Bill Gates Invests $4.7 Million In Data-Collecting Faceware For Livestock

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this month awarded a $4.8 million grant to a company that sells “smart” face masks for cows.

ZELP, which stands for Zero Emissions Livestock Project, claims its artificial intelligence (AI) mask technology for livestock will reduce methane emissions — considered to be a main greenhouse gas — and curb climate change.

Cows and other ruminant animals emit methane in the process of digesting their food.

The mask goes around the cow’s head and captures the methane gas exhaled by the animal, oxidizing it and then releasing it into the air as carbon dioxide and water vapor, according to ZELP.

It also has sensors that continuously collect millions of data points on the animals that are processed by machine learning algorithms.

“Our AI is trained to detect heat, flag welfare conditions, and identify the most efficient animals with a high-level of accuracy,” ZELP said.

But critics, including third-generation farmer Howard Vlieger, said the Gates-funded venture is illogical and driven by greed.

Vlieger, who advises crop and livestock farmers across the U.S., said, “This is what you would get when you combine greed and stupidity.”

Commenting on the news, Will Harris — a fourth-generation regenerative farmer who runs his family’s farm White Oak Pastures, told The Defender all he could say was, “Surely this is a hoax.”

Critical Sway, a researcher and investigator, tweeted, “You couldn’t make this stuff up. … We’re living in ridiculous times my friends.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just announced a $4.7 million grant for a company that sells face masks for cows.

You couldn't make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/U8vkorBKwr

— Critical Sway (@CriticalSway) March 11, 2023

ZELP — which collaborates with the agricultural giant Cargill — makes its money by leasing the smart masks out to farmers and by selling carbon offset credits, Critical Sway said.

“History will show that the vast majority of so-called environmentally beneficial projects like this are going to make Bernie Madoff look like an altar boy,” Vlieger said.

Madoff, whose name became synonymous with financial fraud, was behind the $20 billion Ponzi scheme that CNN called the largest financial fraud in history.

Gates’ love affair with techno-fixes

Smart masks for cows aren’t the first money-making tech fix Gates has attempted to apply to a natural problem.

Last year, the billionaire partnered with Samsung in an attempt to make a toilet that would turn human feces into ash.

And Gates recently claimed his genetically altered seeds were necessary for solving world hunger because climate change alters growing conditions.

He also promotes AI-driven digital agriculture that relies on large-scale monocultures and is “basically a surveillance agriculture,” according to environmental activist Vandana Shiva, Ph.D.

The technology forces farmers “to get addicted to chemicals and chemical fertilizers” that harm the planet and people while reducing natural biodiversity, Shiva said.

Shiva said Gates’ solutions ignore obvious natural remedies for environmental problems, such as the regenerative agriculture practices of managed grazing and natural soil enrichment.

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