It seems like everything is fake these days: fake news, fake ice cream, fake money, fake teeth, fake knees, fake hips and fake identities. Bald guys are wearing toupees, women are getting fake boobs and fake people pester me on the phone with robo calls from fraudulent folks. Fake "reality" TV show stars in Hollywood are even creating fake grades and fake SAT test scores so their kids can get into Harvard and Yale. I suppose their diplomas will be made with fake sheepskin.

It's getting harder and harder to tell what's real and what's not. If you look on a container of lemon juice for instance it says it's made with artificial flavor while dishwashing soap is made with real lemons. I even saw on eBay an autographed photo of George Washington on a "Buy It Now" deal, even though I'm pretty sure there weren't even Kodak box cameras and film back in Georgie's day. We don't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy any more but UFO's in Roswell and the Kardashians are the real deal. Business bamboozlers and bureaucratic government officials in The Swamp contrive, fabricate, forge, deceive, and defraud daily but if you try to save a little on your taxes you could end up in the hoosegow.

The most fraudulent thing that really gets my goat is fake meat. Initially I thought it would be a bigger flop than a braless Playmate of the Year, so I was surprised at how well fake meat has been received. (But then I wonder if all the glowing reviews about fake meat are fake.) What made me especially upset were two quotes from the CEO's of two of the three biggest meat packers in the world about how bullish they are on fake meat. I guess they haven't looked at the books lately or they'd notice that 99.9999 percent  of their income and profit comes from real meat. They should be paid off in fake stock options so they'd know how real meat producers feel.

After I finished getting mad about the charlatans in suits serving as red meat Chief Executive Officers I started thinking of ways to fight back and I think I have the answer: Fake CEO's. If CEO's of meat companies aren't even going to stand behind our product maybe it's time to replace them. I'm thinking that every day you take a different employee off the deboning line who has a fake green card and fake social security number and make he or she CEO for a day. You could even buy from Harvard or MIT any extra fake diplomas they had on hand and nail them on the office walls of the fake CEO's. The money the company would save on the difference in salaries between someone making $25 an hour versus 20 million a year would go directly to the bottom line.

Even my Fake CEO For A Day Program would only be a stopgap measure until a CEO robot could be invented. Don't laugh, if inventors can come up with a robot to milk a cow, inventing a fake CEO should be a piece of cake. A robot Tyson CEO wouldn't speak in such glowing terms about fake meat for fear of being replaced by a fake robot.

We shouldn't just stop with the CEO, we also have to address the scientists who came up with beet juice laced fake meat in the first place. We should replace their test kitchens and test tubes with a fake research department filled with fake scientists in white lab coats who couldn't figure out how to turn on a bunsen burner in a million years.

All the employees of the fake meat companies should be paid in counterfeit $20 bills with Bill Clinton's picture on them. Maybe we could even use some of our checkoff dollars to create Fake Impossible Hamburgers and Fake Beyond Beef Burgers.

Of course, they'd be made with 100 percent real meat.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers may log on to www.LeePittsbooks.com to order any of Lee Pitts’ books. Those with questions or comments for Lee may write to him in care of this publication.