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November 18, 2020 43 mins

What does it mean to eat meat in 2020? What it means to consuming it, to abstain from it and how, as always on matters of so called morality are murky, and impossible to detangle from the influence of culture, society, and privilege.

To lead the conversation we're joined with writer Alicia Kennedy, one of the clearest and most compelling voices in food media today on, among other things, veganism, and more broadly the politics of eating. We then travel to India where we’re Dr. Yamini Narayanan discusses the politicization of beef in India, and in particular, what happens when cow protection laws and diet regulations are coded as a means of marginalizing lower castes and Muslims. And finally, we go to the Dominican Republic with Ysanet Batista, activist and owner of Woke Foods who discusses her ongoing activism work through plant based recipes as a means of healing and restoration.

Join us as we consider as we consider the associated environmental burdens, veganism, it's misconceptions, the politics of meat, and diet identity.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome back to point of Origin. On today's episode, we're
talking about the morality of meat, what it means to
consume it, to abstain from it, and as always, how
matters of morality are murky and impossible to entangle from culture, society,
and privilege. Today's episode is a banger. We begin with

(00:29):
writer Alicia Kennedy, one of the clearest and most compelling
voices in food media today, on among other things, veganism,
but more broadly, the politics of eating. We then travel
to India where Dr Yameni n Ryan and discusses the
politicization of beef in India and in particular what happens
when cal protection laws and dietary regulations are codified as

(00:52):
a means of marginalizing lower caste and Muslims. And finally
we go to the Dominican Republic with East and Batista
activists and owner of Woke Foods, who discusses her ongoing
activism through plant based recipes as a means of healing
and restoration, the politics of meat and diet, diet and

(01:14):
identity today on point of Origin, it's the morality of meat.
I've officially not eaten meat since that is Alicia Kennedy,
And it was something I had always been interested in,

(01:37):
something I'd always been attracted to as an idea. Alicia
is a writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, whose
writing explorers not only the politics of food, but also
the interconnected elements of culture, climate, and access. There was
something about it that always made sense to me, But

(01:58):
lifestyle wise, it was too difficult when I was a
younger person who wasn't in control of of what she ate,
wasn't in control of, you know, all her money, um
to make that decision for myself. And also there was
the fact that for a long time, vegan and vegetarian

(02:19):
food had a terrible reputation, and it earned that reputation.
The food was a bit bland, it was um, it
was a white gaze turned towards global cuisine and and
done improperly without the correct um, you know, either cooking
methods or without the correct spices and what have you.

(02:43):
And that wasn't something I was interested in because I've
always been a person who, first and foremost, even while
I believe food is you know, utterly entrenched in all
the systems of that both oppress and exalt us as
human beings. It is also, you know, first and foremost

(03:06):
something that we have to enjoy every day of our lives.
And Alicia, how did you feel about the prevailing mainstream
notions around veganism at that time? I mean, I hated them,
but at the same time I understood them because I
understood that they were rooted in the same things that
kept me from not embracing veganism until I was able

(03:27):
to ensure that it wouldn't taste bad, you know, like
so um. And I still understand even you know Anthony
Bourdain's kind of grandma rule, which is, you know, if
someone invites you to dinner, you eat what they serve you. Yeah,
David Chang, it's funny. That's a funny aspect of it,
because he was so anti vegetarian that he was like,

(03:47):
I'm never serving anything vegetarian at Mamafuku, etcetera, etcetera. And
then he became the first spokesperson basically for Impossible Burghers
and was like, oh, finally, the veggie burger is delicious,
and it's like, well, you never really tried to make
it delicious otherwise, and also probably haven't had that many

(04:09):
veggie burgers. And then one comes along that's taken you know,
millions of dollars to develop and bleeds slightly and you know,
looks exactly like meat, and finally, you know, it's accepted
into the pantheon of the fine dining restaurants, and so
you know, it's all just very predictable. The emphasis on

(04:29):
it needing to bleed. It's something that really stuck with
me after the conversation because obviously, in the US, not
only eating but cooking meat is seen as a gendered act.
So it's funny but also not surprising that in order
for a plant based meat to be considered acceptable, it

(04:51):
needed not only to bleed but also a masculine champion.
A lot of me, stream media is super interested in
the new fake meat um what I usually call tech
burgers or tech meat um. It's fascinated by them and
by lab made meat and and that sort of thing.
And for me, the whole thing is like, why aren't

(05:13):
you as fascinated by tofu and tempe, which are ancient
proteins that are delicious and also, you know, don't centralize production,
don't come from you necessarily corporate producers and that sort
of thing. But in terms of meat, I mean, it's
funny because we've had so many conversations culturally and within

(05:35):
food media about how unsustainable our consumption of meat is,
especially in the United States, especially around beef, even though
poultry I think at this point um out out runs
beef in terms of consumption, but which is insane because
people consume I think two and twenty pounds a year

(05:56):
in the United States of between beef and poultry. And
the conversation, yeah, it's people eat so much meat. And
so even though it seems like we're having all these
conversations around sustainability and you know, cattle production at this
scale in factory farming, and so I've seen the conversation

(06:18):
move lately toward sustainable grass fed, you know, regenerative regenerative
agriculture in beef, and you know, I understand that, you know,
I've talked to a lot of experts in this, butchers
or or even farmers themselves, and it makes sense, you know,
like we have a ton of grass on the planet

(06:40):
and we can't eat the grass and make it into anything,
but cows can. And then so it makes sense that
they're part of our you know, human landscape, part of
our human relationship to the to the planet. But at
the same time, when you've trained a population to consume
meat at such a rate and in such volume and

(07:03):
then ask them to change, it would require so much
change to people's diets. And we are not capable of
um changing the the agriculture of cattle on such a
large scale to provide this volume of meat to everybody,

(07:24):
um to make it be more sustainable. You can tell
people until you're you're blue in the face that they
have to consume less meat. But you know, how do
you really change people's diets. How do you convince them
that they need to spend more If they're going to
eat meat, they need to spend more money, They need
to have a relationship with their butcher. You know, these
are things that were systemically destroyed by the cattle industry,

(07:49):
by the meat packers in the United States. It was
it was a plot to centralize meat production and to
get people away from their local butchers. And that's that
was successful. And so you know, that's that's what America
is built onto. So that's what that's the foundation of
the food system. Alicia raises an excellent point here. Not

(08:12):
only do we consume enormously high volumes of meat. But,
as we discussed in episode twenty seven Beyond the Wheat,
in the period of less than a century, we've become
so disconnected from the tears of our food system that
we have no sense of what's required to bring the
food onto our plates. We don't understand concepts like seasonality, regionality,

(08:35):
mono cropping, and certainly not migrant labor. We can't really
appreciate the specialized knowledge of what it takes to harvest
an unfathomably high volume of produce, and what it takes
to process it, to store it, to transport it, to
wholesale it, to retail it. We are a long way
away from the days of local millers and bakers, from

(08:59):
local butchers processors, and even further away still from the
image of meat itself. And it's important to note that
the creation of this void has been intentional, and the
same forces that created it, i e. Multinational food corporations
have also filled it with themselves with their own enterprises.

(09:22):
We happily purchase slices of meat or ground beef, but
in the Western world, when we see an animal head
or carcass, it feels challenging or gross even all right,

(09:44):
So let's talk about tech burgers, as you call them
a apt and hilarious name. I've been calling them tech
burgers because they've mostly been burgers. But now I've noticed
that the ground meat, yeah, the ground meat from Impossible
and Beyond meat is used now as just simply an
ingredient in in even New York Times cooking recipes, which

(10:05):
is fascinating. UM. I don't think anyone would ever recommend
a specific kind of cow meat UM in a in
a New York Times recipe, it would just be ground beef.
But now there's trademarked products UM in the in the recipes,
which for me, that's that's the big problem with it
is that it it's corporate, it's centralized, it's extractive in

(10:30):
terms of ecology. Even though it's it's maybe less impactful
than than beef production on the factory farmed scale, it's
still about encouraging monocultures UM. Impossible beef burgers, which are
sold at Burger King and many other places, UM used
genetically modified soy, which is also happily subsidized by the government,

(10:51):
same as beef UM production, and you know, they just
kind of create UM a lot of the same problems
again because we're still at once again focusing on single
ingredients created by a single source, and um, that doesn't
bring us any closer to really changing how we relate

(11:13):
to food. You know, like there's there's veggie burgers that
people make at a vegetarian restaurant that will get super
made fun of, but you know they you know, they
combine like a whole host of grains and legumes and
vegetables and flavors in order to produce something that, yes,
is more like a vegetable croquette than a burger, but

(11:34):
it's also you know, it's it's bespoke. It's something that
like that person that chef has developed. It's an act
of creativity, which is what we are supposed to I
thought expect from recipe writers and from and from chefs
and cook everything. It's a good point we don't actually
just talk about the fact that it's kind of weak
that chefs haven't been more enthusiastic about creating something that

(11:57):
doesn't even necessarily need to approximate it. I mean, even
a really delicious singular iteration of a vegetable croquette that
made me think harder about what my ideas of burder
work would be appreciated. So um, good point there. I mean,
people who've been in food you know full stop, like
you know how how most of the sausage is made um,

(12:19):
so to speak in the United States. You know that.
You know, if you're going to a big supermarket, you're
getting a commodity product, and you know that that that
worker may have repetitive motion and injuries from the kind
of work that they're doing, from the kind of pace
that they're expected to take. You probably know that they're

(12:39):
in cramped quarters. You probably know that many of these
people are undocumented and are subject to harassment and arrest,
and you know, deportation by ice. You know these things
if you're a person who pays attention to how the
food gets to the plate, so to watch people still

(13:00):
ignore this in food media when you have a huge,
willing audience of people who are going to the grocery
store who are cooking, and you don't let you don't
let it change anything about how you talk about food.
You don't chain, you don't mention that you know, meat
processing centers have been hotspots of the spread of the virus,

(13:25):
that people have died, that children have died of COVID
nineteen from being exposed from their parents working at meat
processing plants. And it doesn't bother these people that it's
President Trump who has decided that meat processing, of all things,
is extremely essential, whereas production of PPE for the healthcare

(13:46):
industry hasn't been essential, that um, that testing and contact
tracing hasn't been essential. That these things are actually seen
as some sort of detriment to you know, his his
reign of power. But meat process thing is essential to it,
even though it's it's putting people's lives in danger. Like
that should tell everyone everything they need to know about

(14:08):
what meat means in the United States. You know, it
means authority, it means um, you know, unpaid, poorly treated
immigrant labor. It means animal cruelty. I think this situation
has in so many ways laid bare so many problems
in the United States. And so to watch food editors

(14:32):
at you know, the biggest the biggest outlets in the
country completely ignore this in favor of telling people that
they should comfort themselves with cheeseburgers at this time or
with a chicken and pork patte um. While most knowing
that most people are going to go to the supermarket
and get the commodity meat. They're not going to go
to the butcher. They're not gonna you know, they're not

(14:53):
having a close relationship with their farmer and making sure
that everything is above board. You know, that's so irresponsible,
that's so negligent, and like I mean to me that
you know, these editors and these writers have a hand
in these people going to work under unsafe conditions because
they continue to encourage people to consume something that is

(15:15):
leading to sickness and death. And that's just inexcusable to me. Yeah, wow, wow.
And the inability of editors to to bring that kind
of analysis into the way that they do their jobs
has resulted in a kind of complicitness that I don't

(15:36):
really think that they're ready to hear or absorb yet,
But that is very deep. And um, I hope that
we can get through a point in the and the
discourse in the same way that we have around the
reconciliation of you know, sexual predation um or or racial discrimination,
about the harm that is being perpetuated you know, in

(15:58):
in media. So Alicia, we are in what some people
are calling a moment of reckoning. And one of the
things that many people are reconciling is their relationship to meet.
But mind you, and you know this well that people
eat meat for a variety of reasons, but not the

(16:20):
least of which is their socio economic condition. And that
condition can be multifaceted, but in no small part is
due to the fact that meat is often the cheapest
part of their diet, and the fact that it is
the cheapest part of their diet has to do with
really aggressive lobbying and heavy subsidies paid by taxpayers. So

(16:42):
my question for myself and for my people is often
how can we amplify and support this important message of
needing to eat less meat, but without condemnation, with empathy,
and frankly, without sounding to paternalistic. I think in age first,
on this level with people you have knowledge of deeply

(17:04):
and are intimate enough with to have that conversation, to
have hard conversations, and you know, come with deliciousness, like
you know, if you want someone to stop centering meat
in their diet, like show them how they can eat
something else that is also delicious, that is also cheat

(17:27):
you know, that is also you know, well sourced if possible,
and you know, make that the focal point you know,
I think I've in my in my almost ten years
of not eating me and I've changed a lot of
people's maybe not their whole life, maybe not their diet completely,
but I've changed their mind about what veganism means and

(17:50):
what it is by simply making a really good cake
or a really good cookie, or like a cashew mac
and cheese that someone really enjoyed and didn't, you know,
screw at them that it had no no dairy in it,
you know, And don't think you have to change everyone's
mind all at once, because you won't, you know. Like,

(18:11):
and I think also encouraging people to simply consume less
meat and thus better maybe more expensive meat than you know,
show people how they can get their protein in another
way that works, But never come at people who are
not um already open to it, because it's not gonna work.

(18:34):
You're just gonna alienate people. I think, in terms of
vegetarianism and veganism, like talking food first is way better
than trying to change someone's heart and mind. Um, that's
that's a lot more difficult than changing their stomachs. I
was actually born vegetarian my cost, so I I belong

(18:58):
to a cost which was always vegetarian, and I sort
of inherited vegetarianism just because of my my upbringing and background.
I've never thought once about animals at all until about
five years ago. Beyond the personal or morals. Sometimes these
questions of whether or not to eat meat are superseded
by one's culture or religion, and in order to talk

(19:21):
about the morality of meat, we also need to consider
these factors. And to do so, we go to India
with researcher Dr Yamini no Ryan in where the convergence
of cultural, political, religious, and social pressure to abstain from
eating meat all come to a head. So I never
thought about the ethics of my diet because I assume

(19:44):
that if I don't like thought about it, I assume
that I was okay, because I would have vegetarianism in
my mind, and I think in the minds of most
Indians but also most people in general, does not necessarily
involve slaughter, does not necessarily involve and on suffering. I
was a where that there's a raging conversation, of course,
politically around this question in India, because you have a

(20:05):
very strong Hindu ultra nationalist right wing government in India.
Dr Na ryan And is a senior lecturer in International
and Community Development at Deacon University in Australia. Her work
focuses on the nexus between animals and urban planning in
India and the intersections of species ism, cast is um

(20:27):
and racism and the ways in which animals are enrolled
in nation building projects. As Dr Na ryan And tells us,
the interesting thing is that although India is not a
nation associated with beef, they are one of the world's
largest producers and exporters. Here she expounds on that relationship
and how this contradiction came to be at the moment

(20:49):
we've been having them for the last five years, where
they have really taken on the cause of cow protection
in a very political, very violent sort of way. In
there in their vision and cow protection means protecting the
cow from slaughter. Implicitly, this means protecting the cow from
um Muslims and also who they see as low cost

(21:10):
Hindus who are consumers of beef. Right where consumers of
meat so special and there's a cow is seen as
a sacred animal in Hinduism. Um they see this as
a way of marginalizing Muslims and and low cost Hindus
who they who they see as low cost Hindus. Som
me dating is extremely political and volatile in terms of

(21:32):
resistance to these sorts of um world views as well.
So meat eating in fact is seen as a political activity,
and vegetarianism therefore, because the Hindu writering is is honestly
so violent about it, Vegetarianism in India is seen as
some sort of a fastest activity, which is really interesting
because a lot of cultures might disagree with vegetarianism, but

(21:55):
in India it actually becomes the fastest activity. Right. So
it was in this context that I started my research
on card protection five years ago. And so when you're
talking about vegetarian being perceived as a method of fascism,
which is fascinating, is it because it's used as an
instrument to oppress and already oppressed or marginalized class And

(22:18):
is that being done specifically by preventing access to foods
that would otherwise be part of their traditional and cultural diet. Absolutely,
absolutely so. So vegetarianism is being mobilized specifically against bee fetus,
so not necessarily against consumers about meat. So you know,
if you're eating chicken or or lamb, or other meat.

(22:40):
That's that's okay. It's specifically as a way of marginalizing
bee fetus because in the in the world, in the
political sort of narrative, Muslims and low cast Hindus are
the only be fatus, which is not true. If you
actually do a demographic story of India, everybody is everybody
is consuming base, including the supersede themselves as high cast,

(23:02):
so it's across the board. But the political narrative is
that it's only these sorts of minorities who don't belong
to the Hindu nation, to the Hindu Indian nation, and
therefore they either need to tow the line or they
just need to, you know, not be part of this nation.
So so therefore vegetarianism becomes um becomes seenus as very

(23:22):
fastest activity because it's kind of used as part of
nation building. In their view, they want this ultra right wing,
pure Hindu Indian nation, and vegetarianism is part of this
pure Hindu nation. Because it is seen as part of
nation building, it is tied up so politically it goes
well beyond the ethics of diet itself. It's kind of
almost like a nationalist ultra nationalist narrative right. Interestingly enough,

(23:46):
for a high beef producing country, India does not actually
have any beef cows. So if you look at other
leading beef producers in the world United States, Brazil, Australia
and New Zealand, they all real cows that are explicitly
for the beef sector. Like anger scouse. India does not
have any breed of cattle that's actually for for for

(24:08):
beef purposes. The only actually a real dairy house because
we're not supposed we're supposed to We're not supposed to
be slaughtering house. You can raise dairy cows. We are
the world's largest producer of dairy and we have been
since nineteen seven, so over twenty years you'll be the
largest producer of dairy. Um. But but but the fact

(24:28):
that dairy is also linked to cow slaughter is fully obscured.
What actually happens in India is that we have an
industrial scale of cow slaughter that simply goes underground. So
it's not that we do not slaughter house. They simply
go underground. So we have the largest year of the
one of the largest war and slaughtery countries in the world.
We think of industrial slaughtering in the West as something

(24:50):
that happens in these giant industrial slaughterhouses, right, But in
developing countries, and certainly in India, industrial industrial slaughtering happens informally.
It happens underground. It happens in people's that yards, and
this happens usually in the homes of highly racialized minorities,
highly vulnerable minorities. And this is across the board in

(25:11):
almost all countries, right, So the ones that are performing
this sort of really risky labor, and in India it
is extremely risky because it's also illegal, right. It's actually
they're not just having to perform labor, which is not
very nice, but it's also outright illegal. And there is
there is like really high penalties in many states in India,

(25:32):
especially those that have um a Hindu nationalist political party
ruling the state. Right, the penalties tend to be very high.
In the state of Buddad, for example, it's life imprisonment.
When cows are sold for slaughter in the in the
in the market, they don't necessarily get sold as sluck
as as as slaughter cows, you know, they get sold

(25:53):
as dairy cows. They get sold repeatedly over many, many,
many different park markets. It's almost impossible to trace the
point of origin at the point of sort of destination.
And they go through so many markets across so many states.
Because there's only about two states in India where cow
slaughtering is actually legal, so a lot of cows from
throughout India, that is the states of Kerala and Western

(26:13):
Goal they go through many, many, many markets sold as
dairy cows the point of purpose because it's not per
se illegal to sell a cow. You can sell a cow,
but you can obscure the purpose of the sale, and
that just keeps going through market after market after market. Right.
And so when you're talking about vegetarian being perceived as
a method of fascism, which is fascinating, is it because

(26:35):
it's used as an instrument to oppress and already oppressed
or marginalized class And is that being done specifically by
preventing access to foods that would otherwise be part of
their traditional and cultural diet. Yeah, that's such an such
an interesting and such a complex question. Um, it's it's
so urban urban spaces in India are major cornduits for

(27:01):
facilitating the entire informal economy of dairy and waif. They're
very much part of this continuum. Um, it's not just
the cities, it's also the regions. So for example, you
have entire villages, entire regions that are dedicated purely and
solely to how slaughter, for example, or to sheep slaughter,
or to pick slaughter. So there's entire regions dedicated that's

(27:24):
all they do. Right. I have been through regions in
India where there is skin hanging off fences, people's um
outside people's homes, the skins of cows or buffaloes, they're
literally hanging off the drying, you know. So there's entire
regions dedicated to this activity. And that also contributed, even
though it might just be family units of that region,

(27:45):
but it kind of contributes to this um to this
informal economy within cities. What happens is that in India,
and I think as much of the global South, our cities,
all parts of our cities are not formally planned. Okay,
so there's a lot of our urban spaces which are
not really within the purview of formal urban planning. Even

(28:09):
things like it's a problem because things like sanitation, um
water supply that doesn't reach everybody. So even even aside
from um from these illegal activities or informal activities, people
sometimes often often have to you know, make their own
water supplies, often have to sort of sort out their
own sanitation supplies. So the formal planning doesn't actually formal

(28:30):
governance doesn't reach all parts of the city. It doesn't
reach all parts of the people. For all people in
the city, right there's a large informal population that are
outside of it and that have to that have always
had to make do and sort out their own lives
outside of the benefits of formal governance. But in some
senses it also provides an opportunity. What's the people, but
also for the government when it comes to activities like houselaughtering,

(28:52):
because we as a daily country, we need to start
a house, right, but we can't formally allow it. So
it's easy for the for the state to just turblind eye.
It's happening in informal locations in the city. That's that's
got nothing to do with us anyway, And you will
find entire suburbs and areas of these cities that are
absolutely filled with slaughterhouses, back head boucheries, UM meet shops, etcetera.

(29:17):
But in India there's also this extraordinarily sentimental relationship with
the cow. For a lot of Hindus, and about eighty
percent of the population are Hindu, cow milk is seen
as a very secret commodity. It's not just that you
have a health relationship or a consumer relationship, but it's
also almost a spiritual relationship with cow milk. So it
has symbolic capital. It's not just profitable capital, but it's

(29:39):
also symbolic capital. Either way. Of course, for the cow,
it doesn't make any difference. The cows continue to be
used for dairying and they continue to sort of India
and suffer all the processes that they are in involved.

(30:05):
We thought about what what could be our different like
UM allies, you know, our allies could be planned, Our
allies could be nourishment, or allies could be getting clear
and having a share language about UM racism and system
of oppression UM. But the reality is that the more

(30:26):
you awaken to the truth UM, it's it's hard to
hold that in your body and it's hard to hold
that in your mind. That's insane. Batistasna is a black
Dominican born in Harlem and In two thousand seventeen created
the culinary arts and food justice worker coop Woke Foods,
where she and her team offer Dominican plant based foods

(30:50):
to organizing movements across New York and among other things,
food justice workshops e sn that is also co host
of the podcast for Need the Bag. I didn't take
cooking seriously until after I got into community organizing work

(31:12):
and saw that as an organizer, who was you know,
in in meetings, protests, just like organizing work, UM, how
much it was affecting my physical and mental health and UM.
Through a mentor and through and through just a group
of folks that were also organizing, we just collectively decided

(31:38):
to undergo UM a month of plant based lifestyle to
allow us UM, just to so for us with with
our health, so that we could continue the work that
we were doing, kind of realizing that all of it
is connected and how much systems of oppression UM are

(31:58):
connected to food and lands. Woke Foods was born from
a revelation, a revelation that summons healing culinary traditions as
a means of community activism, from workshops, interactive cooking classes
to creating meals with the North Bronx collective to multi
month long intensive programs. Woke Foods is about healing and

(32:21):
more specifically dedicated to deepening a healing relationship with the earth.
Ethernet has created an organization in her own brilliant likeness,
and in doing so has given us new ways of
understanding how white supremacy and racism have and continue to
undermine our collective survival. We've done a few UM experimental

(32:44):
projects because we don't I don't have it all figured out.
My team doesn't ALMOHOL figured out. But we try different
things to see, like what can we give to our
people so that they can they can UM see the
importance of taking care of them, of themselves and to
see their their m to see their relationship to Mother

(33:05):
Earth just as important as we see our relationship to
each other, and to just this work. And so last
year we did UM the last year REVERE. A year
and a half ago we did Resistance Kitchen, which was
a series of free cooking classes and Harlem and the
Bronx for community organizers and or people that lived in

(33:27):
affordable housing units UM. And so those were like one
off UM cooking classes UM, and they had like different
themes UM for the whole summer UM and they were free,
so that was you know, one experiment and that was cool.
Then UM. We also UM provide you know, free recipes

(33:50):
on our website. UM. Most of our catering is for
grassroots or nonprofit work or found a san work, so
those are pretty much are our consistent clients UM. And
then we've also have done UM cooking for like organizing

(34:11):
retreats UM. And recently we launched earth Lap which is
an eight week UM a virtual course for for bipoc
who want to be in right relationship to Earth while
being clear and understanding the ways that like racism shows

(34:31):
up in our in our in our attempts to be
in right relationship with Earth. And so those are the
typroup of twenty folks. UM. We're down. We're in our
seventh week right now. We started with UM political education,
moved into UM into cooking plant based meals, how to,

(34:56):
how to work with plants, and herbal medicine last week.
I think an issue that I see a lot in
the world of veganism and the world of also environmental
UM stewardship is there is no lens of why we're
in this situation in the first place, and we are
in the situation in the first place because white people

(35:18):
imagine these like racial hierarchies to justify the extraction of
labor from our bodies and from the land, and so
that our work has always been explicit with that. So
a lot of what you're doing right now is based
on what I would consider building future leaders UM and

(35:40):
building UM leaders within this food justice, equity sovereignty space.
So UM, one thing that I know is required for
for leaders who trained leaders like yourself is to have
a vision for the future, right kind of imagine vision
that you can share with other leaders to inspire them

(36:03):
and to give them a way forward. So UM, do
you think you could share with us some of your
visions for a more equitable food system in the future
and maybe how we might get there. Sure, I think
the first thing that comes to my mind is for
for black people, UM, and brown people and indigenous people

(36:26):
too to rest. I really want us to like stop
explaining like racism and having to put that labor on us.
I would love for for there for white people to
step up and return lands back to back to the

(36:46):
first peoples of this nation and back to black people.
Um who you know who helped build so much of
our food system. And I would love for are there
to be more green spaces and urban environments um and
if we would have the time, we would have have

(37:08):
the time to engage um in growing their own food
and cooking their own food. Um. And so yeah, my
vision is a little bit all over the place, but
I think it starts with time, um and for and
for white people to stop the obsession with like over working,

(37:30):
and and for us as you know, as black as
black ground and didn't people to interrupt the ways that
whiteness has also creeps up in our lives um And yeah, yeah,
I think at this point I'm not going a little
bit all over the place. But if I could prioritize it,
it would be time to rest, time to grow food

(37:53):
and and access to land so that we can figure
out what we want to do, who we want to be.
And yeah, I'd believe it. I'd believe it at that
that's a beautiful vision for the future. That's the future
that I want to live into. Well, I thank you,
and I actually think those things are very much in

(38:14):
relationship and I appreciate youth centering, rest and this new
imagined kind of utopia because it is something that we
need to deeply decolonize in our mind, the notion of
productivity and our value being tied to our our economic

(38:34):
usefulness or utility. So much good could come from a
society where rest, especially for for black and bipop people
who are prioritized. I like that a lot. You heard
it right there, eastnet Baptiste with stirring wisdom, which is

(38:59):
also a perfect segue into our last episode of the
season entitled Food Apartheid, in which we discuss the politics
of space and landscape and how they facilitate food oppression.
You will not want to miss that conversation. But in
service of today's conversation, I would like to thank our

(39:20):
extraordinary guests, which I feel is a hallmark of our
little podcast. But today the heat from my friend Alicia
Kennedy from eastnet Baptiste, a leader and a woman of
great vision who I deeply admire. And Dr Yamini Na
ryan In of Deacon University in Melbourne, whose scholarship at

(39:40):
the intersection of animals and urban planning is specific and
exemplary and frankly just enlightening. So I want to thank
them all and I would like to extend my thanks
for you all for gifting me and everyone who tuned
in with your insight and giving us so much to
think about. This is a good time to inform you

(40:02):
of what I'm sure many of our listeners are already
privy too, which is that Alicia Kennedy has a newsletter
UH and if you've enjoyed her interview, I'm sure the
newsletter will blow you away. It's tidy and thoughtful and
weekly offering on the food system. It's maladies and Brokenness
with interviews and musing. So we highly recommend that you

(40:23):
sign up for that in encourage Asnet's work via Woke Foods,
And probably the easiest way to do that is through
their site UH or at Woke Foods, which is their
i G handle. But we will be writing all about
them on our website wet Stone Magazine dot com, w

(40:44):
H E T S t O n E Magazine dot com.
And this is the part of the show where I
will usually add some additional context or commentary to wrap
up the episode, But honestly, our guests did so much
of that lift today that I will just their words
speak for themselves. But what I will say is that
if you've listened to this podcast, you've likely observed, as

(41:07):
we have, that the many problems in our food systems
that continue to reveal itself is that the businesses at
the end of the supply chains, and not the ones
at the point of origin, are the ones capturing all
of the value, and to whatever degree possible, we as
consumers can up end this. That is more important than

(41:28):
any endorsement found on the label, and that criteria alone
will do more to further a truly transformative food system
than just about anything that we could ever do. We'll
be back next week for our aforementioned final episode of
season three. I'm your host Steven Saderfield, what Stone co
founder will see you then. Thanks for tuning in peace.

(41:50):
We'd also like to thank our incredible podcast producer Selene Glazier. Selene,
you are the best. To our editor and wet Stone
partner into Rector of Video David Alexander in London. Appreciate you, Dave.
Thanks to our wet Stone production intern Quentin le Beau,
and last but not least, my business partner Mel She

(42:12):
who makes all things at Whetstone possible. Thank you Mel.
We'd also like to thank our partners and production at
I Heart Radio to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer and
executive producer Christopher Hasiotis. We'll be back next week with
more from the world of food worldwide Point of Origin listeners,

(42:40):
As you know, rating and reviewing our podcast is the
very best way for more people to find out about
our very important work at wet Stone, So please, if
you're able, we would really appreciate a positive review in
rating on Apple podcast that will help others like your
self find out about Point of Origin.
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