Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #262: Is Your Avocado Oil Fake? Plus Trump's Beef Plan & the Flesh-Eating Bacteria Surge

Transcript

Episode #262: Is Your Avocado Oil Fake? Plus Trump's Beef Plan & the Flesh-Eating Bacteria Surge · Beyond Labels Premium

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Making palatable grass finished beef is equivalent in the food sector to the finest wine.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: They decreased their glyphosate content five hundred and forty-three-fold.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: Five hundred and forty-three-fold, Joel.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: And I can tell you, you know, as a producer myself, it is by far away the hardest thing we do.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Stina McKellar, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: And today we are so fortunate to be at Polyface Farm again.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: It it's like it's grounding, it it calms down my nervous system.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: My kids are here frolicking around, getting good microbes on their skin and breathing it in.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: It's it's phenomenal.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: So, Joel, in honor of us being here at the farm, I have an amazing story sent in from one of our listeners.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: This is Irene who sent this in.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: She's a longtime listener.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: She and her husband Nate have a cow named um sorry, they have a goat named Maybelle.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Her goat had three baby goats.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: And they've had the they had this goat, uh Maybelle, for a long time.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, they decided they were gonna get a cow.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And it just worked out really well.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to keep the cow and get rid of the goat, okay?
1:19
SPEAKER_00: They found a great home that was gonna take the mom, Maybelle, and her three babies.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: So what happened was they'd been talking about it in front of the goat, and they even went out to milk the goat that morning.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: They left the gate unlatched, and normally this goat, after milking, would you know go out into the field with the babies and they'd start eating.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: That day, Maybelle didn't do that.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: She actually opened, pushed open the door herself, and by the time that Irene's husband came back out, the mama goat and the three babies were on the trailer.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: This is a trailer they've never been on before in their entire lives.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: He had made this like a makeshift trailer.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: She said that um there wasn't any hay in the trailer, nothing to attract them there.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: The trailer was literally just a box strapped onto a landscaping trailer, and that he had set up the night before.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: So not even familiar with it.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: They come out, they're in the trailer, just staring at them, waiting to go to their new home.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Right?
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and of course, she couldn't wait to share it with us because we did that episode related to that book of dogs who know when their owners are coming home.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: Like this is somehow animals are able to communicate with animals, animals have a strong sense.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Our daughter, uh Rachel, uh she has a cat named Morgan House Cat.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: And uh every time she gets ready to go on a trip, when she pulls her suitcase out to pack it, the cat sleeps on the suitcase.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I'm you can't go, uh I'm I'm holding down this thing.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh oh, oh, I'll tell you how smart Morgan is.
3:11
SPEAKER_02: That cat.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: So we had that cat here at our house for a couple years before Rachel moved out and took the cat with her and all that.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: And um Morgan is a mighty hunter.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: When she was here on the farm, she's an inside cat now because Rachel lives in town, but when she was here, she was a mighty hunter.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: And um, so she comes to the front door um you know, with a mouse, you know, she's caught a mouse.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: And uh Teresa says, No, you can't come in here.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, well, uh once you know she came to the door and Teresa didn't notice a mouse, so you opened the door, let the cat in.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: Well, the cat drags the mouse in and proceeds to be then eat it on the on the fireplace hearth, you know, crunch, crunch, crunch.
3:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: So the next day, Morgan comes to the door with a mouse.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: No, you can't come in here, you know, because you made a mess on the fireplace hearth.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: Uh you gotta eat it outside.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: The next morning, Morgan comes up to the door.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: She's got a mouse.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: And um same thing, you know, no, you can't come in.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: Next day, she comes to the door.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: No mouse?
4:30
SPEAKER_02: Okay, you can come in.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: She had brought that mouse up and put it under the, tucked it under the threshold of the door where Theresa couldn't see it.
4:40
SPEAKER_02: When she when Theresa opened the door, Morgan jumped, grabbed the mouse, and in the house she came.
4:46
SPEAKER_02: She she figured that out.
4:49
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
4:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, animals are animals are smart.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: It's like Temple Grand, and you know, they they live in the moment, they don't have a schedule, they don't have a calendar, they live completely in the moment.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: They're they're pretty sharp.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're amazing.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: Every time I travel, like coming to here to the farm, I can't let them see my suitcase.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Like in advance, they get very anxious and unsettled, like restless.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just it's not healthy for my dog.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: So I don't do it until like that morning.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: I'll bring the suitcase down and then I explain to them this is where I'm going, this is how I'm gonna be here, like daddy's still gonna be here, you know.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I have noticed, like, so I changed my behavior after reading that book and hearing podcasts from him, and where he mentioned that animals can understand in some capacity.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: We don't quite know how.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: So tell them where you're going.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Don't just like throw them like a piece of food and run out the door, right?
5:44
SPEAKER_00: Um, because they won't they'll sit there and be in anxiety.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: So I started to to tell them, okay, this is where we're going.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm bringing the kids with me, you know, somebody's here, or like I'm go, I'm gonna be gone and back to you in probably two hours, whatever.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And I get you not, it went from when I would just leave and be like, okay, bye, the dogs would all run to the door and try to get out the door to go with me.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And every time now that I sit there and calmly talk to them and stare at them and tell them step by step what I'm doing, they just stay laying down.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: They're calm.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: All five of them.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like it's just and they're they're a couple different breeds.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like it's just one breed.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: All five of these breeds are understanding something.
6:27
SPEAKER_02: If only one breed was understanding you, uh, that would be that would be um a pretty good selling point, you know, for for that breed.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: We'd have to start to to yeah, grow puppies and sell them for well, that's something.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, animals are animals are pretty amazing, that's for sure.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I thought that was a little like inspiring story.
6:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, so before I get into my story that might be a little bit upsetting for people who shop in the grocery store, there's another positive story.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: There is uh a company called um Banza, I believe I'm produce uh pronouncing that correctly, and they make a chickpea pasta line.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: It's really popular, for example, people who are trying to not eat grains, they'll go to like chickpea or red um lentil pasta.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: So they make this chickpea pasta line, and as you know, chickpeas are in the group of crops that can be desiccated, right?
7:25
SPEAKER_00: So there's more of a chance of having glyphosate or glyphosate residues end up in that pasta if they're not careful.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: So what they've done is they have now been uh certified by the detox project.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: So that's a third-party um certification that you can find in grocery stores, and they actually test the product for uh uh residues of glyphosate and glyphosate presence, and it's the lowest detectable limit possible.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Their chickpeas product line, it went from um they decreased their glyphosate content five hundred and forty-three fold.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Five hundred and forty-three fold, Joel, in this chickpea pasta line.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: They went from um like almost 3,000 parts per billion to non-detectable levels of glyphosate or glyphosate residues, and they did it in one year.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: So we talk about how, oh, you know, we hear stories about oh, it takes a long time to change the food supply, and these big companies have all these steps they have to go through.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: And I've been one of them saying, no, I worked for like some of these companies.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: They can change if they want to.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: Do you know if that change, if they change suppliers or if the farmers changed practice?
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: So what they did was um they added to two things.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: They changed the chickpea sourcing.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: They started to source from uh companies that where the chickpeas were grown in naturally drier climates so that the crop would um mature and desiccate.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's that's why they spray it with glyphosate, and we call it desiccation, to dry the crop down and dry it down uniformly, too.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: So it's for economic purposes.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: So they switched to dry climates where they're sourcing their chickpeas, and they have started to contract with farmers who are saying that they will not use desiccants.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was fantastic.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Like they didn't wait for some government regulation.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: They heard that the people, surprise, surprise, didn't want to consume glyphosate, and they actively changed their behavior and let the market speak.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: So you probably don't know, but I have to ask the question.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: So when they went to drier climate, does that mean that the crops are now irrigated?
9:57
SPEAKER_02: So they're depleting the aquifer?
9:59
SPEAKER_00: So I actually don't know.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I don't have my computer in front of me.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: But that's one of our disadvantages here out in the out of the hoop house on the farm.
10:09
SPEAKER_02: You can't uh just uh Google up these these things when I start to do that.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: But it would make sense probing they need water from somewhere.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: Like if if it's I don't know, I don't know how dry chickpeas can s can thrive.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what the but um But but what what would wouldn't it be surprising if they traded uh aquifer depletion for no glyphosate?
10:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's just it would be, but but and also because you can have glyphosate runoff in the in the irrigation, but there's it is being tested, so they know it's at least not detectable levels.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: That's a positive.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: Let's stay in our positive bubble.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot of positive news out there.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Let's stay in the positive bubble for a moment, okay?
10:52
SPEAKER_00: And now I'll drop the hammer.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Like so.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the more depressing news is that there's this new study um out of UC Davis, my school, and what they found was that 89% of avocado oil containing foods that they tested used fake or adulterated avocado oil.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: So 89%, Joel, it was 48 out of 54 products tested.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: So uh basically what they did was they looked at products that contain avocado oil, because obviously there's a huge market now for this.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: People are trying to avoid the hated eight as they call them, seed oils.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: And so you pay a premium in the grocery store to buy products that contain avocado oil, like chips and mayonnaise, salad dressings, all these things.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: And so they said, well, let's test.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And they said, This is the to their knowledge, this is the first study that's actually tested for adulteration in these food products.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: And they what they found was they were largely adulterated with seed oils, including soybean, canola, corn, and um sunflower oil, which is so ironic because we buy those foods trying to avoid seed oils, you know.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: Um but and it didn't matter what the price was.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: So even the most expensive products that said 100% avocado oil um were still adulterated.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: So that was you know pretty upsetting to find that out for those of us who are trying to avoid CEDOLs and are reliant on avocado oil.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: This was um a July 2026 study, again from UC Davis, published in Applied Food Research.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Um now on the positive side, oh, and I let me tell you some of the products.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: Is that is that a do you know if that's a a legal a legal labeling situation?
13:03
SPEAKER_02: In other words, if it says uh 100% avocado oil or whatever, or no, you know, no other seed oils, and it has it in there, um, is that a is that a um what am I looking for?
13:21
SPEAKER_02: Is it is it a a purposeful corruption or fraud, or is it just um negligent or you know, oh we didn't know, is it ignorant?
13:41
SPEAKER_00: So okay, what it seems like is that some people may have some ignorance, but it it there's an intentionality between adulterating a product here.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: So okay, so let me first say, so this gets into how are they regulated.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: So for olive oil they it has for avocado, let's start with avocado oil, it has largely not been regulated.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Um it's not like olive oil, okay?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it doesn't have like in the in America, we don't we haven't adopted a standard of identity for it.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: There's um actually a standard that has been created by um Codex Elementarius, yeah, and um they created that in just in November of 2024, but it's voluntary, so it's just voluntary until like the FDA incorporates it into law, basically when the FDA creates a standard of identity, and they have not done that yet.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: So that's part of what this research was um fueled by, is they're saying like it's newer to the market, olive oil also had a similar backstory, um, and it it used to be more adulterated than it is today until we had these regulations.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: So they are calling for regulations, and in fact, after this study was released, it was just released in August of this year, the Texas Attorney General has opened up an investigation into avocado oil products for these undisclosed use of seed oils and what they're calling deceptive marketing.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: They have decided to start with targeting primal kitchen, Siete Foods, and Chosen Foods, which are three of the brands that were called out by this study.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's that's one of the surprising things, too, is that these are more trusted brands amongst you know people who are trying to eat healthier.
15:39
SPEAKER_02: What were those three again?
15:40
SPEAKER_02: Primal Kitchen, Chosen Foods?
15:42
SPEAKER_00: So you got you have Ciet, Primal Kitchen, and Chosen Foods.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, I mean, Cieté has not been having a good time lately because now they're being called out again by the attorney general, and before that, there were lawsuits against Ciette for the cassava having high levels of heavy metals, so they're in trouble again.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: But let me let me just lift off list some of the brands that this UC Davis study found had adulteration.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one is Lesser Evil, uh Simply Tostitos, Kettle Brand, Jackson's, which I know a lot of people they eat their avocado oil, um, sweet potato chips, um, the Sprouts brand, good health.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh again, I mentioned Chosen Foods, Primal Kitchen, Sir Kensington's, Better Body Foods, uh, just to name a few of them.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: So uh the positive part, the positive part of it about this is that the study used as their positive control olive oil samples.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: So that tells you how little olive oil adulteration there is in the marketplace.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And what they found was that 90% of olive oil chip samples and 100% of the olive oil salad dressings in mayonnaise samples were authentic.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: So it's inverted.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Almost 90% of the avocado oil was adulterated with seed oils, and 90 to 100% of the olive oil was not adulterated.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: It was, it was, in other words, it's pure, genuine olive oil.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: So I'm reading this and I'm thinking, alright, maybe there's a methodology that they use that made these things show up as adulterated, but they use the codex standards that they have.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: So they are using something that this organization has said is true and tried, you know.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, and for those people who don't know, the Codex Element Elementarius this is a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practices and guidelines related to food production and safety.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: So um they set a standard and then we get to choose if we want to adopt it or not.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: So the olive oils meet the standards, you know, and olive oil has their own standard of identity here as well.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: So we we don't really have the adulteration problem.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you tell people this, I don't know if you've ever heard, but a lot of people talk about oh, olive oil is so adulterated that I'm going to avoid olive oil.
18:23
SPEAKER_02: Right, right, yeah, pure virgin.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you got all these uh all these adjectives that you've got to, you know, uh put in front of it.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and so I even saw these memes that said things like 80% of olive oil is fake, right?
18:37
SPEAKER_00: So I looked into it because that is counter to what this study's showing.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
18:44
SPEAKER_00: That that wide-held belief that 80% of olive oil is adulterated, it is false.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Huh.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it came out of once again, UC Davis.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: It was a study they did, I think this one was in 2010.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: They did publish a report showing that about 70% of imported extra virgin olive oil that were in supermarkets in California didn't meet their strict sensory and chemical criteria to be labeled extra virgin.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: So news outlets ran with it and said it was fake.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: Uh it wasn't fake, but it was only the extra virgin label, not just regular olive oil.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't adulterated, it wasn't cut with like a soy oil to you know to make it cheaper.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Literally just didn't pass the sensory criteria that they have in place for something to be extra virgin olive oil.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't even true, but like so many of us believe that.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: So the in reality, that 2010 study did not find adulteration.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, all those samples they said were still like 100% pure olive oil.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: So olive oil has gotten this bad wrap, and again, it was used as a as a positive control in this study.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so then, Joel, my next question was is this reproducible?
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, have other studies shown that we do have this widespread adulteration of avocado oil?
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Because I consume a lot of avocado oil, you know?
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: So it's true.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: I found two other studies.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: One was in um 2020, also by UC Davis, 22 samples.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: This was the first study to actually evaluate the quality and purity of just the oil itself, the avocado oil itself in the U.S.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: So that's different than the study they just did.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And the study they just did, they were looking at products labeled as this processed food contains 100%.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the the the process they were they were um they were diluted.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:42
SPEAKER_02: They were diluted with um seed oils.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they were in a processed food.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: This study looked at the bottle of avocado oil itself.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and it did show that most of the bottles were oxidized.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, three bottles out of these 22 were adulterated with soybean oil.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And get this, Joel, they this they were adulterated at levels near 100%.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Meaning, in this entire bottle labeled as 100% pure avocado oil, there's almost no avocado oil in it.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and yet we're playing paying premiums.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: They concluded in that 2020 stamp study that there was an urgent need to develop standards so that we people can ensure the safety and the quality.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: That was piggybacked by 2023 study, where again, out of Davis, 36 avocado oils were tested.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: These were private labels, 69% were adulterated.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's the whole bottle of oil again, claiming 100% avocado oil, 69% were adulterated.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Only four of them passed the purity and quality standards.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: Four out of 36.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: That's a big fat F.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Big fat F.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: So I think.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: To me, this was a story worth sharing because it appears that not only are we wasting our money on a lot of these products, even though they're labeled 100% avocado oil, and we're consuming seed oils anyway, but avocado oil maybe deserves to have its reputation, you know, bolstered back up.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: In the processed food study, uh did those did those adulterations so we're talking about something that used avocado oil in in the preparation of this convenience food.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: So so my question is, could those seed oils have come in not actually in the in the avocado oil, but in part of the other process of that convenience food?
22:52
SPEAKER_02: You know, the potatoes or the uh for chips or you know the corn for you know tortillas or whatever.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh they said no.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: So they actually even they reproduced it, they so they came in from the oil that was used in prepping, processing the convenience food.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: All right, well that's interesting.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so because you can tease it out, like you can extract the oil, you can test the other components of that food and whatnot.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And that's what they did.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, and they even measured lot to lot variation, and they would even find that sometimes uh one lot was okay and one lot was adulterated.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: So um they so that's another indication that it wasn't brought on like so.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Say it's um sweet potato chips, and it's just sweet potato avocado oil.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: One lot has it and one lot doesn't, it's not most likely from the consistent potato, it's from the oil.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Um because sometimes they source from multiple suppliers as well.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Um no, and they also tested it against if it was the processing that caused an oil composition change.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: And that was shown to be negative.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: It would not have it would not have resulted in this type of oil composition profile that's in there.
24:11
SPEAKER_02: But so where are you buying your avocado oil?
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I'm not eating avocado.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I actually um we have switched, so we in large part actually consume tallow in our household and lard.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Tallow and lard.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, though, I do want to have a salad and I want to use an oil for that.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, you can make salad dressing without oils.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, people can do this all the time.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, vinegar, water, you know, different citrus fruits and whatnot, you mixed together with herbs and stuff, honey.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: I actually spent about 30 minutes in the grocery store, and then I'd already prepped online, and I walked them through the olive oil aisle, and we were looking for certain things to pick our olive oil.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there's all kinds of stuff cold press, expel expeller press, refined, um, chemically extracted, you know, all kinds of things.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: So I went through and I taught them the differences between those manufacturing processes, processes, and then told them things like, okay, we're never gonna buy chemically extracted, you know.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, it has to be in a dark container, it has to be in a glass container.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: You gotta check the date.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: You wanna check the best buy date, but also the harvest date.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: So you know, um, because it's so hard sometimes to find those dates on the bottles, they're usually like it's a really faint print.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: And so we were looking at the Best Buy date, and there were a couple, and this was like a fancier grocery store, there were a couple that were expired, like sitting there on the shelf, already expired, uh, based on their you know, Best Buy date.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a harvest date.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, on this is one way that I look at like a higher quality oil, they're gonna usually put a harvest date on it.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: You want it to be harvested within 12 to 24 months.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: So we looked for that too.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: We looked for um cold pressed.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, I taught them about looking for seals.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: There's different seals that you can look for on these products.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: One of them is a California olive oil council seal, then there's North American Olive Oil Association, N-A-O-O-A, and you'll see there are specific seals on that bottle, either the front or the back.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, I look for both of those seals.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: There's also, Joel, a newer seal, that they measure, they test that product to see if there's seed oils in the product.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: So it's actually a seed oil-free label.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: So we found an olive oil that is organic in a dark bottle.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: It had the best buy harvest date, it had the California seal, the North America seal, it had the seed oil seal on it.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: It also had had a the glyphosate, you know, detox seal.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, I feel like this one's pretty safe, you know.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: But then again, I told them, don't trust that.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Once you buy it, open it and smell it.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: Smell, you always have to do the smell test, right?
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Because you can smell if things have gone rancid as well.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, we have switched back to olive oil, you know, until there's more data that has come in and they can show me that they're verifying that the avocado oil is not adulterated.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: We're doing olive oil, but obviously still whole avocados.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Like, I love avocados.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: So now I just, you know, keep dumping them on my salad and pour the avocado oil right on top.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: But but lard and tallow for cooking is what we do.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we just made uh we Teresa made uh lard last week, actually, several uh jars of lard, and we we use it, use it routinely.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: Tallow, tallow is hard.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: It's hard to get.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's really, really expensive because uh, I mean, there's a there's a tallow uh potato chip manufacturer called Massa.
28:09
SPEAKER_02: And um they're they're getting most of their tallow out of New Zealand.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: We don't because they want to use grass grass-finished uh beef, you know, not not uh grain finished beef for their tallow.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: And the thing is, a grass-finished cow doesn't have that much fat on it.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Not like a not like a grain finished cow.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: So if you're gonna, if you're gonna go to grass-finished tallow, um, you know, we we just don't get much from our beef.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it goes, the fat goes in the ground beef, and it's what makes it really good.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: You know.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, that's a that's a bit of a it's a bit of an issue.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, that's something Sally Fallon brought up when you know Kennedy has making this push for companies to start using tallow, like fry your french fries in tallow and whatnot.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Great idea.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: But there's not enough.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's not enough.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: So, but I know is it shaken steak or something like that?
29:09
SPEAKER_00: They they've converted over to tallow.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: So where are they getting their tallow from?
29:15
SPEAKER_02: Uh they're getting it from the industry.
29:16
SPEAKER_02: Just the grain-fed cow.
29:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, grain fed.
29:18
SPEAKER_02: Cows.
29:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you take a take a grain fattened beef in there, and you know, there'll be, goodness, there'll be 200 pounds of fat on the outside of it.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the fat will be like three to three inches thick, four inches thick.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: Ours is, you know, an inch, inch and a half.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:34
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's way, way less.
29:36
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that like and and we need it to go into the into the uh ground beef.
29:41
SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, yeah, your ground beef is so lean, it doesn't have any juice to it, it's really dry.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: And that's where the taste is.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's where the real taste is.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Isn't part of the reason why they feed them grain uh because to fatten the cow?
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: So Yeah, well, grain covers up a multitude of sins.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: You don't you don't have to know anything about grazing animals to get it plumped up with corn.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, you can just put it in, and that's one of the reasons why it's happened is just because it's easy.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh, Alan Nation, you know, founder of Stop My Grass Farmer, my mentor, uh, always said that making palatable grass-finished beef is equivalent in the food sector to the finest wine.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
30:27
SPEAKER_02: That's how hard it is.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: And I can tell you, you know, as a producer myself, it is by far away the hardest thing we do.
30:35
SPEAKER_02: Chicken's easy, pork's easy, turkey's easy, eggs are easy.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, relatively.
30:41
SPEAKER_02: The the beef, that's a different ball game.
30:44
SPEAKER_02: Even lamb is much easier to grass finish than beef.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Why is it so hard for the beef?
30:51
SPEAKER_02: Beef?
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: Well, because uh because it's gotta be the right genetics, the right grass, the right age, uh, the right weight.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's there's a million um um, you know, early pubescence.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's an I I use a pie as a as an example.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: If you have a pie, um and you you cut a small piece, well you have to have a bigger, if you want to make an eight, eight-piece pie, all right, you're gonna cut eight pieces, all right.
31:24
SPEAKER_02: If you have a small piece, well you gotta over here, you gotta have a big piece.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: Or if you don't, you don't have a whole pie.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, the things that the things that that make palatable, tasty, you know, grass-finished beef are um early pubescence, in other words, early fertility.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: Um the winter the winter coat, you know how animals get a winter coat, you know, they get okay, so the sooner that um slicks off, the more tender the animal is.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: Um calcium, uh stress in not only just day to day, but also day of slaughter.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, uh Temple Grandin says if if you have a small operation and you're gonna go uh butcher your a steer, uh you should load it in a in your trailer every week for a month.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: Run it around the block, unload it and give it a give it a treat, you know, a patio of clover hay or something, so that it when on day of and it walks on that trailer, it's associating that with a good thing and not first time in its life, it's what's this?
32:45
SPEAKER_02: A new box, new sounds, new odors, new, oh, and now we're moving, and you know, and by the time they get to the slaughterhouse, the thing's all locked up with uh cortisol from adrenaline rush.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: So there are a lot of aspects to this that have to come through.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh it is the least forgiving of all the of all the animal proteins to actually, you know, finish true blue on on grass.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: I know we've made every mistake in the book.
33:14
SPEAKER_02: Okay, we've been at it a long time.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but uh there's a reason why you know we we it's easy to sell now.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: Because we've we've made we've made refinements.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well that that's incredible.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of grass-fed, grass-finished, in one of our last podcasts, you talked about that breaking story with the male cows lactating.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Right?
33:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And we had um a listener who emailed in with an idea for why those male cows might be lactating.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: But did you get that email?
33:50
SPEAKER_00: With the atrazine?
33:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, uh-huh.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to get your thoughts on that since we're talking about grass-fed, grass finish, because I looked it up.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: There are studies showing that, like, it in different types of animals, you can give them that uh is I guess it's it's probably technically considered a pesticide, even though they use it as a right.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: So Molly Englehart is the one who broke this story.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:17
SPEAKER_02: And uh literally today, um, she just sent me her next her ne her um her next story, uh uh, as she's been, she's just she's just apparently just obsessed with this almost.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: And has been, you know, immersed in it.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: And um it's really, really fascinating.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: The smoking gun has not yet been found.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh and there's a bunch of theories, but um the study numbers don't add up.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: I mean, she, like me, her first thought was, well, it's it's probably these um, you know, these implants, these uh ionophore uh implants and these hormones that they feed them to make them plump up.
35:03
SPEAKER_02: But um uh there are indications as they put the data together that that is not the case, that maybe it's something else.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: She's working with uh with a uh professor at Texas AM who thinks it's simply because of the um how fat we make them.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: I just told you how fat these animals.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: There it there ain't nothing natural about a cow having four inches of fat on it.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you shoot a deer, an elk, a moose, a caribou, any other, you know, a bison, um, they're not jiggly-wiggly blubbly with with fat on them.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: They have some fat, just like we do, but um uh but it's not it's not excessive.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: They don't look like a bowl full of jello.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: And um and his his thinking is that it's simply you know because of that.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: But obviously, her her her even though we don't have we don't know the smoking gun yet and can't speak for sure, it does beg the question if we're if 20 per if almost 20 percent of our steers, now that's a it's a castrated male, and there's even an indicator that pr perhaps the castration actually, you know, does this.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: Another theory is that since since uh there are way more dairy cross calves that are doing it, dairy cross where a dairy beef cross.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: A lot of uh dairy farms use a beef bowl to breed their cows um so that when they have a calf it's worth three times as much as a as a dairy animal because they get beefier.
36:53
SPEAKER_02: Um and um and then they just buy heifers to replace their uh culled cows.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, uh there's there's a thought that the so these calves are raised often on a bottle uh and and um they they drink too fast in this in this artificial you know, a calf orphanage, okay?
37:21
SPEAKER_02: And what they do is they end up sucking on each other.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: Um anything they can find they suck on.
37:28
SPEAKER_02: Including a very juvenile, unformed udder.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: And that there is some thought that even that that is having a a big effect.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: Um but those numbers don't seem to add up either.
37:43
SPEAKER_02: So anyway, it's it's a it's a f I mean it it's a it's a very, very extensive article.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: She's obviously clearly immersed in this thing, but there's no clear smoking gun.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: The one thing though that is, I think, important to appreciate, whatever it is, it's new.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: This is not something that happened a hundred years ago.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: It's new.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
38:10
SPEAKER_02: The obvious question is if if castrated males are lactating almost one in five, what what relative um effect is that having on males who eat that meat?
38:35
SPEAKER_02: If if the beef animals, if the male beef animals are lactating, is there going to be, are we gonna eventually find any connection between that and sexual dysphoria and other things that are happening uh in our in our society?
38:56
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that's I I think anyone who reads the story now about all these males secreting milk, that has to be where your mind goes.
39:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, what happens what happens when you when you eat that?
39:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh is is it is it transferable?
39:17
SPEAKER_02: And if it is, what is it doing?
39:19
SPEAKER_02: None of those questions has been answered.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: All we know is, Molly has broken the story, all we know is that almost one in five castrated steers, is you you you can milk it.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: You you can take, you can grab the the grab the nipple and you can, I mean, because in the article uh that she sent out today, um she said, well, how do you what what's your what's your standard of lactating?
39:46
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and the standard is that you can you can strip the teat and get milk and get a liquid milk.
39:55
SPEAKER_02: Not much, you know, not much, but you can get it.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, there's there's everything from, well, nobody ever looked for this before, so they missed it.
40:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, that that that's another that's another theory.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: So there's goodness, there's half a dozen theories out here, but uh nobody's actually, you know, nobody's actually studied it enough um with unprejudicial data to actually find a smoking gun.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Have they ruled out uh atrazine?
40:29
SPEAKER_02: No.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: They haven't ruled out anything.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: Because they haven't ruled in anything.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:35
SPEAKER_02: So if you haven't ruled anything, you if you haven't ruled anything in, you can't rule anything out.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the problem.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's one of the things I thought, not only what happens when you eat it, but what if it is some environmental exposure to something, some toxin?
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Because there are studies showing, I think actually the per the researcher who did a lot of um published a lot of those studies showing that you can affect male, you know, sex hormones and stuff in different types of animals.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was like heavily censored, like huge pushback flow against him.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: But you're able to still find some of those studies in the literature.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: So one of the things that she exposed in her um in her research is that labs have created mammary gland function in males artificially for a long time.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that.
41:37
SPEAKER_02: So so the point is if you want a male to s to you know, a rat, a mouse, a wheel, okay, to milk.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: I can make him milk.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: How do they do it?
41:54
SPEAKER_00: Did she say?
41:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, with with hormones and stuff.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
41:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's similar hormones to the kind of hormones being done in human sexual dysphoria.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: So um I didn't know that this has been done.
42:13
SPEAKER_02: She said, this this is this is not new.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: We know how to do this.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: The question is, what's making this happen right now?
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: And what would be the purpose of researching that?
42:26
SPEAKER_00: Like to try to make a male lactate?
42:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, did she say, like, they're obviously getting research money from somewhere to do these kinds of studies for what purpose?
42:40
SPEAKER_02: Um, I I think the ultimate purpose is is this affecting the human population?
42:47
SPEAKER_02: Because it is new.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: It's not it's not old.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, like how you said that they're already doing they've been doing studies where they can make it.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: They've been manipulated.
42:59
SPEAKER_02: They've been able to manipulate.
43:01
SPEAKER_02: I don't know why they do those.
43:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: Except, you know, why climb the mountain?
43:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, because it's there, you know.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean it's because we can.
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you can.
43:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean it's it's it's it's it's silliness, but that's what we do.
43:15
SPEAKER_02: Uh so I I don't know, I don't know what the impetus of those studies is.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, this is this is made, it's actually made quite a splash.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: And um and uh, you know, anecdotally nobody in nobody in the in like in our tribe, you know, the you know, the folks that are doing grass finished, small scale, you know, non industrial, you know, the the non the non big four.
43:50
SPEAKER_02: Um nobody there has heard of this or seen it or anything.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: The question is, well, is it because they weren't looking for it that they missed it?
44:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't know.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: But as you know, in science, you've gotta you've gotta be honest and say, and and if you don't know, you gotta say you don't know.
44:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah don't don't come at it and say, well, uh, you know, it's it's it's you know nobody saw it here, so it must not exist.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe, maybe not.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, it's a it's a hot, hot thing right now.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah and it'll be interesting to see how things develop.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: Do you know if national news has picked it up?
44:30
SPEAKER_02: I haven't seen anything.
44:32
SPEAKER_00: I I haven't seen anything.
44:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, only Acres USA magazine.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:36
SPEAKER_02: I think I think it's one of those, man, if they want to um if they want to collapse beef prices, if national news picked that up, that would definitely collapse beef prices.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:52
SPEAKER_02: Pretty quick.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: And right now, there's a lot of um, there's a lot of uh uh political equity in let's not mess with beef right now.
45:06
SPEAKER_02: Um so you know, Trump just you know, current event topic, you know, Trump just did this um uh tariff embargo to get 300 met 300,000 metric tons of beef imported to take the pressure off of beef.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: That's that's roughly two percent of what the U.S.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: consumes every year.
45:29
unknown: Wow.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: So it's not a lot.
45:32
SPEAKER_02: And uh we don't yet know where it's gonna come from.
45:35
SPEAKER_02: It's a 90-day 90-day more moratorium on tariffs on beef, and it'll be subsidized, it's coming in at 25% below market value.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: So the U.S.
45:47
SPEAKER_02: government's gonna subsidize this imported beef.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: So the ranchers are up in arms about this.
45:53
SPEAKER_02: Up in arms about this.
45:56
SPEAKER_02: And um, and and it's important, I think it's important to realize that the price of beef right now, as high as it is, still is not keeping up with the price of inputs.
46:12
SPEAKER_02: So if you if you take if you take the increase in price of beef and lay a chart next to it, the increase in the price of labor, fertilizer, seed, equipment, land, those have actually gone up higher than beef.
46:33
SPEAKER_02: So even as ex as as high as it is, it is still not keeping up with all the other ancillary production costs uh of conventional.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm being, you know, the the the conventional mindset um uh with it.
46:46
SPEAKER_02: And so this this thing to we gotta you know import this at subsidized rates and bring the price down has just infuriated um the ranch and farm the cattle the cattle uh community.
47:02
SPEAKER_02: What I don't hear anybody saying except me is the problem is, given the soybean farmers, I'm gonna harp on this till I die,$12 billion of subsidies to grow soybeans.
47:16
SPEAKER_02: If those soybean farmers had to sit down and realize, you know, the world doesn't want our soybeans.
47:23
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we ought to grow something else, suddenly a bunch of them would maybe look at growing cows.
47:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: That's what we need.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we've talked about what's the what's the quickest way to make a person make stupid decisions?
47:39
SPEAKER_02: Keep him from suffering the consequences of bad decisions.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:44
SPEAKER_02: When if you suffer the consequences of bad decisions, you certainly you certainly uh become more intentional about the decisions you're gonna make.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: But if there's some sort of a safety net that uh no matter what decision I make, as stupid as it might be, there's always a safety net to catch me.
48:00
SPEAKER_02: Well, you're not gonna get very wise very fast.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking, wouldn't that be great if you could like just eat ice cream for every single meal and never ha suffer from the consequence of it?
48:11
SPEAKER_00: Like right?
48:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would definitely be eating ice cream every meal.
48:15
SPEAKER_02: I would, I would, I would be right there.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: Yes indeed.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: I would in a heartbeat.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: So with so Trump's bringing what 2% uh representing 2% of the beef in.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: So no tariffs to get them to come in, right?
48:28
SPEAKER_00: For 90 days.
48:29
SPEAKER_02: It's a 90-day moratorium.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay, for 90 days.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: So does that mean the American ranchers are gonna have to cut their prices to be competitive?
48:37
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, it means it means the American ranchers will suddenly have a bunch of subsidized competition.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but so because theirs will be can the ones that's imported could be sold at a lower price.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
48:50
SPEAKER_02: So then you got a pool of beef, supply, and you got a pool of of demand.
48:58
SPEAKER_02: Supply, demand.
49:00
SPEAKER_02: So what's gonna happen is the supply is suddenly gonna expand.
49:06
SPEAKER_02: Well, what does that do?
49:08
SPEAKER_02: That drops the price.
49:10
SPEAKER_02: The demand will hold, demand will stay the same, but suddenly there's gonna be a bigger, a bigger supply over here, so the price will drop.
49:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:19
SPEAKER_00: So even the price of the American beef.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: So they're already if the inputs costs were already increasing, so now so they were already kind of taking a loss, it sounds like, and now they're gonna have to take a bigger hit on it because of that decision.
49:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, I mean, we we we could argue, we could argue that, well, at least now the cattle farmer, the the cow guys are um are are getting close to what it costs, you know, to stay in business.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: Good, good, that's a good thing.
49:47
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, because they they've been below the cost of doing business for a long, long time.
49:52
SPEAKER_02: Now, finally, here they are in the driver's seat, and as soon as they get in the driver's seat, they get kicked out the door with you know, with it Cena, it just it's just more stop the soybean subsidies, stop the corn subsidies, let the invisible hand of the market that Adam Smith wrote about in Wealth of Nations, let that work.
50:20
SPEAKER_02: This this this micro-manipulation, it it distorts everything.
50:25
SPEAKER_02: It always distorts everything.
50:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:27
SPEAKER_00: Because what's gonna happen after the 90 days?
50:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, after the 90 days, well, supposedly beef prices will come down, but you know, uh the demand will still be there, the supply will be small again.
50:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's gonna go up.
50:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you you can't you you you can't micromanage it.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: You know, it it it's supply-demand.
50:44
SPEAKER_02: It is what it is.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not even understanding it.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: It just sounds like just a short temporary quote unquote fix.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not resolving the problem.
50:54
SPEAKER_02: It's 90 days to the midterms.
50:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh it's all politics.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: It's all politics.
51:00
SPEAKER_02: It's all politics.
51:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
51:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:03
SPEAKER_02: So you watch that.
51:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm reminded of a of a congressman we had that um that passed a bill that I was very opposed to.
51:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh one of the very similar to like this, you know.
51:16
SPEAKER_02: I went to him and says, What's the deal?
51:18
SPEAKER_02: He said, Well, the people just expect me to do something.
51:22
unknown: Yeah.
51:22
SPEAKER_02: You know, the people don't expect me to go up there and there's a societal problem, and I sit there and say, just be patient, it'll all work out, you know, the market will no no no no no no.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: They it they want me to do something.
51:36
SPEAKER_02: And that's the mentality of every politician.
51:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
51:39
SPEAKER_02: And it's the problem with our citizenry.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:42
SPEAKER_02: We we have now been uh been um uh dumbed down to think that the first solution to every conceivable problem is government intervention.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: The the most the most disempowering thing that any culture can do to its citizens is to make them think that the the the uh the first solution to every problem is a government solution.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: It should be the last straw after you've exhausted every possible thing, then you maybe have a government solution.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:21
SPEAKER_02: But um until you've exhausted every other possible every other possible thing, the truth is there are very, very few things that need a government solution.
52:31
SPEAKER_02: Education, health, I mean I can go down the line.
52:35
SPEAKER_02: Buildings, food safety, very few things need government intervention.
52:41
SPEAKER_02: But we what but we've been we've been whatever propagandized to think that I mean how many people you run into and are and are complaining about something, we need a law.
52:54
SPEAKER_02: No, we don't need a law, we need fewer laws.
52:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the problem you're citing probably came because there is a law over here, you know.
53:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh get on my up on my uh back feet.
53:05
SPEAKER_00: I love it, because I want the politicians to go to DC and do nothing.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I would rather them do nothing.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, when it when it's 50-50 and they say uh there's gridlock, yeah, those are the most exciting days of life.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: You know, just go up there and don't do anything.
53:21
SPEAKER_02: Because 98% of what you pass hurts me.
53:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: Hurts me.
53:26
SPEAKER_02: So I love gridlock.
53:28
SPEAKER_02: I think it'd be fine to have gridlock and just just and just let us let us do our thing, let us function and you know, go eat your eat your bonbons and your pizza and you know, uh just stay up there.
53:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:42
SPEAKER_00: So with this 90-day thing and building up to the midterms, are they trying to make the consumer happy?
53:47
SPEAKER_00: Like they're trying to get the stuff.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
53:49
SPEAKER_02: This is all about votes.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: There's way more consumers complaining about the price of beef than the ranch than ranchers are to vote.
53:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no question.
53:57
SPEAKER_02: So it's it's strict it's strictly, you know, candy.
53:59
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's eye candy for the for the people to try to say, well, we did something about food prices.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're coming down.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, we did something about food prices.
54:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh that's all it is.
54:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:10
SPEAKER_00: Duped again.
54:12
unknown: Yeah.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:14
SPEAKER_02: All right.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: Do we have time for another story?
54:16
SPEAKER_02: We do have time for one more.
54:17
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: All right.
54:19
SPEAKER_00: So have you been following this at all about the flesh-eating bacteria um having record highs in like Florida and areas like that?
54:29
SPEAKER_00: The Vibrio bacteria.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: It's Vibrio Nivicus.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: It almost sounds magical, but this is some flesh-eating bacteria.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: And they had an outbreak in Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: So, right, the last time I checked in Louisiana, there were nine cases and five deaths.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: This is a um, they're calling, they're highlighting this because this is this is like a record number.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: The 10-year average is seven cases and one death each year.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: And already they've had nine cases and five deaths.
55:00
SPEAKER_00: In Florida, there's 14 cases and two deaths.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: Um in Alabama, there's one case in April, you know, the list goes on.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: So I started looking into it because I was like, what is it that's causing this flush eating bacteria to, you know, be ramped up?
55:16
SPEAKER_00: And of course, you look at the mainstream narrative and they're talking about um climate change, like places getting hotter, and they're talking about flooding and hurricanes would bring cases on the rise.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that they're not talking about is that it's also a consequence of big ag.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: Right?
55:33
SPEAKER_00: People are skipping over this one entirely.
55:36
SPEAKER_00: So you've had like the and you can explain this better than I can, but like the Mississippi River that runs down into the Gulf of America, you've got all these fertilizers.
55:49
SPEAKER_02: Gulf of Mexico.
55:51
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it like changed now though?
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Like legally, or is that he just said it's now Gulf of America?
55:56
SPEAKER_02: Now he wants to make it the Lake uh Lake uh Lake America, Lake Ontario.
56:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, oh, okay.
56:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, the area the body of water is to the left of Florida.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: Like that's how we'll describe it.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so you got the Mississippi.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: Well it's left if you're at the equator.
56:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but if you're up here looking very to the right.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the one that the Mississippi runs into.
56:21
SPEAKER_02: The run to Mississippi.
56:23
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
56:23
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
56:23
SPEAKER_02: The ones that New Orleans is on.
56:26
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
56:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this will be like a great homeschool geography lesson for everybody.
56:29
SPEAKER_00: Like this is how you have to describe these things.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: Mississippi runs down into this.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: So uh there's a lot of fertilizer from like agricultural runoff that goes through the Mississippi, also pesticides, herbicides, also from residential spray, right?
56:43
SPEAKER_00: But in large part, these fertilizers.
56:45
SPEAKER_00: So they run down there.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: I think that river drains what maybe I think it's around 40, 40, some odd percent of the whole U.S.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's why there's a that's why there's a dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf.
56:59
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
56:59
SPEAKER_00: So do you want to explain that first?
57:01
SPEAKER_00: I'll piggyback.
57:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, uh uh, so this is this is an area, I mean, imagine the size of Rhode Island.
57:08
SPEAKER_02: It used to have crabbers and shrimpers and you know, fishers and everything.
57:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh it used to be a you know a dynamic um aquatic environment, and now it's just totally toxic.
57:20
SPEAKER_02: Nothing grows there.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's not the size of your swimming pool, it's the size of Rhode Island.
57:26
SPEAKER_02: So these fishermen have lost their jobs, shrimpers have lost their jobs, crabs have lost their jobs.
57:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is this is um it's it's crazy.
57:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a devastation.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: It is for the whole industry.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: And again, I wanted to bring this up also because it's a current event with the fleshing of bacteria, but also a bigger awareness of like it's another reason why like I don't support big ag and these chemicals.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: It affects more than just our food supply.
57:56
SPEAKER_02: So do you have do you have material that indicates that this flesh eating is coming from that it boosts it, yes.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let me walk you through it.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: So um, okay, so we have the fertilizer runoff.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that actually feeds the algae.
58:11
SPEAKER_00: So I know we've talked about before on this podcast about algae, and they will have harmful algal blooms called HABs.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: Blooms, yeah.
58:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and those are those blooms can be neurotoxins.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: And Joel, there is now so much literature linking those with chronic health issues in humans, including Alzheimer's, like because it's a neurotoxin.
58:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you name it, I mean, um Parkinson's, MS, uh, cognitive decline, ADHD, all associated with these harmful algal blooms, and they're getting worse.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: Those are actually going um up the coast as well into areas where we're having more and more of this fertilizer runoff.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: So the algae um actually feeds the zooplankton.
58:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so stick with me here.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: So you got algae that are, you know, blooming out of balance because of all this runoff, and then the zooplankton, so these are like tiny little animals, um, like tiny crustaceans.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: So they don't feed directly on the fertilizer runoff, but they feed on the decaying organic carbon.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: So um they feed on the algae, particularly like when it dies.
59:22
SPEAKER_00: So now you've got the zooplankton population that explodes, and then the zooplankton feed the flesh-eating bacteria.
59:30
unknown: Oh.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: The vibrio.
59:31
SPEAKER_00: So the vibrio bacteria can attach to living and dead zooplankton, and they actually produce this special enzyme, uh, it's like a chitinase, and it digests the tough outer chitin' uh shell uh of these zooplankton.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: And so it eats it.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: And then uh when the algae themselves also die, they too feed the vibrial bacteria.
59:58
SPEAKER_00: So this agricultural runoff is allowing the harmful algal blooms that are making people sick, but it's also allowing this vibral to get out of balance.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: And as you know, everything in nature needs to be.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's not allowing it, it is facilitating it.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: It's facilitating it.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_02: That that's a lot worse than allowing it.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's it's fueling it.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_02: It's fuel, it's yeah, it's facilitating it.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: It is, you're absolutely right.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: It is facilitating it.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_00: So it's just I saw that and nobody's talking about the connection with these flushing bacteria and big ag.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't know if that's intentional.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_02: Do the folks that have been getting it, have they been s swimming in the Gulf?
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: Have they I mean, what's the So it can even be like in brackish water?
1:00:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's usually it's when like there's a cut.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_02: So so generally there's a cut.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_02: It's it's a lot like the uh the screw worm that's come up from Mexico and they close the border to Mexican cattle.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, that it it it gets into a wound.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_02: You have a wound, and it gets in there, lays its eggs, and then you're you know, then you're in trouble.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_02: Or the the cow is.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_02: Um and so this uh you have a little cut or a or a wound or something, and that's how it gets internalized, and then you're toast.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it could also be from food.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: So there's one case in Connecticut whereas an infection because they consumed oysters from out of state, and that was in February.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_00: So you can get it through some of these foods too that are in that environment because it's so it's living in an out-of-balanced, you know, ecosystem.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, yeah.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the the the toxicity coming down the Mississippi is is unbelievable.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just unbelievable.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: I would I told my kids, I was like, I would never live in any one of those states.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: So um, speaking of the harmful algal blooms, um, we are having to move again because of harmful algal blooms.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's why we had to leave Florida because of the quote unquote red tide, which are harmful algal blooms that are in the ocean.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_00: I did not realize that there could be um toxic, harmful algal blooms just in nearby lakes.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_00: I know that probably sounds kind of silly, but it's called red tide.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: So I figured, okay, that's in the ocean.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, apparently there's also HABs in these lake bodies, and it's coming from the same thing, the runoff from the fertilizer, pesticides, pesticides.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_00: So we live in North Georgia, where right across the freeway from us is the CAFO capital of the country.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep, yep.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_00: It feeds into that lake, and I think.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_02: CAFO began concentrated animal feeding operation that is normally either pork or chicken.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_02: Yes or uh pork or poultry.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes, so we have these chicken confined animal feeding operations all over the place.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and while they can't dump like a direct pipeline into the lake, it it gets into there through other ponds and such the drain off, you know.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_00: Sure it does.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_00: And we've had flesh eating bacteria measured in that area as well.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_00: Like we don't go into the watering holes, for example.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_00: I have friends that have had to move from that area, like across the freeway and whatever, just simply because the smell makes them so sick, you know.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_00: So we built our I wasn't having problems when we first moved to North Georgia.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_00: Our homestead is closer to the lake.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: So it we're now maybe 10 minutes from the lake versus 20 minutes, and distance is everything when there's a neurotoxic in the air.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_00: And it's blooming, and sure enough, it blows over to us.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: Same symptoms that I had when we were in Florida.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, in Florida, it caused five miscarriages, it caught it, caused a tumor on the sclera or the wide of my eye that they couldn't resolve, but they knew it would cross over my cornea and blind me.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, sharp pain in my head, sinus pressure, like so bad, it feels like a migraine.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we ended up having to move because how are you gonna mitigate it?
1:03:43
SPEAKER_00: I can't stop them from having this runoff.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, once again, now we're gonna have to move because of these, because of these horrible algal blooms.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the positive thing is hopefully we're gonna be closer to polyface now.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_02: Man, man.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_02: It's just um, yeah.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we are we are soiling our nest at a rate that is just um um unspeakable.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_00: It is, and and it's um the impact is greater than most people realize, you know.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think when it affects you personally acutely, you start realizing the severity of what is being created here.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_02: It sure does.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_02: Sure does.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_02: Well, we're out of time, and um we've covered some good stuff, some not so good stuff.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_02: Um I'm trying to think of our of our uh audience question here to um you know uh to ask our folks, and um I guess uh a question would be are you familiar with red tide and do you and is there a lake near you that's had it?
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_02: And uh and and and and write in and say, uh, no, there's no red tide in my state, probably you know, like Montana, there'll be there'll be some that that have never seen anything, but there'll be a lot that do.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_02: North Carolina for sure has plenty of it, Georgia, uh, Florida, and um, and just get a sense of um where it is if you've seen it.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:05:17
SPEAKER_00: And if you're looking for it, you'll want to look at harmful algal blooms.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_02: Harmful algal blooms.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they call them HABs.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_00: It's red tide if it comes from the ocean.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, okay.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, harmful algal algal blooms.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm looking for.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, HABs, harmful algal blooms.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_02: Habs, HABs.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everything is um acronyms because we can't speak in multisyllabic words anymore.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_02: So, hey everybody, thank you for being with us on another Beyond Labels podcast.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we appreciate your your loyalty and your interest in our uh topics.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_02: Send us your ideas, and we're glad to um we're glad to get ideas from you for for programming, and uh we appreciate you taking the time to invest in listening to our banter.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh so once again, thanks for being on Beyond Labels.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_02: We'll look forward to being with you again next week.