Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #266: The War on Happy Animals: Grass-Fed Beef, Free-Range Chickens, and Big Ag Science

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Episode #266: The War on Happy Animals: Grass-Fed Beef, Free-Range Chickens, and Big Ag Science · Beyond Labels Premium

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: Grass fed, according to the people that did this study, grass-fed means if it had one blade of grass in its life, it's grass-fed.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that makes a mockery.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: They use computer modeling.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: So it's not even real-world data.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's only the model's only as good as the what what values you input.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Figures lie and liars figure.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: They are such a perfect example of uh of cherry-picking data.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels Podcast with your host, Joel Salatin.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: That would be me, the farmer, and Dr.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Cena McCullough, our favorite researcher.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: We are on location today here at Polyface Farm in one of our hoop houses in the fall before chickens have come in.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: So in another month, this will be uh full of chickens behind me, or maybe more like six weeks.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um we're at this wonderful time of year, kind of twist and twin, you know, fall and and winter.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: So uh Sina's up to do some things in Washington, D.C.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: and uh change the nation.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: And uh so we decided to do this uh on the farm in person.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: So uh this week Sina has um, like she usually does, uncovered a couple of uh interesting reports that appear to be uh, Sina, could I say almost a coordinated effort to disparage um unconventional beef and chicken production.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say unconventional because we're gonna get into organic, non-organic, free, you know, different things, uh nuances.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: But um what we're wanting to do today is to go into these and um and have our listeners um not be duped by the kind of things you're gonna see in the mainstream media quoting these kinds of studies.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: So Cena?
2:03
SPEAKER_01: Yes, so I was kind of surprised to see some of these headlines coming around the same time.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: So there's one on um it's a free-range paradox, the high cost of happy chickens.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the other is the organic beef has a larger carbon footprint than feedlot beef.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: And actually, a third one that I didn't send to you is about saying that wild-caught fish have a larger carbon footprint than caged fish.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: So we have both the fish, the beef, and the chickens that are all being targeted, if you will, at this same time point.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: And I thought it'd be great to go through it with you and see um is the argument that they're coming up with actually a good one.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: So what they're saying is they're defending these enclosed houses.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: So they're defending feedlots, grain-fed feedlots.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: They're defending CAFOs, right?
3:08
SPEAKER_01: The the um confined animal feeding operations, and they're defending battery cage laying hens.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, and they're defending farmed fish, and they're saying that it's better for the animals.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: So they're saying not only is it better for the environment, but from a humane perspective, it's better for the cow, for the chicken, and for the fish.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: So let's dive into the research a little bit because I do think that this is probably um another method that big ag, big pharma, and big food are using to justify you know these confined um animal and fish operations and to get us away from eating meat.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as as um as Maha gains traction the uh the um chemical industrial complex, they ain't going down easy.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: And so they are fighting back uh as as aggressively as they can to try to disparage um everything that is non-chemical industrial um uh material.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: They are, and I will tell you, this new argument is actually gaining attraction from animal rights activists.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Where they're for the first time they're really getting them on board.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, animal rights activists usually want the chickens to have more space.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, they want them free range or pasture raised, and they don't want the cows shoved into these feedlots or pigs raised on uh you know concrete slabs.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh they want them to live a natural life.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And there's already some articles that have come out as a follow-up to these studies saying, huh, maybe they're on to something here.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it is more humane to keep them caged.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: So let's see what it what they're basically saying.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: So in the in the free range paradox study, this one said that with chickens.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: This is for chickens.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: So this one said that if a chicken is free ranged, so he's out on pasture or he's not in a cage, then the chicken requires more feed, more land, which leads to more greenhouse gas emissions and more runoff of like nitrogen and phosphorus from the manure, leading to more algal blooms.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: And they noted that there's a higher death rate among the chickens that are actually free-ranged or outside of these cages because they're exposed to the elements in the wild, like unpredictable weather, or what they're saying, pathogens.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, birds, wild birds that might come in and give them bird flu.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And also they're saying that well, you have so many of them that are if you're not if you don't have them caged together, they might peck and eat each other.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: So they might do cannibalism.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: So they're making that case that um cages are going to decrease the amount of deaths that you're seeing in these birds.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: So that means not only is it more environmentally friendly to cage them because they're using less land and emitting less greenhouse gas and less runoff, but you're saving more chickens' lives by keeping them in cages.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: So that's the premise for the chicken study.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: And that one was published back in July and it caused some controversy.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: And then I find it peculiar that they're publishing stories about it again right on the heels of a beef study that's about to come out.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: So in this beef study, they're saying that organic pasture-raised beef, right, compared to a cow that is raised in a feedlot and is fed grain.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the organic pasture-raised beef emits 95% more carbon per kilogram of beef.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: It also uses more water and it uses more fossil fuels.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: They say that the conventional feedlots they concentrate the animals and they fatten them up very quickly on the grains, which is a good thing, they're saying, because it maximizes output per animal and it's across a shorter lifespan, right?
7:43
SPEAKER_01: It takes you can slaughter the cow sooner if they're in a feedlot because you fatten them up quicker, versus if they're on the pasture and eating grass, they're gonna gain weight slower.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: So they're saying that that is a good thing to concentrate the animals, fatten them up quicker, uh, because they have a shorter lifespan, and so they're releasing less methane over their lifespan.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: So they do say, they do acknowledge that organic practices are gonna retain soil nutrients and use less synthetic fertilizer and so have less less runoff, but it has a huge land footprint.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: And it also is a deforestation risk because of that.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: So if more people, you're already chuckling, I love it.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: You're chuckling already.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: So if more people started farming like this, farming in the way that the the the cows were meant to actually live, then we might lose too much forest.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: So we have to cage them, you know.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: So we have to we have to feed lot them.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: We have to feedlot them, yes, exactly.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: So I think, oh, and then the fish one, of course, that one they're talking about how um, you know, it's the same thing.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: They're they're you're concentrating them, and so now you don't have to go out with all these ships and use the fuel to power these ships to go catch these, you know, the wild fish.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: They just have one boat that comes up to this huge, like factory fish farm right and cat gets all the fish.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: And so because of that, it is better for the environment.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: So better from a from a a fuel, uh, better from a uh a petroleum fuel emission standpoint.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: So there's so much here to unpack.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: This is such a the I'm so glad that you picked these up because they are such a perfect example of uh of cherry picking data and um and not appreciating nuance.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: The first when I read through them, my first reaction was it's interesting that nobody's talking about nutrition.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's talking about nutrition.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if they'd actually um look at the cost of um uh uh a microgram of folic acid.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, for example, you know, we've had our eggs, I'll give you an example, we've had our eggs tested.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh this is in my book, folks, this ain't normal.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: And uh we have a chart in there, and um we participated with 12 other pastured egg producers in the U.S.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: when the study was done.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: And uh the USDA official, you know, um micrograms of folic acid per egg is uh 48.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: That's what's on the carton when you buy it at the store, you know, 48 micrograms per egg, and ours averaged 1,038.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: So if I I'm I'm just I'm just I'm trying to put um language in place.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: So for example, instead of just measuring kilograms of egg or protein, if instead they had measured the cost of nutrition.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: So imagine if in order to take an egg from 48 to 1,038 micrograms of folic acid, you had to eat what is it?
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's like it's like um twenty uh twenty five times.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Twenty-five times.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: So if you had to eat twenty-five eggs, I mean let's agree for a moment in this in the in the cage, you know, whatever, that that they're they're more efficient, smaller carbon footprint, you know, in in the production end of it.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: If you had to eat wait, is that true?
11:55
SPEAKER_01: Are they more efficient at producing?
11:58
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not, but but I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna play let's just assume that this is a correct study, uh that caged birds do emit less carbon footprint um because they're more efficient, because they don't run around, you know, and they're more efficient.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Um the the conversion of feed to egg, that's what I'm getting at.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: The conversion of feed to egg is more efficient, all right.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: If you have to eat 25 of those eggs to get the nutrition of one pastured egg, what just happened to the carbon footprint?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, all the charts are that are in these studies, you know, they're you know, they have a range, it's a percentage, you know, 3%, 4%, whatever.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about 2,500%.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: So if you started actually accounting for the carbon footprint per item of nutrient as opposed to just pounds, and I know you can wax eloquent.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're back to this calorie protein fat, you know, thing, um where we're simplifying um, you know, we're simplifying the nutrition to a point of of um foolishness, really.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Um because we actually aren't buying pounds of stuff, we're buying nutrition.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I you know, I could you know I could try to gnaw on this wood chip for a while here, you know, and uh, you know, there's weight there, but there's no nutrition.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and so that's the first thing that I noticed was that in none of these studies is anybody, it's not even on the radar to measure what does it take to get nutrition.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: That's not even on their radar.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and I don't think they want that on their radar, as you have so eloquently pointed out.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: And so I'll tell you with the with the egg study, for example, they relied on data that's aggregated from industry and government.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: So they use things like the commercial livestock um conversion table, and that was created by industry for industry for that very reason.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: They don't want to compare the nutrition.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: So their big thing is how much input do you need and how much output do you get?
14:26
SPEAKER_01: And so that's why if you can use a smaller piece of land and you know produce even as many eggs as a free-range chicken, well, now you have a benefit, right?
14:38
SPEAKER_01: Now you have more output for the amount of land that you're taking up.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: So those are the kind of metrics that they actually look at.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: Right.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: Is how little space can we use because you know you don't want to use up too much land, it's a bigger carbon footprint.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Um for the beef study, they use the computer model.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: So you know that I can't help but yeah, you you you stated that well.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: So this is it's all about concentration.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: And um, and isn't it interesting that political tyrannies all function from a from a basic philosophical premise of we'll get better results if fewer people are making decisions, and if we trust, you know, um the elite, World Economic Forum, whatever, if we trust the elite to make these decisions and just let the peasants go.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I I I I find it um almost uh you know sadistically consistent that that as the industry tries to um scientifically justify itself in in um concentrated animal feeding operations, for example, that they are using the very philosophy that defines a an oligarchy.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: It's the same basic thinking.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: All right.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: So they are, and to piggyback on that, even the researchers are doing that because the beef study, they use computer modeling.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: So it's not even real-world data.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's only the model's only as good as the what what values you input.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Figures lie and liars figure.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it's gonna be skewed because they use data from one research center.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: So it's not even like they collected centers from across the country or even you know different different countries.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: They c they got the research from one research center in New Mexico, and that research center works closely with commercial data cattle industry.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: So, what kind of metrics do you think that they're gonna be testing for?
16:59
SPEAKER_01: And I would gather, even though funding sources weren't listed there, I would gather they're probably getting some funding from you know big ag somewhere.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the model reflects that those feedlot standards when you look at it.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Also, if they're using this one research research center in New Mexico, it's really arid there.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: So the inform the data points are going to be really different than if you're like out here where you are.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's humid and lots of grass and whatnot.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, yeah, something called rain.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, when you have rain, it is different.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Um so I mean to to just to express the difference, the average cow in New Mexico to to feed to to feed one cow in New Mexico, you know, pa to pasture one cow in New Mexico on average takes um about thirty acres of ground.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Thirty acres.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: For one cow?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Here it's four.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: So makes a big difference.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: That's a huge difference.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: It's a w when when when their whole premise is how many pounds of beef can be raised on a square yard or an acre, makes a big difference if your data point is Augusta County, Virginia, or you know, um New Mexico.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Huge difference.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: The other thing, uh seeing it, I know you've got you, you're we're we're gonna we're gonna riff on this.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot here to unpack.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: But you know, that the headline itself, um organic beef has a larger carbon footprint than feedlot beef.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Organic, now now I'm gonna I'm gonna cast some disparagements or organic beef.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Most organic beef is feedlot beef.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: They didn't measure, um, they didn't measure those of us who do mob stocking, herbivorous, solar conversion, lignified carbon, sequestration, fertilization.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Um they didn't come here and and they and they didn't check the people that are actually doing this very, very management intensive um grazing protocol.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Um most organic beef is not actually um, it's not actually raised much differently than you know than conventional.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all they mentioned was organic grass-fed beef.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: So that could be a blade of grass.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: But or but grass-fed, here's the problem.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Grass-fed, according to, according to the people that did this study, grass-fed means if it had one blade of grass in its life, it's grass-fed.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that makes a mockery.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: There's also many different ways, so so that's what we call it, grass-finished, or you know, my term is salad bar beef.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Um but there are there are a million different nuances for how to do that.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And and so um they don't they don't measure that.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: Um carbon, you know, when you start talking about carbon, obviously the whole beef, the whole beef one is about carbon footprint.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: It's all about carbon footprint.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with you know mortality and things like that.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: But the actual um the actual digestive process emitted from a grain, a grain-eating animal, uh uh herbivore, versus a cellulytic eating animal, i.e.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: forage, the actual burps and farts are completely different from those two kinds of animals.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: And so um, so of course, when you're going to go to an organic system that's being raised in a in a conventional setting, you're not going to see the kinds of positive nuances that you see when you're when you're raising completely differently.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: I I get what I'm getting at is that um so much of organics is not a 180-degree turn.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's um it's a 20 20 degree turn.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a 20-degree turn.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And and that really complicates comparison data because you're not really looking at opposites, you're looking at cousins.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: And the cousins are not gonna tease out the dramatic differences that you would if you were looking at opposites.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let me throw possibly a wrench into it.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: So I have the pre-printed study, and what they did was uh so they did the study there at the research center, and they said organically produced um cattle were purchased and grazed for 25 months prior to slaughter.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: The organic system used rotational grazing of cattle on a pasture standard model to represent mixed grazing land of 50% cool season grasses, 10% legumes, 5% forb, and 35% warm season grass.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: About 46% of this forage land was harvested and fed as hay.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: And then the cows were supplemented with minerals.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: So they did the study there at the research center, and um, and they're saying they actually and realized that was on irrigated, that was on irrigated land.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, it's still in that arid um location.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: So they did that one in the conventional system, they grew the corn and oats, and then they harvested those and fed them as silage.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh and that was pretty much the main points from that.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: A uh I I'll go back to saying they did not they did not recognize any difference whatsoever in the um in the kinds of gas emissions that come from an herbivore that's eating forage versus grains.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: Those are very, very different.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: The enteric uh digestive systems and the um and the the uh the belching and the farting produced there are completely different.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Number two, number two, on non-crop ground, this is my favorite one, on non-crop ground, healthy pasture, which I don't know if this pasture was healthy or not.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's an experiment station.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: They're using chemical fertilizers, we use compost and earthworms, you know, there are just so many, so many nuances to tease out here.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: So many nuances.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Um but the the the on a healthy pasture, unlike corn, unlike rye, unlike any um tillage annual crop, a healthy pasture has enough methanotrophic bacteria in the biology of the soil to suck down the amount of methane generated by a thousand cows per acre.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Now, they didn't run a thousand cows per acre, trust me, okay?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And so that methanotrophic bacteria does not live under corn, it does not live under oats.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: But they didn't measure the methanotrophic bacteria in the soil that was sucking down the emissions from the gaseous emissions from the cows.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: They weren't measuring that, and and so that is um that is completely different.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Another huge, huge thing is notice they purchased, they purchased them and grazed them for 25 months.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: That's a very, very slow grow out.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we often completely uh, you know, our animals are are are totally uh 25 to 28 months old when we process them.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: These animals are 33 to 35 months.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Why?
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, probably because they bought industry genetics.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Stay with me, industry genetics, and the industry has gone to extremely large animals.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Why?
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, because the processing industry, you know, when you're cutting up a carcass, if you're setting up a meat saw to make ribeye steaks, if you can get another one or two ribeye steaks for setting up your saw, that's way more efficient.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Fabrication, okay.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about materials handling, okay?
26:30
SPEAKER_00: You've got a carcass in front of you.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: If you can, if you can take that carcass and make and make um 600 pounds of saleable product with your with your cutting and grinding and everything set up versus 400 pounds, okay, then suddenly your your efficiency goes up because you're building things with duplos and not Legos.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: You got bigger blocks to work with.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And so and so now for 80 years, the processing end of the industry, which is the ultimate buyer, I mean, yes, the consumer is the ultimate buyer, but in the but in the in the practical sense, the real buyer is is the processor, the one that buys the animal, slaughters it, puts it in a package.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: That's that's the real nub.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: All right.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: They have get offered a price premium for large animals.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Bigger the better.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's I get you know the amount of the amount of meat per hour of cutting and grinding time is a lot more labor efficient with a big animal than a small animal.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're if you want to get meat, it's a I mean, just dramatically, you'd want an elephant, not a mouse, if you're looking for meat, okay?
28:02
SPEAKER_00: And so so the industry has driven genetic selection in the in the production sector to where our our slaughter animals that used to be a thousand pounds are now sixteen hundred, eighteen hundred, nineteen hundred pounds.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Huge, all right.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
28:25
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what you want if you're finishing on grain, because grain is really, really high energy.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: A big animal is a big, you know, it's it's a big engine to stoke.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, you want high BTU, you want, all right, um.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: But if you're finishing on grass, you want a small animal, you want one that's finishes at a thousand pounds.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: That's efficient.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: That's efficient from a product from a grass production.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: So if these guys are buying identical type of cattle, and I'm sure they were, I'm sure they didn't that I'm sure they didn't buy big animals for the feedlot and small animals.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: No, they were they were looking for consistency.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Let's get you know, let's get a you know, across the board consistent size animal, then that's prejudicial to grass finishing because the maintenance cost is too high on a large framed animal.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they got Angus for both.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, you won't find Angus on our farm.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Angus don't work.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Angus don't work in grass finishing.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Why?
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Because the Angus industry bought into this large, you know, uh large animal thing.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: They even they even uh adulterated the genetics with Holsteins to try to get their, you know, to get their an their carcass size up.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Those animals don't work on grass.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: So So it's or it's flawed from the beginning.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's complete it's it's completely flawed and doesn't recognize it it it it it prejudicially derecognizes.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Is that too much in a I was gonna say rigged, so yours is nicer than mine.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: It's rigged to favor big bags.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: Yes, very much so.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Either either by conspiracy or simply by ignorance.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Negligence and ignorance.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah you know these are all these cows are all the same.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, what are these what do these guys know?
30:25
SPEAKER_00: They don't know anything about anything.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they may not know.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they might not know all of these different nuances, and that you know, even in the chicken study, like the mortality.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's so let's go to the we we've spent a lot of time on the beef.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the chickens.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Um So for the chickens, uh, you know, mortality, they just defined it as mortality, but that's gonna vary based on like the management practices, pasture, you know, rotation, uh canopy cover, but they use just aggregate data, and oftentimes that includes like poorly designed pasture-raised places, right?
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: So one of the things, where was it in here?
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Seeing it somewhere in here, I saw they were using British, British, um, um, yeah, Royal Society, okay.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh study reporting Royal Society Open Science Exam, the environmental uh immortality cost of housing trade-offs.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's British, all right?
31:26
SPEAKER_00: So I've been to Britain numerous times, Great Britain, and I've talked to chicken farmers.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: The the requirements in Great Britain for pastured poultry are ridiculous.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the problem.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: I I will I will bet you that this was not using portable housing.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: This was and so I know in Great Britain, well, and here in the US, animal welfare stuff, animal welfare requirements are all assuming a stationary house with a yard.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh think of uh vital farms.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's the like that's the the terrible, terrible uh one in in in pastured poultry.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, they got 5,000 birds in a house.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: All right.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: A chicken, a chicken will only walk so far in a day.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Chickens don't go, they don't walk 500 yards.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: They don't want to run a marathon?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: No, no, they don't want to run a marathon.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: And and and so a chicken from home base will only go out, you know, a couple hundred yards on the best day.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay, on the best day.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: And so when you have a stationary yard with 5,000 chickens, you get a high impact zone right around the house, in other words, what I call moonscape.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, moonscape, and then way out on the edges, they never get there if you gave them enough room.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: So in Great Britain, what they've done is they've they've given um massive amounts of square footage.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna have an outdoor chicken, you've got to have um I don't I don't know how much it is, like nine square feet per bird.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: So you're not supposed to do math in real time in public in front of people.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: But so let's say you've got a thousand, a thousand chickens in a flock.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Um nine square feet is nine thousand square feet for that thousand bird unit unit.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem as soon as you don't rotate that pasture, you're gonna have manure buildup.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Chickens are gonna peck and scratch out all the grass, it's gonna turn to dirt, and we all, I mean, plenty of backyarders are familiar with little dirt runs, and that uh people that know me know that's when I get up on my hind legs.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: The chickens should not be on dirt.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Um and so so I can assure you that what they've done here is they have not used mobile houses, which is why the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, APPPA, um uh has made mobile, mobile structures the foundation of pastured poultry.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Foundation.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: If if if you don't have portable housing, it can't be pastured.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Why?
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Because the chickens destroy the pasture.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't do that in a in a stationary house.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: So I guarantee you this was based on a stationary house where you had moonscapes, and so then you you go into higher death rates.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, I wonder I wonder if their database um included all the factory chickens that died from avian influenza in uh Wisconsin.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: What was it uh four years ago when eggs went, remember when they they they killed whatever, I mean millions and millions of chickens and egg prices spiked.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Um those were all factory chickens.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Those weren't outdoor, those weren't free range, those weren't, okay.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I guarantee you that those numbers were not put in the because they would consider that's an outlier.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: That that's an anomaly.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah uh let's let's let's get rid of the two out, let's get rid of the outliers and let's you know let's go to the um consistent thing.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: But the fact is that 99% of all the avian influenza cases in the world are from factory houses.
36:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: From the kind of houses that that that they're so so they're they're back to this ducks are gonna fly over.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Here comes a here comes a Canada goose, woo, you know, and we're gonna get this.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: Which is interesting because they're spinning it, right?
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely they're spinning it.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: They're saying that we're gonna we have to save the chickens from bird flu by sticking them in these cages.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's the opposite of what we're asking.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, it reminds me, Cena, of um years this is a long time ago, years ago, I was on um I was on a radio ambush.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: So these were two guys in they had had a radio talk show, agriculture radio talk show in uh Kansas, I think it was.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean I yeah, I do radio programs all the time.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: And most of the stuff that I do, podcasts, radio programs, you know, they're they're they're positive.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they they like what I'm they they like to eat what I'm dishing out, okay?
37:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, so these guys, this was an ambush.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And um, boy, I got on and um they said, what what what what does the chickenness of a what does expressing the chickenness of a chicken, what does that mean to you?
37:18
SPEAKER_00: I said, well, you know, means she can, you know, run around in the sunshine, scratch, peck, you know, find bugs, um, you know, scratching the dirt and and kind of get and um they said, well, if it's um i if the chicken gets uh eaten by a hawk, uh that doesn't sound very chickenous to me.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: And um bottom line was they were pushing um complete, you know, battery, they were pushing battery, uh battery chickens.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're we're where think about this, where the entire life of a chicken, you got nine chickens in a 22-inch by 22-inch cage, so for the whole life a chicken has that much space.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: Just think about that a minute.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: A whole life chicken has that much space.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: So they said, well, it seems to me like the best way to have a chicken express his chickenness is for her to um to be safe from anything that would hurt her, like a hawk or a fox.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean, you know, I I don't have any problem letting everybody know our number one, our number one issue here with pastured poultry is predation.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not a friendly world out there.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: There's I mean, um it wouldn't it be nice if predators were vegans, but they're not, you know.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Every single thing out there that goes bumping the night at two o'clock loves chicken.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: And um, and there's there's a whole lot of things that go bumping the night at two o'clock.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: And so um, and so they said, well, it seems to me like the most expressive way for the chicken is to, you know, would be to live in a completely um safe environment.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, now let's agree that a fox and a hawk are not gonna get one of those chickens.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I alright, I I I get that.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: But that's like saying the the most the most the best place for a human to live is in a bubble where you'd never climb a tree because you could break your arm.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: You'd never play soccer because you might get kicked in the head.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: You are you with me?
39:47
SPEAKER_00: And so so the philosophy the the best way to have a chicken is to confine it in a place where it never touches um you know a predator would be equivalent to saying the best way to have humans is to put us in little little um you know bubbles in which we never interact with anything that could bully us, uh make fun of our big ears, or you know, whatever, okay.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: And um and so so this is the you know, this is the kind of the mentality in the system, and and they're trying to um make us all feel sorry for the chicken that once in a while does get picked off by a hawk.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: We lose them.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Fox, you know, bears.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I mean I can get on that rant too.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: We need to be we need to take hawks off and let people shoot them all they want.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: Um and and and so we bring humans back into the environment.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, we've got everything all I mean how many you ride out interstate now and there's a hawk sitting on every fence post.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: How many do we need before they come off the endangered, you know, uh species list?
41:11
SPEAKER_00: Um I mean I'm glad we I'm glad we have more than we had when I was a kid when I was a kid.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, you never saw one.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: DDT, you know, all this, it it killed.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Now we have them, but how many is enough?
41:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's not like we go out and try to exterminate them.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Most hawks, they're just on their way somewhere.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: We see them go by, you know.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: Once in a while, one will take up residence and sit in a tree and you know, pick our pocket as as we go along.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's the hawk we'd like to take out.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Um I'd say we'd like to take out.
41:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm just I'm I'm hedging my bets here.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Um but would you rather, I mean, let's be anthropomorphistic for more anthropomorphism for a minute and say, if I was a chicken, would I rather be able to live in green grass, sunshine, bugs, crickets, and worms, and have the risk of being picked off by a hawk?
42:14
SPEAKER_00: A low risk, but a risk nonetheless.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: Or would I rather live in a in a cage with eight other mates that have floor space this size?
42:28
SPEAKER_00: Which is half a sheet of paper.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, half a sheet of paper, yeah.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: I folded it in half, yeah.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Um and and and the thing that they didn't uh that they didn't address was how filthy.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: So my chickens might get a hawk, but they never get they never get salmonella, E.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: coli.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: We've we've even checked our manure, our chicken manure we sent to a lab to check it for E.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: coli.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: Our manure, chicken manure, clean.
43:02
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: No E.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: coli.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
43:04
SPEAKER_00: But in these confinement houses, it's such an unsanitary environment that it's not the big stuff that gets them, you know, a bear, a fox, a hawk, it's the little stuff.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: Avian influenza, um, salmonella, E.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: coli, you know, bacteria, you know, it's it's the little stuff that gets them.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's interesting because the article about that study brought that up.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, in terms of, oh, they're, you know, breathing in like the waste particulate and things like that.
43:38
SPEAKER_01: But those animal rights activists concluded that it was a fair trade off for them, you know, having a lower mortality because they wouldn't be picked off by a hawk or whatnot in the outside.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: So it is an interesting concept that, you know, I think part of this may become from a lot of like my generation and and when.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Generation younger than me, we tend to treat our children the same way.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Like we're we're like the overbearing, overprotective generation that would sometimes like to keep put our kids in a little bubble.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: Like we are afraid that they might break their arm if they climb that tree and fall out of the tree, you know.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm wondering how much of that too is is the current psyche of the I I I think part of it too, yeah, I agree 100% that we have we have uh not allowed our children to participate in the in the visceral um practicalities of life.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean our son Daniel was you know he was um he was driving a tractor at nine years old.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, he couldn't uh I I'd helped dad uh feed hay in the winter.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: I remember well we had this we had this old um 1951 international uh dump truck, and we were up, we'd we'd go up and feed the cows.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Hey, this is before we started feeding with the carbonaceous diaper and all the stuff that we do now.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean I was I was eight, nine years old driving this dump truck.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: Dad's in the back throwing off hay.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I had to stand up.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't reach the pedals.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: I had to stand up, you know, to to drive.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: And it had a fortunately it had a it had a throttle on it.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, so I didn't have I didn't have to push on the gas pedal.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: I could just set the throttle, you know, like an airplane, set the throttle, and it would just, you know, go along real slow.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: And um, and uh then when we got done, um dad would jump off the truck.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: I was going slow enough, he'd jump off the truck and come in and stop it you know, for me.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: Um because because I I couldn't reach the clutch and the you know take it out of gear and everything.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: So I mean the the but what that does is it you know it it teaches you some things.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: And and um maybe let me just say this that uh you know now that we've hatched, we're hatching our own uh chickens here.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh we've been doing this now for 15 years, and our only requirement are is are you old, healthy, and productive our chickens today are what we call survivor genetics.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: They're actually smarter than they were 15 years ago.
46:17
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Because they are selected from the survivors that didn't look up and say, hi, you know, hawk, uh red tail, feathered friend.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's let's dine together, cousin, you know, and I'll be the entree.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Um our chickens all you know were selecting from birds that have been out and ran under protect, you know, under shelter every time they saw a hawk come or the you know the rooster crowed or whatever.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: And so um, so the the the whole the whole study here, it's a it's a completely oh we can't help it, we're just defeated.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's this it's this defeatism thing that um that that there's no there's no answer for any of this.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't we don't have to we don't have to spread manure chickens spread it themselves.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: Um they they scratch through the cow patties, so now we don't have to give the cows grubicides and parasiticides.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: I'll get you I'll guarantee you they didn't study eggmobiles in this study.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh wait, but you know what they did say about you know the birds like scratching and foraging and rooting, that burns too many calories or what I would call energy.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: So that's not a good thing.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: That's gonna increase the carbon emission because they're not getting fat fast enough.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
47:47
unknown: Right.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean it's just absurd.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: It is totally absurd.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: And and I'm you know, so I shock some people sometimes, you know, when they come and visit her and and and when I get done, you know, showing what we're doing, and I say, now, this doesn't save feed costs.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Our pasture chickens doesn't save feed costs.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, why?
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, because you don't you don't gain weight on salad, you know, but what you do get is phytochemicals and and and really important uh nutrients that that you don't get in just carbohydrate.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: And and and so um like like our pigs, you know.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these studies aren't about pigs, but the pastured pigs we do, it doesn't save any it doesn't save any green, it doesn't save any feed.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: What it does is it makes pork that's that's not white because of all the carotens and the and the and the phytonutrients that are in that meat.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah um and and it makes here's another one they didn't oh here's a good one they didn't pick up.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: They didn't measure how long does it take to cook it.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: All of our meat cooks 15% faster than what's in the store because the animals are happy.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: So they're not emitting adrenaline and cortisol.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh and so they're not all tense.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: We learned this from our chefs over the years.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh everyone, I mean, just root routinely, normally it's an asset.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, your your stuff cooks faster.
49:13
SPEAKER_00: Wow, we don't have to spend as much time in the oven.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: What about that carbon footprint?
49:18
unknown: Yeah.
49:19
SPEAKER_00: If everything cooked 15% faster, took less energy to cook it.
49:23
SPEAKER_00: They didn't measure that.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're there are just well, and to your point, it's back to the whole, you know, what you need is calories as a human, because which either they're intentionally trying to ignore the available data, or again, it's ignorance, which I don't know how it can be, because now there's books and tons of articles about how we are a nation that is overfed and undernourished.
49:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: So we don't need to eat more calories, we need to eat more nutrients.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: And they're doing the opposite here.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: Right.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, if you're not looking for something, you don't find it.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you don't want to find it, you're gonna Yeah, I read I read this uh interesting thing this week, um totally different subject.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: It was about the um like Medicare, Medicaid fraud, you know, Minnesota and all this stuff.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, the one side says, oh, you know, there's there's no there's not any fraud happening, and then you know, then they uncover whatever, eight, nine billion dollars.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: And and the point, the point of the article, it was it I it was kind of a new thought for me was well, the side that says there's no fraud here, well, you don't find anything if you're not looking for it.
50:39
SPEAKER_00: And so in a study like this, if you're not looking for nutrition, if you're not looking for cooking, if you're not looking for for um other benefits that you could maybe get from the pasture like a a lower insect load, um no, no ticks on our farm, you don't get ticks.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: Why?
50:57
SPEAKER_00: Because we've got chick.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's that worth?
50:59
SPEAKER_00: What's what's a case of of uh uh uh what is it?
51:02
SPEAKER_00: Al uh bar, what's the what's the one where you can't eat beef?
51:05
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the alpha gal.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: Alpha gal.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: What's a case of that worth?
51:08
SPEAKER_00: All right.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh what's a case of Lyme's worth?
51:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's assume that all the conventional narrative is correct in how you get that.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: Um which is a big assumption, but let you know let's uh let's play the game.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh the point is, you know, what what what's all that worth?
51:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and and they don't measure they don't measure that.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: They don't measure any of that that uh ecological diversified um synergy that happens when you have complex symbiotic relationships uh in you know closely managed and managed for for each of those species to fully express its its its its positive leverage into that ecosystem.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:55
SPEAKER_00: That that's nowhere in here.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: No, well, and that's surprising because, like we said, the metrics they're using are to favor big ag.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: And and they may not even intentionally set out to favor big ag when they came up with the metrics, you know, long time ago.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: But and that's just what they knew, but it does favor big ag.
52:11
SPEAKER_01: So as long as academia continues and these research centers continue to use those outdated metrics that don't take into account like the holistic system, we're gonna continue to have more and more studies that come out that are saying, oh, we should cage the animals, put them in feedlats, you know, put them in the uh the farmed fish operations, and it's for the good of them, for for their better and for ours.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: And people are gonna read this and get duped, just like I told you, some animal activists are already jumping on the bandwagon.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: So I can't help, but as we're talking, stuff's coming back into my mind.
52:53
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know how many years ago it was, a long time ago, eight years maybe or more, uh Burger King came out with this huge announcement that we're gonna go to Cage Free Eggs in 10 years.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
53:07
SPEAKER_00: In 10 years.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, the food writer for Washington Post called me and they wanted, you know, they wanted a they wanted me to be all excited about, oh, this is a great thing, you know.
53:19
SPEAKER_00: And uh I said, well, there's a Burger King 10 minutes from our house.
53:24
SPEAKER_00: What's what's the 10-year deal?
53:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I can get them, in fact, I could go way beyond cage free.
53:30
SPEAKER_00: I can go to pastured eggs, you know, today.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: All they gotta do is pick up the phone and call me.
53:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready to, you know, take them down at 10, 10, you know, minutes away.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: And as I got to checking into it, as it turned out, I talked to a couple of industry people, and they said, I said, why why the 10-year horizon?
53:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the chicken cycle is fast.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you lay you lay an egg, it hatches in whatever, you know, uh less than a month, and in five months you're in egg business.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can roll over, you could, you could, it's not like beef where there's like a four-year, you know, a four-year time span between calf and and progeny, okay?
54:10
SPEAKER_00: Chickens, it's really, really fast.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: What's with the ten years?
54:14
SPEAKER_00: The guy in the industry said, Oh, that's because they expect in ten years for enough of this kind of study to come out to make to make it now obsolete to want cage-free eggs.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: That that the science is going to show that the that the caged.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I can't help it.
54:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
54:38
SPEAKER_00: That that the that the caged chicken uh is so much superior to everything else, it'll take a ten ten years for for the scientific community to get the data together, to prove the studies, to make this an obsolete objective.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: So that's why there's such a long horizon.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
55:00
SPEAKER_01: That's something, all right.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's infuriating.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: That's all things are going through my mind.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: Like they're playing, it's like another form of politics.
55:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, and how do they know?
55:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, are they are they participating in funding these studies?
55:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, are are they all having their hand in this to try to get this narrative?
55:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a that's a great, it's a great question.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, who knows?
55:23
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
55:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that the amount I I mean, I go back to um to Callie Mean's statement to me when I asked him which is worse, uh big ag or big pharma.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: And I thought big pharma was ten times worse than big ag.
55:37
SPEAKER_00: He said, well, I mean without batting an eye, he said, Oh, big ag is way worse than big pharma.
55:44
SPEAKER_00: As big as big pharma is, big ag is way worse.
55:48
SPEAKER_01: In in what context?
55:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh i i um just in its power.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: It's it's power, it's political and cultural power.
55:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: And sway.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh clearly, I mean, look what it's doing now.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: Right.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: It's and just this, it it seems to me this is very coordinated.
56:06
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, chicken.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they both came out the same day.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
56:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, these no way.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: These guys uh are all in the same room drinking the same Kool-Aid.
56:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'll tell you, the one study that I sent you, uh the write-up of the study that came out, that's from an animal activist group, an animal rights activist group.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: So you can see the coordination happening.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: Um so my takeaway from this is, and I want to see what you thought.
56:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, as I'm mulling this over and I'm like, what's happening?
56:34
SPEAKER_01: And I kept thinking it it's an attack on nature.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: Like this is honestly at this point an attack on nature, and like the mama bear in me is coming out, and I'm like, we've got to spread the word and stop this from happening because if you read these articles that they're putting out there, it it's quite persuasive.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you know.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, they don't they don't um they don't get the lackeys out of the universities.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: The lackeys go work for the government and and and the smart ones go work for the industry.
57:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
57:03
SPEAKER_00: That's that's absolutely the truth.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: So they're using this, what's called this modern life cycle assessment science.
57:10
SPEAKER_01: And they're using that to basically justify um the industrial food supply.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: What they're saying is that an animal who is behaving naturally, you know, like you do here at the farm, Joel, animal who's raised naturally, is is treated as an engineering failure.
57:31
SPEAKER_03: Right.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: So we have the cow that eats grass on the pasture, he takes twice as long to fatten up and he's belching methane along the way.
57:39
SPEAKER_01: The chicken running outdoors, like I said, burns too many calories, scratching in the dirt, being the chickeness of the chicken, and they're exposed to parasites, wild birds and other predators.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: The wild fish, they swim freely in the ocean, and that requires too much diesel to go go around and catch the ball.
57:55
SPEAKER_01: So they the big food, big egg, big pharma, I believe, I believe, are all in this together.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: And they're weaponizing carbon and now chugging out our heart strings to evict nature.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
58:11
SPEAKER_01: They're using industrial data, industrial favored metrics, and they're making these factory confinements look like our ecological salvation.
58:21
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: So that the there these are now the green solutions.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: The the KAFOs, the feedlots, the farm chicken in these little pens, doused with antibiotics, fed GMO, corn, and soy.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, these this is now the green solution because nature's too messy and dangerous and inefficient.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: And people are buying it.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
58:45
SPEAKER_00: And I find it amazing on the chicken one, the headline is Free Range Paradox, the high cost of happy chickens.
58:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like a for me, it's like a personal slant, because happy animals is my right.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's my like part of my brand, okay, is preaching happy, happy animals don't get sick, and they're, you know, they they do better.
59:07
SPEAKER_00: Um and we're we're quick, man.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the um the basic the basic uh um production information here as such as it is is absolutely correct.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, our chickens grow, our our for example, our meat chickens, our broilers grow um this is mainly about eggs, but um our meat chickens grow 20-25% slower than the industry.
59:40
SPEAKER_00: A, they're not getting antibiotics, which make them grow faster um artificially.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: And number two, ours get to sleep at night.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: In the industry, they never turn the lights off.
59:52
SPEAKER_00: They want them to never sleep and just eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.
59:56
SPEAKER_00: So it takes us, you know, what the industry raises in six, six and a half weeks takes us eight weeks.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: But it's a much healthier chicken.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: And it, you know, I I I'd like to see a headline here, you know, can you eat I'd like to do a counter, a rebuttal here.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but can you eat stress?
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you can eat stress, you know, and and put that, you know, juxtaposed here.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, what's crazy though is I've heard the argument that a healthy chicken is too environmentally costly, right?
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: Because of the carbon footprint.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: But this one to me, this new argument that they're doing is fascinating because they're getting people to believe that a happy chicken is dangerous to itself.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's good.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really that's astute, seeing it.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right, you're right.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh that that that if it if it really if it really wants to thrive, it wouldn't be happy.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean, now now take that over to the human community.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we say you are what you eat, all right.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_00: If if if the new if the new life paradigm is happiness is deadly, well that almost sounds like um like uh nobody will own land and they'll all be happy.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, doesn't it?
1:01:24
SPEAKER_00: I I mean it's you will own nothing.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: Um World Economic Forum.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's profound.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really powerful.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: That's why I brought these articles to your attention because I thought this is an entirely this is an entirely different strategy that they're going after this time.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: And I I don't understand how so many people are being duped by it.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just doesn't because they've never visited us.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_01: I know it's true.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: It is profound when you see it for yourself and you feel the calmness and you see how happy they are.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_01: Then go look at a keyfo.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: Like we drive by them all the time where we live right now.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_00: Right, you're down there in the door.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: It's horrible.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_00: It smells you can smell it from half a mile away.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's disgusting.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_01: We almost start gagging in the car.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: It's so bad.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_01: Here, I could eat my lunch inside with the chickens, you know.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: Like with them walking all around.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they would eat my food, but you know.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and if you went and lay down for a while, they would eat you.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_00: Because they are omnivores.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: But I could because it's so clean.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't smell, it's they're happy.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_00: When will we learn?
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, this is a so so all we can say is get ready for more of this.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_00: As as as because as somebody in this, you know, shall we say, uh, happy, happy meet movement.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_00: Um I can tell you the culture, the culture is ready to mistrust all the money behind these studies.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_00: The culture is is one is is beginning to mistrust and they're feeling it.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_00: They're feeling the heat, feeling the pressure, and so this kind of thing is just going to amp up and ramp up uh going forward.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we want all of our people to be uh up to speed and versed at the kinds of uh clever speak, missed, missed important comparisons and data points that a cherry-picked, linear, reductionist, um, prejudiced, agenda-driven study will never see because they don't want to see that.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: And I will tell you this article about the organic beef, that is it's an article basically saying that this study is in preprint and it's coming out soon.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_01: This is what we think about it.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: This is the last line of the article.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: It says beef, whether raised on a conventional feedlot or an organic cattle ranch, eats up a whole lot of land.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_01: So where do you think that's going?
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's now both conventional and organic are bad.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: So the conclusion is we just need to not eat beef and not have these cows.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's there's been a there's been a war on that for a for a long time.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_00: But uh tell that to the um the keto, the paleo, and the carnivore folks that have healed everything from arthritis to limes, you know, with um to to obesity, yeah, with a with a higher protein, you know, higher protein diet.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_01: But what might happen is somebody who isn't in the know, you know, like yourself, might read this article.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_01: That's the takeaway line from it, and they're gonna be like, oh, like if they're an environmentalist, you know, or animal rights activist, they might look at that and be like, oh, well, I need to do my part and not eat beef anymore, right?
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: So they because now it's conventional and organic.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_01: They probably don't know the difference between like organic and like a truly, you know, pastured animal.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, grass-finished.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, grass-finished animal with with with well-managed pastures and all that sort of thing.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_01: So now it's like, oh, the perception is both are bad.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to the grocery store, I'm not gonna buy any of that anymore.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, so they are, I think, slowly shifting, and I think that's a good strategy on their part to say, oh, organic's bad too.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, these guys, they're they're um their uh um focus groups, you know, their think tank groups, high power.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh they're they're they're not dumb.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're very, very sharp.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, like you said, I would agree, like we don't we don't go into the grocery store and buy meat labeled as organic, right?
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: Because those aren't usually happy animals we come to the farm.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: So there is some truth in that last statement.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but most people don't know to parse out.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: That's right, you know.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_00: It's again, it's a broad brush.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_00: And a broad brush that doesn't parse out um, you know, the the the nuance.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_00: Just yeah, it's it's the way it is.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_00: So um question.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_00: Question.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_00: Um I've got several clicking around in my head, but um uh, you know, I guess I guess an easy one would be um uh do you think cows are gonna destroy us?
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: Realize that 500 years ago there were more pounds of herbivores on the planet than there are today.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have global warming, we didn't have any of this stuff.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_00: What's happened?
1:07:12
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, we haven't even talked about climate change science.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's another whole, you know, we could get into that that whole thing.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, uh, where are you on this um on this animal on this animal thing?
1:07:29
SPEAKER_00: And um are you still gonna eat uh eat cows and chickens?
1:07:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_00: Listen, we're out of time, but um thanks, Cena, for bringing these uh to our attention as always.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_00: And um I hope we've given our folks some some good talking points as they talk to friends and neighbors and things uh who think that when they read this they've seen the be all and end all.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_00: And it's not the be all and end all.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more to it.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_00: So thanks everybody for being with us on another Beyond Labels podcast.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_00: We look forward to visiting with you again next week.