Golden, thin, salty — you know how a McDonald’s french fry looks and tastes. But do you know about the potatoes used to make them?
One social media post suggests the answer involves a tech magnate, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, who owns hundreds of thousands of acres of U.S. farmland.
“In case you didn’t know every single McDonald’s french fry comes exclusively from potatoes grown on Bill Gates-owned farmland,” the text in the July 8 Facebook photo reads. The caption said, “Reasons why you should never put a McDonald’s French Fry in your mouth again.”
(Screenshot from Facebook)
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This claim exaggerates.
Gates is one of the U.S.’ top 100 landowners, owning 275,000 acres, according to The Land Report, a magazine that tracks the country’s largest landowners. The majority of Gates’ land is farmland in more than 17 states, the magazine said, making him the “nation’s largest private farmland owner.”
According to The Land Report, part of Gates’ assets include the 100 Circles Farm in Washington state, which McDonald’s Corp. cites as a potato supplier for its restaurants’ french fries. But 100 Circles is not the “exclusive” supplier of McDonald’s potatoes. The McDonald’s website lists two other U.S. potato farmers as suppliers: Frank Martinez and Jenn Bunger. Both also own farms in Washington state. There is no evidence of any connection between them and Gates.
McDonald’s websites in other regions also list other farmers as potato suppliers. London-based fact-checking organization Full Fact debunked this claim and said McDonald’s UK announced it would source potatoes from British suppliers — at least 110 of them, according to its website.
PolitiFact contacted McDonald’s for comment but has not heard back.
The July 8 Facebook post also pointed to a link in the comments section for the “full story,” but the link leads to a blog post called “Over 3,000 reasons why you should never put a McDonald’s French Fry in your mouth again” that doesn’t mention Bill Gates.
Claims about food modification have often targeted Gates. PolitiFact has previously debunked claims that he tweeted about adding vaccines to the food supply, that salt will be replaced with Gates’ “mRNA fake salt,” and that he funded lab-grown meat that causes “turbo cancer.”
Like those, this claim is untrue. We rate the claim that “every single McDonald’s french fry comes exclusively from potatoes grown on Bill Gates-owned farmland” False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
