US Labs Breeding Deadly Foreign Ticks in Bid for mRNA Vaccines
U.S. government-funded labs are actively breeding colonies of exotic Hyalomma ticks imported from Africa to study Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), a brutal tick-borne virus with a 30% mortality rate that’s never been detected in America.
This high-stakes research, aimed at developing mRNA vaccines and analyzing transmission in livestock, is raising red flags among experts who warn of catastrophic lab leaks that could unleash the disease on U.S. soil, devastating agriculture and public health.
The program involves multiple facilities, including the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Manhattan, Kansas (tied to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, formerly on Plum Island), UC Davis in California, and Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, according to research from the White Coat Waste project, first reported by The Highwire.
These sites are establishing tick colonies to experiment on CCHF transmission in cattle, sheep, and goats, assessing risks for the virus establishing itself here based on climate and ecology.
“The White Coat Waste Project uncovered 10 existing USDA contracts to work on mRNA vaccines, including one that is studying Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), a highly pathogenic tick-borne disease with a 10-40% case fatality rate,” The Highwire reports. “The research grant is given to the Agricultural Research Service in Manhattan, Kansas, in combination with researchers at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), which was formerly on Plum Island, where researchers were studying Lyme disease near Lyme, Connecticut, where the first outbreak occurred.”
CCHF, first identified in Crimea in 1944, causes severe symptoms and can spread from ticks to animals or humans, and even person-to-person.
There’s no widely licensed vaccine, only a dubious Soviet-era one from 1970.
Funding flows from USDA contracts for mRNA vaccine development, including 10 ongoing deals specifically targeting CCHF.
EcoHealth Alliance, infamous for its role in COVID origins research, snagged a $3.7 million Department of Defense grant from 2020-2024 to study CCHF as part of “combating weapons of mass destruction.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/11/exposed-us-labs-breeding-deadly-foreign-ticks-bid/