May 19, 2026 • 78 mins
In the second part of this Classic series, Ben, Matt and Noel dive into another aspect of the global livestock industry: the lives of the animals and humans involved. Learn more about the hidden reality of life for livestock--and how it could eventually impact the entire world, giving rise to superbugs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fell a conspiracy realist. We are returning with chapter two
(00:03):
of our classic exploration of the livestock industry, and as
we were called, Matt, this is where this is where
we get into the larger picture. This is so fascinating
because we recorded this Friends and Neighbors in twenty twenty
(00:24):
and this chapter of the story is focusing on superbugs
and pandemics and oh what a.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Time antibiotics in our livestock because of the way we
keep the live stock. It's that concept we've talked about
before on our Big Pharma episodes of treating a symptom
of the wider, bigger problem. The thing that's actually killing
you is not what we're concerned with. We're concerned with
(00:54):
your itchy skin or in this case, the infections that
the cows have.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Right, So, instead of improving the living conditions for these animals,
for these domesticated animals that the economy depends upon, why
don't we just keep giving them the most powerful antibiotics
that we can add. For all those nerds who say, hey,
you guys are essentially doing gain of function actions to
(01:23):
create a superbug, We'll tell them to get out, like hey,
you love books, go over there read one in the corner.
We're making money and we're eating this. Well, why does
that sound so plausible? That sounds like a senator for
Texas would say, oh.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, for real, go met good Book. Well, you know
we've I think we get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And here the lobbying groups, the industry groups that have
so much money in politics, they exist. They are very real.
You may in your mind think about oil when you
think about those things. You may think about big pharma.
You may think about a lot of things. Don't forget
the meat industries.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Don't forget the beats. Why does that sound weirdly? Tim Robinson?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Well, I mean I just I.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Accidentally channel him all the time, becausen't forget the meats.
But really, like the food industries are massive players because
of the amount of government subsidies that go into those things,
and you need to lobby those governments to make sure
you're still going to be secure in the way you operate,
(02:35):
in the way you make your profits.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Also, unlike some other industries, you have a leg up.
The reason I can't remember how deeply we get into this,
not to be again to book nerdy about it, but
we have we be but current civilization spends a lot
of time on protectionism to secure their food resources. So
(03:01):
all this stuff about mark of authenticity in different countries
or crazy taxes or tariffs on outside rice in Japan
or you know, grain produced in insert European country here.
Part of it is making money that is inescapable. Another
more real politic part of it is nobody wants to
(03:23):
be wholly dependent on another country for food imports. That's
giving another country too much power.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Shout out to you, Argentina and your beef trade.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Thank you guys, by the way, good way, apprecia.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But also, you know, if you're an American beef farmer,
get out of here Argentina.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
You can read all about it in recent news.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
This classic episode is emphatically not brought to you by
Omaha Steaks.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I know, I was hoping, But again, if you listen
to the last episode and now you're listen to this episode,
Omaha Steaks, oh god man.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah again, don't have a snack for this one and
join us in the future for more episodes. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I think we approved an ad from Omaha Steaks. One
I did, but I don't remember it. I don't remember
reading one.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Dude, I used to mess with them, heavy y out mad,
wrong time to say it, Jesus Christ, spend time and
a place. Here's our classic episode.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
They called me, and we're joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control decades. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We're diving back into the livestock industry.
So that's either that's either a disclaimer to anyone eating
(05:19):
right now, or it's an invitation to turn it up
while you're cooking whatever you're cooking in your kitchen. In
our previous episode, we explored the gargantua sometimes hidden economy
behind meat in general, and we noted just how much
influence the livestock industry has upon so many other industries,
(05:40):
and Matt, you pointed out that transit is a huge
piece of this, you know, which a lot of people
don't think about.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, most definitely, the animals have to get there somehow
a lot of times, if you know, depending on the facility,
and then they the product has to get other places
as well, and sometimes it's across oceans, which is crazy
to think.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
About, right right the days of cowboys herding cattle by
foot and by hoof across the American West are kind
of long gone and romanticized.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
It's one of those things we always talk about, like
how technology moves things forward, and how refrigeration and just
like ice is probably one of the most meaningful technologies
quote unquote of our species in many ways. It allows
us to do so many things like ship meet without
spoiling across oceans.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And I like that ice example there, Noel, because there's
a wonderful parable, a real story about refrigeration and ice,
and I think it can come into play in this episode.
But the short and dirty of it is, I believe
we may have mentioned this in the past on stuff
that once. You to know, when refrigeration companies came out,
(06:56):
they were entering an industry, an ice industry that already existed,
and the ice industry of the time did not create ice.
They traveled up to I think the ones in New
York traveled up to Canada and they would cut out
blocks of ice and they would cover it with hay,
and then they would haul ass down to New York
where they would sell the ice. So the refrigeration guys
(07:18):
show up, they are the new kids on the block,
new fridge on the block, whatever you want to call it,
new kids on the ice block. We can go a
lot of different ways with us those And when the
refrigeration guys showed up, the industry that existed that was
based entirely on cutting and hauling ice did not see
them as allies or did not see them as an opportunity. Instead,
(07:39):
they sought to shut that industry down. They invested in
faster trucks, in different types of hay, in different tires
because they did not see or were not ready to
see the future for what it was. And this kind
of you can call it a couple different things. Path
dependence is one where so comfortable with a status quo,
(08:01):
a process, or a technology, that we are hesitant companies, individuals, groups, governments.
We are hesitant to embrace the new stuff because it
may upend the status quo. So shout out to those
ice trackers. Nelson laugh.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So it is a crazy thing to think about, especially
if you boil it down to an individual or to
an individual level. So we're talking about innovation, especially in technology,
when something new comes along, and then really you're talking
about money the costs associated with retrofitting or replacing existing technology.
(08:42):
So if you're talking about a single farmer and a
new technology comes along that is not only more efficient,
but it's safer for an animal or something like that,
you're talking about an individual person that then probably has
to get a major loan or work out something with
whoever is distributing the stuff to then retrofit or change.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
Everything otherwise get left behind.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Well, and not to mention, probably lose you know, a
large portion of time and money in doing that process
to where you have to move all of your livestock
out or something. I mean, it's just you can till
you can see why there's that pushback against innovation and
has been historically.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Totally Yeah, and I love the farmers example there too,
because one of the one of the big ways of
those changes happen tend to be in the developed world
government subsidies, which there are their own very sticky bag
of badgers. But we're We're God, We're doing a great
job setting this up. I hope the rest of the
episode is this good. I don't want to chintz us
(09:47):
so knock off wood.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
Uh yeah, these.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Points are all These points are all valid, and there
aren't really clear answers. That's the dilemma. There are also
bad actors at play, people who don't mind skirting the rules,
cutting corners, or breaking the law to maintain their position
in a certain economic hierarchy. That's I know that sounds
like a lot of gobbledygoog, but it's true. In our
(10:10):
last episode we explored this in a number of examples.
It's a question that people don't ask themselves very often
in the West. Why is meat so cheap?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Like, would you.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Consider all of the care, the skill, the resources that
are required to raise cattle, raised chickens, raise pigs, Then
it's weird that you can just go somewhere and get
a pretty nice steak without breaking the bank. This is
(10:45):
this is an effect of the way the industry is
set up. And again, as we said in our previous episode,
none of this is a deing on farmers. None of
This is a dean on the people who work in
these industries, and is a very solid argument to be
made that modern a big piece of modern civilization, as
(11:07):
we understand it, cannot survive without this industry. We cannot
just shut off the switch. We'll leave millions out of work.
They will spell economic disaster in a number of areas.
But why are we even talking about that? We check
out that first episode. In today's episode, we're examining another
aspect of the livestock industry, and it's one that remains
(11:29):
highly divisive in the modern day. Several of our fellow
listeners wrote to us about this after episode one, and
here's what we're focusing on, the animals themselves. Here are
the facts. I guarantee you this is true. This is
so weird in Twilight Zone, believe it or not. There
are people in the developed world who have never seen
(11:51):
a cow in person. I've never seen a pig, maybe
never seen a chicken. Those are three of the largest
meat sources around. People eat millions of cow, chickens, and pigs,
But can you imagine never actually seen one except on TV?
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Oh yeah, I mean that's sort of the whole point
of the meat packing industry is to create that divide
between people's food, the actual living version of it, and
then eating it, because you know, there's a lot of
violence and kind of gnarly stuff that goes into killing
your own raising and killing your own food that a
lot of regular old American, kind of middle class folks
(12:27):
probably couldn't stomach.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, it's true. Another thing to point out here is
that many of us, especially in our generation, have this
fondness of animals that have been that that have been
portrayed in these big movies. I'm thinking, I mean, it's
not necessarily factory farm. Maybe Babe is a really good example.
(12:50):
Charlotte Web Charlot's Web, where where an animal is humanized
to such an extent, you know, and given a name
and can talk and and we feel the emotions there
with them, that we've developed a connection, the different kind
of connection to animals that are that we eat.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
Yeah, an absolutely imaginary and idealized connection that would argue, right, you.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Can befriend cows and you can befriend pigs. People. You know,
if you've worked with chickens before and you're on the
audience today, let us know your take on chickens. I
remember in a different lifetime, in a rural area, there
was this there was this one chicken in this place.
(13:38):
I was a living that was like known as the
bad chicken. Everybody in this community like new there was
this chicken that was just a toll. And that's the
only time I've heard of a chicken personality. But I
don't know every chicken.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
I was once chased by a chicken. I didn't care
for it one bit. It was a like a yert
you ever a yurt. Yeah, there was at a yurt
there was a resident chicken and it chased me and
my girlfriend at the time had to show it away
with a broomstick because, as you guys know, I'm a
little anti bird and it was freaking me out. And
chickens are so aggressive when they come at you like that.
(14:15):
They're like the way geese kind of come at you.
But it's true, I mean, there is sort of you know,
I know people that have raised their own chickens that
have their own goats that you know, and the goats
that they're not raising them to slaughter them. They're raising
them to graze and to maybe give milk or something
like that. And oftentimes the chickens are just raised to
give eggs. And I actually found out that if you
(14:36):
hatch a male chicken, not only you don't want it
in the henhouse, because then the eggs will be fertilized
and you'll just get more baby chickens as opposed to eggs.
They're total holes, like you're saying, Ben, and you often
there's a there's a like a service of some kind
that where you take your male chicken and you donate.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
It to this service and then they fight those chickens.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
That's maybe, No, that's the dark side of of chicken
male chicken donation.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It's the dome.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I would just say kind of similar to that. And
I don't want to stick on this too long, but
I do have a very good friend of mine that
has several chickens and his daughters have named the chickens,
and they do seem to have different personalities and they do.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I don't, I don't.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I I'd like to hear from everybody listening just what
their experience is there, because because yeah, they seem cool
to me.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, let's uh far be it for us them align
chickens unfairly. They're not They're not as intelligent as Corvid's,
but a few few birds are.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So you're right, though, guys, we see we see these
depictions in film and documentaries. You might the last time
you saw cattle might have been a brief clip in
the local news uh on some with some anchor taking
note of an aspect of the economy.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
We encounter the remains of these animals easily every day.
We see them in the local grocery store, we see
them in a fast food chain or in a restaurant.
And in the US, this disassociation between the thing you eat,
the thing that ends up on your plate, and a
living thing goes even further. I mean, think about it.
(16:18):
You will in many of the garden variety grocery stores,
you'll not only see a fairly limited type of meat, right,
but you'll also see limited parts of those types thighs, breasts, chops, ribs,
ground up flesh. You might see tongue, You might see liver,
(16:39):
but you probably won't see eyes unless you go to
the cool places.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Well, even tongue and liver sometimes, I mean, liver is
more common, I think it like a regular chain grocery store.
But tongue that's more of a specialty thing or something
you might see it like a carnisourea or something like that,
or like, yeah, that's where I go.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Actually, I go Beauford Highway nor across Non de Mundo
to the Beauford Highways farmers market too.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Oh yeah, that's amazing, get their get their pre marinated
poo or like whatever else they do. They do all
they do it all up themselves. And they also make
fresh tortillas. They're highly recommend if anyone's ever passing through.
But like you know, even like we're talking about the
food prep, we're all I think into cooking. I might
eat a tongue taco, but I don't know that I
would buy a tongue and slice it up myself for
(17:29):
preparation to make something that's a bridge too far for
me personally.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well, yeah, because that's some of that stuffs. It culturally
is off limits.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Right, Yes, we don't. It's it's fascinating because without a
real concrete set of laws and consequences in the US
and Canada and many other parts of the world, cultures
seem to have generated their own. So I would call
them soft taboos. Right, No one's and no one's going
(18:00):
to arrest you for eating something they think is weird,
but it's just like not done in polite society. These
taboos dictate which animals can be eaten, which parts can
be eaten, or considered you know, normal food. So you know,
we said it's uncommon to see eyes on a menu.
You might also be weirded out if you go to
(18:21):
your local diner or your local hangout restaurant and they say, hey,
we have a special on foxes. Just we're out of
chicken wings, so it's it's just fox legs.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Or yeah, dude, seriously. Or brain.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Brain is a fairly common thing in some places, but
it's hard to imagine it being in many places.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
You know, it's funny, dangerous.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
You can You're absolutely right, Ben, you can get Yeah,
there's like brain, I forget the name, but there are
definitely exactly preons that can exist in brain. But I
grew up my grandpa, who is like an old North
Carolina tobacco merchant. You know, that was how he made
a living when he was a young man. His favorite
breakfast was something called brains and eggs, and I ate
(19:05):
it blindly and thought it was delicious, and only years
later separated from it thought it was a little weird,
but I definitely you could buy it at the grocery store.
And also liver pudding. Ben you and I on the
road trip we did with car stuff back in the day.
They call it scrapple in certain parts of the Midwest,
I believe, or the Northwest, and it's literally kind of
(19:25):
a purade like fried pat tai Ish substance made of liver.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Also known as pan rabbit mush of pork scraps. But
you're right, brain eyes, things of this nature in some places,
like one of my favorite restaurants, shout out. I don't
know if they listen to the show, but Saint John
in London, the guy Fergus Henderson made his name in
(19:51):
the culinary world by taking all that stuff that people
would usually eat pancreass awful sweetbreads and so what, and
elevating it and selling it as a HOAt cuisine. But
that's kind of unusual and that worked. That amazed people
because it was an unusual thing, because a lot of
people in the United Kingdom were now eating things that
(20:12):
they ordinarily would not have considered consumables. Like another example
of a soft cultural taboo here in the US is
that certain animals would never be considered food. Perish the thought.
And you have offended me if you suggest that we
should eat dogs or certain birds even you know what
(20:34):
I mean in cats. I would add to that list too.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
And we've talked about this casually on the show. But
it's an interesting line. It's an interesting division where it's like,
to your point, Matt, you know, we sort of anthropomorphize
these pigs through like movies and animated things or like
you know, deer in Bambi or rabbit, Like rabbit's okay
to eat, but dog's not okay to eat. Yeah, both
are kept as pets and both are considered cute. So, like,
(20:59):
the line is interesting and confusing to me. I'm not
saying we should go eat horse or whatever, but I
know that in certain Asian countries that's totally fine. So
the taboos of these things it eludes me a little bit,
and it seems like a little bit of a double standard.
I'm interested to see what you guys think about that.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I think maybe you just look at different parts of
the world historically, and you know what what are considered,
what animals or what foods are considered taboo. A lot
of it can can have historical religious relevance as to
why you don't eat something like, let's say, if you're
if you live in a country that has a large
(21:36):
number of people who identify as Muslim or follow you know, Islam,
they're you're not going to be eating pork. What are
some other examples of that.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
India, very large percent of the population practices Hinduism, so
cows are considered sacred rather than livestock. What's interesting about
those two examples. In those those cultures, the animals are
left kind of alone for very different reasons. In one,
(22:06):
the animal, the cow, is considered sacred in a way,
and in the other one, the big is just considered
unclean and gross and it's aram to even mess with
them totally.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
And to your original point about looking elsewhere in the
country for these kind of taboos. In Iceland, a traditional
dish is boiled sheep's head and you eat the whole thing,
the ears, the eyes, the lips, the you know, all
of that stuff. And then in this article from The
Salt from NPR, someone asked the individual describing this, well,
(22:43):
where's the brain, to which they were looked at with
a gasp kind of l like horror, like ooh, we
would never eat the brain, but the eyeballs and the
lips and the face totally fine.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I want to keep us off topic too long because
longtime listeners, as you know, the three of us, can
around and talk about food forever.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, because we love it. Sorry about it?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
No, no, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
There's there's one.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I'm sorry it advanced because there's one other thing I
have to shout out. I'm fascinated by it. Kale pace.
It's the Iranian sheep head soup and it's it's the
sheep's head with the brain, just in case you're your
Nasenal and Trotter's and it's they're they're the shops set
up that only serve this soup, and they're only open
(23:28):
from like three am to seven am or something. It's
on my bucket list for Taran And it has nothing
to do with today's show. Unless you want to send
us some examples of Kali Bontier, send us examples of
regional foods in your neck of the global woods that
you think other people might be surprised by. No judgment,
(23:51):
because again, these rules are not constant. They change you
know what I mean. Horse meat is popular in some
parts of Europe, and it's considered taboo in many parts
of the US. So we can explain part of this
weird what is or is not livestock phenomenon through a
cultural lens. But then we also have to, you know,
(24:13):
note that there are people who object to the consumption
of certain animals. Might be a pescatarian no mammals for you,
but fish or fine, or they object to the consumption
of all animals. And there are other factors at play
here aside from cultural factors. And you know, we have
to look at where these folks are coming from because
(24:35):
people don't usually do stuff without some sort of internal logic.
So one their health concerns you. You know, you're in
your mid fifties, You've lived a satiating, gluttonous life, and
your doctor says, look, man, you have to either break
up with bacon or break up with the idea that
(24:55):
you're going to live to be eighty years old and
then boom, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And part of the same coin, there is a younger
person who has learned about the most recent you know,
nutritional facts or something in school or by a friend
or something and then they're choosing not to do that, right,
but for the same reasons, for health reasons. The next one, Ben,
I would say, is really the heart of what this
episode is an emotional revulsion to the whole process, or
(25:27):
to one part of the process, or just to the
thought at all of eating an animal.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Right, Yeah, I mean, no fooling Matt. There are people
who watched Babe at a young age, and probably decades later,
I think I could never eat pork. I loved Babe.
I have the blu Ray what kind of person would
I be?
Speaker 5 (25:51):
I watched the Pig in the City director's commentary once
a year.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, well in this you know, and I guess you.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Could categorize that in two ways.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Revulsion at the thought of eating the animal, but then
the other one, which we're gonna give you a little
caveat here, a lot of what we're gonna talk about
following this moment in the episode. There's gonna be cruelty
to animals in here. There's gonna be in humane conditions
we're gonna discuss. There's gonna be a lot of things
that's gonna be unpleasant and unsettling. So if you don't
like that stuff or you know it's going to trigger
(26:25):
you for some reason, go ahead and pause here. The
other reason is people object to the cruelty that or
the pain that could be involved in the process in
a factory, farm or some other setting where animals are
raised specifically for food.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, you're right, because research proves that some of these
animals can indeed experience emotional states similar to the emotional
states of a human being, like if you have a
if you have a dog, then you know that your
dog has moods, predilections, and personality. Cattle and pigs are
(27:07):
the same way. They can experience things like grief, joy, pain,
and so on. Of course, we don't want to anthropomorphize.
These are not humans, right, but they are still mammals.
So the structure of their brain is similar, which means
that the traffic patterns, if you want to think of
neural activity that way, are in a way similar. I
(27:31):
propose we pause for a word from our sponsor. I
wonder who it's going to be this time, then will
be and then we'll be back to examine this. And
I know, just briefly to add to what Matt just said,
we know that sometimes people get put off by these
(27:52):
kind of examinations because they might feel like it's preachy,
or it might feel like we're telling you to do things.
But as you know, that is not the job of
this show and has never been the mission of this show.
We want to want to bring you the facts and
then some frightening speculation right at the end, so we'll
(28:12):
be right back. We're back. So that last point we
left on the idea that some people object to the
consumption of meat because they they do not feel comfortable
or perhaps they don't feel ethical when they imagine that
(28:36):
there are some way they are, in some way contributing
to the unnecessary pain of another living thinking thing. It's
a controversial stance because, look, we've got on one side
of the argument. People have chosen to minimize as much
as possible their participation in what they see as animal cruelty,
and they may, in addition to abstaining from summer all
(28:58):
types of meat, they may also refuse to wear clothing
from animal products. They may also say, look, dairy, I'm
just I'm not into it either, and dairy is weird.
I get it. Cheese is awesome. But if you explained
to another species what milk is the fact that we're
down with it. It would be kind of weird. They
(29:20):
it'd be weird. It'd be a weird moment in extraterrestrial relations.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I do feel weird giving it to my son every
morning he wants milk. I give him milk, and I
just think about it. I look at the container and
I just go, Okay, think.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Of the calcium. I know he's Yeah, that kid is,
by the way, folks growing at a breakneck pace. Yeah,
you got to feed the engine there. But but there's
you know, there's another side. So that's like what let's
call that one extreme one extreme end of the spectrum.
On the other side of that spectrum, there are individuals
and organizations who are saying, you know, yeah, this system,
(29:57):
if you want to think of it as a system,
it may not be perfect, but it works. And some
of these changes they want to do, although it might
make you feel good as a person wants these changes,
they're just not economically feasible. We can't instantly do this
and without wrecking the entire house of cards. Then, you know,
(30:19):
typically people on that end of the spectrum would say,
we can roll some of these changes out slowly over
a given timespan, but in general, I'd love to hear
what you guys think about this. In general, we find
that if you remove every fact, every financial economic factor,
(30:41):
and you ask people what do you think about the
lives and these animals, then people seem on board with
improving them in numbers that surprised me, although I did
pull for one very biased study just to be completely
transparent from.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
The as yes, oh yeah, let's go through.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Let's go through what it found.
Speaker 5 (31:05):
First of all, the vast majority eighty nine percent of
Americans are in fact concerned with the whole industry of
industrial animal agriculture. This idea of animal cruelty is top
of mind there. People want to make sure that animals
are treated humanly. Also, worker safety, and of course another
biggie being public health, also came up as top concerns.
(31:29):
Farmers who were surveyed who participated in the survey seemed
on board as well, with eighty five percent of farmers
and their families supporting a complete ban on new industrial
animal agriculture facilities, which is almost twice the level of
support that was expressed by the public, which is fascinating
but also makes sense since they're so close to it
(31:51):
and those things you mentioned at the top of the show,
ben about how this can affect their livelihood, and the
idea of more competition, that's certainly a part of it
as well. Two percent of respondents believe that the government
should mandate slower slaughter speeds to protect workers, animals, or
public health. This one's a little confusing to me. I
(32:11):
think we should unpack this.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
They're not talking about slow motion killing the end.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
That's okay, just making sure because I thinks that would
be the opposite of that. Yeah, let's just torture the
animals to death. That would be more humane. Explain if
you don't mind.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Well, I'm this is just me spitballing, but I'm imagining
that killing fewer animals on a let's say daily or
weekly basis, or you know, hourly basis, just depending on
the timeframes that they're speaking about.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
There, that makes sense. That makes sense. And then sixty
five percent or two thirds of the public that participated
reported that they believe poor worker protection and harsh working
conditions will increase people's in humane treatment of farm animals,
which also makes sense because if you're under the gun
(33:00):
where you feel like your welfare is not being looked
after you're not going to be as careful and you're
going to just try to get the job done as
quickly as possible so you can move on. Then more
than half fifty seven percent believed that this mistreatment also
increases health risks to the public.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Ding Ding, Ding.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
There it is.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So it just real quick that you nailed it on
slaughter speeds. What they're talking about is what would also
be described as a line speed. It's how much how
much volume are we doing for processing day And the
concern there is a little bit, i would say, less
on the individual animal and more so on the the
(33:47):
opportunities it raises for things to go wrong because these
a lot of these slaughter lines, especially at the large
industrial scale. It's like if you've seen somebody's speed running
a video game on Twitch. It's there's not a pause,
you know, it's just a shift. There's just a shift.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Change, and it's horrifying if you actually watch it at
that speed.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course we should know
ASPCA is far from a neutral source. Still, again, there
appears to be wide support with with the statistics you
just brought in store. There seems to be wide support
in the public in general to say like, hey, if
it's no skin off my back, you know, if it's
(34:31):
no bacon off my burger, then yeah, I don't want
to torture animals. It's pretty basically, it's not a controversial stance.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, But are our
slaughterhouses still manually killing cattle with those bolt guns that
we are so fond of, especially when they're used as
like murder weapons by sociopaths in movies? You know that
they're like an air powered bolt gun that shoots out
a large projectile through the cow's brain, instantly killing it
(35:01):
and then pulling it back.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
It depends, it depends on where you are right and
which factory, and again that technological advancement, like where are
you on the line or the timeline of advancing.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Because that part of the of the slaughterhouse is called
the killing floor, which I've always found that to be
a very eerie name. And I imagine if you're moving
through a lot of cattle, that killing floor could be
absolutely soaked in blood pretty quickly. And I wonder if
that's something where that could cause like fall hazards or
ways of you know, perhaps being injured by some of
(35:36):
these high powered equipped machines. You know, I don't know,
like I'm wondering, like, how does the volume increase the
danger to the employees.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. Well, you're we're talking about
there with a bolt or with anton sugar is the
is the mechanical method you're stunning the animal. So there
there are a number of other methods that have been used.
And as you said, Matt, it does vary from place
(36:04):
to place. A lot of places, a lot of countries
have laws that ostensibly determine how an animal should be
slaughtered or processed, and those laws are i would say,
primarily centered on health concerns for humans. It's a very
important thing. And of course, you know, this is a
concept that is not new. It's not something that modern
(36:28):
civilization came up with. Ancient religions have very specific rules
about which animals can be consumed and how and how
they should be slaughtered. And if you look back at
those rules through the modern lens, then you see that
they're actually their plans for good hygiene, to prevent the
(36:49):
spread of disease.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, and it's so fascinating. That's what it's been about.
Even in some of the ancient rules that you could
find in the Bible about certain things to wear or eat.
It was, in a way, in many cases a health situation.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
It's very strange.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
I always wanted to read to read that, to read
some of those texts into modern parlance, just like rewritten
to say, avoiding trickonosis, verse one.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Chapter one.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It's like, that's just Leviticus is now trichosis.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
That is fascinating. I didn't realize that the bolt gun
just stunned the animal because you see it use, you know,
in movies, as an instant kill. I mean, but it is,
You're right. It just goes into their forehead and typically
stuns them after one hit, very rarely after two, and
then they're hung upside down and their throats are slashed
and they're bled out, and then you know, processing commences
(37:47):
from there.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
May also be electrically shocked, or you know, that's it's
still a stunning move. But here's our question, what exactly
goes on behind the scenes. What are these animals lives like?
And what does that mean for human beings? Spoiler whether
or not you consider yourself a meat eater, whether or
(38:11):
not you care in general, how does this affect you.
Here's where it gets crazy. Let's do the gross part first.
Let's focus on a factory farm. Let's focus on a cow.
As a matter of fact, you guys want to style
on it a little. Do we want to give you
this cow a name? Oh, Myrtle, Myrtle. Okay, so Myrtle
(38:32):
the cow. Myrtle the cow is born in old school
like think of pastoral scenes from your favorite hit works
of historical fiction. In old school farms, a cow can
roam free and have a normal lifespan of about twenty
five years or so if it's not slaughtered for food,
(38:53):
if nothing goes wrong. Cattle raised for beef. Let's say
Myrtle is raised for beef. In this situation, she is
one of about forty one million cows raised this way
in the US, so she has pretty good odds of
spending her first year on the range, walking around in
the field, eating grass, mooing it's stuff, playing because cows play.
(39:17):
And then after that year, Myrtle and her cohort are
shipped to something called a concentrated Animal feeding operation or KFO.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, the old CIFO. This is what you'll hear referred
to as a stockyard. A lot of times. If you
ever hear that word feed lot sometimes and you know,
by the way, it does make a difference if myrtle
is male or female, because many times the female is
going to be dealing with a whole different set of issues.
(39:51):
If it's a male, we'll talk about that too. But
the biggest problem at these places is overcrowding many times,
not always, but at many factory f operations, overcrowding is
the worst thing because things become unsanitary very quickly for
the cattle, and a lot of times, to save money,
(40:12):
depending on the operation, different kinds of feed will be used.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Corn has been a big issue.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I think we've talked about that on an episode before
when we were talking about the various uses of corn.
But oh god, yeah, yeah, I know. We made a
video about it at some point.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Corns it everything, corns it everything before they shut the
podcast down. You have to know, if you travel to
the US and you're not from here, you will be
amazed by how many ingredient lists, various products have somehow
of corn in the mix. Corn is everywhere. It's like
it's like the Kevin Bacon of the cast of an
(40:51):
ingredient list. Anyway, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Not even the good kind.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It's not those sweet kernels you can get in the can,
you know, those delicious ones that are in the what
is it the creamed corn? Oh?
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Man, when I was a kid, creamed corn.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You were a cream corn kid.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I was a cream corn kid because you could make
so many things out of it, especially if you.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Were baking with it. Oh, it's good stuff. Okay, Where
what am I talking about? The miserable the feed?
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, all of these things combined together can can make
a pretty miserable existence for an individual animal. And then
you take all of that misery together in one big
place at one of these stockyards.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
Yikes. Now, guys, is it true that some more sickly
cows that perhaps die before they get to the feed
lot are destroyed and ground up and made into feed
that can be fed to other cows. Isn't that supposedly
where mad cow disease came from this practice? Or is
that just rumor stuff?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah? It gets it gets rough man, because you know,
a lot of these animals are living a very challenging life.
And we can introduce this concept now you know how
You'll see like USDA grade a prime ord a blah
blah blah when you're in the grocery store. The far
(42:13):
end of that is what's called four D meat, meat
from animals that are dead or they're disabled upon their
arrival at the slaughterhouse and they end up you might
see their bodies. They're considered not fit for human consumption,
but they end up in pet food right or they're rendered,
(42:34):
or they're used to feed animals and zoos and things
like that.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
For sure, And after doing a little more research, it
does appear that the mad cow disease or bovine sponge
of form and sepalopathy or bs it involved the feeding
of cattle parts to cattle, and it did lead to
some restriction on which parts of cattle can be fed
(43:03):
back to cattle. But there is still some of that happening,
things like hooves, ground up bone and other you know,
remnant parts from you know, because they don't want to
waste anything. But yeah, that is a thing, and that's
pretty disturbing.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
That's a good idea. Let's let's force the herbivores to
consume themselves. That's great.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Not only is it cannibalism, it's not something they would
ever eat in the wild.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
It's as sorts. Yeah, well okay, so let's okay. So
back to myrtle. Myrtle is a beef cow. There there
are two things happening. If myrtle is whether or not
myrtle is male or female, she's going to get an
id tag popped in her ear. That makes sense. Everybody's
seen that. If she's male, then her testicles will be removed,
(43:51):
her horns will be gouged out. This occurs without anesthesia.
It's a cost cutting measure, and like you said, Matt,
the the main problem here is the intensely crowded conditions.
This is a perfect storm for bacteria and infections, and
to combat that, cows are injected with heavy doses of
(44:12):
antibiotics as well as hormones. The entire goal of these
injections is to keep the animals relatively healthy and to
ensure that they can survive up until the time of
their slaughter. This is going to be important later. Just
remember that part. I think you know, if you heard
episode one, you know where we're going. So now to
(44:35):
the slaughterhouse, not the eminem sponsored hip hop group, which
I think is pretty good, the actual slaughterhouse where the
cattle meet their end.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
So after leaving that feed lot or stockyard or cafe,
the cattle are then shipped to the slaughterhouses, and technically
only the animals that are able to walk to their
own slaughter are in fact slaughter cattle that are too
weak or who aren't able to get up or euthanized,
(45:05):
so they do not reach the food production process. That
could be for various reasons, because they're too they're not
they're not beefy enough to make beef, or they could
be sickly. There's you know, they don't want to introduce
that into the food supply chain. However, each animal, this
is something that you know, we think about the business
(45:27):
of this. Each individual animal represents money, represents a dollar amount,
a financial investment to various people stakeholders along the supply chain.
So these animals may be prodded to stand upright and
forced to stagger into the slaughterhouse despite not being fit
(45:50):
for consumption.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
And if they can't make it, they may be just
left for dead. That's Myrtle's life as a cow raised
for beef. But let's say Myrtle is a cow raised
for dairy. What's like there, Well, she will be kept
in indoor facilities. She'll be fed and watered. She will
not go outside to graze. There is a mechanical process
(46:11):
used to remove her urine and feces. The milk from
her utters is removed by machines hooked to the utters.
Of course, her tail will be docked so that it's
easier for dairy workers to hook up the machines. And
this surgery is also without the use of anesthesia, and
(46:32):
studies show that it does induce lasting chronic pain. Just
to run through the last one, the last one of
the last possibilities, veal, let's say myrtle is a particularly
unlucky male caf myrtle. The male myrtle will be taken
from the mother, either at birth or within the first
twenty four hours or so, placed in what's called a
(46:54):
veal crate. Veal crate is about twenty two inches wide
about fifty eight inches long. They will spend their entire
lives there, chained up in the crate because the whole
thing about vel is restricting movement of the animal.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
Right, because it makes them more tender.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Right, it's correct, and kept in nearer total darkness, and
then slaughtered approximately eighteen to twenty weeks It reminds me
of this scene in American Gods where you see a
child raised in darkness with no interaction, and then eventually
when they are brought forth, they are killed in a sacrifice.
Speaker 5 (47:31):
And that show's coming back. Actually, I've been seeing promos
for it. It got picked up by another network. I think
it was on Stars, and they got canceled, and now
it appears to be back. I can't recall which network
it's on, but I was glad to see that because
I thought that was very well done. Obviously big fans
of the book as well. So what does all this mean?
What does all this amount to in terms of how
(47:52):
one should view in the food production process? Is it safe?
Is it humane? Like? Where does this leave us?
Speaker 1 (47:59):
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, We're back.
We're back, And you know, we don't want to be sanctimodious,
we don't want to be preachy, because honestly, that doesn't
that doesn't change stuff. In my opinion, the facts are this. Obviously,
(48:21):
this is not the kind of life myrtle or any
animal would choose, unless it was a particularly disturbed cow.
If it had the choice, it would be like no,
I don't. I don't want to do this. I want
to be in the veal crate and get your weird
machine away from my utters. And obviously, given the opportunity,
most individual humans would rather avoid causing unnecessary pain, not
(48:44):
just the cows, but like other living things. We're not
a species that in general just gets off on walking
by and like kicking puppies or something. You know, we
think we'd like. We think highly of ourselves in that regard,
and when we are given the opportunit t unity, we
like to think that we're people who would just rather
(49:04):
not needlessly injure someone else. But again, we are talking
about people's livelihoods. There are people listening right now who
know that a huge part of the economy depends on
the livestock industry. And yeah, it's incredibly tempting to get
sanctimonious about the unsafe and cruel practices of factory farming
(49:28):
while ignoring the fact that millions of people need these jobs.
But at some point it also becomes impossible for us
to ignore the knock on or the fallout effects that
these practices can have, not just on animals, but on
humans at the other end of the supply chain. Even
if you do not eat meat, this affects you. I mean,
(49:51):
I guess first we could talk about the animals, right,
how are they feeling? I think Noah asked them if
they wanted to do this.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Yeah, very true.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Well for the animal, it's terrible since since we know,
as we talked about before, they can experience some emotional states,
some cognitive states that humans can that you can then
going through any all of this process is going to
be horrifying, even if it's the only thing you know, right,
(50:21):
even if we're just in that cattle situation with one
of these little veal calves, the only thing you've ever
known is you're born, you're put into this thing. This
is all you know. But you are never you never
experience a lot of the things that you could potentially
experience as a cow. I mean, it's pretty horrifying. And again,
(50:46):
all you have to do is put yourself in that
situation for a moment, or just think about it for
a second if it was you doing it, what would
it be like? And you can tell just how bad
this really could be and is. The other thing is
if you are a cow, especially the vial one, you
don't understand what the government policies are for your local
you know, state where you just happen to be born,
(51:08):
or you know, the county where you're in, or even
the country that you're in. It doesn't understand the profit
motive of whatever big factory farm in which you find yourself.
It doesn't understand a great number of things, and it
can't and it's just stuck in that situation.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
It's true, and this, I think this is pretty obvious, right.
I don't think anybody is functioning under an illusion otherwise.
But one piece of this that a lot of people
have missed one aspect where these cost cutting methods, where
(51:49):
this endless race to become more efficient at lower price points,
there is one huge point where this can end up
costing us as a species a great deal. This is
where the rubber or the hoofs I guess hit the road.
There is danger to the public. We touched on this
briefly in our previous episode, but let's dive deeper because
(52:12):
a lot of people are listening asking us, well, okay,
all right, fie, I get it. Livestock industry is not perfect.
What is and how on earth is the livestock industry
of all things? A public health risk. I mean, come on, guys,
that's kind of wild. We'll show you.
Speaker 5 (52:29):
I also would have accepted where the trotters meet the.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Track, where the tails meet the turnpipe.
Speaker 5 (52:37):
Indeed. Yeah, So let's take it from a public health perspective,
from none other than Atlanta's own Centers for Disease Control.
More than two million illnesses, they say, and an estimated
twenty three thousand deaths each year are the result of
antibiotic resistance. We've talked about something like these ideas of superbugs,
(52:57):
and that largely stems from the over use of antibiotics
on our food that we eat. Antibiotic resistance in animals
occurs when they consume too many antibiotics and develop drug
resistant bacteria in their stomachs that are then or can
be passed on from animals to humans under a handful
(53:17):
of conditions.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
The biggest one is if you don't eat meat at
a proper temperature, if it hasn't been cooked fully enough.
Speaker 5 (53:25):
Yea, it is a thermometer. Folks, get a meat thermometer.
Don't eyeball it. Don't leave anything up to chance. Meat thermometer.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Give it remote controlling totally.
Speaker 5 (53:34):
It's a good It's a good opportunity to get a gadget.
Who doesn't love a good gadget?
Speaker 1 (53:39):
And this, yeah, this all comes the public health risk,
all comes down to drugs factor. You could talk about
You could talk about the forestation as well. Maybe that's
something for another episode, because that's about much more than
the livestock industry.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
And the effects on climate climate. But yeah, yeah, no,
you're right.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
I In twenty thirteen, more than one hundred and thirty
one thousand tons of antibiotics were used on food animals.
Food animals is just the vague description for stuff that
is raised to be eaten. By twenty thirty, this will
rise to more than an estimated two hundred thousand tons
a year. The stuff we're talking about. These antibiotics, to
(54:24):
be specific, are like tetracyclines, tylisen, bactrac and ethromyacin, just
to give you the specifics there. There's a lot of
back and forth with government approval of these things in
different countries. The EU and the US are forever in
(54:45):
an argument about importing food created in the US because
of these antibiotic and hormone injection practices. What happens, what happens?
You're exposed the whole time that myrtle is living out
a miserable existence, she is also home to a new
(55:06):
kind of bacterial life. It is not vulnerable to the
same antibiotics that killed its predecessors. It spreads, it grows,
and just like myrtle, it doesn't really see the larger picture.
It's not aware of NGOs. I guess it maybe is
aware of antibiotics because it successfully whips their asses. But
(55:33):
it carries on it's merry little way, and once it
reaches human beings through you know, improperly cooked meat, through
contamination and feces something like that, people can acquire this.
And once people acquire this stuff, just like COVID nineteen, right,
once people acquire this stuff, then well the anachronistic phrase
(55:55):
would be it's Katie bar the door, because this stuff
can spread so quick and you don't have to eat
meat therefore to be infected. In twenty thirteen, in fact,
same year, we pulled some of this other info from
researchers showed that you could be thirty percent more likely
to get specific bacterial infections just by living your pig
(56:17):
farms or living your crops that were fertilized with pig manure,
you have thirty percent higher likelihood of becoming infected with
Staphylococcus arius bacteria, which is resistant to some antibodies. And
we are in no way prepared by for this. By
the bye, we are not ready.
Speaker 5 (56:38):
Man, that's right. And Aisha Farruki, who is a infectious
disease specialist, says that humanity just isn't prepared for what
might be down the road. Oh wait, humanity is not
prepared for a pandemic situation. That's surprising. Yeah, And she
says this, we have very few new antibiotics being introduced
(56:59):
and manufactured when compared to the emergence of resistant bacteria
or germs. She goes on to say, if this situation
is not well controlled now, we may lose this battle
between germs and antibiotics, which could lead us to a
crisis situation where we may not have any antibiotics left
to combat resistant bacteria. And it's a little different. But
(57:22):
like for example, with the current COVID nineteen situation, we
have this vaccine now, but we now know that there
is a new strain of it that could be more
resistant to the back of the vaccine that they've been
working you know, long and hard to create for the
one that we knew about. So this isn't exactly the
same as mutating. I mean it is, I guess ben right, Like,
is becoming resistant to antibiotics similar to mutating or is
(57:44):
it literally just kind of developing a a tolerance to
the drugs that could actually, you know, eradicate it.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah, that would be a mutation. Yes, I think gaining
a resistance to something like that. Yeah, we're this is
this is definitely worst case, like, it's worst case scenario,
but it's something that we can see happening if we
continue down the route.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Yeah yeah, yeah, well said it's it's worst it's a
worst case scenario. But we're in like a store that
sells the worst cases, you know.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
Yes, the worst cases, the worst case.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
That's like TV store, just like suitcases with no handles.
What's a pandemic? Another one is starvation? And then Gamma
ray blasts.
Speaker 5 (58:34):
You're talking about the excuse me, that's what you're doing?
Speaker 1 (58:37):
There? We go, yeah, uh, so you're right, we are
not ready and there's not a clear answer as to
how we can effectively prepare for this stuff. It's spooky
and it's you know, I'll be honest with you, it's
more than a little bit disappointing and depressing, Like what
this is how the world ends? Not with a bang,
(58:58):
but with a cow bug? Spare me, where are the explosions?
Where the like, where's the Book of Revelations stuff we're promised?
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Oh that's coming to now that is coming?
Speaker 5 (59:08):
And guys, what do you think about the way you know?
This coronavirus pandemic and the politicization of it has sort
of reduced faith I guess in experts like the CDC,
in experts like you know, doctor Fauci or whatever, who
have been saying one thing all along, and because it's
(59:29):
been politicized, I think there's a polarization against science and
now it's like going to take the CDC some time
to kind of claw back that credibility. Is that setting
us back even further to help us prevent something like this.
Speaker 1 (59:41):
Political acumen and scientific talent are two very different skill sets.
That's the I think that's one of the big issues.
You can have. You can have the up to date research,
you can have the facts, but if you do not,
if you do not know how to communicate it effectively,
then you are shouting into the w that's I mean,
that's just a reality. That's not a ding on the
(01:00:03):
politicians or on the scientists. But the science is there.
I could see, I could see some polarization, I could
see it being more difficult, but I would also say
a superbug that emerged this way, the first thing that
would happen would be a very intense game of hot
pandemic potato, where just like we saw with Goat, where
(01:00:25):
other actors and countries and individuals are trying to assign
blame on someone who is not them. That's a very
brutal its short way to explain it. But that is
immediately what would happen. And you know this, if it
came from a large corporation of some sort, it's active
(01:00:46):
in the livestock industry, and we talked about some of
the biggest ones in our previous episode, then they would
they would have to take accountability. They would be forced
by the by the government of a given country to
do so. But it wouldn't solve the problem at all.
Like right now, it might sound like we're making we're
making a big deal about some old beans here, but
(01:01:08):
you might say, hey, well sure, guys, the potential is troubling,
but this is all still hypothetical, so the hold your horses,
pump your brakes. However, the answer is no, this is
not hypothetical. This has happened. This is happening now as
you listen to this. I don't know why I'm smiling
like this. I think it's a reaction to the very
(01:01:32):
bad news. Twenty nineteen saw a rise in superbug hotspots
directly associated with farms. No circumstantial maybe or statistical likelihood
dithering arguments about it. It is a direct one to
one connection with farms. The researchers for the various studies
(01:01:53):
indicating this, they do have some skin in the game.
They got some bacon in the pan here, because their
argument is ultimately that this can be traced back to
what they call over consumption of meat. And you know,
we're very in this country. We're very raw and swanson
about it, like we'll tell you when it's enough bacon, Yeah, bacon.
Speaker 5 (01:02:16):
And back in the day, I mean, meat was a treat.
It was something you'd have, like, you know, as like
a special occasion kind of thing. And because of factory farming,
we've sort of like stripped it of that kind of
special occasion feel and people eat it for every meal.
And you know, whether you believe in the science behind
it or not, I think we can all probably agree
(01:02:37):
that eating red meat for every meal is probably not
the best thing for our bodies and our diets as
human beings, right.
Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
It's true. Think of the so called blue spots. Those
are that's a handful of areas in the world wherein
people tend to live to and past one hundred years
old at like a shocking degree comparison to adjacent regions.
There are a number of factors that are traced to this,
and one of them is their diet. Their diet does
(01:03:07):
appear to be less based on meat in general, red
meat especially, So it's a health concern. I don't think
that's being preachy. That's a health concern. But if you
look at what's happening with the global economy and you
look at how it changes individual consumption habits, then you
see in parts of the developing world, people who are
(01:03:30):
doing better financially than perhaps their parents did, or than
perhaps they did earlier in life, they are eating meat
more often. Like you said, no, we're talking about northeast India,
northeast China, the Red River Delta in Vietnam. Those are
hotspots for superbugs and the Asian continent, and then there
(01:03:50):
are places like Mexico and Johannesburg that are also affected.
This is hitting, This is hitting everybody because everybody's kind
of doing the same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
That meat, and they're trying to make more of it
as fast as a canon, as cheaply as possible. And
should we just tell them the real real consequence has
been all right, let's get started here. There's a study
in science came out not that long ago, and I
was looking at global trends and anti microbial resistance in
(01:04:20):
animals within low and middle income countries. And my god,
this is something we've mentioned on this show before, but
this number is staggering. It is estimated that around seventy
three percent of all anti microbials that are sold on Earth,
(01:04:41):
that are used on this planet are not for humans
when a human gets sick or something and needs to
get healed because we have this magic thing called anti
microbial an antibiotic, seventy three percent are used on animals
for food seventy three percent world wide. And we just
talked about how that practice right there of using the
(01:05:04):
antibiotics on animals rather than you know, a human who
has gotten sick.
Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Is the problem. It's not good.
Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
No, no, it is double plus un good, as Orwell
would say. Beyond the potentially serious consequences for public health,
this reliance on antibiotics to meet the demand for meat,
to meet the meat demand anyway, sorry, the homonyms, whatever.
Speaker 5 (01:05:33):
You got to meet out that meat demand.
Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Yeah, the acute moment where you see that hamburger. The
problem is this is also a threat quite likely to
the sustainability of the livestock industry. This could wreck the
ship and that would mean that it is a danger
to the livelihood of farmers around the world and people
(01:05:59):
associated with this industry. The scientists in these studies do
leave a little bit of light at the end of
the slaughterhouse tunnel by saying there's a window of opportunity
to nip this in the bud, to prevent the rise
of very real, potentially unstoppable superbugs. The stakes are high.
(01:06:22):
UK former Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said that this
is one of the greatest threats in the modern world
faces And the thing is, even though scientists, even though
people are largely on the same page about this. They're
not really agreeing on how to approach it, how to
(01:06:44):
fix it, because there's a global problem. These diseases will
not recognize rule of law. They don't have a passport,
they don't care about customs. So one country's law is alone.
No matter what they are, they don't really fix this.
You can legislate all you want in the US, but
that's not going to change the fact that China and
(01:07:04):
India are home to more than half the world's pigs
and chickens, and therefore it's up to those governments and
those companies to try to try their own solution to
the problem. So at this point, at the end of
the episode, we gotta we gotta talk what are what
are the solutions. There's a good case that the secret
of the livestock industry is that it may be paving
(01:07:25):
the way for a superbug. That's that's the one sentence takeaway.
But the solutions, I don't know, man, there they seem
pretty piecemeal. You would have to have a lot of
coordination and it's almost a Big Brother situation to address this.
Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Oh yeah, and we didn't even get to it in
this episode. And I'm going to propose that we do
another follow up to this, not necessarily secrets of the
livestock industry, but about animal activism and the varying groups
that are trying to do something of varying sizes, and
some have been around for a long time, some we
are just now forming, and their.
Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Takeing like different steps.
Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
One that I really want to focus on, and I'd
love to put out a call to anyone who who's
listening to this, if you if you're familiar with DXE,
it's a group called dx. I've been reading a lot
about them, doing a lot of research on that particular
group and the actions that they take, and it is
it is interesting to see how the varying levels of
(01:08:24):
extremity are the extremes that people are willing to go
to to try and prevent this from happening, Because it
can be at the individual level, right, just decide to
stop eating meat, But how the heck does that one
individual change the system unless you get billions of people
to decide.
Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
That right, And how do you make it worth worth
their time? Also, is it is it ethical as a
governing body or a ruler of some sort of authority,
is it ethical to tell people what they can and
cannot eat and how much they can consume. Remember how
New York with nuts when there was that there was
(01:09:03):
that regulation to like reduce the maximum size of the
sodas sodas or something with some sugary drink, people went wild.
People who would never even drink that stuff were like,
don't tread on me, how dare you? And imagine that
problem on a macro worldwide level. There's also so calling
(01:09:25):
for people to eat less meat. That's one of the
main things the studies propose, but they also propose other things,
like what if we put a hard cap on the
amount of antibiotics that can be used in some way?
Right we make some kind of metric for that.
Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Well, and it is becoming popular in a lot of
places if you have the an amount of wealth to
support it, to support farms that don't use a lot
of the practices that we've outlined in this episode today
that you know, do allow cattle to just graze in
rome and aren't hooked up, you know, in the ways
we've discussed here, same thing with chickens and pigs, and
(01:10:02):
that's becoming.
Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
A popular thing.
Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
But you have to have a certain level of wealth
in order to support that lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
And then there are still also serious questions about you know,
intentions aside, how much of an impact is that making
and how legit are the claims from those producers. Yeah,
it's true. I mean there are cows in Japan and
get that beer and they get massages. Their life is
kind of dope until they get killed. But you're right,
(01:10:34):
there's not a single thing. There are a number of
financial incentives proposed, or carrot and stick kind of things
where they say, okay, why don't we just have higher
taxes on animal products, just like in the last episode
where we said how much meat cost and we found
some really weird calculations. Would that disincentivize people?
Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
Maybe?
Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
But then there's something a little more insidious, something that's
a little you know, doctor evil the pinky to the
mouth about it. What if we hide the costs in
the supply chain even deeper and we tax the antibiotics
m stinks for the farmers.
Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Well, then just you'd have way more cows and much
more distress and sick. Right, That's what that's all you'd
get out of that. There'd be fewer antibiotics used by
factory farms.
Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Yeah, you know, that's a good point. We don't know
how that would go because that hasn't been put into action.
It's all a matter of theory. But these will these
strategies work. What do you guys think, I mean, should
people institute these because make no mistake, like this is
this is not right now. This is not a what
if situation? This is a when is it going down?
Speaker 5 (01:11:46):
Situation? Yeah, I mean, it's one of these things where
it's like, you know, people want what they want, and
what people want is lots of meat. Unfortunately, and until
the demand goes down, it's going to be a hard
sell to say you have to change your habits for
the greater good, because in America in particular, people don't
really go for that very often.
Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
And how is the first question? It's like, well, why
am I taking the hit if I don't see any
anybody else doing it, you know what I mean? So
it would have to be a worldwide adoption. Do we
need for people who want this stuff to happen? Do
we need to have like a modern Edward Bernese waging
a campaign to change the hearts and the minds of
(01:12:26):
the meat eating public. Should also point out, by the way,
folks that Michigan Control. Matt Nol and myself are omnivores,
so we're eating meat too. We're we're aware of this,
but we're also aware that they're there. Does appear to
be some kind of ticking clock toward the potential for
something disastrous. You know, we can't predict when that would occur,
(01:12:49):
we can't predict the level of impact it would make.
But it's not looking good. So we look yeah bad.
Speaker 5 (01:12:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
My wife just texted me and said, what do you
want from Grindhouse Berger?
Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Nice? I don't think it want anything right now from there?
Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
Well, also, you know, arguably carbe dium. I remember we
talked about the collapse of the maritime ecology, her ecosystems
and ocean acidification. I had a real, what they call
in the South that come to Jesus moment with myself,
and there was a horrible person about it, and I
was like, well, if the next generations of human beings
(01:13:34):
are not going to be able to eat some of
these fish, I was like, maybe, I don't know, it's terrible,
but that's I mean, it's kind of a curb your
enthusiasm moment, but it's something that we're all going through.
On a daily basis. We want to know your thoughts.
Should there be some authority given the power to mandate
(01:13:57):
certain changes. I think that's kind of dangerous personally because
where does power stop? The answer is it usually doesn't.
But then also is this Are people being alarmist about this?
If you were to propose solutions, what would those solutions be.
We want to hear from you. We try to make
(01:14:19):
it easy to find us, and I agree with you, Matt.
I think there's more to be said about this in
the future.
Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Yeah, we will will do that, so hey, contact us.
Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
We are conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook. On Instagram,
we are conspiracy Stuff Show. We also have individual instagrams.
I'm in the same mind today, Matt Underscore Frederick. Nope,
Matt Frederick Underscore. iHeart That's it.
Speaker 5 (01:14:44):
The underscore is in there somewhere. It's sure to figure
out where. It's like a puzzle box. Good luck, Yeah,
good luck.
Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
You type it out. You have to type out underscore exactly.
Speaker 5 (01:14:54):
You can find me on Instagram exclusively where I am
at how now, Noel Brown. Ben's all over the internet.
Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Man, Yeah, for now, you feel free to reach out
to me directly at Ben Bolean hsw on Twitter. You
can also reach me at Ben Bolan on Instagram. Just
let me know what's on your my topics for upcoming
shows memes. Fine, yeah, yes, we always love to hear
from you. You're the most important part of.
Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
The show, hey, Dan.
Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
If you're still listening to the show or Kesha or
anybody else, If you have Clubhouse and you're one of
the cool people that's already in there, hit us up.
Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
We're interested in exploring it.
Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Oh, you can find me on Clubhouse too.
Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Lies.
Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
Oh, I'm so jealous. You know.
Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
I'm gonna say, Look, I know we're running along. Paul's
gonna kill us here, but I'm on the fence with
it right now. I don't know whether it is going
to be a flash in the pan, whether it's going
to be a very popular good thing, or whether it's
going to be a very bad thing. Because they're.
Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
You can do a live hangout, right, So like we
could ostensibly do with stuff they don't want you to know, thing.
Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Of some sort on it.
Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Yes, yes, we could.
Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
We'll invite the show, benh yeah us.
Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Let us know what you think about that too. I'm
a little bit I feel like i'm overthinking it. But
there's how do you moderate hate speech? How do you
moderate extremism on an ephemeral audio app?
Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
We have good times with the people who are being nice,
and the other ones we ignore. There we go.
Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
If you don't care for social media, you can give
us a phone call directly. We're one eight three three
st d WYTK. You have three minutes. Those are your minutes.
Tell us what's on your mind. Recommend topic you think
your fellow listeners will enjoy. Let us know if we
can use your name and or voice on air and
be worn folks, or just don't be worn. Be aware
(01:16:48):
that there's a possibility you might get a callback from
one of us or the creamed corn kid himself. I
was saving that this full time.
Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Oh yeah, cream corn is coming for you.
Speaker 5 (01:17:02):
Watch Out reminds me of that scene in Twin Peaks
Firewalk with Me, where like the little guy talking about
cream corn, and there's a scene in the movie where
there is a creepy little kid and a mask next
to the involving cream corn. I don't remember, but I
think of him as the cream corn kid, and I
will never be able to get that image out of
my head. But yeah, cream corn is good. I stand
(01:17:23):
by it. If you don't want to do any of
that stuff, you want to get in touch with us
the old fashioned way, why not just send us a
good old email.
Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't
(01:17:52):
want you to know. Is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fell a conspiracy realist. We are returning with chapter two
(00:03):
of our classic exploration of the livestock industry, and as
we were called, Matt, this is where this is where
we get into the larger picture. This is so fascinating
because we recorded this Friends and Neighbors in twenty twenty
(00:24):
and this chapter of the story is focusing on superbugs
and pandemics and oh what a.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Time antibiotics in our livestock because of the way we
keep the live stock. It's that concept we've talked about
before on our Big Pharma episodes of treating a symptom
of the wider, bigger problem. The thing that's actually killing
you is not what we're concerned with. We're concerned with
(00:54):
your itchy skin or in this case, the infections that
the cows have.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Right, So, instead of improving the living conditions for these animals,
for these domesticated animals that the economy depends upon, why
don't we just keep giving them the most powerful antibiotics
that we can add. For all those nerds who say, hey,
you guys are essentially doing gain of function actions to
(01:23):
create a superbug, We'll tell them to get out, like hey,
you love books, go over there read one in the corner.
We're making money and we're eating this. Well, why does
that sound so plausible? That sounds like a senator for
Texas would say, oh.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, for real, go met good Book. Well, you know
we've I think we get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And here the lobbying groups, the industry groups that have
so much money in politics, they exist. They are very real.
You may in your mind think about oil when you
think about those things. You may think about big pharma.
You may think about a lot of things. Don't forget
the meat industries.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Don't forget the beats. Why does that sound weirdly? Tim Robinson?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Well, I mean I just I.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Accidentally channel him all the time, becausen't forget the meats.
But really, like the food industries are massive players because
of the amount of government subsidies that go into those things,
and you need to lobby those governments to make sure
you're still going to be secure in the way you operate,
(02:35):
in the way you make your profits.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Also, unlike some other industries, you have a leg up.
The reason I can't remember how deeply we get into this,
not to be again to book nerdy about it, but
we have we be but current civilization spends a lot
of time on protectionism to secure their food resources. So
(03:01):
all this stuff about mark of authenticity in different countries
or crazy taxes or tariffs on outside rice in Japan
or you know, grain produced in insert European country here.
Part of it is making money that is inescapable. Another
more real politic part of it is nobody wants to
(03:23):
be wholly dependent on another country for food imports. That's
giving another country too much power.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Shout out to you, Argentina and your beef trade.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Thank you guys, by the way, good way, apprecia.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But also, you know, if you're an American beef farmer,
get out of here Argentina.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
You can read all about it in recent news.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
This classic episode is emphatically not brought to you by
Omaha Steaks.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I know, I was hoping, But again, if you listen
to the last episode and now you're listen to this episode,
Omaha Steaks, oh god man.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah again, don't have a snack for this one and
join us in the future for more episodes. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I think we approved an ad from Omaha Steaks. One
I did, but I don't remember it. I don't remember
reading one.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Dude, I used to mess with them, heavy y out mad,
wrong time to say it, Jesus Christ, spend time and
a place. Here's our classic episode.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
They called me, and we're joined as always with our
super producer Paul Mission Control decades. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. We're diving back into the livestock industry.
So that's either that's either a disclaimer to anyone eating
(05:19):
right now, or it's an invitation to turn it up
while you're cooking whatever you're cooking in your kitchen. In
our previous episode, we explored the gargantua sometimes hidden economy
behind meat in general, and we noted just how much
influence the livestock industry has upon so many other industries,
(05:40):
and Matt, you pointed out that transit is a huge
piece of this, you know, which a lot of people
don't think about.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, most definitely, the animals have to get there somehow
a lot of times, if you know, depending on the facility,
and then they the product has to get other places
as well, and sometimes it's across oceans, which is crazy
to think.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
About, right right the days of cowboys herding cattle by
foot and by hoof across the American West are kind
of long gone and romanticized.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
It's one of those things we always talk about, like
how technology moves things forward, and how refrigeration and just
like ice is probably one of the most meaningful technologies
quote unquote of our species in many ways. It allows
us to do so many things like ship meet without
spoiling across oceans.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And I like that ice example there, Noel, because there's
a wonderful parable, a real story about refrigeration and ice,
and I think it can come into play in this episode.
But the short and dirty of it is, I believe
we may have mentioned this in the past on stuff
that once. You to know, when refrigeration companies came out,
(06:56):
they were entering an industry, an ice industry that already existed,
and the ice industry of the time did not create ice.
They traveled up to I think the ones in New
York traveled up to Canada and they would cut out
blocks of ice and they would cover it with hay,
and then they would haul ass down to New York
where they would sell the ice. So the refrigeration guys
(07:18):
show up, they are the new kids on the block,
new fridge on the block, whatever you want to call it,
new kids on the ice block. We can go a
lot of different ways with us those And when the
refrigeration guys showed up, the industry that existed that was
based entirely on cutting and hauling ice did not see
them as allies or did not see them as an opportunity. Instead,
(07:39):
they sought to shut that industry down. They invested in
faster trucks, in different types of hay, in different tires
because they did not see or were not ready to
see the future for what it was. And this kind
of you can call it a couple different things. Path
dependence is one where so comfortable with a status quo,
(08:01):
a process, or a technology, that we are hesitant companies, individuals, groups, governments.
We are hesitant to embrace the new stuff because it
may upend the status quo. So shout out to those
ice trackers. Nelson laugh.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So it is a crazy thing to think about, especially
if you boil it down to an individual or to
an individual level. So we're talking about innovation, especially in technology,
when something new comes along, and then really you're talking
about money the costs associated with retrofitting or replacing existing technology.
(08:42):
So if you're talking about a single farmer and a
new technology comes along that is not only more efficient,
but it's safer for an animal or something like that,
you're talking about an individual person that then probably has
to get a major loan or work out something with
whoever is distributing the stuff to then retrofit or change.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
Everything otherwise get left behind.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Well, and not to mention, probably lose you know, a
large portion of time and money in doing that process
to where you have to move all of your livestock
out or something. I mean, it's just you can till
you can see why there's that pushback against innovation and
has been historically.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Totally Yeah, and I love the farmers example there too,
because one of the one of the big ways of
those changes happen tend to be in the developed world
government subsidies, which there are their own very sticky bag
of badgers. But we're We're God, We're doing a great
job setting this up. I hope the rest of the
episode is this good. I don't want to chintz us
(09:47):
so knock off wood.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
Uh yeah, these.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Points are all These points are all valid, and there
aren't really clear answers. That's the dilemma. There are also
bad actors at play, people who don't mind skirting the rules,
cutting corners, or breaking the law to maintain their position
in a certain economic hierarchy. That's I know that sounds
like a lot of gobbledygoog, but it's true. In our
(10:10):
last episode we explored this in a number of examples.
It's a question that people don't ask themselves very often
in the West. Why is meat so cheap?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Like, would you.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Consider all of the care, the skill, the resources that
are required to raise cattle, raised chickens, raise pigs, Then
it's weird that you can just go somewhere and get
a pretty nice steak without breaking the bank. This is
(10:45):
this is an effect of the way the industry is
set up. And again, as we said in our previous episode,
none of this is a deing on farmers. None of
This is a dean on the people who work in
these industries, and is a very solid argument to be
made that modern a big piece of modern civilization, as
(11:07):
we understand it, cannot survive without this industry. We cannot
just shut off the switch. We'll leave millions out of work.
They will spell economic disaster in a number of areas.
But why are we even talking about that? We check
out that first episode. In today's episode, we're examining another
aspect of the livestock industry, and it's one that remains
(11:29):
highly divisive in the modern day. Several of our fellow
listeners wrote to us about this after episode one, and
here's what we're focusing on, the animals themselves. Here are
the facts. I guarantee you this is true. This is
so weird in Twilight Zone, believe it or not. There
are people in the developed world who have never seen
(11:51):
a cow in person. I've never seen a pig, maybe
never seen a chicken. Those are three of the largest
meat sources around. People eat millions of cow, chickens, and pigs,
But can you imagine never actually seen one except on TV?
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Oh yeah, I mean that's sort of the whole point
of the meat packing industry is to create that divide
between people's food, the actual living version of it, and
then eating it, because you know, there's a lot of
violence and kind of gnarly stuff that goes into killing
your own raising and killing your own food that a
lot of regular old American, kind of middle class folks
(12:27):
probably couldn't stomach.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, it's true. Another thing to point out here is
that many of us, especially in our generation, have this
fondness of animals that have been that that have been
portrayed in these big movies. I'm thinking, I mean, it's
not necessarily factory farm. Maybe Babe is a really good example.
(12:50):
Charlotte Web Charlot's Web, where where an animal is humanized
to such an extent, you know, and given a name
and can talk and and we feel the emotions there
with them, that we've developed a connection, the different kind
of connection to animals that are that we eat.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
Yeah, an absolutely imaginary and idealized connection that would argue, right, you.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Can befriend cows and you can befriend pigs. People. You know,
if you've worked with chickens before and you're on the
audience today, let us know your take on chickens. I
remember in a different lifetime, in a rural area, there
was this there was this one chicken in this place.
(13:38):
I was a living that was like known as the
bad chicken. Everybody in this community like new there was
this chicken that was just a toll. And that's the
only time I've heard of a chicken personality. But I
don't know every chicken.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
I was once chased by a chicken. I didn't care
for it one bit. It was a like a yert
you ever a yurt. Yeah, there was at a yurt
there was a resident chicken and it chased me and
my girlfriend at the time had to show it away
with a broomstick because, as you guys know, I'm a
little anti bird and it was freaking me out. And
chickens are so aggressive when they come at you like that.
(14:15):
They're like the way geese kind of come at you.
But it's true, I mean, there is sort of you know,
I know people that have raised their own chickens that
have their own goats that you know, and the goats
that they're not raising them to slaughter them. They're raising
them to graze and to maybe give milk or something
like that. And oftentimes the chickens are just raised to
give eggs. And I actually found out that if you
(14:36):
hatch a male chicken, not only you don't want it
in the henhouse, because then the eggs will be fertilized
and you'll just get more baby chickens as opposed to eggs.
They're total holes, like you're saying, Ben, and you often
there's a there's a like a service of some kind
that where you take your male chicken and you donate.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
It to this service and then they fight those chickens.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
That's maybe, No, that's the dark side of of chicken
male chicken donation.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It's the dome.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
I would just say kind of similar to that. And
I don't want to stick on this too long, but
I do have a very good friend of mine that
has several chickens and his daughters have named the chickens,
and they do seem to have different personalities and they do.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I don't, I don't.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I I'd like to hear from everybody listening just what
their experience is there, because because yeah, they seem cool
to me.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, let's uh far be it for us them align
chickens unfairly. They're not They're not as intelligent as Corvid's,
but a few few birds are.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So you're right, though, guys, we see we see these
depictions in film and documentaries. You might the last time
you saw cattle might have been a brief clip in
the local news uh on some with some anchor taking
note of an aspect of the economy.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
We encounter the remains of these animals easily every day.
We see them in the local grocery store, we see
them in a fast food chain or in a restaurant.
And in the US, this disassociation between the thing you eat,
the thing that ends up on your plate, and a
living thing goes even further. I mean, think about it.
(16:18):
You will in many of the garden variety grocery stores,
you'll not only see a fairly limited type of meat, right,
but you'll also see limited parts of those types thighs, breasts, chops, ribs,
ground up flesh. You might see tongue, You might see liver,
(16:39):
but you probably won't see eyes unless you go to
the cool places.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Well, even tongue and liver sometimes, I mean, liver is
more common, I think it like a regular chain grocery store.
But tongue that's more of a specialty thing or something
you might see it like a carnisourea or something like that,
or like, yeah, that's where I go.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Actually, I go Beauford Highway nor across Non de Mundo
to the Beauford Highways farmers market too.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Oh yeah, that's amazing, get their get their pre marinated
poo or like whatever else they do. They do all
they do it all up themselves. And they also make
fresh tortillas. They're highly recommend if anyone's ever passing through.
But like you know, even like we're talking about the
food prep, we're all I think into cooking. I might
eat a tongue taco, but I don't know that I
would buy a tongue and slice it up myself for
(17:29):
preparation to make something that's a bridge too far for
me personally.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well, yeah, because that's some of that stuffs. It culturally
is off limits.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Right, Yes, we don't. It's it's fascinating because without a
real concrete set of laws and consequences in the US
and Canada and many other parts of the world, cultures
seem to have generated their own. So I would call
them soft taboos. Right, No one's and no one's going
(18:00):
to arrest you for eating something they think is weird,
but it's just like not done in polite society. These
taboos dictate which animals can be eaten, which parts can
be eaten, or considered you know, normal food. So you know,
we said it's uncommon to see eyes on a menu.
You might also be weirded out if you go to
(18:21):
your local diner or your local hangout restaurant and they say, hey,
we have a special on foxes. Just we're out of
chicken wings, so it's it's just fox legs.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Or yeah, dude, seriously. Or brain.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Brain is a fairly common thing in some places, but
it's hard to imagine it being in many places.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
You know, it's funny, dangerous.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
You can You're absolutely right, Ben, you can get Yeah,
there's like brain, I forget the name, but there are
definitely exactly preons that can exist in brain. But I
grew up my grandpa, who is like an old North
Carolina tobacco merchant. You know, that was how he made
a living when he was a young man. His favorite
breakfast was something called brains and eggs, and I ate
(19:05):
it blindly and thought it was delicious, and only years
later separated from it thought it was a little weird,
but I definitely you could buy it at the grocery store.
And also liver pudding. Ben you and I on the
road trip we did with car stuff back in the day.
They call it scrapple in certain parts of the Midwest,
I believe, or the Northwest, and it's literally kind of
(19:25):
a purade like fried pat tai Ish substance made of liver.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Also known as pan rabbit mush of pork scraps. But
you're right, brain eyes, things of this nature in some places,
like one of my favorite restaurants, shout out. I don't
know if they listen to the show, but Saint John
in London, the guy Fergus Henderson made his name in
(19:51):
the culinary world by taking all that stuff that people
would usually eat pancreass awful sweetbreads and so what, and
elevating it and selling it as a HOAt cuisine. But
that's kind of unusual and that worked. That amazed people
because it was an unusual thing, because a lot of
people in the United Kingdom were now eating things that
(20:12):
they ordinarily would not have considered consumables. Like another example
of a soft cultural taboo here in the US is
that certain animals would never be considered food. Perish the thought.
And you have offended me if you suggest that we
should eat dogs or certain birds even you know what
(20:34):
I mean in cats. I would add to that list too.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
And we've talked about this casually on the show. But
it's an interesting line. It's an interesting division where it's like,
to your point, Matt, you know, we sort of anthropomorphize
these pigs through like movies and animated things or like
you know, deer in Bambi or rabbit, Like rabbit's okay
to eat, but dog's not okay to eat. Yeah, both
are kept as pets and both are considered cute. So, like,
(20:59):
the line is interesting and confusing to me. I'm not
saying we should go eat horse or whatever, but I
know that in certain Asian countries that's totally fine. So
the taboos of these things it eludes me a little bit,
and it seems like a little bit of a double standard.
I'm interested to see what you guys think about that.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I think maybe you just look at different parts of
the world historically, and you know what what are considered,
what animals or what foods are considered taboo. A lot
of it can can have historical religious relevance as to
why you don't eat something like, let's say, if you're
if you live in a country that has a large
(21:36):
number of people who identify as Muslim or follow you know, Islam,
they're you're not going to be eating pork. What are
some other examples of that.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
India, very large percent of the population practices Hinduism, so
cows are considered sacred rather than livestock. What's interesting about
those two examples. In those those cultures, the animals are
left kind of alone for very different reasons. In one,
(22:06):
the animal, the cow, is considered sacred in a way,
and in the other one, the big is just considered
unclean and gross and it's aram to even mess with
them totally.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
And to your original point about looking elsewhere in the
country for these kind of taboos. In Iceland, a traditional
dish is boiled sheep's head and you eat the whole thing,
the ears, the eyes, the lips, the you know, all
of that stuff. And then in this article from The
Salt from NPR, someone asked the individual describing this, well,
(22:43):
where's the brain, to which they were looked at with
a gasp kind of l like horror, like ooh, we
would never eat the brain, but the eyeballs and the
lips and the face totally fine.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I want to keep us off topic too long because
longtime listeners, as you know, the three of us, can
around and talk about food forever.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, because we love it. Sorry about it?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
No, no, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
There's there's one.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I'm sorry it advanced because there's one other thing I
have to shout out. I'm fascinated by it. Kale pace.
It's the Iranian sheep head soup and it's it's the
sheep's head with the brain, just in case you're your
Nasenal and Trotter's and it's they're they're the shops set
up that only serve this soup, and they're only open
(23:28):
from like three am to seven am or something. It's
on my bucket list for Taran And it has nothing
to do with today's show. Unless you want to send
us some examples of Kali Bontier, send us examples of
regional foods in your neck of the global woods that
you think other people might be surprised by. No judgment,
(23:51):
because again, these rules are not constant. They change you
know what I mean. Horse meat is popular in some
parts of Europe, and it's considered taboo in many parts
of the US. So we can explain part of this
weird what is or is not livestock phenomenon through a
cultural lens. But then we also have to, you know,
(24:13):
note that there are people who object to the consumption
of certain animals. Might be a pescatarian no mammals for you,
but fish or fine, or they object to the consumption
of all animals. And there are other factors at play
here aside from cultural factors. And you know, we have
to look at where these folks are coming from because
(24:35):
people don't usually do stuff without some sort of internal logic.
So one their health concerns you. You know, you're in
your mid fifties, You've lived a satiating, gluttonous life, and
your doctor says, look, man, you have to either break
up with bacon or break up with the idea that
(24:55):
you're going to live to be eighty years old and
then boom, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And part of the same coin, there is a younger
person who has learned about the most recent you know,
nutritional facts or something in school or by a friend
or something and then they're choosing not to do that, right,
but for the same reasons, for health reasons. The next one, Ben,
I would say, is really the heart of what this
episode is an emotional revulsion to the whole process, or
(25:27):
to one part of the process, or just to the
thought at all of eating an animal.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Right, Yeah, I mean, no fooling Matt. There are people
who watched Babe at a young age, and probably decades later,
I think I could never eat pork. I loved Babe.
I have the blu Ray what kind of person would
I be?
Speaker 5 (25:51):
I watched the Pig in the City director's commentary once
a year.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, well in this you know, and I guess you.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Could categorize that in two ways.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Revulsion at the thought of eating the animal, but then
the other one, which we're gonna give you a little
caveat here, a lot of what we're gonna talk about
following this moment in the episode. There's gonna be cruelty
to animals in here. There's gonna be in humane conditions
we're gonna discuss. There's gonna be a lot of things
that's gonna be unpleasant and unsettling. So if you don't
like that stuff or you know it's going to trigger
(26:25):
you for some reason, go ahead and pause here. The
other reason is people object to the cruelty that or
the pain that could be involved in the process in
a factory, farm or some other setting where animals are
raised specifically for food.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, you're right, because research proves that some of these
animals can indeed experience emotional states similar to the emotional
states of a human being, like if you have a
if you have a dog, then you know that your
dog has moods, predilections, and personality. Cattle and pigs are
(27:07):
the same way. They can experience things like grief, joy, pain,
and so on. Of course, we don't want to anthropomorphize.
These are not humans, right, but they are still mammals.
So the structure of their brain is similar, which means
that the traffic patterns, if you want to think of
neural activity that way, are in a way similar. I
(27:31):
propose we pause for a word from our sponsor. I
wonder who it's going to be this time, then will
be and then we'll be back to examine this. And
I know, just briefly to add to what Matt just said,
we know that sometimes people get put off by these
(27:52):
kind of examinations because they might feel like it's preachy,
or it might feel like we're telling you to do things.
But as you know, that is not the job of
this show and has never been the mission of this show.
We want to want to bring you the facts and
then some frightening speculation right at the end, so we'll
(28:12):
be right back. We're back. So that last point we
left on the idea that some people object to the
consumption of meat because they they do not feel comfortable
or perhaps they don't feel ethical when they imagine that
(28:36):
there are some way they are, in some way contributing
to the unnecessary pain of another living thinking thing. It's
a controversial stance because, look, we've got on one side
of the argument. People have chosen to minimize as much
as possible their participation in what they see as animal cruelty,
and they may, in addition to abstaining from summer all
(28:58):
types of meat, they may also refuse to wear clothing
from animal products. They may also say, look, dairy, I'm
just I'm not into it either, and dairy is weird.
I get it. Cheese is awesome. But if you explained
to another species what milk is the fact that we're
down with it. It would be kind of weird. They
(29:20):
it'd be weird. It'd be a weird moment in extraterrestrial relations.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I do feel weird giving it to my son every
morning he wants milk. I give him milk, and I
just think about it. I look at the container and
I just go, Okay, think.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Of the calcium. I know he's Yeah, that kid is,
by the way, folks growing at a breakneck pace. Yeah,
you got to feed the engine there. But but there's
you know, there's another side. So that's like what let's
call that one extreme one extreme end of the spectrum.
On the other side of that spectrum, there are individuals
and organizations who are saying, you know, yeah, this system,
(29:57):
if you want to think of it as a system,
it may not be perfect, but it works. And some
of these changes they want to do, although it might
make you feel good as a person wants these changes,
they're just not economically feasible. We can't instantly do this
and without wrecking the entire house of cards. Then, you know,
(30:19):
typically people on that end of the spectrum would say,
we can roll some of these changes out slowly over
a given timespan, but in general, I'd love to hear
what you guys think about this. In general, we find
that if you remove every fact, every financial economic factor,
(30:41):
and you ask people what do you think about the
lives and these animals, then people seem on board with
improving them in numbers that surprised me, although I did
pull for one very biased study just to be completely
transparent from.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
The as yes, oh yeah, let's go through.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Let's go through what it found.
Speaker 5 (31:05):
First of all, the vast majority eighty nine percent of
Americans are in fact concerned with the whole industry of
industrial animal agriculture. This idea of animal cruelty is top
of mind there. People want to make sure that animals
are treated humanly. Also, worker safety, and of course another
biggie being public health, also came up as top concerns.
(31:29):
Farmers who were surveyed who participated in the survey seemed
on board as well, with eighty five percent of farmers
and their families supporting a complete ban on new industrial
animal agriculture facilities, which is almost twice the level of
support that was expressed by the public, which is fascinating
but also makes sense since they're so close to it
(31:51):
and those things you mentioned at the top of the show,
ben about how this can affect their livelihood, and the
idea of more competition, that's certainly a part of it
as well. Two percent of respondents believe that the government
should mandate slower slaughter speeds to protect workers, animals, or
public health. This one's a little confusing to me. I
(32:11):
think we should unpack this.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
They're not talking about slow motion killing the end.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
That's okay, just making sure because I thinks that would
be the opposite of that. Yeah, let's just torture the
animals to death. That would be more humane. Explain if
you don't mind.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Well, I'm this is just me spitballing, but I'm imagining
that killing fewer animals on a let's say daily or
weekly basis, or you know, hourly basis, just depending on
the timeframes that they're speaking about.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
There, that makes sense. That makes sense. And then sixty
five percent or two thirds of the public that participated
reported that they believe poor worker protection and harsh working
conditions will increase people's in humane treatment of farm animals,
which also makes sense because if you're under the gun
(33:00):
where you feel like your welfare is not being looked
after you're not going to be as careful and you're
going to just try to get the job done as
quickly as possible so you can move on. Then more
than half fifty seven percent believed that this mistreatment also
increases health risks to the public.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Ding Ding, Ding.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
There it is.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So it just real quick that you nailed it on
slaughter speeds. What they're talking about is what would also
be described as a line speed. It's how much how
much volume are we doing for processing day And the
concern there is a little bit, i would say, less
on the individual animal and more so on the the
(33:47):
opportunities it raises for things to go wrong because these
a lot of these slaughter lines, especially at the large
industrial scale. It's like if you've seen somebody's speed running
a video game on Twitch. It's there's not a pause,
you know, it's just a shift. There's just a shift.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Change, and it's horrifying if you actually watch it at
that speed.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course we should know
ASPCA is far from a neutral source. Still, again, there
appears to be wide support with with the statistics you
just brought in store. There seems to be wide support
in the public in general to say like, hey, if
it's no skin off my back, you know, if it's
(34:31):
no bacon off my burger, then yeah, I don't want
to torture animals. It's pretty basically, it's not a controversial stance.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, But are our
slaughterhouses still manually killing cattle with those bolt guns that
we are so fond of, especially when they're used as
like murder weapons by sociopaths in movies? You know that
they're like an air powered bolt gun that shoots out
a large projectile through the cow's brain, instantly killing it
(35:01):
and then pulling it back.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
It depends, it depends on where you are right and
which factory, and again that technological advancement, like where are
you on the line or the timeline of advancing.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Because that part of the of the slaughterhouse is called
the killing floor, which I've always found that to be
a very eerie name. And I imagine if you're moving
through a lot of cattle, that killing floor could be
absolutely soaked in blood pretty quickly. And I wonder if
that's something where that could cause like fall hazards or
ways of you know, perhaps being injured by some of
(35:36):
these high powered equipped machines. You know, I don't know,
like I'm wondering, like, how does the volume increase the
danger to the employees.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. Well, you're we're talking about
there with a bolt or with anton sugar is the
is the mechanical method you're stunning the animal. So there
there are a number of other methods that have been used.
And as you said, Matt, it does vary from place
(36:04):
to place. A lot of places, a lot of countries
have laws that ostensibly determine how an animal should be
slaughtered or processed, and those laws are i would say,
primarily centered on health concerns for humans. It's a very
important thing. And of course, you know, this is a
concept that is not new. It's not something that modern
(36:28):
civilization came up with. Ancient religions have very specific rules
about which animals can be consumed and how and how
they should be slaughtered. And if you look back at
those rules through the modern lens, then you see that
they're actually their plans for good hygiene, to prevent the
(36:49):
spread of disease.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, and it's so fascinating. That's what it's been about.
Even in some of the ancient rules that you could
find in the Bible about certain things to wear or eat.
It was, in a way, in many cases a health situation.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
It's very strange.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
I always wanted to read to read that, to read
some of those texts into modern parlance, just like rewritten
to say, avoiding trickonosis, verse one.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Chapter one.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It's like, that's just Leviticus is now trichosis.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
That is fascinating. I didn't realize that the bolt gun
just stunned the animal because you see it use, you know,
in movies, as an instant kill. I mean, but it is,
You're right. It just goes into their forehead and typically
stuns them after one hit, very rarely after two, and
then they're hung upside down and their throats are slashed
and they're bled out, and then you know, processing commences
(37:47):
from there.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
May also be electrically shocked, or you know, that's it's
still a stunning move. But here's our question, what exactly
goes on behind the scenes. What are these animals lives like?
And what does that mean for human beings? Spoiler whether
or not you consider yourself a meat eater, whether or
(38:11):
not you care in general, how does this affect you.
Here's where it gets crazy. Let's do the gross part first.
Let's focus on a factory farm. Let's focus on a cow.
As a matter of fact, you guys want to style
on it a little. Do we want to give you
this cow a name? Oh, Myrtle, Myrtle. Okay, so Myrtle
(38:32):
the cow. Myrtle the cow is born in old school
like think of pastoral scenes from your favorite hit works
of historical fiction. In old school farms, a cow can
roam free and have a normal lifespan of about twenty
five years or so if it's not slaughtered for food,
(38:53):
if nothing goes wrong. Cattle raised for beef. Let's say
Myrtle is raised for beef. In this situation, she is
one of about forty one million cows raised this way
in the US, so she has pretty good odds of
spending her first year on the range, walking around in
the field, eating grass, mooing it's stuff, playing because cows play.
(39:17):
And then after that year, Myrtle and her cohort are
shipped to something called a concentrated Animal feeding operation or KFO.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, the old CIFO. This is what you'll hear referred
to as a stockyard. A lot of times. If you
ever hear that word feed lot sometimes and you know,
by the way, it does make a difference if myrtle
is male or female, because many times the female is
going to be dealing with a whole different set of issues.
(39:51):
If it's a male, we'll talk about that too. But
the biggest problem at these places is overcrowding many times,
not always, but at many factory f operations, overcrowding is
the worst thing because things become unsanitary very quickly for
the cattle, and a lot of times, to save money,
(40:12):
depending on the operation, different kinds of feed will be used.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Corn has been a big issue.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I think we've talked about that on an episode before
when we were talking about the various uses of corn.
But oh god, yeah, yeah, I know. We made a
video about it at some point.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Corns it everything, corns it everything before they shut the
podcast down. You have to know, if you travel to
the US and you're not from here, you will be
amazed by how many ingredient lists, various products have somehow
of corn in the mix. Corn is everywhere. It's like
it's like the Kevin Bacon of the cast of an
(40:51):
ingredient list. Anyway, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Not even the good kind.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It's not those sweet kernels you can get in the can,
you know, those delicious ones that are in the what
is it the creamed corn? Oh?
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Man, when I was a kid, creamed corn.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You were a cream corn kid.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I was a cream corn kid because you could make
so many things out of it, especially if you.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Were baking with it. Oh, it's good stuff. Okay, Where
what am I talking about? The miserable the feed?
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, all of these things combined together can can make
a pretty miserable existence for an individual animal. And then
you take all of that misery together in one big
place at one of these stockyards.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
Yikes. Now, guys, is it true that some more sickly
cows that perhaps die before they get to the feed
lot are destroyed and ground up and made into feed
that can be fed to other cows. Isn't that supposedly
where mad cow disease came from this practice? Or is
that just rumor stuff?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah? It gets it gets rough man, because you know,
a lot of these animals are living a very challenging life.
And we can introduce this concept now you know how
You'll see like USDA grade a prime ord a blah
blah blah when you're in the grocery store. The far
(42:13):
end of that is what's called four D meat, meat
from animals that are dead or they're disabled upon their
arrival at the slaughterhouse and they end up you might
see their bodies. They're considered not fit for human consumption,
but they end up in pet food right or they're rendered,
(42:34):
or they're used to feed animals and zoos and things
like that.
Speaker 5 (42:39):
For sure, And after doing a little more research, it
does appear that the mad cow disease or bovine sponge
of form and sepalopathy or bs it involved the feeding
of cattle parts to cattle, and it did lead to
some restriction on which parts of cattle can be fed
(43:03):
back to cattle. But there is still some of that happening,
things like hooves, ground up bone and other you know,
remnant parts from you know, because they don't want to
waste anything. But yeah, that is a thing, and that's
pretty disturbing.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
That's a good idea. Let's let's force the herbivores to
consume themselves. That's great.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Not only is it cannibalism, it's not something they would
ever eat in the wild.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
It's as sorts. Yeah, well okay, so let's okay. So
back to myrtle. Myrtle is a beef cow. There there
are two things happening. If myrtle is whether or not
myrtle is male or female, she's going to get an
id tag popped in her ear. That makes sense. Everybody's
seen that. If she's male, then her testicles will be removed,
(43:51):
her horns will be gouged out. This occurs without anesthesia.
It's a cost cutting measure, and like you said, Matt,
the the main problem here is the intensely crowded conditions.
This is a perfect storm for bacteria and infections, and
to combat that, cows are injected with heavy doses of
(44:12):
antibiotics as well as hormones. The entire goal of these
injections is to keep the animals relatively healthy and to
ensure that they can survive up until the time of
their slaughter. This is going to be important later. Just
remember that part. I think you know, if you heard
episode one, you know where we're going. So now to
(44:35):
the slaughterhouse, not the eminem sponsored hip hop group, which
I think is pretty good, the actual slaughterhouse where the
cattle meet their end.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
So after leaving that feed lot or stockyard or cafe,
the cattle are then shipped to the slaughterhouses, and technically
only the animals that are able to walk to their
own slaughter are in fact slaughter cattle that are too
weak or who aren't able to get up or euthanized,
(45:05):
so they do not reach the food production process. That
could be for various reasons, because they're too they're not
they're not beefy enough to make beef, or they could
be sickly. There's you know, they don't want to introduce
that into the food supply chain. However, each animal, this
is something that you know, we think about the business
(45:27):
of this. Each individual animal represents money, represents a dollar amount,
a financial investment to various people stakeholders along the supply chain.
So these animals may be prodded to stand upright and
forced to stagger into the slaughterhouse despite not being fit
(45:50):
for consumption.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
And if they can't make it, they may be just
left for dead. That's Myrtle's life as a cow raised
for beef. But let's say Myrtle is a cow raised
for dairy. What's like there, Well, she will be kept
in indoor facilities. She'll be fed and watered. She will
not go outside to graze. There is a mechanical process
(46:11):
used to remove her urine and feces. The milk from
her utters is removed by machines hooked to the utters.
Of course, her tail will be docked so that it's
easier for dairy workers to hook up the machines. And
this surgery is also without the use of anesthesia, and
(46:32):
studies show that it does induce lasting chronic pain. Just
to run through the last one, the last one of
the last possibilities, veal, let's say myrtle is a particularly
unlucky male caf myrtle. The male myrtle will be taken
from the mother, either at birth or within the first
twenty four hours or so, placed in what's called a
(46:54):
veal crate. Veal crate is about twenty two inches wide
about fifty eight inches long. They will spend their entire
lives there, chained up in the crate because the whole
thing about vel is restricting movement of the animal.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
Right, because it makes them more tender.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Right, it's correct, and kept in nearer total darkness, and
then slaughtered approximately eighteen to twenty weeks It reminds me
of this scene in American Gods where you see a
child raised in darkness with no interaction, and then eventually
when they are brought forth, they are killed in a sacrifice.
Speaker 5 (47:31):
And that show's coming back. Actually, I've been seeing promos
for it. It got picked up by another network. I think
it was on Stars, and they got canceled, and now
it appears to be back. I can't recall which network
it's on, but I was glad to see that because
I thought that was very well done. Obviously big fans
of the book as well. So what does all this mean?
What does all this amount to in terms of how
(47:52):
one should view in the food production process? Is it safe?
Is it humane? Like? Where does this leave us?
Speaker 1 (47:59):
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, We're back.
We're back, And you know, we don't want to be sanctimodious,
we don't want to be preachy, because honestly, that doesn't
that doesn't change stuff. In my opinion, the facts are this. Obviously,
(48:21):
this is not the kind of life myrtle or any
animal would choose, unless it was a particularly disturbed cow.
If it had the choice, it would be like no,
I don't. I don't want to do this. I want
to be in the veal crate and get your weird
machine away from my utters. And obviously, given the opportunity,
most individual humans would rather avoid causing unnecessary pain, not
(48:44):
just the cows, but like other living things. We're not
a species that in general just gets off on walking
by and like kicking puppies or something. You know, we
think we'd like. We think highly of ourselves in that regard,
and when we are given the opportunit t unity, we
like to think that we're people who would just rather
(49:04):
not needlessly injure someone else. But again, we are talking
about people's livelihoods. There are people listening right now who
know that a huge part of the economy depends on
the livestock industry. And yeah, it's incredibly tempting to get
sanctimonious about the unsafe and cruel practices of factory farming
(49:28):
while ignoring the fact that millions of people need these jobs.
But at some point it also becomes impossible for us
to ignore the knock on or the fallout effects that
these practices can have, not just on animals, but on
humans at the other end of the supply chain. Even
if you do not eat meat, this affects you. I mean,
(49:51):
I guess first we could talk about the animals, right,
how are they feeling? I think Noah asked them if
they wanted to do this.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Yeah, very true.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Well for the animal, it's terrible since since we know,
as we talked about before, they can experience some emotional states,
some cognitive states that humans can that you can then
going through any all of this process is going to
be horrifying, even if it's the only thing you know, right,
(50:21):
even if we're just in that cattle situation with one
of these little veal calves, the only thing you've ever
known is you're born, you're put into this thing. This
is all you know. But you are never you never
experience a lot of the things that you could potentially
experience as a cow. I mean, it's pretty horrifying. And again,
(50:46):
all you have to do is put yourself in that
situation for a moment, or just think about it for
a second if it was you doing it, what would
it be like? And you can tell just how bad
this really could be and is. The other thing is
if you are a cow, especially the vial one, you
don't understand what the government policies are for your local
you know, state where you just happen to be born,
(51:08):
or you know, the county where you're in, or even
the country that you're in. It doesn't understand the profit
motive of whatever big factory farm in which you find yourself.
It doesn't understand a great number of things, and it
can't and it's just stuck in that situation.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
It's true, and this, I think this is pretty obvious, right.
I don't think anybody is functioning under an illusion otherwise.
But one piece of this that a lot of people
have missed one aspect where these cost cutting methods, where
(51:49):
this endless race to become more efficient at lower price points,
there is one huge point where this can end up
costing us as a species a great deal. This is
where the rubber or the hoofs I guess hit the road.
There is danger to the public. We touched on this
briefly in our previous episode, but let's dive deeper because
(52:12):
a lot of people are listening asking us, well, okay,
all right, fie, I get it. Livestock industry is not perfect.
What is and how on earth is the livestock industry
of all things? A public health risk. I mean, come on, guys,
that's kind of wild. We'll show you.
Speaker 5 (52:29):
I also would have accepted where the trotters meet the.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Track, where the tails meet the turnpipe.
Speaker 5 (52:37):
Indeed. Yeah, So let's take it from a public health perspective,
from none other than Atlanta's own Centers for Disease Control.
More than two million illnesses, they say, and an estimated
twenty three thousand deaths each year are the result of
antibiotic resistance. We've talked about something like these ideas of superbugs,
(52:57):
and that largely stems from the over use of antibiotics
on our food that we eat. Antibiotic resistance in animals
occurs when they consume too many antibiotics and develop drug
resistant bacteria in their stomachs that are then or can
be passed on from animals to humans under a handful
(53:17):
of conditions.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
The biggest one is if you don't eat meat at
a proper temperature, if it hasn't been cooked fully enough.
Speaker 5 (53:25):
Yea, it is a thermometer. Folks, get a meat thermometer.
Don't eyeball it. Don't leave anything up to chance. Meat thermometer.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
Give it remote controlling totally.
Speaker 5 (53:34):
It's a good It's a good opportunity to get a gadget.
Who doesn't love a good gadget?
Speaker 1 (53:39):
And this, yeah, this all comes the public health risk,
all comes down to drugs factor. You could talk about
You could talk about the forestation as well. Maybe that's
something for another episode, because that's about much more than
the livestock industry.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
And the effects on climate climate. But yeah, yeah, no,
you're right.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
I In twenty thirteen, more than one hundred and thirty
one thousand tons of antibiotics were used on food animals.
Food animals is just the vague description for stuff that
is raised to be eaten. By twenty thirty, this will
rise to more than an estimated two hundred thousand tons
a year. The stuff we're talking about. These antibiotics, to
(54:24):
be specific, are like tetracyclines, tylisen, bactrac and ethromyacin, just
to give you the specifics there. There's a lot of
back and forth with government approval of these things in
different countries. The EU and the US are forever in
(54:45):
an argument about importing food created in the US because
of these antibiotic and hormone injection practices. What happens, what happens?
You're exposed the whole time that myrtle is living out
a miserable existence, she is also home to a new
(55:06):
kind of bacterial life. It is not vulnerable to the
same antibiotics that killed its predecessors. It spreads, it grows,
and just like myrtle, it doesn't really see the larger picture.
It's not aware of NGOs. I guess it maybe is
aware of antibiotics because it successfully whips their asses. But
(55:33):
it carries on it's merry little way, and once it
reaches human beings through you know, improperly cooked meat, through
contamination and feces something like that, people can acquire this.
And once people acquire this stuff, just like COVID nineteen, right,
once people acquire this stuff, then well the anachronistic phrase
(55:55):
would be it's Katie bar the door, because this stuff
can spread so quick and you don't have to eat
meat therefore to be infected. In twenty thirteen, in fact,
same year, we pulled some of this other info from
researchers showed that you could be thirty percent more likely
to get specific bacterial infections just by living your pig
(56:17):
farms or living your crops that were fertilized with pig manure,
you have thirty percent higher likelihood of becoming infected with
Staphylococcus arius bacteria, which is resistant to some antibodies. And
we are in no way prepared by for this. By
the bye, we are not ready.
Speaker 5 (56:38):
Man, that's right. And Aisha Farruki, who is a infectious
disease specialist, says that humanity just isn't prepared for what
might be down the road. Oh wait, humanity is not
prepared for a pandemic situation. That's surprising. Yeah, And she
says this, we have very few new antibiotics being introduced
(56:59):
and manufactured when compared to the emergence of resistant bacteria
or germs. She goes on to say, if this situation
is not well controlled now, we may lose this battle
between germs and antibiotics, which could lead us to a
crisis situation where we may not have any antibiotics left
to combat resistant bacteria. And it's a little different. But
(57:22):
like for example, with the current COVID nineteen situation, we
have this vaccine now, but we now know that there
is a new strain of it that could be more
resistant to the back of the vaccine that they've been
working you know, long and hard to create for the
one that we knew about. So this isn't exactly the
same as mutating. I mean it is, I guess ben right, Like,
is becoming resistant to antibiotics similar to mutating or is
(57:44):
it literally just kind of developing a a tolerance to
the drugs that could actually, you know, eradicate it.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah, that would be a mutation. Yes, I think gaining
a resistance to something like that. Yeah, we're this is
this is definitely worst case, like, it's worst case scenario,
but it's something that we can see happening if we
continue down the route.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Yeah yeah, yeah, well said it's it's worst it's a
worst case scenario. But we're in like a store that
sells the worst cases, you know.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
Yes, the worst cases, the worst case.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
That's like TV store, just like suitcases with no handles.
What's a pandemic? Another one is starvation? And then Gamma
ray blasts.
Speaker 5 (58:34):
You're talking about the excuse me, that's what you're doing?
Speaker 1 (58:37):
There? We go, yeah, uh, so you're right, we are
not ready and there's not a clear answer as to
how we can effectively prepare for this stuff. It's spooky
and it's you know, I'll be honest with you, it's
more than a little bit disappointing and depressing, Like what
this is how the world ends? Not with a bang,
(58:58):
but with a cow bug? Spare me, where are the explosions?
Where the like, where's the Book of Revelations stuff we're promised?
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Oh that's coming to now that is coming?
Speaker 5 (59:08):
And guys, what do you think about the way you know?
This coronavirus pandemic and the politicization of it has sort
of reduced faith I guess in experts like the CDC,
in experts like you know, doctor Fauci or whatever, who
have been saying one thing all along, and because it's
(59:29):
been politicized, I think there's a polarization against science and
now it's like going to take the CDC some time
to kind of claw back that credibility. Is that setting
us back even further to help us prevent something like this.
Speaker 1 (59:41):
Political acumen and scientific talent are two very different skill sets.
That's the I think that's one of the big issues.
You can have. You can have the up to date research,
you can have the facts, but if you do not,
if you do not know how to communicate it effectively,
then you are shouting into the w that's I mean,
that's just a reality. That's not a ding on the
(01:00:03):
politicians or on the scientists. But the science is there.
I could see, I could see some polarization, I could
see it being more difficult, but I would also say
a superbug that emerged this way, the first thing that
would happen would be a very intense game of hot
pandemic potato, where just like we saw with Goat, where
(01:00:25):
other actors and countries and individuals are trying to assign
blame on someone who is not them. That's a very
brutal its short way to explain it. But that is
immediately what would happen. And you know this, if it
came from a large corporation of some sort, it's active
(01:00:46):
in the livestock industry, and we talked about some of
the biggest ones in our previous episode, then they would
they would have to take accountability. They would be forced
by the by the government of a given country to
do so. But it wouldn't solve the problem at all.
Like right now, it might sound like we're making we're
making a big deal about some old beans here, but
(01:01:08):
you might say, hey, well sure, guys, the potential is troubling,
but this is all still hypothetical, so the hold your horses,
pump your brakes. However, the answer is no, this is
not hypothetical. This has happened. This is happening now as
you listen to this. I don't know why I'm smiling
like this. I think it's a reaction to the very
(01:01:32):
bad news. Twenty nineteen saw a rise in superbug hotspots
directly associated with farms. No circumstantial maybe or statistical likelihood
dithering arguments about it. It is a direct one to
one connection with farms. The researchers for the various studies
(01:01:53):
indicating this, they do have some skin in the game.
They got some bacon in the pan here, because their
argument is ultimately that this can be traced back to
what they call over consumption of meat. And you know,
we're very in this country. We're very raw and swanson
about it, like we'll tell you when it's enough bacon, Yeah, bacon.
Speaker 5 (01:02:16):
And back in the day, I mean, meat was a treat.
It was something you'd have, like, you know, as like
a special occasion kind of thing. And because of factory farming,
we've sort of like stripped it of that kind of
special occasion feel and people eat it for every meal.
And you know, whether you believe in the science behind
it or not, I think we can all probably agree
(01:02:37):
that eating red meat for every meal is probably not
the best thing for our bodies and our diets as
human beings, right.
Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
It's true. Think of the so called blue spots. Those
are that's a handful of areas in the world wherein
people tend to live to and past one hundred years
old at like a shocking degree comparison to adjacent regions.
There are a number of factors that are traced to this,
and one of them is their diet. Their diet does
(01:03:07):
appear to be less based on meat in general, red
meat especially, So it's a health concern. I don't think
that's being preachy. That's a health concern. But if you
look at what's happening with the global economy and you
look at how it changes individual consumption habits, then you
see in parts of the developing world, people who are
(01:03:30):
doing better financially than perhaps their parents did, or than
perhaps they did earlier in life, they are eating meat
more often. Like you said, no, we're talking about northeast India,
northeast China, the Red River Delta in Vietnam. Those are
hotspots for superbugs and the Asian continent, and then there
(01:03:50):
are places like Mexico and Johannesburg that are also affected.
This is hitting, This is hitting everybody because everybody's kind
of doing the same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
That meat, and they're trying to make more of it
as fast as a canon, as cheaply as possible. And
should we just tell them the real real consequence has
been all right, let's get started here. There's a study
in science came out not that long ago, and I
was looking at global trends and anti microbial resistance in
(01:04:20):
animals within low and middle income countries. And my god,
this is something we've mentioned on this show before, but
this number is staggering. It is estimated that around seventy
three percent of all anti microbials that are sold on Earth,
(01:04:41):
that are used on this planet are not for humans
when a human gets sick or something and needs to
get healed because we have this magic thing called anti
microbial an antibiotic, seventy three percent are used on animals
for food seventy three percent world wide. And we just
talked about how that practice right there of using the
(01:05:04):
antibiotics on animals rather than you know, a human who
has gotten sick.
Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Is the problem. It's not good.
Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
No, no, it is double plus un good, as Orwell
would say. Beyond the potentially serious consequences for public health,
this reliance on antibiotics to meet the demand for meat,
to meet the meat demand anyway, sorry, the homonyms, whatever.
Speaker 5 (01:05:33):
You got to meet out that meat demand.
Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Yeah, the acute moment where you see that hamburger. The
problem is this is also a threat quite likely to
the sustainability of the livestock industry. This could wreck the
ship and that would mean that it is a danger
to the livelihood of farmers around the world and people
(01:05:59):
associated with this industry. The scientists in these studies do
leave a little bit of light at the end of
the slaughterhouse tunnel by saying there's a window of opportunity
to nip this in the bud, to prevent the rise
of very real, potentially unstoppable superbugs. The stakes are high.
(01:06:22):
UK former Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said that this
is one of the greatest threats in the modern world
faces And the thing is, even though scientists, even though
people are largely on the same page about this. They're
not really agreeing on how to approach it, how to
(01:06:44):
fix it, because there's a global problem. These diseases will
not recognize rule of law. They don't have a passport,
they don't care about customs. So one country's law is alone.
No matter what they are, they don't really fix this.
You can legislate all you want in the US, but
that's not going to change the fact that China and
(01:07:04):
India are home to more than half the world's pigs
and chickens, and therefore it's up to those governments and
those companies to try to try their own solution to
the problem. So at this point, at the end of
the episode, we gotta we gotta talk what are what
are the solutions. There's a good case that the secret
of the livestock industry is that it may be paving
(01:07:25):
the way for a superbug. That's that's the one sentence takeaway.
But the solutions, I don't know, man, there they seem
pretty piecemeal. You would have to have a lot of
coordination and it's almost a Big Brother situation to address this.
Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Oh yeah, and we didn't even get to it in
this episode. And I'm going to propose that we do
another follow up to this, not necessarily secrets of the
livestock industry, but about animal activism and the varying groups
that are trying to do something of varying sizes, and
some have been around for a long time, some we
are just now forming, and their.
Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Takeing like different steps.
Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
One that I really want to focus on, and I'd
love to put out a call to anyone who who's
listening to this, if you if you're familiar with DXE,
it's a group called dx. I've been reading a lot
about them, doing a lot of research on that particular
group and the actions that they take, and it is
it is interesting to see how the varying levels of
(01:08:24):
extremity are the extremes that people are willing to go
to to try and prevent this from happening, Because it
can be at the individual level, right, just decide to
stop eating meat, But how the heck does that one
individual change the system unless you get billions of people
to decide.
Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
That right, And how do you make it worth worth
their time? Also, is it is it ethical as a
governing body or a ruler of some sort of authority,
is it ethical to tell people what they can and
cannot eat and how much they can consume. Remember how
New York with nuts when there was that there was
(01:09:03):
that regulation to like reduce the maximum size of the
sodas sodas or something with some sugary drink, people went wild.
People who would never even drink that stuff were like,
don't tread on me, how dare you? And imagine that
problem on a macro worldwide level. There's also so calling
(01:09:25):
for people to eat less meat. That's one of the
main things the studies propose, but they also propose other things,
like what if we put a hard cap on the
amount of antibiotics that can be used in some way?
Right we make some kind of metric for that.
Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Well, and it is becoming popular in a lot of
places if you have the an amount of wealth to
support it, to support farms that don't use a lot
of the practices that we've outlined in this episode today
that you know, do allow cattle to just graze in
rome and aren't hooked up, you know, in the ways
we've discussed here, same thing with chickens and pigs, and
(01:10:02):
that's becoming.
Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
A popular thing.
Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
But you have to have a certain level of wealth
in order to support that lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
And then there are still also serious questions about you know,
intentions aside, how much of an impact is that making
and how legit are the claims from those producers. Yeah,
it's true. I mean there are cows in Japan and
get that beer and they get massages. Their life is
kind of dope until they get killed. But you're right,
(01:10:34):
there's not a single thing. There are a number of
financial incentives proposed, or carrot and stick kind of things
where they say, okay, why don't we just have higher
taxes on animal products, just like in the last episode
where we said how much meat cost and we found
some really weird calculations. Would that disincentivize people?
Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
Maybe?
Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
But then there's something a little more insidious, something that's
a little you know, doctor evil the pinky to the
mouth about it. What if we hide the costs in
the supply chain even deeper and we tax the antibiotics
m stinks for the farmers.
Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Well, then just you'd have way more cows and much
more distress and sick. Right, That's what that's all you'd
get out of that. There'd be fewer antibiotics used by
factory farms.
Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Yeah, you know, that's a good point. We don't know
how that would go because that hasn't been put into action.
It's all a matter of theory. But these will these
strategies work. What do you guys think, I mean, should
people institute these because make no mistake, like this is
this is not right now. This is not a what
if situation? This is a when is it going down?
Speaker 5 (01:11:46):
Situation? Yeah, I mean, it's one of these things where
it's like, you know, people want what they want, and
what people want is lots of meat. Unfortunately, and until
the demand goes down, it's going to be a hard
sell to say you have to change your habits for
the greater good, because in America in particular, people don't
really go for that very often.
Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
And how is the first question? It's like, well, why
am I taking the hit if I don't see any
anybody else doing it, you know what I mean? So
it would have to be a worldwide adoption. Do we
need for people who want this stuff to happen? Do
we need to have like a modern Edward Bernese waging
a campaign to change the hearts and the minds of
(01:12:26):
the meat eating public. Should also point out, by the way,
folks that Michigan Control. Matt Nol and myself are omnivores,
so we're eating meat too. We're we're aware of this,
but we're also aware that they're there. Does appear to
be some kind of ticking clock toward the potential for
something disastrous. You know, we can't predict when that would occur,
(01:12:49):
we can't predict the level of impact it would make.
But it's not looking good. So we look yeah bad.
Speaker 5 (01:12:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
My wife just texted me and said, what do you
want from Grindhouse Berger?
Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Nice? I don't think it want anything right now from there?
Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
Well, also, you know, arguably carbe dium. I remember we
talked about the collapse of the maritime ecology, her ecosystems
and ocean acidification. I had a real, what they call
in the South that come to Jesus moment with myself,
and there was a horrible person about it, and I
was like, well, if the next generations of human beings
(01:13:34):
are not going to be able to eat some of
these fish, I was like, maybe, I don't know, it's terrible,
but that's I mean, it's kind of a curb your
enthusiasm moment, but it's something that we're all going through.
On a daily basis. We want to know your thoughts.
Should there be some authority given the power to mandate
(01:13:57):
certain changes. I think that's kind of dangerous personally because
where does power stop? The answer is it usually doesn't.
But then also is this Are people being alarmist about this?
If you were to propose solutions, what would those solutions be.
We want to hear from you. We try to make
(01:14:19):
it easy to find us, and I agree with you, Matt.
I think there's more to be said about this in
the future.
Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Yeah, we will will do that, so hey, contact us.
Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
We are conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook. On Instagram,
we are conspiracy Stuff Show. We also have individual instagrams.
I'm in the same mind today, Matt Underscore Frederick. Nope,
Matt Frederick Underscore. iHeart That's it.
Speaker 5 (01:14:44):
The underscore is in there somewhere. It's sure to figure
out where. It's like a puzzle box. Good luck, Yeah,
good luck.
Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
You type it out. You have to type out underscore exactly.
Speaker 5 (01:14:54):
You can find me on Instagram exclusively where I am
at how now, Noel Brown. Ben's all over the internet.
Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Man, Yeah, for now, you feel free to reach out
to me directly at Ben Bolean hsw on Twitter. You
can also reach me at Ben Bolan on Instagram. Just
let me know what's on your my topics for upcoming
shows memes. Fine, yeah, yes, we always love to hear
from you. You're the most important part of.
Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
The show, hey, Dan.
Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
If you're still listening to the show or Kesha or
anybody else, If you have Clubhouse and you're one of
the cool people that's already in there, hit us up.
Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
We're interested in exploring it.
Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Oh, you can find me on Clubhouse too.
Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Lies.
Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
Oh, I'm so jealous. You know.
Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
I'm gonna say, Look, I know we're running along. Paul's
gonna kill us here, but I'm on the fence with
it right now. I don't know whether it is going
to be a flash in the pan, whether it's going
to be a very popular good thing, or whether it's
going to be a very bad thing. Because they're.
Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
You can do a live hangout, right, So like we
could ostensibly do with stuff they don't want you to know, thing.
Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Of some sort on it.
Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Yes, yes, we could.
Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
We'll invite the show, benh yeah us.
Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Let us know what you think about that too. I'm
a little bit I feel like i'm overthinking it. But
there's how do you moderate hate speech? How do you
moderate extremism on an ephemeral audio app?
Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
We have good times with the people who are being nice,
and the other ones we ignore. There we go.
Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
If you don't care for social media, you can give
us a phone call directly. We're one eight three three
st d WYTK. You have three minutes. Those are your minutes.
Tell us what's on your mind. Recommend topic you think
your fellow listeners will enjoy. Let us know if we
can use your name and or voice on air and
be worn folks, or just don't be worn. Be aware
(01:16:48):
that there's a possibility you might get a callback from
one of us or the creamed corn kid himself. I
was saving that this full time.
Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Oh yeah, cream corn is coming for you.
Speaker 5 (01:17:02):
Watch Out reminds me of that scene in Twin Peaks
Firewalk with Me, where like the little guy talking about
cream corn, and there's a scene in the movie where
there is a creepy little kid and a mask next
to the involving cream corn. I don't remember, but I
think of him as the cream corn kid, and I
will never be able to get that image out of
my head. But yeah, cream corn is good. I stand
(01:17:23):
by it. If you don't want to do any of
that stuff, you want to get in touch with us
the old fashioned way, why not just send us a
good old email.
Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't
(01:17:52):
want you to know. Is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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