Speaking during the 4th edition of the Pastoralist Leadership Summit, President William Ruto formally announced the rollout of a livestock vaccination program starting in January 2025.
President Ruto stated that the program targets to vaccinate 22 million heads of cattle and 50 million heads of sheep against diseases such as PPR and Foot and Mouth Disease. He also said that the vaccines are to be locally produced in Kenya.
More controversially, however, President Ruto termed all backlash against the vaccine as ‘simply mad, unreasonable and possibly stupid’.
These sentiments come amidst a barrage of retorts by the President, in a week where he had called out the ‘evil spirits’ in those opposed to his charity-giving in churches.
Kenyans on social media have taken to express their displeasure at; the president’s sentiments and his obsession with shoving the vaccine down their throats.
The nature of the vaccination program is shrouded in mystery and the administration is not being upfront about it. The so-called vaccine is believed not to be a vaccine at all, but a cattle feed supplement that is in its trial stage. The supplement has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the USA where the company behind developing it is based.
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Rumin8
Rumin8 is an agricultural start-up based in the USA that is committed to designing treatments to dramatically reduce the amount of methane that cows produce.
Methane is viewed as one of the largest contributors to global warming, with cattle and other livestock producing 1/3 of all methane emissions globally (accounts for 11.1%-19.6% of all greenhouse emissions).
For many scientists, academicians and policymakers globally, reducing livestock methane emissions is seen as a key step in reducing carbon footprints and perhaps slowing down the pace of climate change.
Rumin8 is in the testing phase of a technology that promises to cut down methane emissions by reducing cow burps (which are apparently a big producer of methane gas). The technology involves the production of a food additive to animal feed that claims to improve livestock yield while cutting down on methane production by decarbonising 100 million cattle by 2030.
The backlash surrounding the use of this cattle supplement arises from a social media backlash surrounding the use of a similar supplement in the UK. Bovaer is a feed supplement that works similarly to Rumin8 and has been approved for use in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Many users on social media (particularly in the UK) have pointed out that the active ingredient in Bovaer 3-nitrooxypropanol is carcinogenic to humans should it make it past the cattle’s digestive system and into milk and other dairy products. Despite expert reassurance that the product is safe, scepticism around the use of the food supplement continued to mount following the supposed involvement of Bill Gates as a chief investor in Bovaer.
However, Gates had actually chosen to invest in Rumin8 through his firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, through which he has raised US$ 12 Million (Ksh 1.55 Billion) for the company. Rumin8 was recognized as one of the 15 tech companies to watch in 2024 by the MIT Tech Review.
So, you may wonder, what’s the big deal with Bill Gates and a cattle feed supplement? Well, the story is deeper than you may realize.
President Ruto and the Bill Gates Vaccines
Kenyans have been quite uneasy with the increased cosiness between President Ruto and Bill Gates and his various entities. Back in October 2024, the Kenyan government granted The Gates Foundation special operating status in the country under the Privileges and Immunity Act. This was perhaps evidence that Bill Gates had managed to gain the approval of President Ruto in one way or another and Ruto was comfortable with giving him leeway to do as he pleased.
Here’s the thing with Bill Gates though. Despite being a multi-billionaire and one of the world’s richest people, he has created global enemies for himself. And especially in the developing world.
His unscrupulous obsessions with influencing the global economy at large through healthcare, agriculture, poverty and well-being are a repulsive prospect.
During a now infamous 2010 Ted Talk, Gates set forth his belief that the cause of carbon emissions getting to unsustainable levels can be boiled down to uncontrolled population growth, particularly in the developing world. He also believes that poverty and uncontrolled population growth in the developing world puts a strain on the global production systems (agriculture, energy, etc.) which in turn contributes to global warming and climate change.
Well okay, I hear you mutter to yourself, the man is right. What’s wrong with what he says?
The ideology pushed by Gates about the ‘burden of an overpopulated developing world’ comes from an alarmist notion purported by the World Economic Forum (WEF). This notion views the developing world as the problem in maintaining a sustainable world, believing that the world cannot sustain any more population growth from the developing world due to its finite resources. In other words, the world cannot have any more ‘poor’ people.
At the end of the day, most carbon emissions (hence the biggest impact on global warming) come from the developed world. Furthermore, increased access to education has had the natural effect of bringing the level of population growth down to ‘sustainable’ levels in much of the developing world. However, Bill Gates still was not satisfied. He wanted a more interventionist approach. Enter the birth control and contraception campaigns.
In his early ‘philanthropic’ days, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded numerous campaigns aimed at expanding the reach of contraceptives and birth control to many regions of the developing world. As mortality rates dropped in the course of the early 2000s, Gates switched his focus to ‘saving the lives of those who were already living’ as he funded vaccine programs that helped shape the well-being of the people.
It is at this point that Bill Gates’ story pivots for the worse.
Numerous healthcare programs funded by The Gates Foundation have been accused of accelerating scientific discovery while reducing costs, by moving their operations to the developing world.
Programs heavily funded by the foundation such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund and PATH have been found culpable of distributing unsafe vaccines and drugs to vulnerable persons in Africa and India.
In 2010, malaria and meningitis vaccine trials in Africa and HPV vaccine trials in India led by these programs led to numerous deaths and injuries, amidst claims of forced vaccinations and uninformed consent.
All in all, Bill Gates and his Foundation target the developing world in the guise of improving and saving lives, only to undertake large-scale clinical trials of drugs, vaccines and other medical products. He has essentially transformed the developing world into his large pool of ‘lab rats’ on which to test his mostly dystopian ideas.
Leaders such as President Ruto who are willing to look the other way when their palms are greased enable Gates to achieve his despotic agenda by giving him an ‘all-access pass’ to infiltrate the unassuming civilian population.
Consequently, the backlash from Kenyans is not unfounded. Many have lived past being the test subjects of Bill Gates’ patronizing ideas. They realize that this is a ploy by Gates, seeking access through Ruto, to use their livestock as test subjects for his latest toy.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether what Gates funds and/or supports is beneficial or not. It is his sinister motives for control and self-absolution that make him an unpopular figure, especially in the developing world. And that goes for every leader such as President Ruto who actively supports his cause.
Read More: Is another Global Pandemic in our Hands?
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