The same technology that yielded COVID-19 vaccines could help protect livestock from deadly diseases, but a growing chorus of skeptics could undermine the use of these new mRNA-based shots for animals. On a related note, do farmers use too many drugs to raise their animals? This myth persists despite abundant contrary evidence. Just a few companies dominate the global seed market; how did these firms become such economic powerhouses?

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* Kill the Messenger: mRNA-based livestock vaccines are under attack by vaccine skeptics. Here’s why their rejectionism is misplaced — and dangerous

Agricultural animals get sick just like humans do. To reduce the risk of infection and its potentially deadly effects, vaccines are administered to protect the chickens, cows and pigs we depend on for food. While this seems uncontroversial, some of the same critics who opposed COVID-19 vaccination are now sounding the alarm over mRNA-based vaccines for livestock. The new shots, skeptics claim, are a stealth means of immunizing vaccine-hesitant people against SARS-CoV-2. Is there any truth to this allegation?

* Does conventional livestock farming use drugs at ‘unnecessarily high levels’, endangering human health, as activist critics claim?

When vaccines aren't an option, livestock are treated with drugs to bring them back to health. Although treating sick animals is necessary and perfectly ethical, some allege that farmers use medicines, antibiotics included, to make their animals grow faster. In reality, these drugs are tightly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and prescribed by veterinarians.

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* Four multinational companies sell half of all seeds globally, says USDA report on agricultural consolidation

Critics of genetic engineering have long complained about consolidation in the global seed market. With fewer and fewer companies selling seed as time progresses, our food supply is increasingly controlled by just a few international conglomerates. Should we be worried about this oligopoly in the seed market? If so, what can we do about it?