Bill Gates: “All Rich Countries Should Move To 100-Percent Synthetic Beef”
The Microsoft founder urges wealthy nations to switch resource-intensive beef products with plant-based alternatives and lab-grown beef, to help tackle climate change.
Credit: Bill Gates/Facebook
Billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates has said that rich countries should move to plant-based beef in order to combat climate change.
Speaking on how plant-based and lab-grown meats could be a solution to the global protein problem, Gates said that,
“I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time”.
“Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand”, Gates added.
The Microsoft founder made the comments in an interview that discussed his new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.
Animal agriculture - particularly beef and dairy products - are responsible for more greenhouse gases than the world’s transportation system combined. The devastating carbon footprint of animal agriculture has led wildlife experts and climate change campaigners - from Greta Thunberg to David Attenborough - to urge us all to reconsider our food habits and diets to help prevent climate catastrophe.
And Gates name-checked several leading plant-based brands that are helping people to make that change to sustainable, plant-based products. Explaining how these companies have the means to compete with the biggest animal meat companies, Gates says,
“Impossible and Beyond have a road map, a quality road map and a cost road map, that makes them totally competitive. As for scale today, they don’t represent 1% of the meat in the world, but they’re on their way.”
Big-Ag’s huge influence on government policy has so far tried to prevent a faster transition towards plant-based beef. “The politics [are challenging]”, Gates explains. “There are all these bills that say it’s got to be called, basically, lab garbage to be sold. They don’t want us to use the beef label”.
Public figures and politicians are increasingly fighting back against Big-Ag and its factory farms which have “undue influence” over public policy.
Senator Cory Booker introduced The Farm System Reform Act back in 2019, a bill which seeks to shut down America’s huge factory farms and help fix America’s “broken” food system. The bill has received support including co-sponsorship from Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna.
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