Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #264: Trump's Rancher Executive Orders: Real Reform or Political Theater?

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Episode #264: Trump's Rancher Executive Orders: Real Reform or Political Theater? · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't realize, Cena, that federal judges have ruled from the bench more than once that Americans have no freedom of food choice.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: This is a blueprint for how we can move forward and actually have food freedom of choice.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we need to gain momentum and get people on board with it.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: This thing is a um is a testament to a life-loving food freedom and individual choice in our food system.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another Beyond Labels podcast with Joel Salatin, the farmer, that would be me, and Dr.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough, our favorite researcher.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're kind of going to dig in a little bit to a current event, which is there's there's been a lot of White House President Trump uh brujaha in the agriculture sector, just in general.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh we could say that it started back a few months ago with the executive order making glyphosate a um you know uh an important um national security brand, uh, which of course is not true, but anyway, that's what that's what we got.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then as the price of beef has continued to increase uh with the lack of supply, um he did a uh a 300 million metric ton 90-day um subsidized import of um lean trim product.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Beef is not in the item, but that's what it's supposed to be.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh imported most of it will come from Argentina, below market prices.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that infuriated the ranchers, which are part of Trump's base.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The you know, Red America is rural, rural America, politically red.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um now he's given another executive order, uh, essentially trying to curry favor, I think, with the uh farm and ranch community, uh, trying to make it um well deal well, just dealing with uh with competition pricing and market access to farmers and ranchers.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um Cena uh has the executive order in front of her because she's our researcher, and um it's essentially got Cena three parts.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh okay, so there's two pieces.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one of them basically has three parts, and one of them has basically five parts to it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you can I mean you can read the whole executive order.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um we don't we're not gonna read the whole thing here on on our um on our podcast today, but um but it it it it deals with um competition, talks about enforcement of the packyard, uh packyard, packers and stockyards act.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um it includes um expanding market opportunity.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But and so so I've gotten emails from people, oh wow, Trump's finally got your message about you know letting farmers sell to their you know to their neighborhoods and things like that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um I mean there are people that are that are just um ecstatic about this, but when you when you look at the actual verbiage of the executive order, I don't know, Cena, we didn't count as you went through it, we didn't count how many times the executive order says the phrase to the extent of federal law, but it's numerous numerous times throughout.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many times, half a dozen, whatever.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I was trying I was trying to write them down, but um couldn't keep up with you.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: But to the extent of federal law.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's federal law?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, federal law is that if you want to sell a T-bone steak to a neighbor, it's gotta be done, it's gotta be processed in a in a federal inspected processing facility.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so um my take on the executive order is that it is a lot of verbiage with actually no uh no real teeth.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um again, it talks about we should be able to butcher, process, and sell across the state lines within the extent of to the extent of federal law.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, uh reducing barriers to fair competition, you know, um within the extent of to the extent of federal law.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so um so all of this is bounded by current federal law.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my point, Cena.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Unless I'm missing something, I don't see any any change in any law here.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now they they have they have talked about mandatory country of uh origin labeling, which was eliminated in 2015.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Congress took mandatory country of origin labeling off and made it voluntary.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, as currently used, it is a it is fraudulent um imported beef.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: If it's packaged in the U.S., it can carry U.S.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: country of origin labeling, even if it's from New Zealand, Argentina, or you know, uh Australia.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: If it's actually, if if it actually goes into the final package, which almost all of it does, almost no beef comes into the U.S.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: fully packaged.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It comes in in um in commodity boxes, and then it's uh it's packaged here.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: The actual final bag that ends up in your you know, Kroger grocery store was actually put together here in the U.S.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if it's put together here in the U.S., it can have product of the USA on it, which is completely fraudulent, but this has been going on now for a long, long time.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, one of the one of the thoughts is well, this executive order will actually, you know, uh uh dive into that loophole.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Another one, of course, is enforcement.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, go ahead.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Let me stay with that one.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: So you have people already rejoiced when the Secretary of AG addressed country of origin labeling, and but it's it was a voluntary process, right?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so even then they couldn't mandate it.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: So in in Trump's newest executive order, one of the executive orders that's supposed to help ranchers, and I'll tell you, Joel, I giggled a little bit because on the USDA's press release website, when they were announcing these two executive orders, this is what it says President Trump signs executive orders cementing status as most pro-rancher administration in history.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, okay, they're pleading for the votes here, right?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like everything is perception.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: So as you said, a lot of these are saying, you know, to the to the extent admissible under the law.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the country of origin labeling is no exception.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: It says that within 90 days, the Secretary of AG um it basically is going to issue or amend regulations to the extent permitted under applicable law to require mandatory country of origin labeling for beef products.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: It says, or it may, in further coordination with the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, develop legislative recommendations regarding such labeling.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it sounds great, like, oh, country of origin labeling.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you're just glancing at it or an outlet is just having headlines, it's like, oh, they're gonna make it mandatory, which should actually signal to people that it's voluntary at this point.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: But we're gonna make it mandatory.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: But if we can't actually do it under the law, we're gonna try to develop legislation.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so we'll have we'll see how that goes in Congress.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh none of this, none of this is really um is really tractionable.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's no real treads here.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Or like real teeth.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like so the next section under um country of origin labeling, section five, it's it's titled Supporting American Consumers.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: This one would be great, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you could lower the prices of beef, if they could actually do that, this would be fantastic.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is what it says.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: The very first line under section five, supporting American consumers, says to the extent consistent with applicable law, the head of each agency shall take such steps as may be appropriate to ensure that the measures directed in this order, as well as other measures taken by my administration with respect to food production and supply benefit American consumers in the form of lower prices to the maximum extent possible.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, it's not how are they doing that?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is the plan?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: When this first came out, Cena, uh a couple of weeks ago, I I did a blog um saying that whatever comes out of this initial little you know, uh X thing that Trump uh tweeted about wanting to help, I said, whatever comes out of that, when it actually gets written, there will be a representative from JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef, the big four.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a there will be a representative from each of those companies sitting at the table with Secretary Brooke Rollins writing the the actual implementation.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: What does this executive order actually do?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're not interested in in any deregulation.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um they don't invite people like me to those sessions.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so so or they uninvite you.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: But but um but listen, um, isn't wordcrafting uh wonderful as they as they went through this.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder which one of them actually came up with this uh with this phrase to the extent applicable in uh to the extent applicable within federal law.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is that is such um uh bureaucrat speak.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna do I'm I'm I'm gonna help you, I'm gonna do all sorts of things for you to the extent applicable in federal law, you know.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean it it's it's just a it's just a complete uh uh charade.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean they all use it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's what when when Kennedy was talking about closing the generally recognized as safe grass loophole, the announcement said the same thing, you know, pretty much, may not word for word, but it basically said, you know, we're gonna do what we can do legally.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, I was like, well, that's the fallback is that you can say one thing to the public, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's it's market speak.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds really good, it's all about perception.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: But then behind closed doors, maybe either they didn't realize they don't have the legal standing, or they're caveating um they're putting a caveat on it to kind of save their butts, to be like, well, we tried, but the law won't let us do it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we just we just uh you know, the law we we we gotta stay legal here, you know, we gotta stay illegal.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so so that's like a lot of their other like a lot of their other executive orders, you know, or uh statements that they've made.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: The this primary in this executive order supporting America's ranchers, the the first section where they're actually talking about what they're gonna do, comprehensive policy and regulatory review, it basically says that they have 90 days to have all these different agencies submit reports to the president that it that assesses uh all the regulations, guidance, and other agency policies that are affecting ranchers and make recommendations.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: So again, it's go spend 90 days doing more research, which you should already know.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like they should already know at this point which regulations and guidelines you know are affecting our food supply, particularly ranchers.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: This is not a new problem.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: So now we're gonna take another 90 days to get another report on what's the problem and see if we can do anything about it within the law.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like yeah.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and so you know it it it's it is far reaching in a in a in the fact that it it uh questions, for example, it it appears that they're getting ready to take the is it the brown wolf off of um off of protected status.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh okay, they're gonna look at determine whether the gray wolf and the Mexican wolf have met the recovery criteria for delisting or downlisting under the Endangered Species Act.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: So they are gonna look at that.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which means which means then that a wolf that uh you know that that takes a calf, uh, you could go kill it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because right now in endangered species, they're equivalent to eagles.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and of course, you know, I think eagles need to come off as well.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's a that's a that's a hot topic.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so it so it it it's not just processing right what I'm getting at.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is a fairly far-reaching uh or or eclectic blend of things.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you know, the the Packers and Stockyards Act.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, you know, uh uh ranchers have been complaining about collusion within the um Packers and Stockyards Act, you know, that the big four they collude and they set prices and all this stuff.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm it's it's a fine line, Cena, uh, in business between you know between conspiracy and trying to be financially astute.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean you can't you can't blame Tyson for wanting to buy for wanting to trim 10 cents off of the cattle it buys, you know, per pound.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: You you I mean you can't blame them.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and and Tyson, I know I don't know about the other three, but I know Tyson um has just closed two large processing plants um that were doing a total of 8,000 beef a day.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and they're they're they're trying, they're consolidating that in the Midwest in three of their plants to try to keep their plants operating.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: The point is there's not there's not enough cattle coming into their plants.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and these are massive plants.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think about that.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 5,000 head a day.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a hundred that's a hundred tractor trailer loads.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, if a if a if a slaughter steer has five gallons of blood, all right, that's 25,000 gallons of blood a day.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just blood.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's half a tractor trader load.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I mean I'm trying to try to gross people out here, but you know, you it's it's hard, it's hard to conceive of that kind of consolidation.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the fact.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and the fact that Tyson, as powerful as they are, are closing two plants just to get enough volume to keep the other three open.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: If there were some sort of you know conspiracy or collusion within the system, you know, they wouldn't, they wouldn't be posting a$500 million loss for last year.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and and and what happens then is so they're you know, they're trying to stay in business, and so they push every button that they can to reduce the price they're paying for beef coming into their facility.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't fault them for that.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if I owned that facility, I'd do the same thing.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so, you know, ranchers have been um have been saying that these big companies collude and they set prices and all this stuff, you know, forever.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this this has gone on all my life, I mean not all my lifetime, but but certainly for the last 30 years as these four companies have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um I I don't know if it's true or not.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I get, see now, here, I guess what I would like to see is instead of these ranchers being mad about the four big uh operators in conspiracy, why don't they take all that energy and say, well, let's just let's just circumvent them.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just let's just process our own beef and circumvent the big four.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and put their and put their emphasis on on freedom, on food, freedom, and liberty, and being able to actually access the marketplace uh without going through the the top four and and and hoping and praying that the government regulators are going to actually uh regulate.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean JBS, which is a Brazilian-owned company, one of the big four, JBS, Cena, they were the largest contributor to Trump's inauguration.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They were the largest single contributor to Trump's inauguration.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, we're we're we're back, we're we're back to the glyphosate thing, you know, the executive order with glyphosate.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, 45 of top people in the White House administration, and we brought this out back then, um, e have received in their lifetime, they have worked, they've received a paycheck from Bayer Corporation.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: 45 of them in in Trump's, you know, inner circle of influence.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's a lot of influence.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and the same thing is happening here.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so, you know, if if they could, if they could actually collude and and drop the price, they would.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: But they they haven't because I think I think they they can't.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody will say, well, you're all you're you're naive, you know, you you don't appreciate how powerful and how strong these outfits are.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, that that may be true.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I certainly wouldn't pay put wouldn't put past some um some uh uh criminaliz criminalization, some illegal activity within the confines of the Packers and Stockyards Act, but that's not why we've gotten to the point we we are.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's not why we are in the place we are.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: The reason we're in the place we are is because we've lost thousands and thousands of community butchers and abattoirs around the country uh due to scale, scale prejudicial um federal regulations.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we're in the place we're in.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I so my understanding when they first talked about this executive order was that that is the problem that they were going to address.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like when he was on Glenn Beck's show, that's what Glenn Beck was saying, like, you know, remove the regulations so that we can, you know, basically slaughter and not have to go to these, you know, sp specific federal run uh slaughterhouses.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so are you saying that after looking at these two executive orders, that's not going to be the case?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's not going to help these farmers slaughter on their farms or slaughter these smaller custom houses or state inspected houses?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, because because that's uh that's uh applicable within federal law.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can't Cena I can't I can't birth birth a calf, raise a calf here on the farm and s and and if and sell a T bone steak to a neighbor without first exporting that calf to a federal inspected slaughterhouse an hour away and then re-importing it two weeks later in a in a in a package that that I can't that I was not able to touch.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the owner of that animal can't touch that package.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be you know done in a licensed facility.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so so the result of all this is that it costs me because because the plant we use and co-own is small, it costs us$650 to do what Tyson does for$150.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's called price discrimination.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because it's because we don't have the volume to pay for the regulatory overheads, the minimal regulatory overheads that the applicable federal law demands.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: The applicable federal law demands that we have a sixteen-foot-high kill floor.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for centuries, for thousands of years, millennia, people have killed animals out in the field.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and in America, you can still shoot a buffalo in a field and have it federal inspected, but you can't do it with a cow.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we have all of these uh um completely bogus requirements that make it prohibitively difficult for a farmer to be able to raise and process an animal on the farm the animal was raised on and sell portions of it to a neighbor, to a friend, to you know, somebody that comes by and is two consenting adults wanting to exercise their voluntary choice to give their microbiome agency to be able to engage in a food transaction without asking a bureaucrat's permission.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we've gotten in our country, which is why I've written a new book.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Were you waiting for that segue?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, it's coming.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: I could tell.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we really if we really want to change the climate, we're not gonna change the climate with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've we've got it we've got to we've gotta keep the iceberg away from the ship.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we do that not with regulation, but with freedom and liberty.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I've just written a new book.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here we are.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Food Emancipation, Unshackling America's Sustenance.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I love, Joel?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: Both of our books have all of these tags where we've marked sections.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh uh Cena, I you know this is my of course, this is you know my last, my latest book, but uh yeah, don't say your last.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it is it is the it is the the what what what do they call it?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Magnus opus or whatever, you know, the the um the culmination of my lifetime of trying to articulate, trying to move food freedom forward.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I think that we're at a at a significant um inflection point in our in our culture where trust has broken down, um nutrition has broken down, the health system's broken down, and and the way out of this wilderness is not going to be with government grants, it's not gonna be with a new agency, it's not gonna be with with tweaking government involvement in the food system.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: What it's gonna be is us pulling up ourselves by our own bootstraps and and getting out of and and crossing the Jordan River uh and to the promised land.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the promised land is one where we can actually take personal responsibility.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about personal responsibility for our health, personal responsibility for our vaccine program, personal responsibility for you know our financial investments, our kids' education.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's time to take personal responsibility on our food.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: That that's where we need to head.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so this book uh now is my attempt to articulate the the necessity of the reason for the benefits of and the rebuttal to the naysayers who who think that I want to kill everybody with unsafe food.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, this more this morning scene, I spoke at a at a conservative political breakfast club, and um a guy walked out to the car with me, says, I want to tell you something.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I was in um Iraq in uh special forces, American Special Forces.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um he said, I had two significant food poisonings in the American Forces mess hall, eating eating uh our food.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: He said, but we routinely ate out in villages with people, sitting on the ground, eating a home butchered goat or whatever.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: He said, tons of times.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: He said, we'd we we would go in, special forces, we would go in and say, who's the poorest farmer in the in the community?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they'd say, Oh, it's you know, he and why he's he's struggling, and his wife is sick or whatever.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said the American uh military would then buy that family's goat or sheep or whatever, and then the village would, you know, would process it and all sit down with the village and the soldiers and they would eat.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I never had problems with any of that village food.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: But he said, I had big problems with the American food.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a it was just a really um uh heartfelt um testimonial, you know, to to so here we are.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you want to talk about the book a little bit?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to talk about the book, and I love these stories like the one you just told, too, because it also gives us a little glimpse into like a sector of America that most of us may not be privy to, to think that the military is even doing something like that, you know, to go out and buy the poor farmer's animal to lift him up that way.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's that's truly remarkable.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's the America that I like to hear about.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't agree with you more.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh it's it's it's um it it makes you proud.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a yes, it's heartwarming, um, good, good story.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so yeah, I um I love this book, and I'm not just saying that because I kind of have to, but better.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, I tell you, this was actually the one of the most enjoyable books I've read that you've written, and one of the most enjoyable books I've read in the food space.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: I your writing to me uh was uh just the best that it has been.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was very conversational but knowledgeable, compassionate.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I I thought it was engaging.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: There are many things I want to talk about before we run out of time.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the things that I want to start with, it's on page 293.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: You have this chapter on misplaced efforts.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: And if I would love for you to go into that as well and talk about where some of the misplaced efforts have been, in your opinion, even in your own life.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: But the part that I think would be fantastic to start with are the things that you say that we hold in common.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I think a lot of times in this food space, people think of you as like this fringe lunatic farmer.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, um, and maybe even think of me as some fringe health nut.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: But you've listed here 10 like what I would call these underlying principles that I think that we all have in common.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: And if we can start there, I think it will start bridging some of the differences between people, and they might realize that we have more in common than many people think.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: We want a lot of the same things.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: We may have different methodologies to get there, but we are all really searching, or most of us are searching for the same the same outcome.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, do you want to quickly go through those 10, even if you just read them?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're uh what what page are they on?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Page 293.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: 290 293.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's way out.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's almost to the end of the book.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, these I was like, well, let's start by connecting people.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not this is not a um, this is not a uh a little book, you know.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's got some bulk to it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's um what is it?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: 300 and yeah, almost 400 pages.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's yeah, it's uh it's got some heft to it.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, here are things we hold in common.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we just listed them off.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Flourishing farms that are economically, emotionally, and environmentally vibrant.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who doesn't want that?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, local affordable food with short chains of custody between farm and plate.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, barring number two, a relationally oriented provenance where know your farmer, know your food may be on the internet with doorstep delivery, but it's not the nameless, faceless industrial counterpart at Walmart.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, mRNA, genetically modified organisms, and the like are not part of an authentic food and farm system.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Most people agree with that.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Five, labor should be legal, well compensated, and attract our nation's best and brightest into agriculture.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, farms should increase the commons.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Soil, water, fresh air, pollinators, wildlife, ecological diversity, and social interaction.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Increase the commons.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven, livestock should enjoy a habitat that honors and respects each species' unique physiological proclivities and distinctiveness, like the pignus of the pig.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number eight, if you can't pronounce it or can't make it in your kitchen, it's a food additive that has no place on the plate.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number nine, a farmer's goal should be first and foremost nutrition and secondarily volume.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And number 10, carbon and organic matter are the keys to soil health.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those are those are broad, broad, common, nonpartisan shared beliefs, I think, values.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: I do too.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: I can't think of anyone that would say, oh, I don't want a farmer to think of nutrition first, or animals should have a good habitat.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, or say that animals should not have a good habitat.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the animals shouldn't have a good habitat, that we shouldn't compensate labor.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that I think we all learn during COVID that the the big industrial food complex is not stable.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: So who doesn't want to have food security for local farmers?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like these are things I think we can all agree on.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: What I think your book does a brilliant job at doing is outlining how do we get there, right?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the big crux of this whole thing.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's these 10 kind of tenets that I think everybody probably wants, or most everybody wants.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: How do you actually get there?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this is where the big debate is.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: And what I'd love for you to do is even talk a little bit about um in the the healthcare problem.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: Let's start with there.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, because part of this, part of how to get these 10 things into our to be just commonplace in our modern culture, um, part of that is not understanding the past and how we got here.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: And in this book, you explain how we got here.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: We talk a lot about that on our program for the food side, not as much about the health side, but give us any kind of insights, you know, about how we actually got here.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I think I think that we are so far removed from a completely independent healthcare approach.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, pre-1900, pre-the Flexner report and the Rockefellers, pre-1900, um healthcare was a completely private, individualized, many times kind of a community-based thing.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: And even even teaching hospitals uh were uh well, hospitals were primarily philanthropic, philanthropic outreaches of often, you know, religious places, you know, the Methodists, the Presbyterian, you know, you got and and many and many of those um large hospitals today still carry the name of some denomination, you know, the the uh Roman Catholic, the you know, the Baptist hospital, whatever.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they've got they've they still carry these names.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they they were they were um philanthropic efforts and the medical community um was dominated by people who who had success in in healing and and word got around, people would write letters, hey, I went to this you know clinic, and and um you know, we we tend to think that people in that day were just isolated and unable because of our fast our internet today, but but but they were not.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in many ways, at in that day, there was almost more authenticity in the communication than there is today, because you had to write a letter, you know, AI couldn't write it, and uh and and people got together at you know at church or or you know, community gatherings.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Think about Little House on the prairie, you know, and and and uh community spelling bees and and political uh debates and things that they did.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I think it's very hard for us today to grasp that for decades, health care was a completely non-governmental thing in the culture.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and the reason, and and as the government began licensing doctors, the American Medical Association, and then of course as medical insurance came along, you know, you couldn't you couldn't pay for your um you know for your stitches with a sack of potatoes and a you know a country ham.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so as as uh insurance came along under um Franklin Roosevelt all of that started to change this personal personal responsibility for health care into a cultural responsibility for health care.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly your health decisions did not just impact you, they impacted me because now we have a pool of money, whether it's an insurance company, taxpayer supported, whatever, we now have a pool of money that we put together.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm really interested in how you view your healthcare options because if if I think you're doing something really stupid, that's going to make my insurance go up, my taxes go up.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we we we as a culture, we moved the entire healthcare question from one of of personal um personal prerogative to corporate, and I don't mean corporate by corporation, I mean I mean, you know, um non-individual, not non-personal uh uh liability or or or involvement.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and so this is one of the big thorny issues in food freedom when you have people that you know that think raw milk will kill you.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, you can't engage in risky behavior because if you get sick from drinking raw milk, it makes my premiums go up or it makes you know my taxes go up.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so we changed this individual preference to a cultural mandate, and this is and we're still trying to work through it.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: So some people would say though, that the reason that the government got involved in the medical system, uh, you know, and and in health care in general, is because people have this vision that back then people were dying in the streets or they were being turned away when they needed health care.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the case, Joel?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Or why did we actually get government involvement in health care?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, people were definitely not.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sure, you hear stories of you know snake oil and and those kinds of things, but no, people were not dying in the streets.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and the fact is that the you know the the um the powers that be uh saw a way to you know to to garner control.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And those powers were initially financed by the Rockefellers who wanted to sell petroleum uh through drugs.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we we've talked about that on this blog uh before.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: But all of this was a grand a grand um trajectory away from private private and personal medical care.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was incremental and it didn't start until about you know 1900 or a little after, but it but it progressed, it progressed and progressed and progressed until Obamacare and now you know there's a lot of push to to think that we need universal health care, that nobody should, you know, carry, that there that we should eliminate private health insurance.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and so so there's there's been this this steady march as we've um as we've moved away from what we had.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it so we're just consolidating, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: We're just centralizing, just like the meat packers, you know, coming back around to the executive order.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: What I thought was really powerful is on page 112.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people talk about how um you know you and I have talked a lot about how you don't really have much choice when you go into a supermarket, like not much food choice, right?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: And people kind of laugh at us with they're like, wow, we have so much more diversity than ever before.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, look at all the fruits and vegetables and the meats and the eggs and all like all the 12 aisles of processed foods in the middle of the grocery store, right?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: So they laugh.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: They don't quite under some of them don't understand what we mean by you don't really have a choice.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: You did a great job of laying this out on page 112.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, so uh I'll just I'll just read a list here.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So here are the here are the beef brands or the brands that Tyson Foods owns.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and these these all have beef in them because this was this was the whole point.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was the four meat packers.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, here are the brands that they own.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go through them.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is just Tyson Foods.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Advanced Pierre Foods, Adell's, Ballpark, Barber Foods, Big Az, Basco's, Brian, Chairman's Reserve, Fast Fixin, Galler, Hillshire Farm, Hillshire, IBP, Jimmy Dean, Lady Aster, Lanshire, Like Moms, Mexican Original, Open Prairie, Original Fiffy, Pierre, Ruben, Russer, Savoro, Sarah Lee, Star Ranch, Angus, State Fair, Steak Easy, Ripe Brand, and Wonder Bar.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those are just the those are just the brands Tyson owes.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, they're all the same.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when you see a recall, uh a recall from some some outfit, you know, the the the article will list all these brands, you know, and there's like 20 brands.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because they all came out of the same spigot.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's just all they did.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I uh you know, I I have a joke about this.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I can see them at these slaughterhouses, you know.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: The the uh the shift supervisor says, All right, we need uh we need uh 10,000 red labels here, you know.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he's watching the counter, and then when the 10,000s package comes off, all right now stop the put put the green label on, you know, and here goes the green label for we need 8,000 of those.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I mean you can just see it.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's the same stuff.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're just slapping a different color label on it.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: That that that's the amount of choice the Americans have in the in the regular channels, yeah.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the same with the produce as well, the vast majority of the produce.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: But let but let's continue on because you said so.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: Four meat packers control 85% of the American meat market.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: You just listed Tyson Food, um, owning those brands.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, how about Cargill?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Cargill, Cargill.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so Cargill, here are the brands they own: Angus Pride, Castlewood, Charter Reserve, Corner and Company, XL genuinely better.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: You like that one?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um Honest Turkey, Honeysuckle White, Certified, Preferred Angus, Rumba Meats, Sterling Silver, Sunny Fresh, and TNT Burgers.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds more like a bit of a uh dynamite than uh than something you eat.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we go to JBS.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: JBS is a Brazilian company.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, wait, JBS, is this the one that you said gave money to the largest uh contributor to um President Trump's inauguration?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, here we go.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: JBS uh owns these brands 1855, 5 Star, Adaptable, Aspen Ridge, Cedar River Farms, DAC, Danola, Elite Prime, Gold Kissed, Gourmet Burgers, Grass Run Farms, Imperial, Just Bear, La Gerencia, Golden Plump, Pierce Chicken, Pilgrims, Princip, Samco, Showcase, Black Angus, Swift, Think Pure, and Torricos.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other of the four big ones, which is the smallest of the four, but the other one of the big four is National Beef.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and they own uh Black Canyon, S8 Angus, Goodness Grays Cows, Iowa Premium Angus, Natural Certified Angus Beef, and Natural Beef Prime.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I I didn't I didn't count them, Cena.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: One it anyway, it's it's a it's a slew of them.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's almost all of the major meat brands.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of them, you know, are familiar to us, others will be familiar with other people.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's some that are regional, you know, only in a particular part, but they're all they're all brands that started out and you know as kind of independent places, and then these companies bought them up.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: They they bought the you know, they bought that brand.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so now it's under their umbrella.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, um, it's a pretty it's a pretty uh amazing list.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, a choice seems to be an illusion.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: So do you think, you know, JBS, one of the you know, big four.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: Having donated so much money to, you know, to Trump's cause, do you think that influences Trump in this, you know, you're laughing at me.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to be impartial here.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: I've shifted to interviewer mode.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: Come on, you know, because I mean, you gotta think that anytime somebody props you up in some way, donates to you, researchers do the same thing.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: It does you're not impartial anymore.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're definitely definitely not impartial.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and it colors.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you imagine if I went up to Trump and said, Trump, we really need a food emancipation proclamation.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just just just free us to be able to sell, you know, to our neighbors.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine a JBS representative sitting there?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he he would have a he would have an aneurysm.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I can tell you, well, you know, Congressman Thomas Massey, when he was pushing the the Prime Act, which is doesn't go nearly as far as what I'm asking for, um, but it but it's you know it's a step in the right direction.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he said that there are a thousand, a thousand small-scale, you know, community-based uh abattoirs that would start up as soon as the Prime Act passed.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so when I say a small outfit, I mean we've talked about these that do 5,000 in a day.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: When I say a small outfit, I'm talking about somebody that can do 10 beef in a day.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe they do, maybe they do 50 in a week, 30, 30, 20, 30, 40 in a week, 50 in a week.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just let's just assume that you know these are doing 50, 50 in a week, 10 a day.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if there are a thousand of them, fifty times a thousand is um twenty uh a two thousand five hundred.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, fifty times no, fifty times a thousand is fifty thousand.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Fifty times a thousand is fifty thousand, and if you do that fifty weeks of the year, that's two point five million.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now two point five million is a lot of critters.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot, and and it and and it brings it it brings to my mind the the the way nature scales.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um actually at this meeting this morning, um I had a had a young guy, his question was, well, but you know, he said, I've been out in Idaho on these, you know, 3,000 cow dairies and the other.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: He said, How do you feed America, you know, with with farms like yours?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um I explained to him that nature does not scale with consolidation and centralization.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: If nature wants more what oak lumber, and we need more oak, it doesn't make a great big oak tree, it makes acorns.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: If nature wants more milk, it doesn't make a great big cow, you know, with an udder the size of the Empire State Building.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: It it it makes calves that grow into cows.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: If nature wants more tomatoes, it doesn't make a great big tomato plant, it makes it plant, it makes a bunch of little more tomato plants.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nature scales by duplication, by duplication, which sounds a lot like mentorship, discipleship, you know.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: So so the whole what I'm trying to do in this book, I mean, I'm realizing I'm trying to cut through literally a century, a century of propaganda, brainwashing, and cultural perceptions and assumptions.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to do in one book, you know.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but I'm but this idea that we can't feed ourselves unless we have Tyson chicken houses or JBS feedlots that we can't uh uh that we can't feed ourselves is just is just not true.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely not true.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and the fact that our entire system incentivizes consolidation is just part of the part of the fact that our entire system um disrespects and and militates against nature's desire for duplication.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's how nature grows.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nature goes with duplication.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um if we want if we want more if we want more uh labor, we don't make one great big man and one great big woman.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: We we make babies, okay?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I mean it's it it's so simple and it's so obvious to me to see.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: But everything in our Western American cultural mystique is man, if we don't, if we don't have these massive chicken houses and these massive feedlots and these massive hog factories with 10,000 pigs that stink up to three miles away.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't have that, we're all gonna starve.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just not true.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not true.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and we and we have we have allowed ourselves to swallow uh a bill of goods that is not that not only does it not work, it's actually repulsive to God's design of nature.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's so beautiful.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, when you say it, and that's one of the beauties of this book, is that when you say these things to kind of debunk the mainstream narrative now, it is so obvious.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll tell you, it's something I these things are things I've never thought of before.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I just didn't stop to think about it.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's one of the beauties um of this book is that as soon as you say it, it's like it tugs at the heartstrings because it makes perfect sense without even much explanation whatsoever.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just a matter of how do you get to that point?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do you go from this was my perception, you know, we have to have this centralized system.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then now I understand how what you're saying, that how nature works, how God works.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get there?
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: And is that what your chapter workarounds is about?
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: Is how we can start actually getting there?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so the chapter on workarounds is is things things that people have done already because of these stifling regulations.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are very creative people out there who have done things to try to work around this this compliance thing.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's everything from herd share to community-supported agriculture to um you know to doing online butchery classes, and part of the butchery class is that you get free meat.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh the the pet food, pet food is another one, you know, not fit for human consumption.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: But seeing it, you know, at the end of the day, why should we have to do that really?
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, why should you why should you have to do a bunch of legal and mental and logistical gymnastics just to be able to get a chicken pot pie to a neighbor?
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's absurd.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: It it totally is absurd.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's absurd.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and for the farmers listening, uh I I I really drilled down on this idea that um, you know, we raise pastured chickens, pastured poultry.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we raise 600, 600 broilers on one acre.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if if you add up all the all the little you know daily moves, it it ends up being um one acre handles 600 chickens.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if we process those chickens, sell them as whole chickens, they're gonna sell for about 20 bucks a piece.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: So 20 bucks times 600 is you know twelve thousand dollars.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 12,000 of gross income per acre.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you're a small, you're a small holder, you're a small homesteader, you only own you know two acres, and you want to put, you know, and you want to use an acre to grow chickens, all right?
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: So now you've got$12,000 on on the acre.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now let's say instead of just selling whole broilers, you you cut them up and you do, you know, um, you know, bonus skinless breasts and you do, you know, legs and thighs and stuff.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so in general, what that does is kind of double the value of that chicken.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we double the value and we go to$24,000, okay, on that acre.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now that sounds pretty good on an acre of land to be able to generate$24,000.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: But now let's put that chicken in a in a chicken pot pie, a frozen chicken pot pie in a cardboard box that's a heat and eat value add.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now that chicken is worth$200 because that chicken goes into 15 chicken pot pies.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, suddenly, at$200 a chicken, your one acre just generated$120,000.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: And seeing a sudden, we have a pathway of entry for young farmers.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: The average farmer is now 60 years old.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: The average livestock farmer is 65.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the next 15 years, we're going to transfer 50% half of all American agriculture equity.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's land, buildings, machinery, you know, experience, okay, all the equity in agriculture is going to be transferred in the next 15 years.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: That has never happened in any civilization in history except in conquest.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Huns come in and overrun Rome, whatever.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's some some conquering.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not saying we're getting ready to be conquered, but I am saying that if we if we come through this catastrophic successional transitory time in agriculture peacefully, we will be the first culture in history to do so.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we desperately need we desperately need ways for young farmers to be able to get in and by accessing the market.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, we need consumers.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, you and I, we promote domestic culinary skills.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, get single ingredient stuff, cook it from scratch.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what we promote.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: In our book Beyond Labels, we recognize a lot of people aren't there yet.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, and so the fact is, right now, right now, 75% of food Americans consume is prepared, preserved, and packaged outside the home.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: 75%.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what Teresa and I eat, goodness, um, 75% is prepared and packaged and preserved in the home, you know, it's not outside, okay?
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, so what, what, what are people like us to do?
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's our do we sit here and and judge and rail on you negligent people, get in your kitchen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: How about we, how about we say, okay, I know you didn't grow up this way, and and uh boiling water scares you.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so here you go.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, farmer John over here has frozen chicken pot pies you can buy.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have any MSG, they don't have any vaccines, they don't have GMOs, they don't have antibiotics in them.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're it's the best stuff in the world, and and you can buy it from him, and you don't have to get in your kitchen today.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll honor you in your, I'll respect your your your culinary ignorance.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: I won't judge you for it.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an alternative.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why why can't that be a starting point?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and it solves um, I mean, one of my chapters is all the benefits.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: It solves all of this dysfunctionality in our culture with one fell swoop, and it doesn't require one dime of taxpayer money, it doesn't require one single agency, a federal agency, it doesn't require anything.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: All it does is say, we're gonna let you personally take responsibility for your food.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're scared of that and you want to shop at Walmart, we have the entire federal program in place to make sure that you get a blue inspected buzz on your T-bone steak and you don't have to ever think about where it came from, who did it, or anything.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can trust the government.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't trust the government and you don't trust all these brands that we just read about, and you and you trust your neighbor farmer more, we're gonna give you the right to be able, and that farmer to be able to sell you his alt his or her alternative product in a voluntary transaction.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna let that happen.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we're gonna create a place for the lunatic fringe to innovate, to create, and and to offer an alternative to the to the status quo.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna the federal government will stand down.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: The bureaucrats, we're gonna stand down if two of you want to get together and do that.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm asking for.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's beautiful because it lowers the hurdle and it says that you know the person can enter into the tribe, if you will, and does not have to live up to this high expectation that a lot of people have placed upon those tribal members.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I love that.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: So this sounds like a win for everybody almost, right?
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: Who does not win in that scenario?
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: And is that why the federal government won't stand down?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, like, why won't they just stand down?
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, why won't they just stand down?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Medical Association, the Ralph Nader Consumer Advocacy folks, all the people that are scared to trust an individual.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're scared to trust an individual, and they want to protect their turf.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Grocers Association, the obviously the four big packing associations, uh, the the you know, big ag, big ag, big pharma, big food, okay, they're the ones that will be hurt.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a nonpartisan issue.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bernie Sanders runs around all the time, Senator Bernie Sanders, you know, liberal is all get out, but but we agree.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: He runs around saying, we got to stop the oligarchy, gotta stop the oligarchy.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he wags his finger and he shakes his head.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and he's exactly right.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what's the only thing in his arsenal is is is additional government intervention.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: We got to activate the Federal Trade Commission, we've got to activate the social the um um securities exchange commission, we've got to enforce the stockyard pack.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: None of that, none of that.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've been we that's what we've been doing for 125 years, or 120, anyway, since President Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, um started the federal uh the food safety inspection service in 1908 after Upson Sinclair wrote the jungle in 1906.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: We we've we've been we've been getting more and more and more federal government intervention in the food system since that time, and where's it gotten us?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is our food better?
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is our health better?
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is our uh are our farmers flourishing better?
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a metric in which this has been better, except except perhaps cheap prices, cheap food prices.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because with all of this fraternity.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Collusion, the true cost of food does not have to show up at the cash register.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: So there we are.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: I it a whole summation right there in that monologue.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is a fantastic book.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're out of time, but I would love to close out by you just even briefly sharing the story about um because a lot of people will you know write books and they'll come up with their own principles, but they don't stick to them in all scenarios, right?
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: They're almost like what I call Sunshine Patriots.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in in uh in biblical circles we call them Sun Sunday go to meeting Christians.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday Sunday, Sunday, you know, we're we're Christian, but the rest of the week we, you know, act like the devil.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I have the privilege of, you know, hanging out with you behind the cameras and whatnot and getting to know you.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I'm I already knew this about your character, but I don't know that a lot of people actually know this about how principled you are, because anybody can say something on camera, right?
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: What they do off camera is what matters more.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd love for you to share this story about how you helped somebody move forward with getting religious exemption.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, so um, back when homeschooling was new and there was a lot of pushback on homeschooling, and and then and then we finally got um homeschooling in Virginia.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and there there were several criteria that that you could do homeschooling.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the final one, I mean, one was if you were an accredited teacher, you could you could homeschool by default.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody asked any questions.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Another one is if you had your uh curriculum approved, you know, then you know you could homeschool.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the last one, the fourth one was a religious exemption, religious exemption.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and of course, when they did that, they you know, they assumed that this would be you know something for the faith community, the Christian community, uh, you know, uh because it was the Christian community that was largely lobbying for, you know, for for a homeschooling um uh law.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I became very, very friendly with a lady that was, you know, interested in in pastor chickens and showed her how to gut chickens.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: We got we got to be quite friendly.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: She had a daughter that was struggling, struggling in school.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so she pulled her out, and she couldn't meet any of those criteria um except the religious exemption, but she was an atheist.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't believe in God.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she was an atheist.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote, helped her, coached her write a letter that ended up being accepted um as a bona fide religion, that atheism was a bona fide religion, and helped her articulate in the letter so she'd get approved under the religious exemption status for her daughter to homeschool.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's how much I believe in liberty and freedom.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is not just for a little subsection.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is for anyone who holds strong beliefs.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and and she got you know, she got through it, and I was uh there are people who would, I'm sure, uh not like that I helped her get it under that, but I saw it as completely consistent, as completely consistent within within the legal framework that had been created.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I would have done it for a Hindu, I would have done it for uh, you know, for a Muslim, I would have done it for anybody.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's great, especially in a society where we talk about we don't have a lot of trust, and part of it's because we see all these carve-outs and exceptions that are made.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_02: And what you're doing is you're applying the law uniformly to all.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I I just thought that story really jumped out at me, and I thought, that's Joel.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like that you can say what you want about you know whether atheism is a religion or not, but it is the principle of applying the law equally to everybody.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I love that addition.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Joel, where can people get the book and is it available for them to purchase now?
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the book will be able to start shipping on September 21st.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we actually don't have it uh we we don't have them in-house yet.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have when we have a couple little advanced copies here, but uh we don't have them actually to sell.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um we are holding um, look, you know, once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I have I'm not releasing them to Amazon or anybody until January 1.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so right now the only way you can get it is through our Polyface Farms gift shop.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so just uh hit Polyface Farms or you can, you know, just if you type in P-O-L-Y, it'll probably pop up.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um and go there to our our gifts, our bookstore, and um you can get it pre-release right now.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It won't be shipped until September 21, so give it a couple of days, and um and it'll come, it'll come to you from our uh gift shop.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and then you have a hard launch coming up and tell them about the autograph.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, hard launch coming up around uh November 1.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't actually picked a date yet.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: In uh the hard launch, then what we'll do is the first, you know, a couple hundred people, I'll I'll autograph them.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But um uh but if you if you want it right now, uh get it.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you know, uh I encourage you to get two or three so you can give it to a friend.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um this thing, this thing is a um is a testament to a life-loving food freedom and individual choice in our food system.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't realize, Cena, that federal judges have ruled from the bench more than once that Americans have no freedom of food choice.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have it.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so uh this the the forward is written by Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of Brownstone Institute.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's just a really classy guy, and um, I was really appreciative of him writing the foreword.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh go ahead and get your advanced copy and um we'll get it right to you.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh let's let's let's um let's blanket this world.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, Jeffrey Tucker said when he read it, he said, this has the capacity to touch the food system like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think about it.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Within six months of the jungle coming out, those big seven at that time, big seven companies that controlled half of the meat supply, lost half of their sales in six months after the jungle came out.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine if this book could awaken that many bipartisan people to understand, to actually understand uh why we are where we are and and why the media narrative on this never actually and and and the Trump executive orders and whatever, why it never actually gets to the nub of the problem.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: It it never gets there.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just it just dances all around the edges and tries to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we're gonna keep everybody updated following the executive order for the ranchers.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it may be a coincidence, but uh the 60-day um period that they gave, you know, secretary and them to respond to that um you know, that executive order, it gets them past the midterms.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So could be a total coincidence, but I'm just saying.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um so we'll keep you up to date on that.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it yes, everybody get the book and Christmas is coming up.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_02: This would be a good gift of freedom to give to people for Christmas, and also get one for um your congresspeople, right?
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even put like, I mean, they're not gonna most of them aren't gonna read the whole thing, but give them the book, give them a single sheet of paper with bullet points, you know, uh listed out because they'll read like a short thing with bullet points on it, and they can read the book if they're interested.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_02: But we've got to spread the word.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to, this is a blueprint for how we can move forward and actually have food freedom of choice.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we need to gain momentum and get people on board with it.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't see I don't I don't know another book, maybe you do, but um, I don't know another book in which the concept of food freedom is is the only theme of the book.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the only uh there are plenty of books that have you know danced around a little bit, you know, uh chapters.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of books who have who have um condemned federal regulatory agencies, you know, agency capture, things like that.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know of a book that has that that the the the the single theme for the whole book has been to articulate all the ramifications of the argument for a um for a right for a farmer to be able to sell um home processed food to friends.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_00: There hasn't been one.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know of one either, and certainly not one that's outlined it in the manner in which you have.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that might be because a lot of people don't know the topic to the depth and breadth that you know.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So uh, you know, like you said, there's been pieces published here and there, but having this as a compilation and laid out the way that you have and with a lot of compassion and understanding, but also a principled approach is something I I have never personally seen before.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it is an original.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, should we leave our folks with a question?
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um my question is uh, do you trust farmers more than bureaucrats?
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you trust bureaucrats more than farmers?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be a that that'd be a that might be a good one.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being with us on another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Cena, for all your kind words.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for staying with us through this, and uh, we'll look forward to visiting with you again next week on another Beyond Labels podcast.