Morning Wire - Unveiling Bill Gates' Synthetic Meat Agenda | 5.28.23

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

As food prices soaring over the last year, Gates has been using his growing influence in the industry to urge Americans to embrace a new form of sustenance: synthetic meat. In this episode, we revisit a Sunday edition of Morning Wire that took a closer look at those behind the anti-meat movement.   Indeed: Start hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit with Indeed at  https://indeed.com/wire     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When most people hear the name Bill Gates, they think of his work at Microsoft, on climate change, or vaccine initiatives. But it's Gates' investment in a different field that's now drawing attention, agriculture. Last year, it was revealed that Bill Gates owned more American farmland than any other person on Earth. With food prices soaring over the last year, Gates has been using his growing influence in the industry to urge Americans to embrace a new form of sustenance, synthetic meat. In this episode, we revisit a Sunday edition of Morning Wire that took a closer look at those behind the anti-meat movement. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, May 28th, and this is Morning Wire. Here to discuss the so-called War on Meat and Gates' prominent role in it as Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Cabot First, we talked about this topic last summer, but quite a bit has happened since then.

Yeah, if anything, the War on Meat, as many call it, has only intensified in recent days. A number of cities have advanced measures to implement, quote, meatless Mondays in the name of student health. And last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams vowed to reduce the city's so-called food emissions by 33%, in large part, by cutting meat products from public meals to supposedly fight climate change. Those moves come as a number of prominent health organizations have labeled meat detrimental to public health and called for plant-based alternatives. But lately, we have seen some pushback from the scientific community. We talked earlier this month about the Dublin Declaration, a paper signed by over a thousand scientists from around the world, which touted the benefits of meat consumption and reaffirmed its nutritional value. Now, most people probably aren't aware of the fact that the largest farmland owner in America is Bill Gates. First, tell us about how he's amassed all of this land.

That's right. As of last year, Gates owned roughly a quarter million acres of farmland across 19 different states. There are 70,000 acres in Louisiana, for example, for corn and cotton. another 20,000 in Nebraska for soybeans. One of his potato farms in Washington is so big that you can literally see it from space. But it's not just the land itself that's drawing attention now. It's also how the land was amassed. Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda, quietly began purchasing large tracts about a decade ago, and they often used shell companies to try and hide the fact that it was them.

For example, in 2018, a company with just two employees in a small town of Louisiana, purchased $171 million worth of farmland in Washington state. But it was later discovered that the company making the purchase was actually controlled by Gates. That, along with a series of other large land purchases, now has more people than ever asking questions about just what his plans are with all that land. Now, this isn't the first time Gates has gotten involved in the farming industry, though, right? Yeah, he's no stranger to the world of agriculture. In the past, as part of what he called efforts to combat global hunger,

he invested heavily in agricultural technology, specifically in companies developing genetically modified organisms or GMOs. For example, in 2010, his foundation purchased $23 million worth of stock in Monsanto, the now infamous agrochemical corporation. But in recent years, he's shifted away from just acquiring shares of farming companies to acquiring actual farmland itself. And that is significant, especially because it comes at a time when he's also viewed as one of the world's leading climate activists. Yeah, how does Gates' climate advocacy play into all this? Well, that's where an interesting overlap starts to emerge. While climate change activists historically focused on reducing greenhouse emissions by cutting back on fossil fuels,

in recent years, they've turned much of their attention to cutting back on meat consumption, especially red meat. In the past, the fight against meat was typically waged by animal rights activists, but now it's increasingly coming from climate activists. They claim that cows are an inefficient food source and harm the environment by consuming precious water reserves and emitting CO2 in methane. The growing idea among many in the scientific community is that red meat may have been necessary when options were limited,

but now that humans have access to so many alternatives, we should be seeking out food that's less harmful for the environment. And Gates has been totally on board and really leading that message. And all this dovetails with his public messaging on meat consumption. Exactly. At the same time that he started amassing huge swaths of farmland, Gates has also become one of the most prominent voices in the world against meat. He's called it a threat to the environment and says that in order to combat climate change,

we must move to alternatives. And in his mind, those alternatives are synthetic meat or plant-based meat. In one interview last year, for example, he said, quote, all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference. He's also said that the push towards synthetic beef was so important that even if people don't adopt the shift willingly, government coercion could be necessary. Speaking to MIT's technology review about his latest book titled How to,

to avoid a climate disaster, Gates said, quote, eventually you can sort of change the behavior of people or use regulation to totally shift demand. Here he is in another interview further explaining his position. You said rich nation should move to 100% synthetic beef. Yes, unless we can make the cow zero emission, which I'm not sure we can, we do need to make, to get rid of those emissions.

And it's not going to happen overnight, The scale up and the innovation still required there is quite large. What sort of public reaction have we seen to Gates' involvement in this? So there have been two main sides forming. Some have praised his climate activism, saying that Gates is just trying to educate people about the potential dangers of meat reliance. They perceive his intentions to be purely philanthropic and say that billioners like Gates should be exerting their influence on culture in pursuit of the greater good.

But others have remained skeptical. and questioned his motives. Specifically, they point out that he really stands to profit from the two main alternatives to meat, which are synthetic beef and plant-based meat. Let's dig into that more. Tell us about plant-based meat. Yeah, plant-based meat is created with a mix of legumes like soybeans and lentils, as well as potato starch, pea protein, and other vegetables.

Now, critics have been quick to point out that all of those products are products grown on farms, now owned by Bill Gates. Obviously, if meat is phased out in exchange for plant-based solutions, Gates would stand to gain financially. And then when it comes to synthetic meats, the process starts in a lab where scientists use stem cells to essentially grow meat in a petri dish. And it's worth pointing out, not only has Gates invested massively in the produce that's used to make these meat alternatives, he's also invested millions in alternative meat companies themselves, like Memphis Meats, Beyond Meats, and Impossible Foods. Critics say that it's no coincidence that he's simultaneously pushing for meat alternatives while buying up farmland that grows the products used to make those alternatives or investing in the companies that would obviously explode as a result. What about the environmental impact of all this? How much greener are these meat alternatives? That's the thing. From the data we have right now, they actually appear to be worse for the environment in many ways. On that note, I talked to Rob Wolf. He's a research biochemist and author and has also worked with the Navy Special Warfare

resiliency program. He's basically an expert on all things meat and nutrition. Here's what he had to say about how synthetic meat is made as well as its impact on the environment. It is an outright lie that these plant-based alternatives are better for the environment, are going to reduce carbon footprint or carbon emissions. This is a key piece that gets missed in this whole story. That tissue needs to be fed, and the stuff it needs to be fed has to come from somewhere. Does it just magically grow in a in a vat but that's basically the way that this lab grown meat is is approached and this is one of the the things that's so remarkably silly about it being sold as a a climate change benefit because we have a lab yeah all of the carbon footprint that went into building that lab that lab environment needs to be

temperature controlled it needs lighting the funny thing is when you look at these meat alternatives they say it's good for the planet, but they never, ever, ever show you what's called a life cycle analysis, which is basically looking at all the inputs, all the outputs, and then comparing and contrasting those with, say, like, conventional meat and pasture-raised meat. Despite those concerns, the scientific community has really gotten on board with the call for meat alternatives. And it's interesting. If you look at the timing here, the call for cutting meat that's come from a lot of climate change activists has coincided almost perfectly with many in the scientific community going after meat from that perspective. The growing message from many

scientists is now that diets high in meat are unhealthy for humans and we should move away from meat not just for environmental reasons, but for health purposes. Again, critics have argued that that message from the scientific community could have more to do with fulfilling climate change goals and serving their own self-interest and less to do with the actual science on meat and its nutritional value. Yeah, what about that, the nutritional value? What does the research say about beef consumption? Yeah, as with anything surrounding diet and nutrition,

there are conflicting sides. There are some doctors who claim humans can get the nutrients they need from a plant-based diet that includes synthetic meat, but there is a growing amount of data that raises concerns over diets based entirely around plants. I asked Wolf about that as well, and he says that while some young people,

primarily men, are able to subsist on a meatless diet, it often leads to nutrient deficiencies, especially among child-bearing-aged women and those above the age of 50. The short answer is it, no, it is it is largely impossible to identically replicate the nutritional characteristics of a meat-inclusive diet using, you know, plant-based alternatives only. Some people can do it. The American Dietetics Association, American Medical Association, have made statements that vegan and vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the human life cycle. And there's absolutely no data to support that. This is a completely non-evident. based claim that these folks have made.

And it's interesting, according to Wolf, there's often pressure within the scientific community to avoid saying anything positive about meat because it could detract from the climate change movement, which, as we mentioned earlier, is calling for meat to be removed from our diets. He says that questioning the science on meat and its impact on the environment can often result in being outcast from the mainstream. You know, we needed nuanced discussion around climate change to I'm a Holocaust denier in all of about, you know, three minutes. And I think that academics are terrified of getting, you know, legal in this way with cancel

culture and everything else that's going on in these kind of McCarthy-era witch hunt type things that happen in academic circles. Even the people who knew better on the science of this topic, they're in a really difficult situation. To that point, there are also those who say that pressure from the scientific community to wage a war on meat in the name of saving the environment has resulted in a number of skewed or misleading studies on the topic. For example, take the global burden of disease study.

That is the authoritative paper on overall worldwide health each year. It's very influential in the health care decisions of countries, especially regarding their food policy. In 2017, the study claimed that diets high and red meat pose almost no risk of death. But just two years later, in 2019, that same study claimed that meat-heavy diets actually kill well over a million people globally each year.

The study claimed that meat-heavy diets killed 36 times more people in 2019 than in 2017. There was a huge spike in the number of deaths they attributed to to meat heavy diets in just a two-year span. Critics say that such a dramatic change in the data over just a short period of time raises red flags, especially because it coincided so closely with this new environmentalist push to reduce meat consumption during that same time period. They say it's not a coincidence. And it's also worth noting that study was sponsored in large part by the Gates Foundation. So seems like a direct line there between the scientific communities messaging and Bill Gates. Definitely appears that way.

All right, Cabot, thanks for providing this deep dive for us. Any time. That was Daily Wire's Cabot Phillips, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.