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Fiery Picnic: Bill Gates-linked Grocery Store Burns Down

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Officials in the Netherlands are investigating a fire that blazed through an online delivery supermarket said to be connected to Bill Gates this past weekend. 

The fire started Sunday night at a store called Picnic, located in the eastern town of Almelo in the Netherlands. The fire was still a fiery blaze as of Monday morning. 

Picnic is said to be worth over one billion dollars and markets itself as being a climate-friendly operation offering delivery service to customers directly from distribution hubs. The hub in Almelo served approximately 200 cities throughout Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Michiel Mueller, the CEO of Picnic, admitted last year that the 604 million dollars that the company raised from investors came from none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Some say the timing of the blaze is questionable, as it comes after hundreds of farmers in tractors took to the streets in the Netherlands this month in protest against the government’s new strict net-zero regulations. Others suggest that the delivery store offers lots of vegetarian products and meat alternatives, which may have angered supporters of community livestock farmers. “It still isn’t clear what the cause of the fire was or whether it is tied to the protests — though some have speculated it is in retaliation over the career-destroying nitrogen policy brought in by the Rutte government,” according to the Canadian website Counter Signal. 

 Local news teams took photos and video footage, showing that the blazing fire gutted the site. Emergency crews on the scene reportedly deployed several fire engines and flew a drone above the site to get a clear picture of how to best tackle the flames. Residents in the immediate surrounding areas were warned to stay indoors due to the dangers of smoke inhalation. 

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Picnic was founded in 2015 and delivered groceries to customers in identifiable electric vans in 125 cities across the Netherlands and Germany. According to Dutch News, the supermarket employs approximately 60 people, but no one was on the premises the night the fire broke out. Thankfully, No injuries have been reported.

Addressing some of the chatter online, Spokesperson Martijn Koolhoven said: “It is false to state that the Picnic facility damaged by the fire is ‘Bill Gates’ factory that produces lab-grown synthetic meat’ and that ‘Bill Gates Foundation supermarket in the Netherlands focuses on new-age foods.

“Competent authorities immediately launched an investigation to determine the cause of the fire. The cause of the fire is not yet known. Further investigation is underway… [But] local police are not investigating the fire because they have no reason to think it was intentionally lit.”

The speculations about the cause of the fire are not the first time Bill Gates found himself at the center of controversy. He has been the focus of several claims in recent years, including that he planned to implant people with microchips through COVID vaccines. 

Gates has recently faced a lot of backlash as he swooped up a massive 2,000 acres of farmland in North Dakota for 13 million dollars. Meanwhile, Chinese company Fufeng Group purchased 300 acres outside a US Airforce base about 40 miles. Nothing to see here.