Uruguay has invited the Bill Gates organization to get to know the country’s meat production system up close, after the president of the Foundation, computer magnate Bill Gates, openly positioned himself in favor of synthetic products. A little over a year ago, in February 2021, the Seattle businessman attacked large-scale meat production as “a climate disaster that causes global warming and will leave more deaths than the pandemic” and defended the consumption of meat 100 % synthetic.
The current minister of the branch in Uruguay, then president of the National Meat Institute (INAC) of Uruguay, Fernando Matto, openly criticized Gates’s statements: “Call it what you want, but it’s not meat!” and described as “deliberate misleading the consumer” to call meat “a product that should not be called that way.”
Members of the Gates Foundation have visited Uruguay in a first meeting that left an “optimistic outlook” among its protagonists. “Producing meat in a way that is well received by the environment can provide more and better business opportunities when exporting. And if there are things to improve, we will gladly consider them,” they conclude from the Foundation.
