Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #119: US Approves Lab-Grown Meat As Italy Bans It: Joel's Perspective

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Episode #119: US Approves Lab-Grown Meat As Italy Bans It: Joel's Perspective · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I think that folks are not aware of is that this agenda of fake meat, of cell cultured meat, is right now, it's about 10 years behind their early uh prophecies, their early prognostications.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: The reason it hasn't happened is because when you run, when you try to culture um cell structures in a bioreactor, you don't have the entire organism's um functionality to dispose of waste, to move energy around within the the structure, uh, within the cell structure.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And basically all you have to move stuff is bubbles and filters.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And those are not nearly as efficient as as a body, whether it's a cow or a person or a cat or a tomato for that matter.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so um and so the the truth is that when they thought they were going to be cranking out uh millions of pounds of this stuff, they've actually only cranked out a few pounds of it in little gallon jugs because they can't get rid of the waste and the whole thing becomes toxic.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels, the podcast with yours truly, Joel Salatin, a farmer in Virginia, and our favorite researcher, Dr.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And today's topic is coming on the heels of the announcement just in the last week, where Italy banned the use, sale, import, or export of food and feed from cell cultures or tissue derived from vertebrate animals.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us call this fake meat, lab meat, cell, you know, cell-structured meat, whatever.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: But but the point is it's fabricated, it's fabricated uh meat.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and this is, of course, a very hot topic in lots of circles from you know climate change discussions to uh dietary discussions and all sorts of things to animal welfare, all those kinds of things.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: We've already done a podcast uh uh digging into this topic a little bit, but we're gonna come to you today with some more updates and some additional thinking with this new um this new development from Italy, which, you know, as we all know in America, a lot of times the way Europe goes, America follows about 50 years later.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so if this is the kind of thing that's developing, uh, you know, we're seeing it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we certainly see a an increasing um uh ostracism of meat eating.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh California now has they haven't passed it into law, but there are bills being submitted to create uh meat-eating, uh segregated meat eating areas in restaurants, uh, like like you know, they used to have smoke, you know, rooms for smokers and um uh to segregate smokers away from non-smokers.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And now it looks like there's more and more impetus to go to public spaces where meat eaters will be segregated from non-meat eaters.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be in this you know same room.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the we we we do see the rumblings of these kinds of things you know developing in our own country.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this this Italian um uh law uh is certainly uh uh you know uh an interesting, an interesting take where Italy has um said we don't want anything to do with it, we're not gonna eat it, we're not gonna grow it, we're not gonna import it, we're not gonna export it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they've taken a very strong stand uh uh against it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wouldn't you expect that from a place that creates uh parmesan cheese?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, here we are, and Cena is gonna, Cena's got some new information, is gonna bring us up to date a little bit on where we are in that whole, you know, that cell-cultured meat um scenario.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks, Joel.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, like Joel said, there's a lot of updates to provide.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then I want to really dive down and discuss this with Joel from, you know, a farmer perspective, also libertarian perspective, and what he thinks about all of these laws and banning and should we be banning food in general?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so as Joel mentioned, in November, Italy became the first country to ban these, what we're calling these cultivated meats or the lab-grown meat.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: The Italian Minister of Agriculture said, quote, in defense of health, of the Italian production system, of thousands of jobs, of our culture and tradition, with the law approved today, Italy is the first nation in the world to be safe from the social and economic risks of synthetic food.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: The Italian prime minister Maloney said that farmers are one of the main reasons why we should ban fake food.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: She said, quote, we could only celebrate with our farmers a measure that puts our farmers in the vanguard, not just on the issue of defending excellence, but also in defending consumers.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, in that bill, Italy also banned companies from using meat references when they're selling plant-based alternatives.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, if you're marketing a product as quote-unquote tofu steak, that would actually violate this new law.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so I wanted to contrast that with what's happening in the US.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: While Italy was the first to ban cultivated meat, the US was one of the first countries to approve cultivated meat for human consumption.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: There, to my knowledge, there's only been two countries that have approved cultivated meat for human consumption, and that's the US and the Single and Singapore.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in so the way the time frame for how this happened was in November of 2022, the FDA announced that it completed its first pre-market consultation for a human food made from the cultured animal cells.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then in June of 2023, the USDA uh gave its first ever approval to produce cell cultured meat to two companies in the United States.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those are Good Meat and Upside Food.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: The approval was for lab-grown chicken.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Good Meat um said that the company also received early in 2023 a no questions letter from the FDA.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So our audience knows what that means, right?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a grass listing.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So this lab-grown chicken was quote unquote approved by the FDA through the grass loophole.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was so what's been approved so far in the US is the lab-grown chicken, although Good Meat says that they're working on other types of meat, including cultivated beef using cells from California pasture-raised cattle.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh, research and markets, a group that predicts um trends, they're actually predicting that the global uh lab-grown meat market is going to reach nearly$2 billion by 2035.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: They said that the largest market share of this segment is actually attributed to increasing adoption of the on-the-go lifestyle, as well as the growing demand for snack products and frozen foods.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, now I found this interesting.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are some states that are pushing back.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So Missouri and Florida seem to be in the lead of trying to exercise states' rights.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: On November 13th of this year, 2023, uh, a Florida state rep filed a bill.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's HR 435, and the bill aims to prohibit the quote, manufacturing, sale, holding, or distribution of cultivated meat in the state of Florida.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the commissioner of the Florida Department of Agriculture is fully on board.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: He said the following: without this legislation, untested, potentially unsafe, and nearly unregulated laboratory-produced meat could be made available in Florida.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as of um November 22nd, that bill has moved to the Agriculture, Conservation and Resiliency Subcommittee.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it has not passed yet.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's in another committee.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Missouri passed a law in 2018 that prohibited plant-based and lab-grown foods from being labeled as meat.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you can't misrepresent it as an actual meat product.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, other countries seem to be pushing the agenda of switching from animal-based proteins to plant-based proteins as well.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying this is because of climate change.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Germany, Germany already sells synthetic meat products manufactured by Beyond Meat.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're reportedly selling in over 1,600 stores.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Netherlands and the UK, they've actually earmarked public funds for research and development of cultivated meat as well as alternative protein sources, respectively.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Spain is actually studying the potential of cultivated meat in preventing food-related diseases, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: So they're actually trying to figure out if there's benefits from this.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And something else that I found that was interesting before we jump into Joel's take on this, is that the American government also seems to be pushing the narrative of more plant-based consumption.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, the latest US dietary guidelines that came out, if you look on page 34, and of course we'll include the link to this, it says, quote, shifts are needed within the protein foods group to add variety to subgroup intakes.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Selecting from the seafood group or the beans, peas, and lentils subgroup, more often could help meet recommendations while still ensuring adequate protein consumption.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: They go on to say about replacing processed or high-fat meats is advised.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um they want you to replace these high-fat meats with beans, peas, and lentils.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And they say they would have similar benefits to the health of the American population, as if you were, you know, similar benefits to consuming these fat-based meats, which you know they're talking about predominantly the red red meats.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I found that fascinating because for me, this is an indication that the government is on some level starting to push into this narrative of let's consume more plant-based proteins.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they they are literally stating it in the new dietary guidelines.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, these are used to shift policies, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: They they make they set policies, they shift the way that manufacturers make foods, they shift what's being served to um the elderly and nursing homes, people in hospitals, children, um, in schools, in daycares.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they are setting the policy and it's moving towards plant-based, uh, plant-based protein.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what I think is fascinating is that um I want to share this story, and then I'm gonna throw it over to you, Joel.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So in June of this year of 2023, there is a study from Purdue University that is actually blatantly challenging these US dietary guidelines that are that are recommending this shift away from animal protein and toward plant-based proteins.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a couple things that I find fascinating that this study has revealed.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, they said that the dietary guidelines are recommending that you consume um more plant-based protein on this ounce equivalent portion.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at the dietary guidelines, they group proteins into animal-based, and this would be your red meats, poultry, fish, and eggs, and then there's plant-based.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: This would be soy products, beans, peas, lentils, nuts, and seeds.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: When they are comparing the animal-based protein to the plant-based protein, they use what's called ounce equivalence.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, a one-ounce equivalent equals one ounce of meat or a whole egg, a quarter cup of beans, or a half ounce of nuts.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is what they use to differentiate between the plant and animal uh protein sources, and then this is the dietary guidelines that trickle down to affect all of us.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really important to know how they come up with these ounce of protein equivalents.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is what they say.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not only has no study has assessed the same ounce equivalent portions of animal versus plant proteins, right?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So they haven't even assessed the difference between consuming animal protein and plant protein on an ounce equivalent portion, but they say, quote, the basis for stating that these protein foods are quote unquote equivalent and have, quote, similar nutritional content is unclear.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So researchers can't even figure out how it is that they have classified these different foods as being equivalent to each other.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we know they're not, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is basic nutrition.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: We know that the protein quality and protein quantity differ in the different foods.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like pork contains about seven grams of protein, whereas um one ounce of almonds contains about three grams of total protein.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the total amount is different and the quality is different.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I want to briefly chat about on this sub on this study.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: They actually measured the qualitative difference between these protein sources.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they did that through measuring the essential amino acids that were actually absorbed into the bloodstream after young and old adults consume these different foods.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So essential amino acids, if if you're not aware, are in the in the nutrition world, we say that you can't make these.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's why they're called essential amino acids.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: You have to eat them.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they're very important because you have to have the amino acids in order to build things like certain muscles and hormones and for your metabolism to work properly.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't consume enough essential amino acids, it's correlated to poor health.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if and we you need to have enough essential amino acids in order to think, think about like it's order to build build muscle, to maintain muscle as you age, to maintain proper metabolism and immune function.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's a very critical marker in the field of nutrition.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what they did in this study was they fed um human subjects, they fed them um either two ounces of pork or two ounces of um egg or beans or almonds, and they fed them on different days, okay, in a mixed meal that was the same each time.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then they drew their blood for a total of five hours to track what happened with the essential amino acids that got absorbed into the body, how much was actually absorbed, and was there actually a difference in quality between these proteins?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they found a huge difference.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Not surprisingly, they found the greatest amount of essential amino acid bioavailability.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, the greatest amount of essential amino acids that were absorbed into everybody's bloodstream came from pork.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: The second greatest came from egg, and then beans and almonds were the same.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: They were, there was no significant difference between them, but there is a big significant difference between beans and almonds and the pork and the egg.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So these reachers went on, researchers went on to basically conclude that quote, these results highlight the shortcomings of using ounce equivalents to achieve the dietary guideline recommendations for protein requirement.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they're saying that this study is going to serve as an important resource, resource for the future dietary guidelines of America for them to reevaluate the appropriateness of equating different protein sources comprising the protein food groups on an ounce equivalent basis for young and older adults.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, like in the in the science world, this is like this is harsh language.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So these um scientists clearly feel very strongly about this, and they're pointing out something that's um very critical because number one, it's it's an oversimplification, right?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're talking about, oh, you can still meet all your dietary protein requirements um based on the plant-based diet, they have completely not only oversimplified it, but it sounds like they're just making up what these protein equivalents are.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: They and in the dietary guidelines, they don't even reference how they come up with them.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we have scientists coming out and saying, hey, this is actually pretty much a lie of what you're promoting to the country for them to be eating.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you may in fact be endangering people.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, it's such um, it's so much contradiction that our government, on one hand, with these highly influential dietary guidelines, are pushing this uh plant-based narrative and they're saying, Oh, you'll be fine.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Shift more of your intake to plant-based um uh protein sources and you'll be completely fine.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, we have the scientists saying that's actually not true, and we don't even know where you came up with that.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that the that America, I think it's another one of those things where you know, you really need to look beyond what they're saying.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: You need to ask the questions of what's happening here?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they being driven to say this?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm wondering if there's actually uh, you know, global influence, industrial influence, you know, um high-powered entrepreneurial influence that's that's touched these dietary guidelines even more than we had previously thought.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I certainly agree.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for the thanks for the um the update.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things I think that folks maybe not are are not aware of is that this agenda of fake meat, of cell-cultured meat, is right now, it's about 10 years behind their early uh prophecies, their early prognostications from the back in like 20 2010, 2011.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um this, you know, uh the thing that jumped out to me as you were kind of uh opening this up was they expect it to be$2 billion by 2035.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's 10 years down the road uh worldwide.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if this stuff were really uh possible, why is it gonna take 10 years?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, 10 years ago they had the same, they had the same prophecies and they're and they're off by a fac by you know, basically it hasn't happened.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The reason it hasn't happened is because when you run when you try to culture um cell structures in a bioreactor, you don't have the entire organism's um functionality to dispose of waste, to move energy around within within the the structure, uh within the cell structure.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And basically all you have to move stuff is bubbles and filters.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And those are not nearly as efficient as as a body, whether it's a cow or a person or a cat or a tomato for that matter.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so um and so the the truth is that when they thought they were going to be cranking out, you know, uh uh millions of pounds of this stuff long before now, they've actually only cranked out a few pounds of it in little gallon jugs uh because they can't they they they they can't get rid of the waste and the whole thing becomes toxic.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're dumping in antibiotics, uh antibiotics up the wazoo in order to keep the sterility.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And these these labs that are making this stuff have had massive meltdowns of of um of disease and toxicity because they simply can't they can't clean, they can't run a hygienic cell structure outside of a body, outside of an organism.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I I don't know if they're gonna conquer that or not, but it's certainly um, you know, I I I tell farmers that are, you know, my my my livestock farmers that come to me and oh no, are we gonna, you know, we're gonna be out of business in a couple of years, they're all scared to death of all this, because it is getting a lot of finger.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Capital is getting a lot of, you know, a lot of uh impetus.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I I I tell them, look, they're already.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: 10 years behind.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're really no much, not really much farther ahead now than they were 10 years ago because of this huge, you know, um log jam of trying to clean cells outside of an organism.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, maybe maybe you could add a little bit to that, Cena, but that that that's my that's my understanding of it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so is there gonna be a you know, is there gonna be a sudden influx of a juggernaut of millions of pounds of this stuff dump dumped on the market?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I tend to not like to prophesy because usually uh you know usually you start into that and you're wrong.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I I just I just don't see them overcoming these complications quickly uh when you're trying to when you're trying to um you know duplicate a whole organism.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I tend to agree with you, and I do think there's a lot of challenges they have left to overcome.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um my so I my concern would be the other spectrum of the fake meat, right?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got these in my mind, I divide it into two paths of where like the fake meat movement is going.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: One is the lab cultured meat, which we were just talking about, and the other would be using plant-based protein, like veg like like veg veggie burgers, like a veggie burger, right?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like the impossible burger.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you're so that one definitely has much more traction, right?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: In our in across the across the world.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so that would be more of my concern.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and this actually um feeds right into some of the questions that I wanted to ask you today.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start, let's back up a minute and start with the basic question.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think the US government should get involved in banning fake lab meat, you know, the cell-cultured meat, just like Italy just banned?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Should we be in the business of banning fake meat?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, I don't I don't uh agree with that because it sends you down a slippery slope.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, as much as I had a great aunt that was very, very involved in the prohibition movement of the early uh 1900s.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um and you know, right righteous indignation is an interesting thing, and it needs to be uh held in check, I think, when you start to come to legislation, because today's righteous indignation can become tomorrow's prohibition.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and so a government that can keep me from drinking alcohol can also tell me uh that I can't sell raw milk or I can't get an alternative therapy for my child in a medical condition.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I just I just think that that uh that the uh the in the government intervention in the food slash health space um uh arbitrarily, arbitrarily, and as as as we know, you and I have a have a we have a kind of a deep uh aversion to you know government orthodoxy anyway, but but it it it it opens up it opens up the culture to orthodox fadism.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, here's the new the new thing of the day, we're all gonna we're all gonna run there, we're gonna make laws to we're gonna make policies to either push this or prohibit the alternative.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is then ideas don't have to fight it out in the marketplace.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when ideas don't have to fight out in the marketplace for the ascendancy of the best one, what you have then is an a an a um a capricious incentivization to accept one idea over other ideas that don't have a fair shake in the marketplace.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sena, I think we're seeing this right now in the whole electric vehicle movement.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I love electricity.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have no problem with electric vehicles, and I have no problem with solar panels either.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: But but you know, I just met a couple two weeks ago from Indiana, their 40-acre homestead.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: They just found out and and and they've now they've now become surrounded because the the project already happened, um, that they're surrounded now by 5,000 acres of a solar panel farm.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is prime farmland, Indiana, prime farmland, and suddenly they are surrounded by a 5,000-acre uh solar solar farm, not just on prime agland, but but it has sterilized the entire environment.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are no loons, no birds anymore.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, you can imagine what what this is.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now our solar panels better than better than uh GMO corn.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I you know we can kind of uh debate, but but but the the abil the ability the ability to redeem that land is a lot easier if it were just if it were still in agriculture as opposed to you know solar panels.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so so uh enough of that.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just that that the the government intervention um moves a culture to an orthodox fad, uh that may or may not be the right idea, that by go by letting the marketplace duke it out, if you will, that allows the best, you know, uh that that encourages or facilitates the best idea to come out.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: If if the government had never told us what to do about COVID, for example, if it had never told us what to do about COVID and everybody had just you know sleuthed it, uh looked at the situation and and made up their own minds, who knows uh how many lives would have been saved and what a different protocol we would have had had the marketplace and and and and individual research and and ideas been allowed to duke it out for ascendancy.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh including supplements, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: If they didn't come after certain supplements, right, to your point of they can pick and choose.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I completely agree with you, you know, as a fellow libertarian, not a surprise that I don't want the government picking and choosing the winners and the losers, right?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: They've done this before, like you said, with prohibition.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they do this all the time, really, right?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: With subsidized crops and whatnot, they do pick winners and losers.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I want them out of the food supply, um, in it pretty much in its entirely, in its entirety.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, also because if they start banning food, it does reduce consumer choice.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't want them banning any of the food or making any of the policies.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my question for you though is let's say we let the market speak on not the lab cultured meat, but let's say we let the market speak on the plant-based protein alternatives.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And let's say people are buying those alternatives as opposed to, you know, buying the animal-based protein, and then the government gets involved, like it seems to be doing, and they are pushing for it, and maybe even get to the point where they're crafting regulations and policies that could put the small farmer, the meat farmer, out of business.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Then are you concerned at all?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: I for me, that's just um, that should not happen.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: The government should not be in that business, but you can clearly see a potential path of which they might do that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: If that happens, like how concerned are you that that might happen?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And what would you do?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, first of all, I don't I don't worry about it.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh I I think right now the the juggernaut of alternative therapy and alternative healing.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh we're we're right in the we're just a little past midpoint of our annual two two-week uh uh stewardship checkouts.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And at our, you know, we we have 41 young people coming through here in two weeks.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll pick 11 of them for our stewardship.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I've already had, I don't know, five or six who have had serious, serious physical problems and have healed themselves with paleo.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: They've gone carnivore, paleo, you know, some some some meat-based, you know, uh um thing.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and now they're the picture of health, and they say they're never going back.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and that that you know, that movement is growing as well.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, so you know, I I don't think um anyway, you know, maybe I'm naive, uh, but but I I I hope that you know um if and when that day comes, that that truth, you know, truth will prevail.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Truth will prevail.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And our truth is that um you know that that animals synthesize and bioactivate things that that you know that soybeans and uh lentils never will.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I completely agree with you.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, and it's not going to benefit you to to worry about it, but it does bring me comfort to know that you're not actually concerned about it, that you know, as the actual meat farmer, that you're not concerned about it.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of that puts my mind at ease a little bit.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I do have hope for it.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like I do think people will come around to that realization, you know, to work with nature as opposed to trying to manipulate nature, you know, and and so some some countries are also moving towards um consuming insects, right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: As as a and away from the animal-based uh protein sources.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know that so in January, the European Union approved the use of cricket powder in major processed foods that are sold to the public.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I read an article recently talking about how children in Australia are being fed crickets as a snack in school, that somewhere around like a thousand different schools just added cricket, like cricket chips to the menu.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and Canada, Canada just invested in a in like invested, I think$6.5 million in a new production plant that's gonna house like 4 billion crickets and produce like 14,000 tons of cricket protein a year.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I find that fascinating.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for me, that's that's less of a concern for me than obviously than like a lab grown meat, because you know, at least it's at least they're eating a naturally grown, you know, insect.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally grown.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I uh Cena, I've had the privilege of being on a uh a cricket farm uh down in Kentucky.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I was I visited one.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't actually growing crickets while I was there, they because they were out of business.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because the the so these are these are cricket cricket um cricket cafos.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a big building like a Tyson chicken house, but they're growing crickets.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, and so the feed comes in.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think they were getting their feed from Purina or something.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the point is that the feed had some tiny adulterant in it, and it killed all the crickets and destroyed seven entire, I think it was seven that were fairly close together, these cricket farms, uh, destroyed seven of them all in one day.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and um and and they went bankrupt.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: They went out of business.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so you know, this is fragile too.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when you when you try to grow a football stadium sized uh uh cricket operation with imp with feeds, you know, with with um feed uh that's that's augered in and all that, um, you know, that's not that's not just simple either.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and when you crowd that many critters together in one place all the time, you're gonna have you know pathogen problems and and toxicity problems.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So so I I I think I think as long as the marketplace can speak, I think uh I I tend to think that the the platforms that have stood the test of time are going to stand the test of time.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so you know, uh we'll I don't have any problem with somebody wanting to eat cricket.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to eat crickets, you know, I mean a a similar question would be if I had had the chance in 19, you know, 1968, would I have banned McDonald's?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um now I don't like McDonald's, I don't eat at McDonald's.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wish nobody would eat at McDonald's, but but if I banned McDonald's, by whose criteria is banning going to be uh you know codified?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what's going to be that protocol?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then if I want to start something, then you know, then I've got a bunch of regulatory stuff to to go through that makes it a hurdle for me to provide uh something else.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so let the market speak, let the consumer speak, let people take their own responsibility, and um and and we'll we'll we'll we'll duke it out, we'll duke it out uh one-on-one.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have said that better than myself.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Joel, for enlightening us today.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um filling us in on the cricket key foos.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: That like I'm surprised to hear that.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's not actually a good solution.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're just going from one KFO situation to the to another KFO situation and those poor crickets.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh so, anyhow, thank you for enlightening us.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: We will keep you updated on this ever growing, ever changing topic.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure we'll have more and more wisdom and insights from Joel in the near future.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next week.