MARY ALEXANDER • 14 JULY 2024

“Bill Gates has decided that the slave class needs to drink maggot milk,” reads one version of a claim going viral in South Africa, Kenya and across the world since late June 2024.*

“He’s launched ‘EntoMilk’ a food-like product. It’s described as a ‘dairy alternative’ that’s supposedly similar to real milk, but is made from ‘black soldier fly larvae’ or maggots. His goal is to introduce this product into the food supply…”

The claim links to a blog post with a stock photo of a mass of maggots crawling through a human skull. It’s headlined: “Bill Gates Has Launched ‘Maggot Milk’.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been a common target of conspiracy theories for years.

Another version of the claim reads:

You will drink the bugs and be happy! Wait, what? That’s right! Bill Gates’ latest evil venture is called EntoMilk. He wants to replace milk from animals (cow milk, goat milk) with maggot milk.

The claim has been posted with comments such as:

• This is an actual thing and he’s evil. look up Entomilk…
• What has the evil world of darkness been up to lately? Here is just one other hair raising demonic ploy of the elites.
• Zillionaire Bill Gates is at it again. He has already got the ball rolling on eliminating and replacing all meat products and now he is going after milk and dairy.
• Part of the new “Transhumanist” diet. I feel so bad for our Grandchildren and leaving this sick world behind to them.

Several instances include an AI-generated cartoon of a crazed-looking Gates holding a jar containing a malformed fly in one hand and a cup of what is presumably EntoMilk in the other.

It’s been posted on the known disinformation site Natural News, on the equally dodgy sites YourNews and SlayNews, and on YouTube.

But has Gates recently launched a “maggot milk” known as EntoMilk?

‘That’s your headline’

The claim began in a 20 June broadcast of the Alex Jones Show on InfoWars, titled “DISGUSTING: Bill Gates Wants You To Eat Maggot Milk.”

Alex Jones is a notorious conspiracist who founded InfoWars in 1999. US courts have ordered him to pay $1.5 billion to the parents of 20 six- and seven-year-old children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting for repeatedly saying the massacre was a hoax. The cases were the subject of a recent documentary, The Truth vs Alex Jones.

Jones’s broadcast uses a promotional video for EntoMilk, titled “Bug Milk”, which shows how it is made from black soldier fly larvae. Two people are seen drinking the milk while the voiceover describes its “creamy mouth-feel”.

The video ends with people being offered EntoMilk ice-cream to taste. Some look dubious.

The video stresses that insects may be “vital to the future of food” because they need little land for cultivation and aren’t as damaging to the environment as livestock such as cattle.

But Jones says: “Oh, it’s rich and creamy? And they are feeding the black people the maggots.” It’s clear he’s watching the video for the first time.

“Bill Gates is involved in these companies,” he suddenly adds, without evidence. “Bill Gates wants you to drink maggot milk.” Jones then gestures to someone off-screen, and says: “That’s your headline.”

Six-year-old advert for defunct product

The original video is almost six years old, first posted on YouTube in September 2018.

EntoMilk was a dairy-free milk alternative developed by South African food scientists and launched by their Cape Town-based startup Gourmet Grubb in 2017.

It was made from the larvae of farmed flies, so the “maggot milk” description, if dramatic, is almost true. The product was only sold as an ice cream and never in its liquid form, according to a July 2023 article.

But Entomilk has been off the market for years, and Gourmet Grubb is listed as out of business.

The Gourmet Grubb website no longer exists. The company’s Instagram page hasn’t been updated since 2020, and its description (note the past tense) reads: “Yes! we made insect ice cream from EntoMilk which is Dairy Free and insanely SUSTAINABLE! 2020 – we are going to level up – watch this space.”

Gates wasn’t “involved in” Gourmet Grubb. He’s not mentioned in any of the company’s online profiles. And if the billionaire had invested in a South African startup, it would have made many local headlines. But there’s no credible news of Gates’s involvement.

Bill Gates has not launched a “maggot milk” called EntoMilk. The claim is false, made up on the spot during the Alex Jones Show.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Published by Africa Check on 22 July 2024

The post Bill Gates launches maggot milk? No, Alex Jones nonsense misuses South African dairy alternative EntoMilk appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

MARY ALEXANDER • 20 JUNE 2024

On 3 June 2024 a tornado ripped through towns and settlements in the South African municipality of eThekwini, which includes KwaZulu-Natal province’s port city of Durban.

The twister was part of a major storm, its high winds, heavy rain and sudden flooding killing at least 11 people. Heaviest hit was the eThekwini town of Tongaat, also known as oThongathi.

A tornado is a column of wind rotating at a high speed. They develop during thunderstorms and can cause enormous damage when they hit the ground. Tornadoes are not uncommon in South Africa, particularly in the east of the country.

The South African Weather Service says the oThongathi tornado rated EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, a measure of twisters’ wind speed from one to five. Wind in an EF3 tornado can reach up to 265 kilometres an hour. These “stronger and more destructive” tornadoes only occur every decade or so.

In the week after the tornado hit KwaZulu-Natal, a video appeared on social media with the claim it showed the twister. In the clip we see a tornado barrelling through a settlement, throwing up the debris of destroyed buildings.

It’s been posted with the captions “Tornado KZN 4 June 2024” and “The #tornado seen on camera in KZN Durban”, and the hashtags #tongaattornado and #kzntornado.*

But does the video really show the KwaZulu-Natal tornado?

Drone footage of 2022 tornado in Andover, Kansas

Africa Check took a screenshot of the first frame of the video and ran it through a reverse image search.

This led us to several news reports of a tornado that tore through Andover, a town in the US state of Kansas, in May 2022. They all use the same footage, shot from a drone.

The twister was reportedly also a destructive EF3, but there were no fatalities.

In 2023 Africa Check debunked a claim that the video showed part of the destruction when an earthquake hit Morocco. But it was shot in the United States, not Morocco – or South Africa.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Published by Africa Check on 21 June 2024

The post Tornado video shot in US state of Kansas, not South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province appeared first on South Africa Gateway.