Fake Food Series: Bill Gates Wants You to Eat Fake Meat—Here’s Why We’re Not Biting 🍔🚫

During a late 2021 interview with MIT Technology Review, billionaire philanthropist and tech tycoon Bill Gates stirred the pot with a bold claim while promoting his book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." He stated:

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef.”

👀 Translation? Gates thinks the Western world should say goodbye to real red meat—forever.

🧪 What Kind of Nonsense Is That?

Let’s get this straight: Bill Gates is not a doctor. He’s not a climate scientist either. Yet he’s claiming that livestock production is one of the biggest culprits of greenhouse gas emissions—on par with transportation, industry, and energy production.

📉 Spoiler alert: It’s just not true.

Bill Gates claims that the plant-based patties and cell-cultured “meat” he’s preaching about have a lower carbon footprint.

What kind of nonsense is this self-proclaimed medical doctor and climate scientist joker talking about? He is erroneously claiming that livestock production is as heavily disparaging to the climate as any other cause of greenhouse-gas emissions.

📊 Let’s Look at the Actual Numbers

Source: EPA, 2019

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2019):

The largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. comes from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.

🐄 Agriculture’s Share? Just 10%.

And that 10% includes everything: livestock, soils, and rice production.

During the last three decades, the greenhouse-gas emissions from agricultural activity remained the same. Source: EPA, 2019

Let’s further break it down (source: EPA):

• 🌾 Agricultural Soils – 5%

  Emissions mostly come from fertilizer use, irrigation, and draining organic soils.

• 🐄 Livestock Production – 2.5%

  Cattle emit methane (CH₄) during digestion. But according to EPA data, livestock accounts for just a quarter of agriculture's 10%.

🤔 So, What’s the Real Impact?

📌 In 2019, livestock production was responsible for just 2.5% of the total greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S.

💡 Meanwhile, energy, transportation, and industrial activity make up over 85% of emissions.

Let that sink in.

Over the last 30 years, agricultural emissions have barely changed. And after decades of anti-meat messaging, beef consumption in the U.S. is already way down. Yet Gates continues to push for the total elimination of livestock. Why?

So, why is Bill Gates is so much interested in eliminating livestock production and consequently, real meat consumption?

💸 Follow the Money

Turns out, Gates is heavily invested in:

• 🌱 Beyond Meat

• 🌿 Impossible Foods

• 🧬 Uprise Foods (lab-grown meat)

  
  

Yes, the same companies making the plant-based patties and cell-cultured “meat” he’s preaching about.

He claims these alternatives have a lower carbon footprint, but those claims are unproven, especially when it comes to energy-hungry lab-grown meat.

👎 And let’s be honest:

None of these options come close to the taste, texture, or satisfaction of a juicy ribeye or a slow-braised short rib.

Furthermore, after decades of relentless anti-meat campaigns in the US, beef consumption per capita has fallen substantially.

🛑 Our Answer to Bill Gates

Sorry, Bill. We’re not putting down our forks 🍴 anytime soon.

There are no plant-based or lab-grown substitutes that match the joy of real, whole meat cuts. Your book? Keep it. Your fake meat? You can have our share.

🔥 We’ll keep grilling, searing, roasting, and savoring the real deal.

📚 Coming Soon: A deep dive into the murky world of cell-cultured meats—what they really are, how they're made, and why the industry isn't telling you the full story.