Did Italy Ban Bill Gates' Lab-Grown Meat? What the Viral Post Gets Wrong

A post is going round Instagram with a photo of Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a small picture of Bill Gates, and a headline saying Italy has become the first country to ban “Bill Gates lab-grown fake meat”. It has tens of thousands of likes. Parts of it are true, parts are old, and one part is a stretch. This is what the record shows.

Did Italy really ban lab-grown meat?

Yes. Italy’s parliament passed the law in November 2023 by 159 votes to 53, under Meloni’s government. It is Legge 1 dicembre 2023, n. 172, and it is widely reported as the first national ban of its kind.

As reported, it does two things:

• Bans cultivated meat. It stops businesses from using, selling, importing, producing for export or distributing food or feed made from vertebrate animal cell or tissue cultures (Food Times).
• Bans meat names on plant-based products. Products made only from plant protein can’t use words like “steak” or “salami”. Adding plant protein to a product that already contains meat is still allowed.

Fines of up to €60,000 are reported (Osborne Clarke), though sources differ on exactly which provisions they apply to. The government’s stated reasons were protecting Italian food heritage and taking a precautionary approach.

Is this new?

No. The same viral claim was fact-checked by Euronews in December 2025, which found it wasn’t a new development as the posts implied. We searched for a 2026 change to the law and found none. If you see “Italy just banned” it, check the date on the original source.

Did Italy ban it because of Bill Gates?

There is no sign of that. Euronews found the ban wasn’t tailored to Gates, and the law is about a category of food, not a person.

The link is an investment. Gates took part in several funding rounds for Memphis Meats, now called Upside Foods, including its US$400 million round in 2021. He has also backed plant-based makers such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, which is a different technology.

His best-known comment came in a February 2021 interview, when he said “I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef”. In the same interview he said he didn’t think the poorest 80 countries would eat synthetic meat, and he was more confident about plant-based beef than lab-grown. That quote is why his name keeps getting attached to every cultivated meat story.

Can Italy’s ban actually be enforced?

This is the part the viral post leaves out. Italy first notified the EU of its draft law, reportedly withdrew that notification, then notified it again on the day the law was signed. The European Commission said the law was passed in breach of the EU’s required waiting period, known as the TRIS procedure.

The EU’s top court has previously ruled that national courts can declare laws adopted this way unenforceable, so analysts have called the ban “potentially unenforceable”. We found no Italian court ruling either way. Bear in mind that GFI Europe, which argues this point, campaigns for cultivated meat.

There is also a practical side. As of December 2025 the EU hadn’t authorised any cultivated meat product for sale, so there was little for the ban to stop in the shops.

Does lab-grown meat cause cancer?

The viral versions of this story often add that lab-grown meat causes fast-growing “turbo cancer”. We found no reliable evidence for that in any of the sources used for this article. It isn’t part of the Italian law either, which rests on precaution and food heritage, not a finding of harm.

Is lab-grown meat banned anywhere else?

Italy is the only national ban we found, but several US states have their own. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Indiana, Nebraska and Texas have all passed bans or moratoria, and some of them run for a set period. That is despite the US having approved cultivated chicken and beef for sale, and Upside Foods is suing Florida over its ban.

Australia went the other way. Food Standards Australia New Zealand approved Vow’s cultured quail in June 2025, aimed at restaurants rather than supermarkets.

What does Twiggy Forrest have to do with Bill Gates and cattle?

Nothing to do with lab-grown meat, as it turns out. This is a separate story about methane, and it is real.

Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s agri-food business, Harvest Road Group, co-led a US$12 million funding round in January 2023 for Rumin8, a Perth startup. The other lead was Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the climate fund Gates founded. It was BEV’s first investment in an Australian company.

Rumin8 doesn’t change the cattle. It makes a feed additive based on synthetic bromoform, a copy of the active compound found in a red seaweed. The idea is that a small amount in feed or water reduces the methane cattle burp out.

So the two billionaires are backing two different answers to the same problem. Gates has backed cultivated and plant-based meat, which replaces the cow. Gates and Forrest have both backed an additive, which keeps the cow and cuts its emissions.

How well it works is still being proven. In July 2026 Rumin8 reported a small animal trial of a new version, with methane reductions of up to 86%, and the company itself says that is preliminary and needs further trials. Reports also say it has approval to run studies in Brazil and a provisional authorisation in New Zealand, so it is still working towards full approval.

How can you spot a recycled headline?

A few quick checks work on almost any viral food story:

• Find the date. “Italy bans” and “Italy has just banned” are very different claims if the law is nearly three years old.
• Look for the primary source. A law has a number and a date. A post with only a headline and a photo has neither.
• Be wary of a famous name added to a general rule. If a law covers a whole food category, a named person is usually a hook rather than the reason.
• Notice how it makes you feel. Posts written to make you angry travel furthest, and that is a reason to check them, not share them.

The bottom line

Italy banned cultivated meat in 2023 and the ban’s legal force is unsettled. It wasn’t aimed at Bill Gates, and nothing in it is new. The Gates and Forrest methane story is real but separate, and the results so far are early.

If you’d like a plain walk-through of what lab-grown, plant-based and printed meat actually are, start with 3D printed vs lab-grown vs plant-based meat, or read the fact check on 3D printed meat in US supermarkets.