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USDA FOIA File on Merck RNA Pet Vaccine Lists Deaths and Collapse Within Hours of the Shot

Laboratory scientists conducting sample analysis with a microscope and pipettes

Summary

  • A USDA Freedom of Information Act release reviewed by The HighWire covers 1,012 pages of post-market reports on Merck’s Nobivac NXT canine flu vaccine, the first widely used self-amplifying RNA shot for U.S. pets.
  • The file lists 296 cases naming the product as a suspect vaccine, including deaths, cardiac arrest minutes after injection, neurological reports, anaphylaxis, and injection-site masses.
  • The USDA licensed the RNA-particle platform in 2024. Portions of the pre-approval trial spreadsheets were withheld as Merck confidential commercial information.

What Happened

In June 2024 the U.S. Department of Agriculture licensed Merck Animal Health’s Nobivac NXT Canine Flu H3N2, marketed as the first RNA-particle vaccine for canine influenza. Merck later licensed related Nobivac NXT products for feline leukemia. A rabies RNA-particle shot was licensed as well. Merck has said the rabies product was sold in Canada and was not yet commercially available in the United States because of contracts.

Nicolas Hulscher of the McCullough Foundation said veterinarians are injecting self-amplifying RNA into dogs and cats and that FOIA records show deaths, cardiac arrests, and neurological damage within hours. The FOIA claim is not an empty slogan. The HighWire obtained the first 1,012 pages of 1,888 pages of USDA adverse-event reports covering September 2024 through July 2025.

Those pages list 296 cases naming the Nobivac RNA vaccine as a suspect product. One hundred fifty-two were coded as adverse reactions. Seventy-six were coded as lack of efficacy after dogs developed cough or respiratory illness. The tally includes 41 neurological reports, 30 anaphylaxis or hypersensitivity reports, 52 vomiting reports, 19 injection-site masses, five collapse or shock presentations, four canine deaths, one feline death, and three euthanasias after vaccination.

Two death reports describe collapse in under two hours. A 4-year-old golden retriever collapsed ten minutes after vaccination, went into cardiac arrest, and died. Merck later added anaphylaxis to that file. A 7-year-old Yorkshire Terrier collapsed seventy minutes after receiving the flu shot plus other Nobivac products and could not be revived. Other reports describe seizures, wobbliness, and pain within hours. Two of the dog death files had major confounding factors. An 8-year-old Shih Tzu that became ill after vaccination was later euthanized for renal failure. Merck told the file the vaccine was unlikely to be the cause.

A second FOIA request sought the trial data used to license the product. The USDA released three spreadsheets of individual animal results and withheld other portions as confidential commercial information supplied by Merck. The redacted comments that remain include anaphylaxis, diarrhea, and decreased appetite. Pre-license product summaries posted by APHIS reported a 2.5 percent adverse-event rate among 654 dogs given two doses. Post-market reports are not proof of causation. They are the government’s own paper trail after the product left the lab.

Why It Matters

A regulator that licenses a new genetic vaccine platform for household pets owes the owner a complete safety file, not a marketing line and a blacked-out spreadsheet. When deaths and collapse appear in the official aftermarket reports within minutes or hours of the shot, the public is entitled to see the pages and judge the risk. Hiding trial rows as commercial secrets leaves the veterinarian and the owner guessing while the product stays on the shelf.

Self-amplifying RNA is not a conventional killed virus in a bottle. The construct is designed to copy itself inside the animal. That is a different kind of product, and it demanded a different kind of transparency before it became a routine clinic item. Treating serious post-shot reports as routine noise, while the license stays in force, puts the pet on the same path human families already walked with fast-tracked RNA shots: approval first, argument later.

The Bigger Picture

Merck and USDA describe Nobivac NXT as RNA-particle technology built on a Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus backbone that expresses the target antigen. Industry papers call the platform safe and nonadjuvanted. Independent reviewers note that long-term companion-animal data are thin and that many clinic reports involve several vaccines given at once.

The same fight now sits in two places: the clinic and the FOIA log. Owners who want a conventional rabies or flu shot have to ask which product is in the syringe. Agencies that license the new platform and then withhold trial rows as trade secrets make that question harder. The HighWire file is only the first thousand pages. The rest of the 1,888-page set, and the unredacted trial sheets, are the next test of whether USDA will treat pet owners as customers or as an afterthought.

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