Bill Gates and The War on Meat

As I am sure you guys could probably guess, many passionate conversations have been had in our household surrounding Bill Gates. He seems to be involved in a lot of contemporary worldly situations and where there is a 'crisis' Bill is never too far away. 

The media would paint this picture as one of philanthropy, but to be honest, something has always seemed a little off to us regarding Bill and what he gets up to. After doing some digging it wasn’t hard to find evidence that his 'philanthropic' actions are not what they seem.

Despite there being many angles we could cover him from, we are currently most interested and alarmed by Bill Gates rapidly becoming one of the most outspoken individuals on the topic of meat, specifically beef, and climate change.

Historically climate activists have quite rightly been focused on the devastating impacts large corporations have on the environment. Especially oil and gas giants and the toxic chemicals, gases and horrific pollution that these companies produce which destroys the planet and the health of its inhabitants. 

However, recently there has been little to no mention in any news outlets of these industries with regards to planetary health, and the focus has been entirely shifted on to meat. The term, carbon footprint has become a household phrase, and although this is not what we will be speaking about today, it is definitely relevant to this conversation. The origins of this term was surprising to us! So if you are interested you can read about this in our other blog titled "The Carbon Footprint".

Now before we get into this, its worth us emphasising that although we are huge proponents of eating meat, we are 100% against factory farming and the horrific conditions animals are subjected to under those conditions. However, regeneratively raised livestock are essential for our health and the health of our planet.

Recently it has been interesting for us to observe how the war on meat has been waged from a number of angles at the same time. You may have noticed, that ‘experts’ are condemning animal farming for 'causing climate change' whilst ‘health specialists’ are also promoting veganism as the healthiest option for the our bodies and making wildly inaccurate claims about meat being extremely unhealthy for humans to eat.

Essentially the mainstream would have you thinking that meat is bad for the planet and bad for your health. The repetition of these dumbed down statements has resulted in this mantra being embedded into the subconscious and commonly accepted. However true human and planetary health are complex issues, which needs to be researched deeply and woven together carefully. 

When we heard billionaires such as Bill Gates starting to chime in on these claims, despite having no nutritional or environmental background, it made us question why. Also, the fact that regenerative agriculture always seems to be left out from the discussion shows us that the demonisation of meat narrative is not thought through or even worse, intentionally falsified. There is mounting evidence of the benefits of regeneratively farmed animal agriculture and it is clearly starting to present itself as one of the main solutions, not problems in the human and planetary health discussion. 

So let's take a deeper look at why Bill Gates might be jumping in on this conversation. First off, he was recently quoted saying that “all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef” and went on to state that if people did not accept a shift away from animal based products, government regulations could be put in place to force such a transition. Pretty scary stuff.

Now we know that Bill isn’t this selfless billionaire as it is so often made out and it wasn’t hard to find a money trail that lead back to him surrounding the newly proposed food system. It is clear to see that he is one of the individuals that would gain the most, financially, from a total dietary shift. One of the main reasons for this is that you can’t patent real food, however fake food is a whole different story. 

Over the last decade Gates has been quietly buying up farms across the United States, often using shell companies to purchase millions of dollars worth of land. He is now the largest farmland owner in America, with 242,000 acres across 19 different states. As of today, he owns more land than all Native American’s combined and one of his potato farms is so large it can be seen from space! 

Whilst buying up all of this land, he’s been simultaneously investing in fake meat companies such as Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Memphis Meats. This obviously raises the question; could Gates be hiding behind climate change to wage a war on meat for his own personal gain? 

Not only has Gates been pouring millions of dollars into meat alternative companies, but it also turns out that he’s using his newly acquired farmland to grow the crops from which these products are made. Seems like a win win for Bill. The scary reality of the situation is, that if Gates were able to successfully influence a total dietary shift, he would not only make unbelievable sums of money but he would also have control over a huge proportion of the food system. Billionaires deciding how we eat? No thanks. As well as being involved in the attempted removal of meat from our diets from a climate change perspective, we also discovered he is funding studies looking at the implications of eating meat on human health. He’s a busy guy eh, software developer, vaccine expert, largest landowner in America and now a nutritionist to boot.  

The Global Burden of Disease Study in 2017, which has a huge amount of influence on countries regarding their health decisions and food policies, claimed that diets high in red meat posed almost NO risk of death. However, in 2019 an updated version of the study claimed red meat was responsible for over 1 million deaths. If you run the figures, their conclusion showed a 36 times higher death rate as a result of red meat consumption in just a 2 year period.

What is incredibly interesting to note is that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation injected a huge amount of funding into the organisation that produce the Global Burden of Disease Study between 2017 and 2019. This is just another example of Bill Gates funding a study or company that proves / confirms exactly what he is promoting. 

However, The Lancet Medical Journal reviewed the study and completely pushed back. They released an article saying how unsatisfied they were with the way the study had been carried out and concluded and they were in disagreement with the findings. They wrote; “If the current public health message advising moderate consumption of red meat as part of a healthy balanced diet is replaced by the message that any intake of red meat is harmful, this change will probably adversely affect iron deficiency anaemia, sarcopenia, and child and maternal malnutrition—these conditions and their associated risk factors are already responsible for considerably greater global disease burdens than a diet high in red meat, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries.” 

This is just one demonstration of how billionaires and corporations can easily influence the outcome of major studies that impact governmental policies through huge financial injections. The corruption in these scenarios if often so great, that even when the studies are proven wrong, the damage is already done. 

It fills us with sadness thinking about how children in schools all over the world are now having the meat taken from their school menus. This deprives them of key nutrients and whats even worse, it’s being replaced with fake meat alternatives filled with things such as vegetable oils, which are extremely damaging to health. This latest generation of children are literally guniea pigs for a shift in dietary guidelines, and where parents are not aware or conscious of the BS, it is the childs health and wellbeing that will suffer. If you want to learn more about why children need meat, one of our latest Instagram posts 'Let The Children Eat Meat' breaks it down.

We have given a few examples here that demonstrate the conflict of interests that Bill Gates involvement in the food system presents. If more of the population are turned off meat and a dietary shift is implemented, he stands to gain more money and power putting him into the top 0.01% of the planet in terms of his ability to influence on the global stage. 

We took the time to look into just a few more of the donations the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation make, which include; news outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian and CNN to name just a few. It was recorded they’ve donated $319 million to media outlets, and to be honest, we wouldn’t be surprised if It was a lot more. 

Our final point is the fact that regenerative agriculture is never even brought into the conversation and the fact that Gates wants to simply just cancel meat shows us this isn’t about what’s good for us or the planet. Regenerative farming holds so many solutions, enriching soil biodiversity, acting as a carbon sink and providing us with key dietary nutrients. It also is often smaller family run farms that operate in this way keeping money in the community rather than giving it to large corporations. 

If Gates concern was genuine, he would 100% be looking into this. Fake foods are not aligned with our biology and the proposal of adopting a diet or plant based alternatives full of vegetable oils or lab grown meat on mass will further drive us into dis-ease and disconnection with our planet. He would become the master, and food production would be totally controlled. 

So what’s the solution? We need to start taking autonomy over the information we consume and our health. We need to speak up and start those important conversations, not accepting the dumbed down statements the media would have us regurgitating. It is more important now than ever before to go beneath the surface and discover what true health means for yourself and your family, before billionaires and big corporations try to take it from you.

Our impact comes with where we put our money so keep supporting your local farmers by buying their produce and raising awareness to friends and family as to why they should as well.