The World Economic Forum has not planned for a future without pets or animal charities

A Facebook post has claimed that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is planning a future where there will no longer be a need for animal charities.

The post states: “According to the writings of the soulless dehumanised future the WEF have planned. We won’t need animal charities because we’ll cease to have pets and eat meat”.

We couldn’t find any examples of the WEF suggesting animal charities won’t be needed or people won’t have pets in the future. On the contrary, in fact, it published a post in October 2021 which looked into research showing the mental health benefits of pet ownership during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2017, the WEF did publish an article in collaboration with the tech website Futurism about robotic dogs, though it did not suggest that the robots should replace real animals.

Full Fact has contacted the WEF to clarify whether it has ever said that animal charities won’t be needed in the future, or that humans will no longer keep pets, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

It is true that the WEF has repeatedly advocated for people to eat less meat, and has published a number of articles and social media posts promoting meat replacements and plant-based diets. 

However, we could find no evidence that it has linked meat-free diets to eliminating the need for animal charities. Instead, the WEF tends to focus on the environmental and health impacts associated with eating less meat, as this video demonstrates.

The post starts by saying its claims are “according to the writings of the soulless dehumanised future the WEF have planned”.

We’ve previously written about conspiracy theories relating to the WEF and the “Great Reset” theory, which claims, without evidence, that the WEF along with other secret actors or organisations are responsible for significant social or political events and are attempting to implement their own secret agenda.

The Great Reset is a concept that has been mentioned a lot over recent years by the WEF and its supporters, including the Royal Family, and while it has been the subject of some criticism there’s no evidence that it is a vast conspiracy, as posts like this one would suggest.

The WEF itself defines the idea of the “Great Reset” as an opportunity for world leaders and communities to “build a new social contract” and address existing social and geopolitical concerns—such as climate change—in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Great Reset initiative was launched in 2020 alongside the publication of a book, titled Covid-19: The Great Reset, co-authored by the foundation’s co-founder, Klaus Schwaub.

Image courtesy of Andrew S