The high levels of prussic acid in the sorghum grass had an intoxicating effect on the cattle, blocking their cellular respiration and effectively suffocating them, Giantin told USA TODAY in an email.

Giantin said sorghum grass is not usually poisonous, but drought and high temperatures caused there to be “high toxic concentrations” of prussic acid in the plant.

Fact check: No mRNA vaccine approved for cattle in US

Other Italian and international news outlets also covered the incident at the time, which affected multiple herds of cattle in the area.

About 40 cows at the Sommariva Bosco farm were successfully saved after being injected with a sodium thiosulfate antidote, Giantin previously told the AFP and the Associated Press.

USA TODAY and other fact-checkers have previously debunked other erroneous claims about COVID-19 vaccinations for cattle and other livestock.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the post for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

The Associated Press, PolitiFact, Lead Stories and Check Your Fact also debunked this claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, COVID-19 vaccines didn't cause Italian cow deaths | Fact check