Pfizer's Fungus

Pfizer was contracted by the U. S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick to produce a crop-killing bacteria.

In “Development of a Process for and Production of Spores of Piricularia oryzae,” [19] Pfizer reports on the process of their contract for the U.S. Army Biological Laboratories. Pfizer produced 1,900 pounds of “Piricularia oryzae,” fungal spores that cause a crop disease called “rice blast fungus,” “rotting rice neck,” or “wheat blight.” [20]

“Chas. Pfizer,” is the former name of the company now known as Pfizer. For this contract, Pfizer cultivated a bacteria that would infect grain crops. The fungus was grown in large fermentation tanks as sheets of mycelium. It was then filtered, dried, extracted and purified in a process somewhat similar to brewing beer. The below diagram details how the lab was set up.

The report details the process of store production and storage, difficulties of quickly setting up the fermentation process and research on scaling up the laboratory to producing 2,000 pounds of spores per month.

Page 193 of the report tabulates the total cost of building a lab like this to be $11,288,420, or $108,594,600 in 2025 dollars, inclusive of facilities, equipment, expendables and labor. Page 206 of the report details the personnel, 669 workers were required to run the lab with the average worker paid around $2.85/hour to make deadly fungus. On page 215, the report calculates a cost per pound of the weaponized spores: $220/pound for solvent spores, $215/pound for dry spores, with predictions of lower costs as industrialization scales up.

Manufacturing this pathogen has caused untold costs for humanity. In 2003, scientists at the University of Nebraska called Piricularia oryzae, “the most devastating fungal plant pathogen worldwide.” [21] Historians researching famine in the 1960s might consider biological warfare a source of mass crop death.

In 2022, Pfizer sold $37.8 billion dollars worth of COVID-19 vaccines to the US government. [22] It’s not often mentioned that in 1966 they sold the Army cultivated crop-killing bacteria.

Works Cited

19: Chas. Pfizer & Co., Inc. “Development of a Process for and Production of Spores of Piricularia Oryzae.” NARA, January 1, 1967. National Archives and Records Administration at College Park. RG 544, Box 6. https://pacificatrocitiesedu.reclaim.hosting/items/show/1594.

20: “Magnaporthe Grisea.” In Wikipedia, n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnaporthe_grisea.

21: Yarden, O., D. J. Ebbole, S. Freeman, R. J. Rodriguez, and M. B. Dickman. “Fungal Biology and Agriculture: Revisiting the Field.” Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions® 16, no. 10 (October 2003): 859–66. https://doi.org/10.1094/MPMI.2003.16.10.859.

22: Spencer Kimball. “The Covid Pandemic Drives Pfizer’s 2022 Revenue to a Record $100 Billion.” CNBC, January 31, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/the-covid-pandemic-drives-pfizers-2022-revenue-to-a-record-100-billion.html.