Thread by @brechtcastel

77K watched a clip of "tens of thousands of cattle suddenly dying after being given a vaccine" in #India 🇮🇳.

😲"Worldwide, they are destroying cattle." 🐄🤔

What do we see? Investigate! 🧵👇 1/...

#OSINT🔎
#Verification 📽️
#GeoLocation 🌍
#HowToOSINT 🧐

The tweet mentions the Indian region Gujarat, so we google with the search terms 'Gujarat dying cows'.

This leads us to an article by The Shillong Times, a local newspaper in north-east India, entitled 'More than 1200 cattle die of Lumpy Skin Disease in Gujarat'. 2/...

The article does not contain a video, but it does contain screenshots.

If we compare one of the screenshots from the article (right) with the Twitter video (0'26", left), details 🟨🟩🟥 appear to match.

➡️So the article seems to be about the same images. 3/...

According to the Agriculture Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, by 31 July at least 1 240 cattle had already died from Lumpy Skin Disease, a deadly viral disease.

According to the opposition, the death toll is 25 or 30 times higher, we read 👇4/...

theshillongtimes.com/2022/07/31/ove…

On Facebook, we find a longer version of the same video: facebook.com/watch/?v=86974…

It shows carcasses being brought in by a tractor 🚜.

So it is not the case that these cattle died 'suddenly' at this spot, as claimed on Twitter. ❌5/...

The article 👆 also features the mayor of Bhuj, Ghanshyam Thacker.

So, we search YouTube for videos on 'cattle' and the municipality of 'Bhuj'. 6/...

So we end up with a report by a local TV station in much better quality:

This report was shot at the same spot, as we can see when we compare visual elements in the Twitter video (0'26", left) and the report (0'29", right). ✅7/...

We have the video translated by journalist @ArchitMeta. 🙏

According to the reporter on the scene, we see a rubbish dump outside Bhuj (seems plausible when we check satellite imagery): 'You can see the death toll caused by Lumpy Skin Disease.' 8/...

google.com/maps/place/Bhu…

@ArchitMeta The Twitter video was originally posted on 30 July 2022 by Indian journalist @Kaushikdd.

"I was at the scene and filmed this footage," he told me. "This was not caused by vaccination. That's wrong. The cattle died from Lumpy Skin Disease. " ✅9/...

https://twitter.com/Kaushikdd/status/1553285222120185857

In response to the outbreak of LSD the state government launched a vaccination campaign. "It started in May 2022."

Our research provides neither indications nor evidence that the vaccine had anything to do with dead animals afterwards. ❌ 10/...

CONCLUSION: The images show a rubbish dump near Bhuj where cadavers are dumped filmed by a journalist on 30 July 2022.

The established cause of death is the viral disease LSD. We found no evidence for "tens of thousands of cattle died suddenly after receiving a vaccine". 11/.

What have we learned? 👩‍🏫

1) Simple searches on YouTube and Google are often sufficient to do decent research. 🙂🔎
2) Help from local journalists can be very valuable. Reach out! 🙏
3) Finding longer and more footage of a scene, gives important context. 🚜 12/...

You can read our full article with all sources used here (@Knack) for FREE. 👇13/14

knack.be/factcheck/fact…

Did you learn something from this #OSINT for #FactChecking?

Follow me (@brechtcastel) and check out my channel on #YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCMBPt… 🙏

Older 🧵🧵underneath this tweet:

https://twitter.com/brechtcastel/status/1390688405416198145

14/END