Michelle Pfeiffer claims Bill Gates-backed coating means 'organic produce is no longer safe'
On Thursday the actress, 67, expressed concern on social media over the FDA 's approval of Apeel, a Gates-backed food coating meant to extend the shelf life of produce.
'Apeel (an edible, plant-based coating designed to extend the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables) was just approved and now "organic" produce is coated in something we cannot see or wash off,' Pfeiffer wrote. 'Ver concerning.'
She shared a video that claimed 'organic produce is no longer safe' after 'Bill Gates' Apeel just approved for USDA-certified organic.'
Apeel has long been mired in controversy over its ingredients and association with Gates.
The company was founded in 2012 by entrepreneur James Rogers with the help of a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Gates' are not currently involved in Apeel, which has received substantial backing from venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz.
Post: Despite Pfeiffer's comments, Apeel claims on its website that their coatings can be washed
Apeel responded by saying it was 'both disappointing and concerning to see a public figure like Michelle Pfeiffer use her platform to spread disinformation about our company, our mission, and the work of our employees.'
They added: 'To set the record straight: Bill Gates is not now, nor has he ever been, a shareholder in Apeel Sciences.
'Additionally, our products have been reviewed and allowed on the market in compliance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. National Organic Program requirements for nearly eight years - not recently, as Ms. Pfeiffer's post suggests,' Jenny Du, co-founder of Apeel and senior vice president of operations, said in a statement.
Also, the company claimed that their coatings can be washed by rinsing the produce with water and scrubbing it.
'Apeel uses plant lipids or plant oils naturally found in fruits and vegetables and creates a coating applied to the surface of fresh fruits and vegetables in order to retain moisture and reduce oxidation,' Du told the Associated Press. 'Our product is also intended to be edible.'
The coating consists of purified monoglycerides and diglycerides, which Du pointed out are also found in products such as infant formula.
The company has said their coating technology can help reduce post-harvest food waste in developing countries and is ultimately aimed at combatting famine and hunger.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Beyonce makes MAJOR tour change after terrifying stunt left her hanging and screaming midair
Beyonce has made a major change to her Cowboy Carter tour just weeks after the singer was left hanging midair during a terrifying stunt. The Grammy winner, 43 — who has sparked fear in fans that she could possibly retire — took to the stage in Atlanta on Thursday where she debuted a mechanical gold horse which she rode inside the Mercedes- Benz Stadium. Up until last month, she had ridden on a red Cadillac convertible which would suspend over the crowd — but the prop began to suddenly tilt amid her June 28 concert in Houston which caused the singer to abruptly stop the show. However, Beyonce has since made the slight alteration to her tour this week with the flying gold horse. She notably sits on the prop as it soars through the air while belting out her country track 16 Carriages. It is not the first time that the songstress has used a horse as a prop while performing on stage. Back in 2023 during her Renaissance Tour, Beyonce used a sparkling silver horse - which mimicked her Renaissance album cover. The star kicked off her Cowboy Carter Tour earlier this year in April - and is in support of her eighth studio album of the same name which was released in 2024. She is set to perform two additional dates in Atlanta on Sunday, July 13 and the following Monday. The Crazy In Love hitmaker will then travel to Las Vegas later this month where the tour will conclude on July 26 at Allegiant Stadium. Late last month, the mom-of-three was forced to abruptly stop her show after the flying car she was riding on seemingly began to tilt midair. The horrifying moment occurred at her Houston concert on June 28 and stunned audience members, who had captured it on video. The red convertible, which is normally in an upright position, could be seen at an obvious slant as she soared through the air during her 16 Carriages performance. 'Stop,' Beyonce could be heard sternly saying. 'Stop, stop, stop,' she further commanded, concern evident in her voice. The crowd inside then grew quiet before they erupted into a mixture of yelling and cheering. The vehicle, which was attached to various cables, was slowly and safely brought back down to the stage. Despite the terrifying stakes, Beyonce appeared calm whilst in the car. It's unclear what exactly occurred but according to various social media accounts, her car began to tilt in the air. According to the Houston Chronicle, her car had stopped moving midair. contacted representatives for Beyonce for comment but did not immediately hear back. According to Hot New Hip Hop, Beyonce left the stage floor briefly after her car was properly lowered to the ground before coming back to wrap up the performance. The songstress, now safely on stage, then resumed performing her song and thanked her fans with a heartfelt message. 'I wanna thank y'all,' she told the audience, adding, 'for loving me. If ever I fall, I know y'all will catch me.' The incident, which occurred in her hometown of Houston, is not the first time she has suffered from a mechanical issue during her Cowboy Carter tour. In May, the songstress was captured in fan video on the final show of her five-night run in Los Angeles as a robot on stage failed to hit its mark. During one section of the concert at Inglewood's SoFi Stadium, Beyonce took a break to sit on a large gold thrown as a robotic arm that wouldn't have been out of place in a factory attempted to pour a bottle of liquor into her glass on one of the throne's arms. But the robot upended the bottle just an inch or two away from the drink, and instead poured the liquid all over the golden chair she was sitting in. She was supposed to follow up the over-the-top display by taking a sip of her drinking and grabbing a remote control on the other arm rest as if to turn on the TV before vegging out. But the Texas Hold 'Em singer — who was dressed in a busty white Western suit covered in sequins and tassels — looked surprised and embarrassed as she briefly picked up her glass and realized that it was empty. Her mouth started to curl into a smile as she quickly returned the empty glass to its spot on her arm rest. But Beyonce managed to tamp down her smile and continued with the act as she picked up the remote and flicked it as if to turn on a television. And in June, Beyonce lost her chaps on stage during a show in London. The diva from Texas was walking while singing as the fringed chaps fell to the ground as she looked astonished, according to TMZ. Her look was a gold plunging bodysuit under gold fringed chaps with high heels and sunglasses as her accessories. The site claimed that she 'effortlessly performed' during the embarrassing incident as she slid down to pull the chaps back on. The Cowboy Carter Tour, officially titled Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin' Circuit Tour, is Beyonce's ongoing concert tour in support of her album Cowboy Carter. It's an all-stadium tour, featuring 32 stadium shows in the U.S. and Europe - and will conclude on July 26 in Nevada.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Collectors can fight to pay £7m for a Birkin – but the ‘it' handbag is no longer cool
The news that Jane Birkin's original Hermès bag has sold for a record-breaking €8.6m (£7.4m) at auction will no doubt cause some jaws to drop to the floor. However, perhaps it should not surprise – this is a bag design that is often linked to eyewatering amounts of money. Forty years on from the prototype, it's now less a (very expensive) symbol of style and elegance, and more a way to signal you have a lot of money and you would like everyone to know that. A Birkin has always been expensive – about $10,000 (£7,400), according to the Guardian last year – but the complicating factor is demand. As was reported, two California residents sued Hermès for a practice known as 'tying', which means customers are expected to pre-spend a sufficient amount on other items, such as homewares or jewellery – some say up to $30,000 – before they are even put on the waiting list for a Birkin. Therefore, wearing one on your arm – to those in the know – shows you have the disposable income that not only means you can buy the bag, but also go through with this practice in the first place. The TV show Your Friends & Neighbours – in which Jon Hamm stars as a banker who loses his job and resorts to stealing from his wealthy friends to keep up his lifestyle – alludes to this in an episode where Hamm's character attempts to steal a Birkin from an alarmed table of the bags in a luxurious closet. In a montage explaining the lore of the handbag, he comments 'there is no more obnoxious or coveted status symbol than the Hermès Birkin'. It's hard not to agree. With this culture around the bag, it has lost its fashion appeal. See Beyoncé's lyric in her 2022 track Summer Renaissance, which replaces the Birkin with the more affordable and fashionable Telfar shopping bag, one so popular in Brooklyn that it's sometimes called the 'Bushwick Birkin'. 'This Telfar bag imported,' she sings. 'Birkins? Them shit's in storage.' The Birkin is now a favourite of glossy and put-together women. Victoria Beckham is said to have more than 100, and Kylie Jenner also collects them (Singaporean socialite Jamie Chua apparently has the biggest collection). For the Sotheby's auction, it was rumoured that representatives of Lauren Sanchez and Kris Jenner were on the phone attempting to bid, although the bag eventually went to a collector in Japan. An article in Vogue revealed who was in the room: collectors with an eye on the value of this item rather than someone wanting to use it as a receptacle. 'I've been telling people to invest in Hermès bags for years!' comments Sara Abou-Khalil, a client of Sotheby's who also collects contemporary art. All of this contrasts to the bag's beginnings. Jane Birkin was an icon of bohemianism who campaigned for abortion rights and against the far right and originally donated her bag to an auction to raise money for an Aids charity in 1994. Loved for her style, Birkin was gorgeous and chic but she was also scruffy, with wild hair and clothes that didn't always appear to be completely ironed. The original bag shows Birkin's approach to the design during the nine years she owned it – it's lived-in: scuffed, with marks from the stickers that she regularly put on it, for organisations such as Unicef. It's this part of the bag's life that remains charming – and influential. A TV clip of her showing what was inside her bag in 1988 is a favourite on TikTok, with a pile of papers, notebooks, pens, mascara and more emerging. The way she decorated her bag is so loved that it inspired the 'Birkinifying your bag' trend last year, where people added trinkets and charms. Arguably, this was the prelude to the Labubu craze, with the critters becoming the prized object to have hanging on any bag in 2025. The love of Labubus is already going the way of the Birkin – they retail for about £21, but sell for a lot more: a human-sized doll sold at auction last month for £127,000. The lesson? Whether it's a monster with spiky teeth or a battered bag with old stickers, fashion will always find a way to get people to spend a lot of money on obnoxious and coveted status symbols. But who knows? Maybe the buyer is a fan of Birkinifying and they'll soon be walking around Japan with a bag draped in charms, with a Free Tibet sticker on its £7m leather. Lauren Cochrane is a senior Guardian fashion writer
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Trump threatens to revoke Hollywood star's citizenship branding her 'threat to humanity'
Donald Trump has threatened to revoke Rosie O'Donnell 's American citizenship, calling the comedian and longtime critic a 'threat to humanity' in a fiery post on Truth Social. 'Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,' Trump, 79, wrote Saturday. 'She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!' The outburst followed O'Donnell's July 7 HuffPost interview, in which she discussed her decades-long feud with the president and her 2024 move to Ireland, made ahead of Trump's reelection. 'I look at America and I feel overwhelmingly depressed,' O'Donnell, 63, said, citing her need to protect her mental health and care for her 12-year-old son, who has autism. 'I knew what [the Trump administration] was planning to do, because I read Project 2025. I know what he's capable of. And I didn't want to put myself through another four years of him being in charge.' 'I picked up and left before the inauguration – because I wasn't going to take any chances.' O'Donnell and Trump's public feud began in 2006, after she criticized him on The View over his handling of the Miss USA controversy. Mocking his defense of then-titleholder Tara Conner, she called Trump a 'snake-oil salesman on Little House on the Prairie' and dismissed his claim of being self-made, pointing to his wealthy father. Trump hit back in a People interview, insisting his father 'never gave [him] tons of money' and threatening to sue. 'Rosie will rue the words she said,' he said at the time. 'Rosie's a loser. A real loser.' In the recent HuffPost interview, O'Donnell described her move as one of 'self-preservation.' 'I wasn't up for this battle,' she said. 'The cost was too high. I still believe in the virtue of the fight—I just couldn't do it personally.' Watching Trump's second term from abroad, O'Donnell added: 'I think it's as bad as everyone worried it would be. I believe fascism has taken a foothold in the United States.' She also criticized a new bill she claims grants Trump his own 'secret police,' with a budget 'greater than the money we give to Israel, which is already unbelievably high.' 'I look at America, and it feels tragic,' she said. 'I feel sad. I feel overwhelmingly depressed. I don't understand how we got here.' The two have continued to trade jabs publicly, their mutual disdain well-documented. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly brought up O'Donnell, including during the first Republican primary debate in August 2015. When moderator Megyn Kelly questioned his use of terms like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' and 'slobs' to describe women, he replied, 'Only Rosie O'Donnell.' Her name eventually resurfaced during a debate with Hillary Clinton, when Trump said, 'Rosie O'Donnell has been very vicious to me. I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree she deserves it.' O'Donnell responded in a now-deleted post on X, calling him an 'orange anus.' After Trump's first election, O'Donnell told W Magazine in October 2017 that she struggled to cope with his presidency, saying it took her a year to regain emotional balance. 'I seriously worry whether I personally will be able to live through [his presidency] and whether the nation will be able to survive,' she said. 'It's a terrifying concept, on the brink of nuclear war with a madman in charge.' In August 2018, The View alum even joined a protest outside the White House to voice her opposition. After Trump's second inauguration in January 2025, O'Donnell revealed on TikTok that she had moved to Ireland with her child and would consider returning to the U.S. 'when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights.' Weeks later on The Late Late Show, she expressed disbelief that Trump still invoked their long-standing feud. 'He hasn't let it go,' she said. 'He uses me as a punchline whenever he feels the need.' Trump later commented on O'Donnell's move during Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin's visit to the White House for St. Patrick's Day. When asked why he allowed O'Donnell to move to Ireland, Trump said he 'liked' the question, asked if Martin knew who she was, then joked he was 'better off' not knowing.
