Bill Gates Owns Synthetic Fruit Coating — What’s in It?

Do you know what Apeel is? In an April 24, 2023, Twitter thread,¹ Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director at the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), lists the many patents associated with this mysterious synthetic fruit coating, which is even approved for use on produce certified as USDA Organic.

According to Apeel Sciences’ website,² Apeel is a plant-based protective coating that “helps the produce you love stay fresh for longer.” It retains moisture within the produce and keeps oxygen out, thereby slowing the spoilage rate.

Avocados, cucumbers, lemons and limes, mandarins, oranges, organic apples, grapefruit and mangos are listed as produce that are currently being treated with this coating.

Apeel-treated produce can be found in several large grocery chains in the U.S., including Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Trader Joe’s, Harps Food and many others,^3,4 as well as stores in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland⁵ and Canada.⁶ As of October 2020, the company had also received regulatory approval in Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador.⁷ Apeel-treated produce can be identified by looking for the following produce stickers.

Red Flags

One of the warning flags that makes me question the safety of this product is the fact that Apeel Sciences (a DBA or “doing business as” of aPEEL Technology Inc.) was founded with a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.⁸ That’s never a good sign. I can’t think of a single harmless product Gates has ever willingly poured his money into.

Other investors include the Rockefeller Foundation;⁹ the World Bank Group; Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe; and Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube¹⁰ (she stepped down in mid-February 2023¹¹). By May 2021, Apeel Sciences was valued at $1.1 billion.¹²

What’s more, Apeel Science’s founder, James Rogers, Ph.D., is an agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum¹³ (WEF). Among the articles he has written for the WEF is one in which he hailed COVID lockdowns as a model for future action on climate change.¹⁴ In other words, climate lockdowns.

Rogers is also a WEF Young Global Leader¹⁵ — yet another red flag. And I’m not the only one questioning the motives behind this product. “Is [Apeel] another Gates/WEF plot to destroy our health? Or a distraction from worse plots?” Baden-Mayer asks.¹⁶

Is Apeel Part of President Biden’s GMO Agenda?

One of the first things that came to mind when I heard of Apeel is that it fits right into President Biden’s recently launched agenda to turn the U.S. food supply over to the biotechnology industry. I reviewed this agenda in “Executive Order Lays Foundation for Lab-Created Foods.”

In summary, Biden’s September 2022 “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy”¹⁷ makes biotechnology a national priority across agencies and branches of government, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In late March 2023, Biden expanded on this premise in a “Bold Goals for U.S. Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing” report.¹⁸ One of the specific goals listed in this report is “Reducing food waste by 50% by 2030.” Reducing food waste to combat climate change¹⁹ is also the premise upon which Apeel Sciences was founded, according to its website.²⁰

Further evidence that Apeel Sciences fits into Biden’s biotech-driven food agenda is its acquisition of ImpactVision, “a software company that uses AI and machine learning to track the chemical composition of food throughout its shelf life.”²¹ The company has also promised to “double down on technology” through other tech acquisitions.

While reducing food waste and making fresh produce last longer are certainly sane and worthy goals, the question is, how is this being done? Seeing how Apeel’s emergence broadly coincides with Biden’s official transition into biotech-led foods, can we trust that it’s a food-based product? Or is it biotech in disguise?