Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode 24: Beef Label Lie: "Product of USA" Actually Raised in A Foreign Country?

Transcript

Episode 24: Beef Label Lie: "Product of USA" Actually Raised in A Foreign Country? · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: If all the effort, if all the effort that has gone into this certainly sincere, you know, heartfelt, sincere uh uh campaign, if all that effort were channeled somewhere else in in facilitating um uh you know direct farm to plate uh marketing, uh facilitating um you know uh abattoirs so farmers could get you know uh to get slots for their animals to be able to get them uh processed or or whatever.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the point is that there there are other um competitive options for placing this level of time and attention uh in in in the food system.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I always come away from this thinking, boy, all that all those hours, those meetings, those all that effort that went back and forth, and then what do we what do we get?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: We we get um we get virtually nothing, and um, and where could that be better spent?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everybody.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another edition of Beyond Labels.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Stina McCullough, and I'm here with my amazing co-host, Joel Salatin.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Joel, how you doing?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Stina, I'm doing great.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, this episode, I wanted to talk about a labeling loophole in the beef industry.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually didn't know this loophole existed until recently.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I got a newsletter from Center for Food Safety, and they were talking about this new bill, the American Beef Labeling Act of 2021.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying we need more sponsors in the Senate to try to move this bill through.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what they said is that the USDA currently allows meat companies to quote unquote mislabel beef produced in other countries.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: They can label it as product of the USA, as long as the beef was re-wrapped in the USA.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what they're saying is cows can be raised in other countries, they can be slaughtered in other countries, then shipped over here to the United States.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as the meat is unwrapped and rewrapped in the United States, that beef can be labeled product of the USA.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this was shocking to me.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent it to you, and I was like, is this actually true?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you what was your response?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so uh you know, so several years ago, uh there was a pretty big effort in in the kind of you know, uh, integrity food movement to establish what's called country of origin labeling.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: It it goes by the acronym COOL, C-O-O-L, Country of Origin Labeling.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and uh it was to try to get a handle on uh uh on where meat came from, you know, in in the grocery store.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a consumer, you know, consumer advocacy thing.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And as you and I have seen, over you you cannot you and I uh could the average person could not invent um more uh uh whatever silliness uh uh you know within the labeling community.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so what they did in the in the cool um uh you know law was that they didn't actually require that that they they just said that it had to it had to be in the U.S.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: on its final labeling, it's its final wrap.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So what people don't realize is nobody sends nobody sends T-bone steaks to the U.S.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody sends um you know uh whatever pork chops, you know, nobody sends well that's that's pork, that's not beef, but anyway, um nobody sends ribeye steaks to the U.S.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: What they send, they send are what are called primals.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you you you know you have this carcass uh hanging here, and you can cut it in quarters, and then you kind of cut it in eighths.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you cut those quarters again, and you essentially have eight great big pieces.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're called primals.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's what they send to the U.S.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody is sending little packages of retail cuts.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: They send these big uh primals.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So they so they send those to the U.S.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Then here they are, of course, unboxed.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then then they cut them, they fabricate them into you know, ribey's and T-bones and and uh you know uh short ribs and whatever else.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so what the loophole or the the thing that this uh labeling law allowed was that as long as that final wrap, that final fabrication and wrap was done in the US, the product could be labeled product of the U.S., which is of course completely misleading.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: It could come from Uruguay, Paraguay, Australia, New Zealand, uh wherever, you know, the actual the actual product, uh, but be but be finally fabricated and wrapped here, and then it was it was uh labeled as here.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So this is you know this is an effort to correct that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I I just you and I uh have have lost faith in you know the US duh to be able to do anything that's actually uh uh honest.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um but anyway, but but that's the that's the origins of this effort.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That that's why this has happened.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So right now in the store, uh you can go and buy beef that's labeled uh product of the USA, and it may very well have come from Australia or Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, uh any place else, and just been finally packaged here in the US.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: How does that make you feel as a as a buyer?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, fortunately, as a buyer, it doesn't threaten me because I buy from my local farmer.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if I was buying from the grocery store still, this would be very alarming to me.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if I hadn't already lost faith in the labeling system, like if this was the first labeling debacle I'd heard about, it would jolt me enough that I would start looking into wait a minute, what else is on these labels that I really don't understand, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you and I know, these labels sometimes seem straightforward, but they're they never are, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: They let it almost never are.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll put a little caveat in there.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: They almost never are straightforward.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I just couldn't believe this.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you would yeah, and you you would um yeah, I I think, yeah, you you say you'd feel shocked.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to push you a little bit and say, uh, I I feel betrayed.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the average person would feel not just shocked, but betrayed.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: You feel betrayed by the people who are supposed to who are supposed to be, you know, whatever, supposedly looking out for your interest.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so what you feel is betrayed.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would feel very um deceived.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I like they were they were trying to trick me, right?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trick me to buy something that was a facade, really.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you when you email me back and confirm that this was true, I emailed you back and I said, All right, I have to dig into this, I got to find where this act is, where did this whole thing start, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because what they're saying is that Congress is now trying to pass that American Beef Labeling Act to amend the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back, I read the current bill, and then I went back to that Marketing Act of 1946, and I was trying to piece together the history of it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is something that I wanted to talk with you today because this tells you it as though you and I haven't already peeled back the layers of deception of labels, right?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've already shown you the complexity of it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: This adds in a whole nother level of complexity, in my opinion, and a whole nother um, it brings you to a new awareness that even the United States government doesn't have control over our food supply all the time.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what I found.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So for many years, agricultural commodities have actually been exempted from these cool requirements, right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since the Tariff Act of 1930, these agricultural products were exempted until the 2002 Farm Bill.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: That farm bill amended, again, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, and it did require the labeling.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It required the labeling for beef and lamb and pork, um, you know, and fish and shellfish, peanuts, fruits, vegetables.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually did require labeling for beef.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then what happened was in 2016, there was an appropriations bill that modified which products were going to be covered so that these cool laws no longer applied to beef and pork.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that that appropriation bills bill was um signed by President Obama.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So um, although, and I don't mean that I'm I'm saying that as a historical um you know fact, but obviously this has been a bipartisan effort.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm not singling out either side.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually was beef was included, but um then, as I said, in 2016, it got taken out.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So now the most current, the most recent regulation applies the cool laws only to lamb, chicken, goat meat, perishable agricultural commodities, macadamia nuts, pecans, peanuts, and ginseng.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So other meats, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lamb, chicken, and goat meat, are still required to have country of origin labeling, um, unless they're in a processed food.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that's a caveat, but they're still required to have this country of origin labeling on the meat product, but somehow beef and pork got taken out.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, well, that's weird.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and at first I thought, oh, this just screams the lobbyists, you know.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then um, this is what I found out.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So once that once it was passed that there was going to be this labeling requirement, we as a country faced legal challenges from the World Trade Organization because of Mexico and Canada.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Mexico and Canada, who send a lot of beef to us, um, they threatened to impose over a billion dollars of tariffs against the United States unless the labeling was removed.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, as a result of the pressure, uh, President Obama signed the appropriation bills removing the requirement.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I found just kind of um fascinating here, and um a little bit like I lost even more faith in our food supply, is that that um that went back and forth.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So between the United States and Canada and Mexico, um, you know, them threatening this um the tariffs against us and then bringing a lawsuit through the World Trade Organization, that went back and forth for many years.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we kept losing and we kept appealing.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and finally, in October of 2014, the World Trade Organization compliance panel ruled that Canada and Mexico were successful in arguing that our rules presented a technical barrier to trade because of the increased production segregation and record keeping requirements.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in December of 2015, Canada and Mexico were actually given approval by the World Trade Organization to move forward with their billion dollars worth of retaliatory tariffs against us.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's when Congress passed that 2016 Consolidation Appropriation Act that Obama signed, and it repealed the cool requirements for the beef and pork.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: On the heels of that, the USDA secretary at the time was Vislack, I'm sorry, VILSAC, and he sent out guidance that the USDA will no longer enforce the cool regulations for beef and pork in accordance with the new laws.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that that meant the retailers, when you go into the grocery store, they no longer had to label the country of origin.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But again, they're still in fact in effect for the chicken, lamb, and the goats.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this was specifically for the beef and the pork.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, I read this and I thought, so not only is this another layer of complexity of our food supply, but this shows you that not even our own government, um, even when they are well-intentioned, right?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even when they want to imply, uh impose these labeling requirements for country of origin, they can be overridden by the interests of other countries.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, that we had to bow down to the authority of the World Trade Organization.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you know what I'm saying?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it reveals another layer of complexity, another layer of we really don't have control over our food supply in in some areas.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when you want to change your food supply, right, like you and I really promote a free market solution, so we can talk about that too.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: But when a lot of people who still have faith in the government regulation of the food supply, when they want a change in the food supply, what do they do?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right, just like the Center for Food Safety is doing now, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to go through Congress to pass another uh act, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: But as we're seeing here, once again, I think you would agree with me, that's not a good solution for us because that what's going to happen this time if they pass it?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are we are we gonna be brought to the World Trade Organization again and sued and get into a tariff war?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and this is why, you know, in our podcast about the GMO labeling live that we just did, this is why I called these labeling wars, because these are constant battles that go on.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now this battle is not just between the consumers, the government, and the food industry, it's bringing in other countries.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you may think that you're you can go through and you might win a little battle, like, oh yeah, we got that GMO labeling law passed, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Score for us.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then it comes, we as we revealed what's really in that regulation, right?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's not helping you.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's contributing to the deception that you see on these labels.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, this is one more reason why we should not be putting our faith in the system.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: We need to become our own solution.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Cena, that um, yeah, thanks for that that good historical rundown on it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and obviously it shows that even if this effort passed, who knows what it'll what what opposition it'll face at the WTO or you know, other other outfits.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It it uh it's a it's a it's a tangled web, that's for sure.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so what that brings up, what that brings up, no, I mean as a very practical matter, then when you when I see these kinds of of big efforts, and you know, and I get the emails, I get the letters, you know, the uh send us a contribution, we're you know, we're on this campaign, blah, blah, blah.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and what this kind of does is always bring me to a point where, okay, you know, you and I only have so many hours in a day.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: We we've got we've got so much time to you know to to devote to something, to a cause, to to whatever it is that we want to devote our time to.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and it it begs the question well, where's the biggest return for effort?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you have to ask that question.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: We we ask it in finance, we ask it in investment, you have to ask it in time as well.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've only got so much time in the day, I've got to get the kids to soccer practice, I've got to go to the elders' meeting at church, I've got to, you know, and and and and we've only got so much time to invest, as well as just so much money to invest.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you ask for, you know, for for bang, we say bang for the buck, well, bang for the hour, all right.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and so um, so you know, I would just lay on lay it on the table and you know enjoy your response, that these kinds of things make me uh want to uh say if all the effort, if all the effort that has gone into this certainly sincere, you know, heartfelt sincere uh uh campaign, if all that effort were channeled somewhere else in in facilitating um uh you know direct farm to plate uh marketing, uh facilitating um you know uh abattoirs so farmers could get you know uh to get slots for their animals to be able to get them uh processed or or whatever.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the point is that there are other um competitive options for placing this level of time and attention uh in in in the food system.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I always come away from this thinking, boy, all that all those hours, those meetings, those all that effort that went back and forth, and then what do we what do we get?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: We we get um we get virtually nothing.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and where could that be better spent?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I completely agree.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I would go as far as to say, not only do we get virtually nothing, we get more deception.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So right, the web gets even more tangled.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I agree with you, and that's one thing I recognized early on is that these these, you know, we're we're activists in our in each of us in our own way, you know, we're trying to defend our food supply in whatever way resonates with us.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as I had untangled what's happening like years ago, I realized that the system wasn't gonna change.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you I've because where you put your effort and your energy, it grows.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm putting my effort and my energy into bills, I'm helping to grow that tangled web, you know, because there's no bill that's gonna come out that's they're not gonna find loopholes for it or exemptions, or another country is not gonna, you know, sue us over it, you know.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: No bill is this right.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So what I decided early on was I was not gonna play the game, right?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't gonna support that system, I wasn't gonna engage in those battles because you're never gonna win the war if you engage the battles in that strategy, in my opinion.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided that I would fight the battles with my dollars, right?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's what companies are about, is the dollar bottom, the bottom dollar, right?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It that's not what they're all about, obviously, but the dollar does matter to the company.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: They do respond when you stop buying the products, you know, and they do notice when there's a shift and you start buying, you know, the organic version of the product, you know.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so my I decided early on my effort was going to be to move the market, also because number one, um, it's not helping to contribute to the system of deception and continued loopholes that's fallible and susceptible to um influence by lobbyists and other countries and people who don't have the consumers' interest uh in heart.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it also is empowering because you don't have to go through government to change the market, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can go straight to the food producer, you can go straight to the farmer, and you can actually have a bigger impact.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I decided to do was let's put out that positive message that we don't have to keep fighting these battles.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can focus on the positive.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: We can make the change ourselves, and we can do that by moving the market, and you do that by speaking with your dollars.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So every bite of food that goes into my body and my family's body, it's an intentional choice, right?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then we tried to educate people and make it easy for them.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, like we did that podcast on how to find an authentic food supply.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we did that, was to help people realize there is a better way you can get authentic clean food that's not gonna hurt you and that you can trust the label.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how you can do it.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we try to create a path of least resistance to help them access that food while supporting these companies that we believe in.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in that way, we focus on the positive, right?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Put our energy in that direction, and then it will grow that system.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we live we live in a time of um of surrogates.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, we we we've never we've never been able medically to have you know surrogate parenting, you know, where you you know you implant an embryo in somebody else's womb and you know they and you pay them to you know uh have the pregnancy for you.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's perhaps a very extreme example of of surrogate.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: But but the idea of surrogate uh I think can be used, you know.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: We it it's like we want to pass, we we want to have surrogate decision makers.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want to mess with it, I don't want to fool with it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I want you to pass a bill so that that's out of sight, out of mind, and and we and and we have we have created this whole um surrogate mentality for decision, for protection, for making sure that what we want to happen will happen.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh and and as we have seen over and over.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: um you you can't you can't just give your health your food decision making you can't give it over to a surrogate that nobody nobody is gonna watch out for your interests uh like you will and um i mean we we've done it with educ we've done it we've done an education you know let's have surrogate education well uh we see where that's where that's heading in in many places i don't want to get in too many broad topics here but um you know the the the i um the the the the push in our culture right now um toward you know i'm a victim or i'm entitled i'm not responsible i i think it has its kind of uh foundation in this kind of in this surrogate the surrogate idea that that i can i can go over here and i can you know uh feed on on um you know uh junk food and and netflix and the experts will you know take care of make all these decisions for me while i you know uh play my video games and and eat chocolate bonbons and and watch netflix and and and uh and so we've we've surrogated i don't know if that's the word or not but you know we've we've created this kind of uh a surrogate uh um uh decision making expert model uh i i if not if not physically at least kind of mentally and figuratively uh in our in our heads and um and and and so i think what we're finding is that you simply can't you simply can't do that and get where you want to be you can't do that yeah i think that's exactly right you know and um the more the more that i've learned on my journey the more i realized um it it is outsourcing your authority right and and when you do that you weaken your intuition as well because you're trusting others as these supposed experts over yourself and so um you know intuition is like a muscle that you you exercise and so i've realized that my intuition has strengthened the more and more I put my faith in myself and the more and more I question authoritative figures, you know you know these supposed experts.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now I will say that when you stop and think about it and you look around, it can be overwhelming when you start thinking of all these different areas where you have outsourced your authority, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we've all done this to some extent, okay?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be really overwhelming.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I always say to people, start with one thing, right?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And don't even try to tackle your whole food supply at one point.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching this video and this is alarming to you and you want to know where your beef is coming from, then make that change.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, find your local farmer or like we said in a previous episode you can actually order you know good um beef online now it can be delivered to your doorstep.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there's easy solutions for finding an authentic beef supply.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: So just start with that one step, you know, don't start with the whole the the whole um field and be like oh I have to do all these things and take all my authority back right now.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do one step you know and then when you're ready do the next step.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, if you keep doing that, even if you made like one change every two weeks you're gonna be so much um stronger like mentally and physically and emotionally and so much more in tune with your intuition by the end of a year.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know that's just by making small changes um incrementally.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So don't be overwhelmed with it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do one step at a time and this would be a good first step you know yeah yeah yeah well you know uh if you start with your if you start with your animal protein you know that's one of the um you know that's one of the biggest parts of the consumer dollar and so if you start there that's a good place to start.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well this has been fascinating Cena I I really appreciate you uh staying on top of this bringing it up and um and you know it's the kind of thing where I I you know I admit I I just gave up on it and and a lot of that all that all that bills and lobbying and you know people say I I mean media I I get over the years you know they've always asked me what do you think about the farm bill I say I haven't even read it I don't care about the farm bill I'm not even in the farm bill who you know who cares but it's amazing how much effort how much effort goes into these things and and I know they have implications but at the same time if all the people who got their pants in a wad about these these efforts would would would would actually just get very practical practical find their alternative source vote with their food dollar put all that effort right in there uh exercise their intuition become skilled at at vetting uh vetting your provenance uh that's a skill too and um and and if if that became where we where we became expert um you know we could we could just not get all riled up with some of these uh some of these efforts that occupy our time so thanks thina for bringing this to our attention and um we'll we'll uh thanks everybody for tuning in and we look forward to seeing you next time