By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Participants at last week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) called for a “cultural revolution” to increase acceptance of lab-grown meat — despite the public’s “terrible” resistance to the products, The Blaze reported.

The meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland, brought together leading global political and business leaders.

During the “Food @ the Edge,” panelist Sam Kass, a senior policy adviser for nutrition during the Obama administration, asked about the growth of “replacements” for “core foods.” The former chef said he doesn’t want to see a future “where we’re starting to drink coffee from a factory as opposed to from a tree.”

Andrea Illy, chairman of the Italian coffee giant illycaffè, countered that “there is a terrible cultural resistance from consumers to accept tech foods” but that he believes such foods “represent the way forward.”

Davos participant Andrea Illy claims that fake, lab-grown foods “represent the way forward”, despite massive public resistance.

“70% of the ecological footprint of agriculture is due to animal proteins.”

“Why should I use animals when I can cultivate meat [in a lab]?” pic.twitter.com/tZYK4uy6ST

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) January 22, 2026

Illy, affiliated with the WEF for over a decade, said reducing meat consumption yields environmental and health benefits. He said that “70% of the ecological footprint of agriculture is due to animal proteins.”

Illy claimed “excessive consumption” of real meat products is the leading cause of noncommunicable diseases — the “number one health problem” in the West. He called for the reduction of real meat consumption to a “healthy” level and for a decades-long “cultural revolution” to get people to consume lab-grown meat.

Experts tout benefits of real meat, question safety of lab-grown alternatives

Internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, hit back at Illy’s claims. Since health officials started recommending less meat — which they blamed for certain health conditions — “we had child obesity rise from 4% to 20%,” Nass said. “Childhood Type 2 diabetes doubled. Adult diabetes and prediabetes skyrocketed.” Nass blamed high carbohydrate consumption for the increase.

“Meat is extremely healthy, especially when animals graze on grasses as they were meant to and when they are not fed antibiotics, hormones and contaminated feed,” Nass said. She said the animal feed used in industrial meat production is typically “drenched with glyphosate or grown on sewage sludge.”

Biologist Heidi Wichmann, Ph.D., a member of Make Europe Healthy Again’s advisory committee, said the primary driver of non-communicable diseases is not meat, “but the way food is produced, treated and disconnected from natural biological cycles.”

“Excessive consumption of biologically degraded, highly processed products is problematic, regardless of whether they are of animal or plant origin,” she said.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense, said that while animal agriculture is “an ample source of disease variants,” questions remain about the safety of lab-grown meat.

“Lab-grown meat has all the unknowns of any new technology,” Jablonowski said. “In theory, lab-grown food can be healthy. In practice, only if consumers demand it.”

According to Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo, these unknowns associated with lab-grown meat include “novel risks” that are not fully studied.

“Many products rely on immortalized cell lines, which by definition evade normal cellular aging and death mechanisms — raising legitimate concerns about oncogenic potential and long-term biological effects,” Ji said.

Technologies like this “centralize food production into highly patented, proprietary systems that displace decentralized, local and farmer-based food networks — a shift away from food sovereignty and toward industrial dependency,” Ji said.

WEF calls development of lab-grown meat from stem cells ‘revolutionary’

The WEF last week released a video promoting lab-grown meat produced from animal stem cells, describing the technology as “revolutionary.”

The video featured Singapore-based Shiok Meats, which grows “meat” and “seafood” from animal stem cells. The WEF said Shiok’s technologyoffers “a promising solution to the environmental and ethical concerns associated with conventional animal agriculture.”

Singapore, which approved the sale of lab-grown meat in 2020, is a global leader in promoting alternatives to conventional meat. In 2024, Singapore approved 16 insects for human consumption.

Several experts suggested that the global elite are pushing to reduce meat consumption by suggesting tactics such as making people allergic to red meat, or convincing wealthy countries to switch to “100% synthetic beef.”

“Narratives had to be created by the globalists to demonize meat,” Nass said. “The push for lab-grown meat comes from the desire to control food by central authorities,” who “want food to only come from outside authorities, who can withhold it if you do not comply — or who make it too expensive and control you that way.”

Seamus Bruner, director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, suggested that what “ties all of this together” is “an obsession by what I call the ‘Controligarchs’ — a small, self-appointed elite that believes every aspect of human life must be managed, optimized and ultimately owned by them.”

Seven states, including Florida, Texas and Montana, have banned lab-grown meats. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released new dietary guidelines favoring the consumption of protein, dairy, healthy fats, vegetables and fruit and deemphasizing grains.

Consumers have increasingly rejected alternative meat products. For instance, the stock price of synthetic meat producer Beyond Meat cratered last year, dropping from an all-time high of $240 to less than $1 amid low consumer demand in the U.S.

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said, “There is near-zero market demand for this ‘frankenfood’ born of the same intellectual class and lab technicians who have given us poison food and medicine.”

Tucker said producers of synthetic meats “rely on government regulations and restrictions to throttle genuine health and good lives while deprecating what we know is both good for us and delicious.”

WEF: phasing out artificial additives placing ‘stress’ on food industry

Other WEF panelists criticized efforts by the HHS to phase out synthetic dyes and artificial additives in food products.

According to Slay News, Jasmin Hume, founder and CEO of Shiru, an AI-powered “protein discovery company,” said HHS’ recommendations are placing the food industry “under an unprecedented amount of stress.”

Hume claimed removing synthetic ingredients from foods would require significant changes by food manufacturers and would have a negative effect on consumers and the planet.

Nass noted that approximately 10,000 artificial food additives have been approved in the U.S. compared with only about 400 in the European Union. “Companies already know how to produce food without most such additives,” she said.

Slay News reported that Hume’s remarks came as the Trump administration “ramps up its Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) crackdown on ultra-processed junk, synthetic additives, and added sugars,” leaving WEF members “scrambling to defend” synthetic food that faces growing public and political resistance.

Mass vaccinations or culls of livestock linked to lab-grown meat agenda

Politico Europe reported Jan. 16 that authorities in Greece are responding to a nationwide sheep pox outbreak with mass culls of sheep flocks — but are facing increasing pressure to engage in mass vaccination of sheep instead.

According to Politico Europe, many Greek farmers are “begging for vaccines to save their flocks.” Mass vaccination was among the demands of farmers who recently protested against Greek government policies by blocking highways throughout the country.

“Sheep pox is so infectious that global farming regulations require whole herds to be slaughtered immediately after even a single case is detected,” Politico Europe reported. The outbreak has resulted in over 470,000 sheep and goats being culled, and the closure of over 2,500 farms in Greece.

The European Union’s Animal Welfare Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi told Greek authorities last year that vaccination is the only new measure that can stop new sheep pox outbreaks.

The Greek government and its advisers have “repeatedly rejected this option, citing the steep financial consequences and damage to exports” and the fact that no sheep pox vaccine has been approved in Greece or the EU, Politico Europe reported.

Regenerative farmer Howard Vlieger, a member of the board of advisers of GMO/Toxin Free USA, said choosing between mass culling and mass vaccination ignores a tried-and-true method in which farmers “let the ones die that are going to die” and use the surviving animals as the “genetic base for building your seed stock.”

“Vaccine-induced immunity does not replicate the breadth, durability, or ecological integration of naturally acquired immunity, which is what inspired the creation of vaccination but has never been effectively replaced by it,” Ji said.

Bruner, author of “Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life,” said lab-grown meat and mass culling or vaccination of livestock are part of the “Controligarch worldview.” This includes “centralized control over natural systems in the name of efficiency, safety and sustainability.”

“They seek to replace organic, decentralized life with systems that can be surveilled, patented and governed from the top down,” he said.

Related articles in The Defender

• Federal Judge Upholds Florida Ban on Lab-Grown Meat, as Other States Propose Similar Bans
• FDA Declares Lab-Grown Chicken ‘Safe to Eat’ — But Scientists, Food Safety Advocates Have Questions
• Florida Governor Slams Proposal to Engineer Meat Allergies in Humans to ‘Save the Planet’
• Lab-Grown Meat: Investors Love It, But Scientists Question Safety
• ‘Always Listen to the Mom’: U.S. to Phase Out Artificial Dyes Used in Food Products

The post WEF Calls for ‘Cultural Revolution’ to Promote Lab-Grown Meat appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

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