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Episode #165: Meat and Poultry Prices to Rise Under New EPA Rule · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: But their estimated cost of compliance for these new rules is a million dollars per plant.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so the EPA estimates, as you said, you know, 16 at the bottom end, 53 at the top end, processing plants will close.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: The uh opposition is saying probably 74 plants will close.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McKella here with our favorite one and only farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Joel.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Cena.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Today I think it's going to be a really exciting uh it um I almost said interview.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I do feel like I'm interviewing you for this one because this is a subject that is in your wheelhouse, not mine, and I have lots of questions.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're bringing to you another rule change from the EPA, where they are trying to uh propose rules for governing wastewater.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And this is wastewater coming from meat and poultry processors.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: This new rule, while they say it's necessary to control contamination from wastewater, there's a lot of critics to it because the EPA is saying that around 16 to uh maybe as much as 53 plants, processing plants could be closed.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So 16 to 53 processing plants could be closed.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: A minimum of 17,000 jobs could be lost.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they said that prices are expected to increase for beef, chicken, turkey, and pork.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Only slightly, they said, only slight increases.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the availability of meat and poultry is also expected to decrease, but only slightly, they said.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now opponents are estimating it won't just be 16 to 53 processing plants that are going to be closed.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're saying it could be 74 plants closed with a loss of jobs ranging between 31,500 and 78,500 jobs.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're estimating it could be a significant increase in the price of meat and poultry because they're estimating that it's going to be about a million dollars in compliance costs per factory.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So per per uh processing plant.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, Joel, let's break this down.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about what the EPA is doing, why they're doing this, and then I want to hear your overall thoughts about uh the EPA in general and what we should be doing at this point.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, what a what a big topic.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, so um, Cena, in the in the article that we're referring to, in the information that we've gotten, the impetus for this, you know, whenever something like this happens, you always wonder, well, what's the what's the agenda?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: What what's what's the what's the cause?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently the cause is a bunch of um lawsuits filed by environmental groups against the EPA.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and these come, you know, these are filed just along, you know.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: These groups, they've got their, you know, they've got their um, you know, attorneys that work on a lot of them on cut rates or gratis or whatever.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they just file these lawsuits against the EPA, and and um, and so the EPA um, at least from what we've been able to determine, is is fighting for its credibility.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these these environmental groups are saying, oh, see, you don't you don't really care about the environment, see, you're not doing anything about this.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so the EPA is fighting for credibility, so let's make some tougher rules.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the tougher rules, then, of course, have a compliance cost.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So these plants are all you know federally, federally licensed processing plants.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably not the biggest ones, they're probably you know smaller ones.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I haven't I haven't seen a list.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I I expect they're smaller ones, but their estimated cost of compliance for these new rules is a million dollars per plant.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so the EPA estimates, as you said, you know, 16 at the bottom end, 53 at the top end, processing plants will close.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: The uh opposition is saying probably 74 plants will close.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: The problem here, as is so often the case with bureaucratic compliance requirements, they're often uh requirements of infrastructure and not performance.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when it says it costs a million dollars to comply, what that is, is a tremendous amount of infrastructure, uh, whether it's holding ponds, um, you know, additional whatever equipment, you know, to treat this this um effluent.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: The significant issue here, I mean, I I think there are two things here, Cena, and we can we can you know talk about this.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: The the two significant things are one, look, I don't want polluted waterways any more than anybody else.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think either one of us wants polluted water wants polluted waterways.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we assume for a moment that the environmentalists are correct in their assessment of the situation, that there is effluent dumping polluting the waterways, let's assume that that's correct.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: The what has gotten us to this point is centralization.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is is you know, these plants have gotten so big that they override their ecological, the ecological, the the carrying capacity of where they are.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean I know up here the big poultry plants around Harrisonburg, Virginia, you know, which are huge, uh, they basically, those plants have literally effluent treatment plants as big as a city.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's it's it's a it's a huge, it's a huge thing because to process chicken in the industry takes five gallons per chicken.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if a plant is processing um, you know, 500,000 chickens a day, that's 2.5 million gallons of processing water per plant per day that needs to be handled and supposedly come out of the whatever the the discharge thing is, come out as potable.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't come out as potable, then it's then it's it's uh you know it's not acceptable.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and so these are tremendous costs.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, compare that, for example, to where we process chickens here on the farm, and we do it a couple days a week, and we have a thousand gallons of water, and and we take it out in a tank and and just let it go into the you know, into a hillside on a pasture, and it makes a, you know, in a in a real dry time, it makes a nice, you know, little green spot out about 15 feet, you know, and and it's all you know, you're done.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: You it that's it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the ecology, and when I say the ecology, I mean, you know, the worms and the actinomyct, the soil biology, the vegetation, you know, all of that that that's entailed in the ecology can metabolize and sanitize and utilize that that nutrient load, you know, kind of like a like a septic field, you know, for your for your um human sludge in a you know in a in a rural setting.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: How do they know how many feet of effluent pipe to make?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they base it on the number of bedrooms in your house, how many people are gonna live there, and that's how long you have to make your you know, make your leech field, so that you don't overrun the you know, overrun the uh the ecology.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and of course, the in the the grass, the grass always grows nice and nice and lush and you know green over your um uh leech field.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But but but but that's part of the ecology, metabolizing that nutrient load, you know, turning it into uh something else, and that that's that's um benign or sanitary.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um so if you drill down to the bottom of it, the problem that I see is that these plants, if look, if a million-dollar compliance runs a plant out of business, that's a relatively small plant in in the big scheme of things.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what that what's that going to do?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to drive us to more centralized all that business, all those animals that are getting processed at those plants are going to go to bigger plants.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So so you you have so you have increased centralization of the processing system, which is which is from a from a um a big picture standpoint, you know, uh food system standpoint, you don't want more centralization, you want less centralization.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so the rule is driving a a more concentrated centralized system.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so let's let's contrast that with what some of these bigger companies are doing.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so according to uh the the EPA, they said about 850 out of about 5,000 facilities are going to be impacted by the rule change.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it said those include large facilities processing more than 50 million pounds of meat per year and more than 100 million pounds of poultry per year.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So my first question is is that on par with like a Tyson?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or is this are these facilities that are smaller than a Tyson?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: 50 million pounds of meat.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're processing more than 50 million pounds of meat per year and more than 100 million pounds of poultry per year.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well that's let's uh let's um let's break that down a minute.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that that's good.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't seen those, hadn't seen those figures, Cena, but so so follow me here.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 100 million pounds poultry per year um divided by 250 working days is 400,000 pounds per day divided by uh four pounds per chicken gives 100,000 chickens per day.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your live weight is gonna be about uh 24 or 25 percent more than the actual carcass weight.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm assuming when they give this many pounds of poultry per year, they're assuming carcass weight.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is this is processed weight, okay?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's that's 12.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to get a perspective, you know, so people understand.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be 12 tractor trailer loads of chicken a day, uh chickens, you know, when you see them going down the interstate, you know, these truck fulls of pigs of chicken, all right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's 12.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's 12 tractor, that's 12 tractor trailer loads a day.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a lot.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, it seems like a lot.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh 100,000 chickens a day.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you if we do one more little um equation here and say uh and say that that um that we're running, let's say we run two shifts, two shifts a day, all right?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Two eight-hour shifts, and then one shift is cleanup, all right.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So two eight-hour shifts a day, if we divide a hundred thousand by 16 hours of work a day, that's six thousand two hundred and fifty birds per hour.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So when you when you think this has to be the big people, right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when you when you think of of you know, this tractor trailer, it's backed into this great big room, and these workers are literally they're they're hand they're hand hanging.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's no machine that can grab a chicken and hang it on the shackles, all right.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so they're putting them on a shackles.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh two two legs, two legs in a in a in a in a hanging shackle, okay?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: That has to be done by hand.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's no machine that can do that.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have to physically grab the chicken and hang it on a shackle.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So at 6,250 an hour, that is 104 per minute.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh 104 chickens per minute.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I've done plenty of this in my life.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if we say that the average, and I I've I've actually now we don't actually use shackles here, you know, at our farm where we process, we don't use shackles at all.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I have been to these great big plants where they do use shackles, and I've stood in the kill room, you know, and watched all this happen.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, uh hanging 104 birds per minute, that would take probably 10, 10 workers working, you know, at a pretty good clip just to hang, just to hang the birds on the on the the uh the shackles.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the average bird per person hour at these big plants is about 25 birds per person hour.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a minimum of 250 workers just to process those birds per 250 people.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it gives you an idea of the you know of the of the the size of these kinds of things.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and I um I actually don't know what an average you know Tyson plant or whatever does, but certainly sounds like a pretty big plant to me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one of my first thoughts was uh when I started reading it, I thought, oh, are they coming after this the family farms again?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: But um it doesn't seem like that.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like they're coming after the you know some big players.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and what they're saying in here is there's some firsts in this new EPA proposed regulations.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have some firsts.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what they're saying is they want to establish tighter limitations for the amount of nitrogen that can be released into the environment by these large processors, and for the first time, they want to limit phosphorus.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So apparently that's not limited because they're saying for the first time, limit phosphorus.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: They said that um the rules are gonna apply to processors who are directly discharging wastewater into bodies of water, and for the first time, these rules will also apply to those indirectly discharging wastewater through water treatment plants.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: One more first, they said that the new EPA rules would establish pre-treatment standards for oil and grease, total suspended solids, and biochemical oxygen demand.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the first questions is because I don't think a I don't think a lot of us even think about this, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: When we talk about uh meat and poultry processing plants, it's not a common thing to be like, okay, well, so they're processing my meat in these facilities, and then of course there's gonna be waste that comes out and wastewater.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, my first question for you, Joel, is what is in this wastewater that's coming out of these processing plants?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, compare it to yours, for instance.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got your on-farm processing of the chickens, and then compare it to one of these big outfits, like maybe like a Tyson.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Are there different chemicals that are being used?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are you gonna have different toxins, potential toxins or chemicals that are in this wastewater?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because the EPA, while it's saying this this is what it's gonna tighten the regulations on, later on in this article, the EPA talks about how they think that this is beneficial because it's going to decrease the amount of toxins and potential pathogens that are that's in this water, even though I don't see any you know proposed rule for helping to regulate that.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: But so why can you break that down for us, Joel?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's in these large treatment plants, large processing plants, wastewater that we should be concerned about?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at the top, at the top, uh Cena, um and and boy, far be it for me to um to be uh a champion of the radical environmentalist agenda.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: But as I'm doing the math here, as you were giving me a moment to do some more plunking here on my calculator, um I'm I'm I'm I'm realizing that at 400,000 pounds a day, at$2 a pound, let's just say that chicken's worth$2 a pound.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's$800,000 a day.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: $800,000 a day.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they're saying cost of compliance might be a million dollars.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you've got a plant that's running through$800,000 a day, a million dollar uh additional compliance seems like seems like nothing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean just uh uh um um I mean in in in two days you got$1.6 million.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: In three days, you have$2.4 million.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, at eight at$800,000 a day we'll we'll do our we'll do our um that's what does that come at$200$200 million a year.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: If your plant is running through$200 million a year, what's what's a million dollars?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Yes.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so let me piggypack on that.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't seem like much.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So so to but but to answer your question, I don't want to be a politician here and not answer your question.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um to answer the question, so here's the thing that everybody's got to understand the the the biggest difference between the chickens that we're doing here at our farm that are coming off of pasture and the chicken that's going into a Tyson plant is the fecal particulate in the feathers.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So those chickens, those chickens live in dust.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They live in fecal dust.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: 247-365.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: They live in fecal dust, and that dust is completely saturated in their feathers.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: They can't, and of course, you know and I know feathers are yeah, we use uh dust, you know, feather dust um dust things, right, to to pick up dust.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Feathers attract dust.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and so within all that plumage of the chicken are embedded literally um ounces, ounces, I mean measurable amounts of this accumulated fecal dust living in the feathers of the chicken.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so when they're, you know, let's say that each chicken has I don't know, uh let's just say each chicken has four ounce, I don't know, four ounces might be too much.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's drop three ounces.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm just I'm just brainstorming here, okay, spitballing.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: If every chicken has three ounces of fecal dust and bread embedded in its feathers, three ounces times a hundred thousand chickens is three hundred thousand ounces divided by six whoops hit the wrong thing, divided by sixteen ounces in a pound is listen, Cena, it's eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifth of manure.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's just that's just manure on the feathers of the chickens that's in the processing water.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: 18,000 pounds a day just of of manure that has to be handled in the um in the in the initial scald water.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So what you have is you have you have scald water that loosens the feathers so they can be plucked.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have um, and then you have cleaner water that's used, you know, out on farther down the processing uh uh chain.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because a processing plant's divided into a a clean half and a dirty half.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: The dirty half is everything up until the feathers are picked off.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Once the feathers are picked off, then the chickens go into a clean half.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So every plant's divided in half.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: You got a dirty half and a clean half, and the water doesn't mix between those two halves.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: The the dirty half water, it goes into one stream.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I guess they they they they eventually mingle, but they don't mingle within the plant.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they the the the the dirty water goes out one chute and the the the clean water, you know, is all uh on another chute.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course all the the manure that's you've got all the the O fall, the guts and the and and all that sort of thing.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um And in addition to blood and all that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: But they they generally separate that.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the the stuff that they can separate like that, they they do.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course you've got chlorine.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've got lots of of um uh antimicrobials and chlorine poured, and again, on our farm, our chickens come in directly from the pasture.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is there is zero fecal particulate in the feathers, zero, none.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then and then we don't use any chlorine, we don't use any toxic, you know, uh, whatever, you know, chemical um, you know, sanitizers.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um and but in the industry, they are bathing everything in because the chickens are so filthy.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: They come in filthy, and even even the skin, you know, your skin is porous.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: The skin has this, you know, from the from the big Tyson confinement animal feeding operation, KFO, it has all that material in it as well.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you go to the to the beef plants, those animals, the pigs and the cattle, again, are coming in either from you know from some sort of a confinement animal feeding operation.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times these beef animals are carrying.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready for this?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: These beef animals are carrying up to 10 pounds or more of manure on their tails, on the the hair of their legs, uh, because they're in this this these extremely manure y conditions.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: The pigs, the pigs are similar uh because remember, they're on concrete, they don't have a clean place to lie down.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're lying on on slatted floor, concrete, and so again, their skin and their hides are embedded with manure.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I I hope nobody's listening to this while they're eating their lunch.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but but I was gonna say this is the if they're if you're still eating from a grocery store, like this episode would convince you, go to your local farmer who's you know ecologically aware.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's hard, it's hard to describe the exterior.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is what people don't understand.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to describe the exterior manure and feces that's hanging on these animals when they come in from these concentrated animal feeding operations.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it it and on a on a beef animal, sometimes it's it's many, many pounds.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's hanging on their tails, hanging off their brisket, off their stomach, off their legs.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's caked um because they're not on a clean, you know, carbonaceous diaper.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're not in a pasture field, they're not, you know, any of these kind of things.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're they're they're crammed in these uh in these small lots, both pigs and cattle, um, you know, without without bedding, without bedding.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And at least the chickens normally have a little bit of bedding, but but the chickens make way more dust because they they scratch and and and move around.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and so um, so while they have a little bit of bedding, uh they're turning it into you know a fecal fumigant for themselves that then they of course breathe in and send their feathers.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, um, it's a it's a so that's pretty gross.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it's pretty gross, but it also tells you it also explains why they need to use all these toxic chemicals, you know, like the chlorine and the antimicrobials, for instance, because people could get sick if they're processing the meat and or the poultry with all this fecal matter and whatever else is growing in that environment where those poor animals are living.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so the the EPA in their own report said that Tyson, one one Tyson location out of Dakota City releases as much as 3,084 pounds of nitrogen per day into the Missouri River.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: They said this is approximately equal to the waste load of 132,000 people.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this was the EPA themselves that cited this.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: So over 3,000 pounds of nitrogen dumped into the Missouri River, equivalent to waste from 132,000 people.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: This to me was also alarming because, you know, Joel, we used to live, my family used to live in Florida for three years because that's where my husband got a job.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we had to leave Florida because of the health issues I was suffering from from the red tide, which, you know, from we lived in Southwest Florida, and this dumping of the nitrogen we now know fuels the red tide.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: It it's more, it's like what you said, the ecology cannot handle it, can't handle the load that we're giving to the environment.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the um the algae and stuff respond by releasing this toxic, this toxic compound.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's I was suffering multiple miscarriages because of the red tide.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So this ties directly into that.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we know that that's actually a neurotoxin.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: It causes all these fish to to wash up dead on the shores um now, seemingly every year.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's toxic to the animals.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyhow, this is a big problem.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is so I was talking about this with Donnie uh yesterday, because I was like, I need to talk through this.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where do I fall on this?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like you, I am a small government, limited government, uh libertarian.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in something like this, I'm wondering, well, what's the solution?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: You you have these companies that that overrun the ecology, so they can't use the solution that you're using, which is, you know, like you you so eloquently described, of having the ecology kind of break it down and actually utilize what's coming off of your chicken processing.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: They can't do that, it overwhelm, it overruns it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And yet they're allowed to take this wastewater and put it in water, whether it's you know, they dump it into a stream, and that stream flows into a larger body of water, like a lake.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then that lake is used for not only recreation, but also for drinking water in many instances.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we have that situation here where we live.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're one of like the chicken keifo factories of the world here.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so we we specifically only will live on one side of the freeway because the other side has all these kafos there, and you can smell it.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's nauseating.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know people who have had to move because the smell of the keifos makes them so sick because of all the chemicals that they're using and the stench of the feces and whatever other pathogens are in there.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, so we I spoke with a local farmer here who, by the way, is a huge fan of yours, and he tries to farm like you.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a keifo just down the street from him that he said it's disgusting.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: They take the wastewater, they literally just dump it right there in the creek, and it goes right into the big body of the big lake that literally is the water that's pumped through the local water treatment plant, and then that's sent to the homes, and they people drink it, right?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's through our county, that's the county water.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: These KFOs can dump right into waterways that go into that lake.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and he said that they will routinely test the water, and he said that there's even been positive tests for flesh-eating bacteria in the water, you know, and hit his assumption is it's coming from these from these KFOs.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I have a couple, so my question for you is in terms of us who are these limited government, you know, people, what actually is the solution?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because so I describe that, and so this isn't just on paper for me.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I'm reading these EPA rules, this is in my backyard.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can drive around this area, you can smell these KFOs.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: In our homeschool group, we go to watering holes every um week during the summer, and there's specific watering holes we do not allow our children to go into because you can smell and see the pollution, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, so this is a real thing in our lives.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: But and here's the other, here's the other part of it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a, I didn't think about this until there was a public comment period for this EPA proposed rule.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a um, you know, opponents of it said this that if the govern, if the EPA is allowed to do this, there's 78% of the dischargers that are still going to continue to pollute the waterways.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's missing, in their opinion, 78% of the people who are polluting the waterways.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: When they do that, it threatens our downstream drinking water supply.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing it passes the cost onto the taxpayers that fund our wastewater treatment plants.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, wait a minute, this is true.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: So our local tax dollars go to these water, um, these wastewater treatment plants, and so so we're paying more in taxes actually to treat that water, right?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: The company has passed the has passed the cost onto the water treatment plant, who then passes it on to our to us, the local taxpayers.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So in essence, I am subsidizing those processing plants for process for for processing meat and poultry that I think's junk, right?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: That shouldn't that people that we shouldn't be pro shouldn't be subsidizing.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I am subsidizing that with my tax dollars instead of that company being responsible for taking care of their own waste.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this is this is quite the dilemma.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so uh um it it it is it is a philosophical conundrum, but let me um let me go back.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go back.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm old enough to remember when the EPA was started by uh President Nixon.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um and at that time there was a uh just a TV ad.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's all we had in those days.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh TV, didn't have social media, didn't have internet.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: But there there were massive uh advertising campaigns by environmental groups.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: The some some maybe some of our listeners are old enough to remember, Cena, the the Native American standing on the shores of the Cuyahoga River as it burned.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: It it actually had enough uh stuff on it that it actually caught fire and burned.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and then and somebody comes along with a car and throws trash out on the side of the road, and this big tear comes down the cheek of the it it's it's American icon.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you know, it's it was iconic American.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and and what that did, that awakened it what it did, it it it moved the culture to not only an awareness, but a fighting awareness of of the pollution problem.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, fish couldn't live in rivers anymore.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were in bad shape in the late 60s and early 70s, and that and that cultural awareness eventuated in the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what and what I would say is that the societal pendulum swings side to side.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sit in the middle usually, it you know, it swings side to side, and it has to swing far enough on a side, you know, to one direction before there's before there's corrective action.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: It has to get to people, you know, enough.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at that point, culture, you know, all of us um we come to this tipping point of okay, I'm saying enough.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's the solution?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the temptation is to gravitate toward, well, let's let the government solve this.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's create an agency and get the government to solve this.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: It it's it's a longer slog, and I'll I'll admit it, I don't have a you know, a quick solution here.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a longer slog to say, okay, now people are awake, they're aware, and they will begin voting with their dollars.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: There will just these these environmental groups will morph into marketplace.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look what's happened with you know DEI uh in modern in modern times, um, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion stuff, and uh environmental social governance, ESG, in these big companies, uh, BlackRock.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'm not I'm not sitting here defending any of that, okay?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: But all I'm suggesting is um just you know, when when when Walt Disney came out woke, um suddenly their attendance dropped 30% as conservatives quit going to Walt to Disney to Disney, okay?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's marketplace speak, if you will.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's market speak.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the uh the thing is when we when we as a as a culture we demanded a government solution to this, and and we're not content to let individual choice and market reaction respond to the dirty companies.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um we then traded we then traded a um a grassroots personal response, um, you know, defund the bad company kind of thing.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and and we simply conveniently laid it over to a government agency which which uh vacillates uh seemingly between incompetence or negligence, which by RFK Jr.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: has sued the government whatever 180 times for not doing their job, okay, or not, you know, not fulfilling their mandate.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's one that that's one or you know, the the the corporate fraternity, you know, uh um collusion.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: But then the other end of that is is you know where a farmer has a mud puddle and now his farm's determined a wetland and he can't do any farming because he's got a mud puddle.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you have that.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this whip sawing back and forth of people dealing with the technocracy, dealing with with the technocracy rather than the actual issue of the day, which is discharge into the creeks.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Any anyone, um, and I know this is gonna rub some people the wrong way, but let me tell you something.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: The most disempowering, and and you just chime in there anytime, but the most disempowering thing you can tell you you can assume as an American citizen, the most disempowering thing you can assume is that the only solution is a governmental solution.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most disempowering thing uh or whatever paradigm, philosophy that you can have.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, a government solution should be the last resort.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are there are tons of things that can be done privately by private organizations, NGOs, uh um, you know, private sleuthing groups, journalists, the you know, uh the the media, um if it were actually functional, uh you know, there there are lots of things that can be done uh to to create this awareness.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: My point is that once once the culture awakens to a problem, it the the solution is not necessarily required of the government.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like when when people awakened to the uh problems of the of the public schools that started the homeschool movement, all right.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm not trying to be partisan, I'm not trying to be anti-anything.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying that that that that that personal option to opt out, to to go rogue, if you will, to um to say, okay, I'm gonna uh I'm not gonna participate in this system, um that that is a powerful thing.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when that's and when that's added by you know this person, this person, this person, and it's added up across across the awareness marketplace with individual responsibility stepping up to the plate, you know, we we can we can change things pretty pretty dramatically.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if and if the if the i here's what I would say if the environmental groups if the environmental groups would take all of the effort they're they're expending suing the EPA for not doing its job, if they would turn all that into their constituency and say, don't go to Happy Meals, don't don't go to Burger King, and don't buy Tyson, because here are the pictures, here's what they're doing.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: If they would turn that campaign into an individualistic marketplace campaign, I'm suggesting we would be way farther down the road to solving the solution than by simply hitting the E by simply demanding uh a solution, a governmental solution that that that that vacillates between incompetency, collusion, and overreach.
• 40:43
  unknown: Yeah.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Did I say that?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Did I say that well enough?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm not sure I'm I think you said that brilliantly.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: That was brilliant.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and I agree, I've always thought the people are the solution, right?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's always going to be government loopholes and carve-outs, you know, and special interests lobbying them and whatnot.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the the because this is what um, and I want to get into uh more of what you're saying and solutions.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is the one thing that stood out to me when we were when Donnie and I were debating, well, I mean, do we want to have some regulations so the companies have to, you know, at least have some minimal um requirements that they can't just dump all this toxins you know into our waterways.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it hit me that in order to even so the so the EPA has these regulations on the books, okay?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: And these environmental groups are saying that like even a lot of times they're not actually enforcing the regulations.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: You hear that often.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Cornucopia institute has said that too about the FDA.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they're just not enforcing the organic regulations and stuff.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Organic standards, yeah.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the organic standards.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that we hear this over and over and over again.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Different government agencies just don't enforce the rules that are actually on the book.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: So then what do you have?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: You have in this case the environmental organizations that come in and sue the EPA to try to get them to enforce these regulations.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my thought is why go to the middleman?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't these environmental groups just sue the companies?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of having to go to the EPA and trying to get the EPA to then make the company do something that they want it to do.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: They should just go directly and sue the companies.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And in that setting, I think that that would remove it, would take out that middleman of the government, right?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and the, and then we could actually have more um of a way to vote with our dollars because we could support these groups and organizations um and like you know RK Jr., when they go and sue these companies, we could donate to them or do something to try to help in that movement.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so my so my thoughts are twofold.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, you can right now start voting with your dollar.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because just as you explained, Joel, the wastewater that's coming from, say, your farm, it has a very different chemical profile than the wastewater coming from, let's say, a Tyson.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you can vote with your dollars right now.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can stop buying those, you know, from those big companies, like stop buying it in the grocery store and go support your local farmer that supports the you know, ecological um viable option.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that you can do right now.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then my thought is for for for where do we go from here?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like what can we envision together?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can see what you're saying as a solution that takes that government out and it more empowers the people and the people running these organizations because we can go directly to the companies, right?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you you hit their bottom dollar by not buying from them.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then you hit them with these through these organizations who are going to shift their focus and start suing.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: the companies directly.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's more of the system that we have, right?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's how it was designed.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people, uh Cena, I know we're, I know we're running long on time, but this is such a it's such a basic um it's such a basic cultural discussion.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't realize the origins of the commons.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: The commons was the land designated during so so if you go back to the Magna Carta, we'll give you a real brief history lesson.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: You go back to the Magna Carta and basically it was the the nobleman um uh gave the king rights if he gave them rights and in fact later on then the peasants guides as well and the rights were the commons so the commons were the lands designated for the peasants to have that the nobleman the lords could not could not take and that way the com that that way the people could have a garden spot they could they could at least raise their own food.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: The commons was to be a a a um a place where the peasants could actually subsist not thrive maybe but at least subsist without the without the uh the nobility um you know uh taking it and and the shire okay which is the basis of our sheriff the shire was the sheriff who acted as a go-between between the commons and the nobility and so if a no if a nobleman you know a rich wealthy aristocrat nobleman came in and infringed and took a quarter acre or an acre or something of the commons then the the magistrate the magistrate activated the shire the sheriff okay to come and enforce the commons as a shared property and and and kick the and kick the aristocracy off so with that quick little history lesson if we bring that to today imagine if instead of having pa we actually had a functional um you know uh english common law system that ran for centuries and worked very very well to protect the interest of the peasants so if we say you and I are peasants in this situation you and I are peasants and we're sharing the commons of the creek the lake the river uh that's that's our commons and the big corporate people are the aristocracy okay then you are you are exactly right on uh cena in that the way the way English jurisprudence was set up was set up it was not a a a technocracy of government agencies protecting it was the people protecting themselves through their local shires and their magistrates against the aristocracy of the day so that for example if if a neighbor's dumping stuff into the river I actually have standing I have standing as a peasant to go to the magistrate and say this guy is polluting the commons go take care of him that's the way it's supposed to work in the U.S.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if all of these if if all of the effort over the years that's gone into establishing government agencies to to to watch this and establish and and the and the watchdog groups who are who are um kind of standing shoulder to shoulder with the peasants if you will okay um if all of that inner if all of that energy had been activated as you said directly between the commons and the aristocracy think what a different kind of local personal responsibility there would be think about the the the um the the role and the what's the word the um not sacredness but the s the the the position think of the the the the position of the watchdog groups would be elevated way above what it is because they'd be working directly with the perpetrators rather than a third party through an agency that's subject to corruption collusion and and and fraternization and everything else and so yeah you've put your finger right on that and I hope my history lesson helps people to understand this is the way it was supposed to work.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is the way the founders of our country thought it would work.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: They thought they would just take that that commons that jurisprudence from the commons now here we didn't have an aristocracy.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: So our commons shifted from a designated like a surveyed out area you know from this tree to that creek to you know to that hilltop over here it it it it converted from a a survey designated area to a shared commons because we were a democratic republic in which there was no aristocracy.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's you said that's so beautiful that I'm all charged up over here.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And because you know I was thinking I mean I don't even I don't know how what the budget is but imagine you know the EPA has a huge budget right imagine with our tax dollars.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine if even that huge budget from our tax dollars went to sample the water right yeah to watch dog to riot to river keepers to dog groups who who then who then went directly at the perpetrators yeah we had we have a river keepers here you know there's a there's a creek that comes under right under our lane when you come into our farm and there's a group of river keepers that actually you know volunteer they take samples all the time and it's interesting there um there was a there was a great big feed lot uh about I'm gonna say uh as the river runs maybe two miles two miles downriver from us and I talked to the river keepers and so this was a this was a beef a beef feedlot and and from from that feedlot up to us the river was wonderful it had duckweed and and fish and and all sorts of things but they said as soon as they tested below that everything died the the river the river was was um bad and and so you know this kind of stuff it's not hard to find all right why why why wouldn't why couldn't the river keepers and this is just a local a local you know group group of guys and gals that that care about the river you know why couldn't all their effort be focused on media social you know and and and and and basically run run this perpetrator out of town you know you're not welcome here we don't want you at our restaurant we don't want you at our rotary club we're gonna kick you out of the Ruartin club we're gonna you know and and and just essentially just run them out of town you know not not you know violent but but you know basically shun them shun them within everything to where they okay we gotta we gotta make a change here wouldn't that be wouldn't that be cool to see as opposed to all this court battles and wrangling and and and and and oh my goodness yeah we we we have so much capacity in ourselves and it just it just um it frustrates me when we're so quick to just say hey you take care of it i i'll i'll go i'll go back on tick tock and get my you know bright shiny object from china and you take care of it you know and and um and we we don't have to do that and we we would be such a better place to do it we're out of time Cena but but uh this has been a really fascinating discussion and I thank you for uh for bringing it up oh I thank you and do you want to close us out with a question if you made a list of the um I'm gonna say aristocratic perpetrators that are destroying our commons um what would be your top two two outfits on that list if you're gonna name the the uh the aristocratic perpetrators who's at the top of the list two of them i'll only two well you know i don't want to make this too big an assignment no no i think that's great let's that's great let's roll with that one all right thank you so much joel for all of your insight i think we're all gonna kind of look at the waterways differently now knowing what is being dumped in there either directly or indirectly um and how we view that um whether it should be regulated by the government but or by the people so thank you so much for having us helping us kind of get outside the box a little bit and kind of push our comfort zone all right and we'll see you all next week