Aletho News

Florida Governor Slams Proposal to Engineer Meat Allergies in Humans to ‘Save the Planet’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 20, 2025

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week publicly rejected the notion that humans could be engineered to develop a red meat allergy as a way to curb meat consumption and protect the environment — an idea he linked to the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

On X, DeSantis posted a 2016 video of Matthew Liao, a professor of bioethics at New York University and director of its Center for Bioethics. Liao tells his audience that ticks could be used to spread allergies that make humans unable to tolerate red meat — an idea that has been repeated by other bioethicists.

“People eat too much meat. And if they were to cut down on their consumption of meat, then it would actually really help the planet,” Liao said in the video. “There’s this thing called the lone star tick, where if it bites you, you will become allergic to meat. So, that’s something we can do through human engineering.”

DeSantis said Liao’s statements are “an example of why entities like the WEF and WHO are persona non grata” in Florida.

“Genetically engineering humans to become allergic to meat because some elites think people eat ‘too much’ of it is insane,” DeSantis wrote.

Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, said that while Liao’s comments were not new — the video is from an almost 10-year-old talk at the World Science Festival — DeSantis’ remarks were significant.

“Although he’s slow to the game, at least he’s noticing,” Hinchliffe said.

Liao “has been talking about making people allergic to meat for over a decade, going back to his TED Talk 12 years ago, in 2013,” Hinchliffe said.

During that talk, Liao said, “Just as some people are naturally intolerant to milk or crayfish, like myself, we could artificially induce mild intolerance to meat by stimulating our immune system against common bovine proteins.”

Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo, said DeSantis is “right to call out the WEF’s agenda targeting meat consumption.”

“This isn’t dietary advice — it’s social engineering,” Ji said. “Unelected global organizations have no business dictating what free people eat, especially when they’re demonizing traditional foods that have sustained human health for millennia.”

In a follow-up X post Friday, DeSantis questioned widespread claims that cattle and their carbon footprint harm the environment. “The notion that cattle are destroying the planet has always been ridiculous,” he wrote.

Kendall Mackintosh, a board-certified nutrition specialist, said such claims aren’t “just about climate,” but are also centered around “control and consolidation.”

“Real, regenerative farming supports independence and local economies. Centralizing food systems through synthetic or lab-grown products benefits corporations, not families,” Mackintosh said.

Ji agreed. He said such proposals are indicative of “the merger of biotechnology and behavioral control.” He added:

“The war on meat has never been about climate. It’s about control — consolidating food production under centralized, patented, technology-dependent systems.

“Meat represents everything the global technocracy fears: decentralized production, nutritional independence and cultural traditions that resist standardization. When people can raise their own food, they’re harder to control. The WEF understands this perfectly.”

Recent paper suggests spreading meat allergy to humans is a moral obligation

A paper published earlier this month in the journal Bioethics proposed using the lone star tick to spread alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), “a condition whose only effect is the creation of a severe but nonfatal red meat allergy.”

In the paper, Western Michigan University bioethics professors Parker Crutchfield, Ph.D., and Blake Hereth, Ph.D., argued that “if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), when it bites, the lone star tick transmits the alpha-gal sugar molecule into the human bloodstream, leading to a red meat allergy. Consuming red meat after being infected could result in life-threatening anaphylaxis.

The paper’s authors present what they called the “Convergence Argument.” If a specific action “prevents the world from becoming a significantly worse place, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and promotes virtuous action or character,” then it becomes a moral obligation to perform this action, they said.

According to the authors, the use of AGS to spread a red meat allergy to humans meets these criteria. However, they acknowledged ethical obstacles: few people would likely volunteer for the tick bite, and forcing it on people would raise questions of bodily autonomy and freedom.

The authors told The College Fix in an August email that their paper does not constitute an endorsement of spreading AGS to humans, but offers a hypothetical framework raising ethical and philosophical questions.

Mackintosh questioned this denial. “Calling it a ‘thought experiment’ doesn’t make it any less disturbing. The idea that inducing an allergy or harming human health could somehow serve a moral purpose shows just how far detached some parts of academia have become from basic human ethics,” she said.

“The fact that this was even published tells you how normalized these anti-human, anti-food narratives are becoming under the guise of ‘ethics,’” Mackintosh added.

Ji said the paper raises questions about bodily autonomy.

“This is about far more than food, it’s about whether human beings retain sovereignty over their own bodies, or whether that sovereignty can be overridden by those who believe they know better. The answer to that question will determine whether we remain free,” he said.

Mackintosh questioned the authors’ claim that lone star tick bites “only” lead to AGS.

AGS “can cause severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, and can completely alter someone’s diet and quality of life,” Mackintosh said. “The suggestion of using ticks or any biological vector to intentionally spread an allergy is beyond unethical. It’s dangerous, unpredictable and medically reckless.”

A 2023 CDC report said AGS cases were on the rise in the U.S.

DeSantis previously outlawed sale of lab-grown meat in Florida

While DeSantis didn’t directly address the paper or AGS in his X posts, he has consistently spoken out against efforts to shift people away from red meat and toward alternatives such as lab-grown meat and insects.

Last year, DeSantis signed legislation prohibiting the sale of lab-grown meat in Florida. According to a press release, the law aims “to stop the World Economic Forum’s goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects,” which a 2021 WEF article characterized as an “overlooked” source of protein.”

“Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis said at the time.

DeSantis has previously questioned other WEF and WHO policies, saying they are unwelcome in Florida.

Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., a psychotherapist who sued DeSantis and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to prohibit mRNA vaccines in Florida, said that while he has been “litigating against DeSantis for over a year and a half to stop mRNA injections,” he agrees with DeSantis on this issue.

“DeSantis is calling out something that many Americans feel — they don’t want global organizations or unelected bodies deciding what they can or can’t eat,” Sansone said.

Mackintosh said lab-grown meat raises questions about potential health risks.

“There are questions about contamination risks, the use of antibiotics or growth media, nutrient content, and even the true environmental impact once scaled up. It’s also ultra-processed — far from the whole, nutrient-dense foods our bodies were designed to thrive on,” she said.

“Many lab-grown meat companies are using immortalized cell lines — cells that are capable of continuously dividing and growing in a manner disturbingly similar to cancer cells,” Ji said. There is a “complete absence of long-term safety studies” for such products.

Scientists have raised similar concerns about human consumption of insects. The exoskeletons of many insects contain chitin, a natural material that can trigger an allergic reaction in humans. Some studies suggest that humans cannot digest chitin, while other studies suggest humans “don’t digest it well.”

WEF suggests consuming alternative meats will ‘save the planet’

The WEF has repeatedly promoted reducing the consumption of red meat and animal products.

In a 2019 video, the WEF suggested that in the not-too-distant future, humans would be allowed to consume only “one beef burger, two portions of fish and one or two eggs per week” to “save the planet.”

That year, the WEF published a white paper calling for “a transformation in the global system for protein provision” to meet climate-related targets.

Also in 2019, the WEF published an article stating that humans will be “eating replacement meats within 20 years.” A 2020 WEF article said there were “promising” signs that humans will begin consuming lab-grown meats. A 2022 WEF article said lab-grown meat “almost entirely eliminates the need to farm animals for food.”

Mackintosh said corporate interests are behind the push for “alternative” meats.

“The biggest winners in the lab-grown meat push are large food conglomerates, biotech companies and venture capital investors who own the patents and production technology. Small farmers and ranchers — the backbone of our food system — lose. This is about creating dependence, not sustainability,” she said.

Ji agreed. “Follow the money. Biotech corporations and their investors stand to profit massively from patents and market control,” he said.

In 2019, Bill Gates invested in Beyond Meat, an alternative meat producer. In his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” Gates said stopping climate change requires a shift in human behavior, including a switch to synthetic meats. He later suggested that wealthy countries should switch to “100% synthetic beef.”

Beyond Meat’s stock price recently cratered, dropping from an all-time high of $240 to less than $1 amid low consumer demand in the U.S.

Liao suggested chemically inducing empathy, making kids smaller

DeSantis and others have suggested a link between Liao and the WEF, including a claim that Liao’s 2012 co-authored paper, “Human Engineering and Climate Change,” which argued that “human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change,” was the subject of a discussion at the WEF’s 2021 annual meeting.

At present, the only mention of Liao on the WEF’s website is in connection to a paper he co-published last month proposing “a structured approach” to the governance of artificial intelligence.

Hinchliffe noted that the WEF “does have a habit of scrubbing what it considers to be negative publicity from its website.” However, whether or not there is a direct connection between Liao and the WEF, Liao “is definitely aligned” with WEF policies, he said.

Liao previously suggested how humans could change their bodies to fight climate change. These include the “pharmacological induction of empathy,” which involves taking a pill to induce empathy; “cognitive enhancements” so that humans have fewer children; memory modification; and administering hormones to children so that they remain smaller in size because “being smaller is environmentally friendly.”

Ji said:

“Academic papers proposing disease vectors to manipulate behavior aren’t harmless philosophy — they’re rehearsals. They move the Overton window, normalize the abnormal and provide intellectual scaffolding for future atrocities. The field of bioethics has become less about protecting human dignity and more about rationalizing its violation.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 21, 2025 Posted by aletho | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Human rights, WEF, WHO | 1 Comment