May 12, 2026 • 44 mins
The global livestock industry employs millions of people in one way or another -- meat is a big business, and business is booming. In communities across the planet meat is often seen as a status symbol, a way to impress friends and announce one's own success -- but how much should meat actually cost? Critics argue every piece of meat, from a fast-food burger to high-end steak and everything in between, is actually riddled with hidden costs that will eventually be paid by everyone, whether or not they personally eat meat. Join Ben and Matt to learn more secrets of the livestock industry in the first chapter of this Classic series.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Phil a conspiracy realists.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
We are returning to you with a classic episode. This
is one in a series and just to give you
us insight, we explored this in twenty twenty. It still
stays true today unfortunately, and if you are eating something
as you're about to tune in, put the food down
(00:26):
or wait until you're not hungry. This is not a
snack time episode.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I gotta tell you, Ben. Personally, I'm a little ashamed
of myself realizing that we talked about this way back
then at the end of twenty twenty, and thinking about
how much meat I still consume on a weekly, mostly
daily basis, because the stuff we're talking about in this
(00:55):
it is harrowing and should, in my mind, should be
like life changing. You know, in some way.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's definitely changing a lot of lives, maybe not human.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Ones exactly, but if you know, to hear it and
to absorb the information that's contained within this episode feels
like it should it should matter. And I just I
do wonder how much our culture, as we talk about
in this episode, and our and our food availability really
does have kind of a stranglehold on all of us.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, agreed, man.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
This is the first chapter in our two part series
on the global livestock industry and the secrets of things
like factory farms and trade organizations and how you know.
One of the things we touch on is how the
US conspires to keep meat so affordable. So this is
where all the vegetarians, vegans and obligate carnivores in the
(01:50):
audience tonight. Secrets of the livestock industry. We cannot wait
to hear your thoughts again. Don't have a snack with
this one.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
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 iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
My name is Matt Our Patriot Nole is Odd Adventures.
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
our super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. This is a food episode,
which means usually you know, in the course of recording this, Matt,
(02:53):
you and I are going to become increasingly famished.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Right, yes, Evids.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
As you know, generally we don't eat a lot of
things prior to recording for some reason. I don't know
why we do that to ourselves, mostly because we're just
working to get all the information make sure we're ready
to roll. But yeah, this one in particular could make
you hungry. It's not going to make you feel squeamish
like maybe some of our other food episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right right, and shout out Shout out to the listener
on Twitter. I think I sent this to you, guys.
Shout out to listener on Twitter who joined in our
debate about calamari as, pig holes, pig intestines. We should
say that conversation continues. This is not like that, not
today's episode. To your point, Matt, this is the first
(03:43):
and a recurring series because recently, longtime listeners, you recall
that we did we did a second part on the
weird conspiracies round fast food or the food industry in general,
and we got a lot of our fellow listener wrote
to us with their own takes on this, and several
(04:04):
wrote to us asking about one big aspect of the
food industry we did not explore, which is the livestock industry.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah. Uh, the livestock industry is big and it's powerful
when you think about all of the components, all the companies,
all the interests that exist there, which means, I mean,
like a lot of big things. It had secrets and
how it got that big and what it has to
(04:32):
do to continue on being big. So for the purposes
of this episode, let's begin with how did the meat
industry become so big? And with a lot of things,
when they become big, you can lower prices because you're
you know, doing all kinds of things to make the
process of producing whatever you're producing cheaper. So let's start
(04:54):
this episode with why is meat so cheap at least
here in the United States States?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Well, heng on, you might be saying, hey, hang on,
hang on, bag your badgers, gentlemen, meat is not cheap.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I would agreed with you, right right, many people would
before diving into some of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So first, there are a couple factors at play here.
Everyone who has survived the pandemic so far knows that
temporary COVID related closures of factories did drive prices up.
And this was compounded by panic buying, right, which is
one thing when you are preparing for chaotic or unstable situations.
(05:40):
You never want to be panic buying. You want to
already have your stuff, you know, and your deep freezer
and your pantry, et cetera. But people were scared, and
so there was a smaller supply than normal for a
little while, and there was a larger demand, so it
drove some prices up. But really, meat in the US,
(06:00):
if you are just the average you know, John Jane
or Jojosaphatt walking through your grocery store, meat in the
US is pretty cheap, especially when compared to many other countries.
So to get a sense of how meat prices in
the US relate to the rest of the world, we
have to take a global perspective, right, we have to
(06:22):
look at the world's meat industry first.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So if we're looking at the price of meat across
the world, there are a lot of different factors that
go into a specific country's price of meat. So I
think it's better for us to look at how affordable
is meat in any given country across the world. So
let's consider an absolute price, the price that you'd see
(06:46):
wherever you procure your meat at a farmer's market or
a store or something. That sticker price can be lower
in one country, and it doesn't matter that it's lower overall,
because it may not be affordable compared to the income
that an average person is able to make. When you
(07:07):
think about the amount of the percentage of income they'd
be able to spend on food or meat. For example,
there's this group called cater Wing and there's a great
article on eater where you can see this information written
out in graphs. They calculated how many hours a local
resident of any given country would have to work at
(07:28):
minimum wage to afford two pounds of any given meat type,
so chicken, pork, whatever, And really it's really interesting to
think about it in that way. I think it's probably
one of the closest things to a standard metric to
really compare the you know, the prices of food and
(07:50):
meat in particular across the world. So let's look at Indonesia.
Their meat is super cheap, super super cheap. It's about
thirty eight percent cheaper the global.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Average as of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, oh, you're right. These stats are from twenty seventeen.
We've also got some stuff from twenty eighteen that will
be mentioning in the show A lot of times. You
know this it takes a while to get all of
these aggregated numbers in, to crunch them all down, and
then to present something like Eater did in their article,
or like cater Wing did when they calculated this stuff. So,
(08:24):
according to twenty seventeen prices, meat in Indonesia is among
the least affordable in the world, even though it's thirty
eight percent cheaper than the global average. And according to
this index that cater Wing created, Indonesians have to work
more than twenty three hours twenty three hours to afford
two pounds of beef. That seems like a lot. That's
(08:46):
almost three times as much as people who live in
Hong Kong have to pay or have to work in
order to buy meat, and nine times as much as
an American would have to work to afford two pounds
of meat.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, so it's I think that's a good way to
frame that conversation, because an ultimate price is a tricky thing.
It's not the same thing as something being affordable. What
I like about the work. What I liked about the
work here is that you can slice it not upon
a number of different ways, Because of course chicken is
(09:20):
going to be cheaper than beef, right in most countries.
You can slice it this way. One thing I want
to walk back on here is that this thing, which
is called the cater Wings Meat Index, doesn't include every country.
It's the top meat producing countries that have to work
(09:40):
at minimum wage. And you can see some I think
the highest and this affordability index would be India, where
people have to work twenty seven point three six hours
for two pounds of meat overall. And the thing about
these kind of aggregations is that there are a lot
of There are a lot of trick things here, So
(10:01):
your individual mileage may vary if you're a resident of
one of these countries. But I really wanted to include
that because Americans eat a lot of meat, or US residents,
I should say, eat a lot of meat because it's
easier for us to do so if you look at
numbers like this. So I was talking about global overall. Look,
(10:22):
the best way to do that is to look at
production and consumption statistics. So and I promise we're going
somewhere with this. So here's the bottom line, conspiracy realists.
Despite small variations year over year, meat consumption in general
is increasing because the world is growing more wealthy. Global
(10:43):
demand for meat is growing. Over the past fifty years,
meat production has more than tripled, and now the world
produces more than three hundred and forty million tons more
than at easily every single year. There's a guy named
Vid Sprinkle's research director Packaged Facts, and he has a
(11:03):
quote about this that we quite enjoyed. It's the following.
In many parts of the world, meat is among the
least affordable food options. It's generally pricier than locally available grains, beans, vegetables,
and fruit. However, as averaging comes rise, more people eat
meat first as an occasional treat, and then finally it's
something they consume multiple times a week, if not daily.
(11:27):
And if you have traveled, if you're not from the US,
or if you've traveled outside of the US, depending on
where you went, you'll notice that meat functions as a
status symbol in some parts of the world. I mean,
I've been in places where, without getting without getting too
deep into it, I was a vegetarian for a while,
(11:48):
and I was in situations where it would be offensive
to refuse food that someone offered me that beyond just
being a bad guest, it would be offensive because it
contained meat. So it was very it was like a
somewhat prestigious thing, right, so I totally broke it. I
didn't want to be that person saying, I know life
(12:10):
is very challenging here, but I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Too good for what you cook.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
You know, there's a big cultural thing about consumption of
meat here, and it plays into it because now it's
kind of like there's something there's something about success to it.
It has the air of success. And this seems set
to continue if we look at projected trends. The Packaged
Facts Group has something called the Global Meat and Poultry
(12:39):
Trends and they expect, despite despite any disasters, man made
or biological, meat consumption is going to increase at least
one point four percent through twenty twenty three. And again
a large part of this is due to the economic
rise of some of the countries that you would you
(13:02):
would hear called brick once upon a time, you know
what I'm talking about there, right.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah, I mean that it's astonishing to think that meat
consumption would increase, you know, one point four percent year
of the year for that long given the challenges that
the meat and you know, the overall meat industry faces,
especially countries like the US, that that does produce a
ton of meat and then exports a lot of meat
(13:28):
as well, and just thinking about safety factors, you know,
we've we've heard stories of so many poultry and other
meat factories having to close or those factories continuing to
function even when there was an outbreak of coronavirus within
the factory on the factory floor and then was kept quiet,
which is something we will likely be talking about in
(13:50):
the future. It's just astonishing to think something like that
wouldn't wouldn't you know, put a big hole in that
growth or a damper on that growth. But as we
talked about before, we eat as humans so much dang meat. Anyway,
Sorry to get back to the brick countries. That's Brazil, Russia, India, China,
(14:14):
those countries. We've talked about them several times in the
context of brick and why they're called that.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So we've set up a very high level look at
the global situation. But if you are asking where's the beef,
you have to ask about Uncle Sam. If we zoom
in in the Google Earth of your mind to the
US meat industry and we do the same thing, look
at production and consumption stats, then we quickly see Cattle
(14:43):
production is the most important agricultural industry in the United States,
accounting for sixty six point two billion in just cash
receipts in twenty nineteen, and overall this industry, cattle production
specifically represents about eighteen percent of the three hundred and
seventy four billion in total cash receipts that were forecast
(15:07):
for all agricultural commodities in twenty nineteen. The big cow
is real, and big cow is big, I guess if
we really want to simplify it. And in addition to
they're kind of in like a men's hair club. I'm
not just the president, I'm a member kind of situation,
because in addition to having the world's largest what they
(15:29):
call fed cattle industry, the US is also the largest
consumer of beef. This might not be true forever as
these other countries arising in their economic status and so again,
you know, the thing that really want to hit on
is that difference you mentioned map between an ultimate sticker
(15:50):
price and affordability. It's not just how big the slice
is out of your budget, it's how big the overall pie, oh,
mince meat pie is. So how did we get here? Well,
food used to be much more expensive. Actually, our spending
on food in the US, as you know, a slice
(16:12):
of our meat lover's pizza has actually declined dramatically, is
since nineteen sixty, but even since before then. You can
see charts from the Department of Agriculture that show, like,
if you went from nineteen sixty to two thousand and seven,
you would see it dropped by almost half, from seventeen
(16:33):
point five percent of a household income to nine point
six percent. We're purchasing more food for less money, and
we're using less of our income to do it.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I think fast food, yeah, because a lot of that
beef ends up in a burger from wherever, whatever fast
food joint you go to.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And think about the increase in portion size in places.
Think about the increase in dining out in places.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Think about.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
We're dining in now, dining in now, yeah, pre pandemic.
So it's odd, isn't it that with the price of
so many things rising over time, the cost of some
food stuff's meat in particular, seems there's actually declined in
the US over time. Why is this happening? Is this
(17:22):
a thing that is going to continue in the future, and.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
What does it mean? You know what I mean, what are.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
We actually what price are we actually paying for this?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, none of this happened by accident. That doesn't necessarily
mean it was planned to go down exactly this way,
but it wasn't an accident. It takes a lot of
work to maintain all of the things that we've been
talking about, specifically product and you know, keeping consumption at
levels is actually that's a marketing thing we can we
(18:06):
can talk about that later. There are a ton of
often ignored side effects and consequences, real consequences when it
comes to eating this much meat and producing especially producing
this much meat. And we actually may be paying more
for meat, just not in you know, the sticker price.
(18:27):
We the the end user consumer of meat isn't the
one necessarily paying for it with the dollars out of
their wallet. We might be paying for it with our lives, well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
For future. Here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
You know, we've got a lot of listeners in the
crowd who are maybe maybe themselves vegetarians. Maybe you're listening
along and you're saying, well, I don't participate in this
because I'm vegan or vegetarian. I don't know. If you
pay taxes, you are supporting this industry and will you know,
will show you how momentarily we've also got We've also
(19:05):
got a ton of people listening today. A lot of
us are listening, maybe in a meat packing plant, maybe
making food in the kitchen, you know, and breaking out
some ribs you were excited about, or something like, I'm
probably I'm going to try to cook some ribs.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I've always I've always got a.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Weird food project going on. But it's this is at
every level of American society. And maybe it's when we're
when we're exploring how this came about and what it means. Uh,
maybe it's best to propose a couple of factors and
then see which one is the primary driver or if
(19:40):
they all work together. First, geography, it's crazy, you know,
you don't know what you've got till it's gone. As
Joni Mitchell said, I think that was Joni Mitchell, right, Yeah,
as Jooni Mitchell said, Big Yellow Taxi, good song holds up.
The US has this tremendous abundance of natural resource. We
(20:00):
have a lot of space, there's a lot going on
between the East and West coast, and you may not
hear about it, but it's a very productive part of
the world. It's easy to grow food pretty cheaply here,
amber waves of grain and so on. But that alone
can't be the entire answer, because there are other parts
of the world that are you know, that are so
(20:22):
called bread baskets, or that are hubs of a cattle industry.
So what makes the US a little bit different?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I would say we have to.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Consider four basic things. Subsidies, lobbying, corruption, and security.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Hmmm. That makes a lot of sense because most of
the larger companies, even some small companies that are involved
in any way in the meat business, including these the
big old meat packers, like I guess the Tysons of
the world, they're represented by one or more of these
powerful meat trades. You've probably heard of this, we've we've
(21:05):
spoken about it a little bit before. But you know,
you can think of these as lobbying organizations essentially, groups
that are in they exist entirely to prop up one
or more meat product, like big pork. Essentially, this kind
of thing really exists. There's one called the American Meat
(21:27):
Institute or the National Meat Association, the National Cattleman's Beef Association.
These are powerful groups and a lot of them have
very strong voices in, you know, decision making heads of
Washington because a lot of these groups essentially represent workers
(21:48):
who are voters. And that's that's why it's there, that's
why it's so powerful.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, yeah, what do you do.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
You want to be that congress person who has to
go back to your constituents and say, hey, I approved
some new regulations that may be better for consumers, but
they are going to be much more expensive for the
companies that employ you. And that kind of stuff rolls downhill.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah. It's a convoluted process making sure meat is affordable
enough to be consumed at levels that are high enough
so that you have to continue producing. And so everybody
has jobs and you know, all like it's so it's
so complicated when you get into it. But these groups,
these lobbying groups, are making sure everything is functioning at
(22:39):
least to the best that they can make it.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, so think about salmonella scares, right, think about bullas scares,
things like that. This is where some of these groups
come into play, and they've been accused in the past
of pressuring members of Congress to stifle or hold back
(23:03):
regulatory moves. So they push against expensive safety standards and regulations,
but they also work continually to keep meat appearing very
inexpensive at your local store. There's a continued drive for efficiency.
It's kind of weird, right that chicken sells for less
than two dollars a pound. That's cheaper than peanuts in a.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Lot of parts of the world.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
So there's another thing here, another entity that often gets
painted as the villain, and that is government action, the
factory farm lobby. You'll hear it called. The argument is
they secure these huge handouts, and these handouts suppress the
true cost of meat. So when we say handouts, we're
(23:52):
not just talking about direct farm subsidies, which are a
real thing, right, and they're an important thing economically. We're
also talking about some indirects, some things you might not
be as aware of if you're outside of the industry.
Has someone made too much chicken or too much mutton
or beef or what have you, Well, there may be
(24:12):
a buyback program for excess animal products. There may be
programs that subsidize the promotion of meat.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
There may be loans.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That are subsidized over time on much more favorable terms
than any loan you or I could ever get.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah, it's not going to happen. And in the end,
the US spends around thirty eight billion dollars every year
to subsidize the food that is produced here. And that's
all of it, So everything from peanuts to pigs, So
thirty eight billion dollars, and almost all of it goes
(24:51):
to meat, or the vast majority of it goes to meat.
Think about this, Zero point zero four percent of that
thirty eight billion goes to subsidize fruits vegetables. That's seventeen
million out of thirty eight billion that goes to fruits
and vegetables.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
That's why you'll hear people sometimes argue that eating a
meatless diet is more expensive than eating an omnivorous diet.
That's not entirely true.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
It really depends on what you could what you do
with it.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I have one friend who's a lifelong vegetarian associate and
refers to himself as a French fi vegetarian because he
is a very unhealthy person, and he will you know,
it's for him, it's rice, beans and fries.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Oh, that's awesome. But also just think about this when
we're talking about that seventeen million for subsidizing fruits and vegetables,
think about the last time you visited, you know, any
grocery store or something. A lot of the produce that
you're going to find those fruits and vegetables come from
other countries, from Chile, from just anywhere, across a lot
(26:01):
of a lot, yeah, a lot of Latin America, a
lot of South America. And you know that's one of
the reasons that it's different there rather than subsidizing money,
because you're talking about imports.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Then yeah, very good point met. That is a very
good point here. So that's maybe that's not entirely our answer.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Though.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
If the government is doing this and the lobbies or
work or the trade industries working with the government hand
in hand, that's something that happens at a lot across
a lot of industries. It happens in the tech industry, right,
Maybe a more compelling explanation, maybe another piece of the
puzzle is that meat is cheap because it is so
(26:44):
ruthlessly efficient to produce.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
In a lot of.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Ways, this sounds absurd right at first, Blush, because all
sorts of activists have talked about the inefficiency of animal
agriculture and have raised very good points, like, if you
think about it, cattle grown for beef are it's tremendously
inefficient from a chloric intake perspective, a US cow takes
(27:09):
about sixteen pounds of water for each pound of weight
it gains. And of course, you know, admittedly cattle are
very very expensive part of this puzzle, but they're also
a smaller piece when you consider what people are eating,
because a lot of people are eating chicken because it
(27:31):
is so so cheap.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Right, yeah, that's correct. So let's take a look at
broiler chickens like it's it's a chicken to be eaten.
And there are lots of companies that have been working
out there for a long time to figure out how
to make chickens bigger, how to make them grow faster,
and really just increase efficiency all around. When you're talking
about a single chicken that then gets sold at grown
(27:54):
and sold and right now you only need two point
four pounds of feed to produce a pound of usable
chicken meat. Now, if you compare that to a cow,
I mean it's something insane, like a like twenty four
kilograms of feed that are required to make a single
(28:18):
unit of beef. It's crazy, but that just that makes
a lot of sense. It's cheaper to get one chicken
out there, and one chicken is a substantial amount of
meat when you think about how large chickens are, especially
in the United States, when you're when you're looking at
these modified versions.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
These blade runner chickens.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, it's it's absolutely nuts. Also, what
are corn nuts? This has bothered me for a long time.
Are they just are they like puffed corn?
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Is that what it is?
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, it's it's it's corn, right, it's hardened corn for
your pleasure.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
We've got a you know, we've also got to do
an episode on corn at some point, because it is
odd for people outside of the US to travel here
and realize corn is in everything in one form or another. Right,
corn syrup, when's the last time you ate some mean
that didn't have corn syrup in it? As the last
day you went without encountering corn syrup?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
When's the last day that I recognized that corn syrup
was a part of whatever it was that I was eating.
It's been a long time, it's been a long time,
which just.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Sort of accepted it.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
You're right, it's it is ubiquitous, but it's it's often
you know said that these subsidies are a huge part
of what drives down the sticker price of meat. But
there are also exceptions to regulations. So critics allege that
if the US government required some of these very large
(29:51):
scale operations to treat their waste appropriately the way that
municipalities are bound to do by law, then this would
cost the industry and estimated eighty to twenty billion dollars
a year. Guess where that cost would end up being recouped.
It would be if you buy meat. It would be
(30:13):
carried on to the consumer. So that leads us to
the question how much should this stuff actually cost? We'll
tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And we're back. Now. If you listen to the show often,
you know that we cover the concept of hidden costs
within any given action or industry. We've done it all
the time, and those hidden costs exist everywhere in the
meat production machine. According to one David Simon. This is
(30:55):
the author of Metonomics, not David Simon, the creator of
the wire and other thing.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Right, different Davids, Okay, not everybody can.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Not one person could be that good at so many things.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Okay, Okay, So David Simon, he's the author of Meatanomics,
and he has found or he believes he has found
the answer to this question. These hidden costs are things
that everyone collectively will be paying for in the long run,
even though where we have relatively affordable meat, especially in
(31:28):
the United States. And he's looking at some pretty huge
numbers here in hidden costs.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Animal food producers, according to Simon, impose somewhere around four
hundred and fourteen billion dollars worth in hidden costs on
American society every single year. To be completely transparent. Before
we see how he defines that. David Simon is a
(31:57):
person who has a has a right agenda. Yeah, he's
partisan in this regard because he wants the same restrictions
that have been applied to tobacco to one day be
applied to meat. So he's definitely got a strong position here.
Here's how he breaks it down. He says, when we
(32:18):
think of hidden costs, we need to think of bills
for healthcare, those subsidies, the environmental damage involved, and other
items related to producing and consuming meat and dairy animal
food production, from his perspective, now surpasses both the transportation
industry and electricity generation as the greatest source of greenhouse gas.
(32:41):
So if we put it there's if we put it
in the old loaf of bread, jug of milk big
mac index we get, we can get a more concrete
sense of this. According to him, if we included all
the hidden expenses that the meat industry offloads onto society
(33:04):
in this price of a single big Mac, it wouldn't
be five dollars anymore. It would be thirteen dollars, which
means that every time a fast food place sells any
kind of sandwich in the big Mac example, if they're
selling a five dollars big mac to you, you are
at some point, in some way paying another eight dollars
in hidden cost. And it's easy to miss that.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Oh sure, absolutely. I would have to just point out
that the meat production industry is the transportation industry. And
when you think about how far the end of product
has to travel, how far all of the other goods
have to travel in order to produce. God, it's weird
to say produce and grow the cows, but to have
(33:49):
a cow become alive and then live long enough and
create enough mass for it to be a sellable product.
There's all kinds of transportation costs involved there, but yeah, no,
it's it's it's an interesting point that David Simon place
is there. If you imagine, if you imagine going out
(34:10):
to eat or just buying buying food at the store,
if you imagine your beef was another, god, another eight
dollars for that food. I can't imagine being able to
afford it.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yeah, not every day, because.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
We eat every day, most of us. We try very
hard to.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
But good god.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Well, yeah, and there's there's another aspect to this too.
We see other countries taking a different tact, and often
their countries that import food, so it's already going to
be more expensive, but they also levy tariffs on different things, right,
so the other governments have tried to intervene in some
(34:54):
way to to address what they see as the hidden cost.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
But what I love about the fantastic point you make
with the how did you say it was the meat
industry is the transport industry. I think that's brilliant, especially
if you look at just the way that chicken may
be transported for processing across the Pacific it may be
(35:21):
grown here, sent to another country for processing, sent back here.
Those chicken wings may have seen more of the world
than a very horrible and enjoyable way than we ever will.
It's something that I think bears consideration. And at this point,
I think what we've done is this is just part
(35:44):
one of US series. We wanted to establish some of
the hidden costs to the meat industry, but we need
a disclaimer at the end. This is not some hit
piece on farmers or some sort of propaganda about the
benefits of being vegetarian. There are benefits to be vegetarian,
but Matt and Mission Control and I are not vegetarian.
(36:07):
So we're not going to criticize that lifestyle. But we're
also going to be honest. We are omnivorous. But there's
another thing about the livestock industry. It is mission critical
for the US economy right now. So many people do
this job. It's a job, it's a career, So you
(36:29):
can't just turn off the faucet. It would be economically disastrous.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
And then there's the part about alternative meats.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Have you ever had an impossible burger?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
I have, yeah, and I very much enjoyed it, but
it's not the same, and it's I don't know when
it will be the same, the same experience, the same
joy that you get for some reason, because our childhoods
were filled with I think seventy nine cents burgers or
however much they were at the time. They're so cheap,
(37:02):
Oh my god, they were cheap. But thankfully, across the
world there's all kinds of research and companies that are
focusing on alternatives to meat, ways to get protein that
we need, you know, for our human bodies to grow.
But the problem is it's not affordable right now. It's
(37:22):
just not affordable. However, there are alternatives, you know, that
would fall in the vegetarian category that can afford to
you know, it can give you the protein that you
need that don't cost as much as meat. But it's
not the same experience. It's not the same thing as
having some kind of alternative meat.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, some kind of meat like substitute. It's true, and
it's not it's not because those things are super fancy
or super crazy expensive so much as it is that
traditional meat is super super absurdly cheap. That's that's the
real hurdle there. Then, it's a strange system. You know,
(38:04):
farmers are some of the hardest working people in this
entire country, and you hear about those subsidies all the time,
But a lot of farmers don't get those subsidies and
don't get the things you hear people complaining about. In
the last fifteen years, something like two thirds of American
farmers didn't get didn't get a penny from direct subsidies
(38:27):
that were worth over one hundred billion dollars. Those funds
mainly go to big corporations, and that subsidy money spurs
the growth of these factory farms, which can be kind
of bad for local economies because they employ fewer workers
per animal than regular farms, and they buy most of
their supplies outside of the local area the local economy,
(38:49):
or they have control over multiple related industries, right like
now I own the trucks, now I own the grain,
Now I own the cattle.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, Oh, for sure, I'm reminded of our whole episode
on farm subsidies. Yes, we talked about a lot of that,
and I would recommend you listening to it if you
have a chance and you're interested in that stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, yeah, because it's the subsidies themselves become an industry,
you know. And right now eighty percent of this country's
beef industry is controlled by just four companies JBS, Smithfield, Cargill,
and Tyson. They have been accused of price fixing and
(39:28):
numerous times throughout recent history in a way that doesn't
benefit anybody on the beginning and end of the equation.
The idea is they'll keep live cattle prices low and
try to make beef prices higher, just a.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Little bit at a time.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
And this is at the expense of the American farmer
on one side, the American consumer on the other. And
there's a lot of litigation about it, but it's one
of those things that maybe isn't isn't the sexiest headline.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Well, think about what that means. They're working to make
sure the cows, the cattle are cheap. So when that
farmer who has put in all the effort, you know,
if it's not one of these giant companies and factory farms,
even if it's a small farm that's been purchased by
a giant company like a Tyson or Smithfield or something
(40:25):
like that, just by having the end product that that
farmer creates a cow that is ready for slaughter and
reducing it way down. It just means it's harder and
harder for that farmer to make a profit and all
of the massive expenses that are required to having and
maintaining a farm. It's just I don't know, man, it's
(40:48):
weird to think that that's what they're doing to then
keep it super cheap on the end user side. I
don't know, but it makes sense. I mean, it makes sense.
It's all about mass scale in those.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Instances, It's an economy of scale for sure. It also
becomes a matter of sustainability. How long can this keep going,
especially as we hurtle toward a planet where people are
more and more likely to be fighting over a potable
water like on a large scale.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Where are we going to get the water for this.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Kind of industry in the future, And again, how cheap
should it be? How many backroom deals happen between that
cow out there grazing in a field and the hamburger
that you've made or are eating. We have a lot
more to cover in the secrets of the livestock industry.
(41:43):
There are a couple of things, Matt that you and
I mentioned that are their own episodes. I would say
corn probably counts in the livestock industry because so much
of it is involved there. We're going to cover more
of this in the future. In the meantime, we want
to hear from you. Do you think that there is
(42:04):
a way for meat prices to more accurately reflect these
hidden costs we've described? Should they reflect those hidden costs?
Would you buy them?
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I mean, I'm gonna be honest. I love a good steak.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
I have no idea how much it would actually it
should actually cost, but it probably shouldn't be the price
it's at now.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, that's the big question that we want to ask you.
If beef did cost what it should, could you afford it?
Would you splurge on it for a special occasion or something,
or would you just stop eating it all together. We'd
love to know how you would handle it. You can
find us everywhere. We're on social media. You can find
(42:46):
us on Twitter and Facebook. We're at Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram.
We are a conspiracy Stuff show. If you don't want
to do that, you should head on over to this
thing we like to call Here's where it gets crazy, right.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
That's our Facebook page where you can out with our
favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners. If you
don't care for Facebook, if that doesn't quite wrestle your cattle,
then you can haul us directly one eight three three
st d WYTK. There are three minutes. They belong to
(43:18):
you and no one else. Give us new ideas for
topics you think your fellow conspiracy realist will enjoy ed,
or you know, just tell us what's on your mind.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Come with a cool nickname. It's up to you.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
It's really your three minutes. All that we ask is
let us know if it's okay to use your name
and or voice on the air, And if you don't
particularly care for that mode of communication, there's one more
way that you can always get in touch with us,
regardless of the time, regardless of the place, regardless of
the space, as our good old fashioned email address where
(43:52):
we are conspiracyantiheartradio dot com.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Stuff they don't 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.
Phil a conspiracy realists.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
We are returning to you with a classic episode. This
is one in a series and just to give you
us insight, we explored this in twenty twenty. It still
stays true today unfortunately, and if you are eating something
as you're about to tune in, put the food down
(00:26):
or wait until you're not hungry. This is not a
snack time episode.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I gotta tell you, Ben. Personally, I'm a little ashamed
of myself realizing that we talked about this way back
then at the end of twenty twenty, and thinking about
how much meat I still consume on a weekly, mostly
daily basis, because the stuff we're talking about in this
(00:55):
it is harrowing and should, in my mind, should be
like life changing. You know, in some way.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's definitely changing a lot of lives, maybe not human.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Ones exactly, but if you know, to hear it and
to absorb the information that's contained within this episode feels
like it should it should matter. And I just I
do wonder how much our culture, as we talk about
in this episode, and our and our food availability really
does have kind of a stranglehold on all of us.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, agreed, man.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
This is the first chapter in our two part series
on the global livestock industry and the secrets of things
like factory farms and trade organizations and how you know.
One of the things we touch on is how the
US conspires to keep meat so affordable. So this is
where all the vegetarians, vegans and obligate carnivores in the
(01:50):
audience tonight. Secrets of the livestock industry. We cannot wait
to hear your thoughts again. Don't have a snack with
this one.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
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 iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
My name is Matt Our Patriot Nole is Odd Adventures.
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
our super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. This is a food episode,
which means usually you know, in the course of recording this, Matt,
(02:53):
you and I are going to become increasingly famished.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Right, yes, Evids.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
As you know, generally we don't eat a lot of
things prior to recording for some reason. I don't know
why we do that to ourselves, mostly because we're just
working to get all the information make sure we're ready
to roll. But yeah, this one in particular could make
you hungry. It's not going to make you feel squeamish
like maybe some of our other food episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Right right, and shout out Shout out to the listener
on Twitter. I think I sent this to you, guys.
Shout out to listener on Twitter who joined in our
debate about calamari as, pig holes, pig intestines. We should
say that conversation continues. This is not like that, not
today's episode. To your point, Matt, this is the first
(03:43):
and a recurring series because recently, longtime listeners, you recall
that we did we did a second part on the
weird conspiracies round fast food or the food industry in general,
and we got a lot of our fellow listener wrote
to us with their own takes on this, and several
(04:04):
wrote to us asking about one big aspect of the
food industry we did not explore, which is the livestock industry.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah. Uh, the livestock industry is big and it's powerful
when you think about all of the components, all the companies,
all the interests that exist there, which means, I mean,
like a lot of big things. It had secrets and
how it got that big and what it has to
(04:32):
do to continue on being big. So for the purposes
of this episode, let's begin with how did the meat
industry become so big? And with a lot of things,
when they become big, you can lower prices because you're
you know, doing all kinds of things to make the
process of producing whatever you're producing cheaper. So let's start
(04:54):
this episode with why is meat so cheap at least
here in the United States States?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Well, heng on, you might be saying, hey, hang on,
hang on, bag your badgers, gentlemen, meat is not cheap.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
I would agreed with you, right right, many people would
before diving into some of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So first, there are a couple factors at play here.
Everyone who has survived the pandemic so far knows that
temporary COVID related closures of factories did drive prices up.
And this was compounded by panic buying, right, which is
one thing when you are preparing for chaotic or unstable situations.
(05:40):
You never want to be panic buying. You want to
already have your stuff, you know, and your deep freezer
and your pantry, et cetera. But people were scared, and
so there was a smaller supply than normal for a
little while, and there was a larger demand, so it
drove some prices up. But really, meat in the US,
(06:00):
if you are just the average you know, John Jane
or Jojosaphatt walking through your grocery store, meat in the
US is pretty cheap, especially when compared to many other countries.
So to get a sense of how meat prices in
the US relate to the rest of the world, we
have to take a global perspective, right, we have to
(06:22):
look at the world's meat industry first.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So if we're looking at the price of meat across
the world, there are a lot of different factors that
go into a specific country's price of meat. So I
think it's better for us to look at how affordable
is meat in any given country across the world. So
let's consider an absolute price, the price that you'd see
(06:46):
wherever you procure your meat at a farmer's market or
a store or something. That sticker price can be lower
in one country, and it doesn't matter that it's lower overall,
because it may not be affordable compared to the income
that an average person is able to make. When you
(07:07):
think about the amount of the percentage of income they'd
be able to spend on food or meat. For example,
there's this group called cater Wing and there's a great
article on eater where you can see this information written
out in graphs. They calculated how many hours a local
resident of any given country would have to work at
(07:28):
minimum wage to afford two pounds of any given meat type,
so chicken, pork, whatever, And really it's really interesting to
think about it in that way. I think it's probably
one of the closest things to a standard metric to
really compare the you know, the prices of food and
(07:50):
meat in particular across the world. So let's look at Indonesia.
Their meat is super cheap, super super cheap. It's about
thirty eight percent cheaper the global.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Average as of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, oh, you're right. These stats are from twenty seventeen.
We've also got some stuff from twenty eighteen that will
be mentioning in the show A lot of times. You
know this it takes a while to get all of
these aggregated numbers in, to crunch them all down, and
then to present something like Eater did in their article,
or like cater Wing did when they calculated this stuff. So,
(08:24):
according to twenty seventeen prices, meat in Indonesia is among
the least affordable in the world, even though it's thirty
eight percent cheaper than the global average. And according to
this index that cater Wing created, Indonesians have to work
more than twenty three hours twenty three hours to afford
two pounds of beef. That seems like a lot. That's
(08:46):
almost three times as much as people who live in
Hong Kong have to pay or have to work in
order to buy meat, and nine times as much as
an American would have to work to afford two pounds
of meat.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, so it's I think that's a good way to
frame that conversation, because an ultimate price is a tricky thing.
It's not the same thing as something being affordable. What
I like about the work. What I liked about the
work here is that you can slice it not upon
a number of different ways, Because of course chicken is
(09:20):
going to be cheaper than beef, right in most countries.
You can slice it this way. One thing I want
to walk back on here is that this thing, which
is called the cater Wings Meat Index, doesn't include every country.
It's the top meat producing countries that have to work
(09:40):
at minimum wage. And you can see some I think
the highest and this affordability index would be India, where
people have to work twenty seven point three six hours
for two pounds of meat overall. And the thing about
these kind of aggregations is that there are a lot
of There are a lot of trick things here, So
(10:01):
your individual mileage may vary if you're a resident of
one of these countries. But I really wanted to include
that because Americans eat a lot of meat, or US residents,
I should say, eat a lot of meat because it's
easier for us to do so if you look at
numbers like this. So I was talking about global overall. Look,
(10:22):
the best way to do that is to look at
production and consumption statistics. So and I promise we're going
somewhere with this. So here's the bottom line, conspiracy realists.
Despite small variations year over year, meat consumption in general
is increasing because the world is growing more wealthy. Global
(10:43):
demand for meat is growing. Over the past fifty years,
meat production has more than tripled, and now the world
produces more than three hundred and forty million tons more
than at easily every single year. There's a guy named
Vid Sprinkle's research director Packaged Facts, and he has a
(11:03):
quote about this that we quite enjoyed. It's the following.
In many parts of the world, meat is among the
least affordable food options. It's generally pricier than locally available grains, beans, vegetables,
and fruit. However, as averaging comes rise, more people eat
meat first as an occasional treat, and then finally it's
something they consume multiple times a week, if not daily.
(11:27):
And if you have traveled, if you're not from the US,
or if you've traveled outside of the US, depending on
where you went, you'll notice that meat functions as a
status symbol in some parts of the world. I mean,
I've been in places where, without getting without getting too
deep into it, I was a vegetarian for a while,
(11:48):
and I was in situations where it would be offensive
to refuse food that someone offered me that beyond just
being a bad guest, it would be offensive because it
contained meat. So it was very it was like a
somewhat prestigious thing, right, so I totally broke it. I
didn't want to be that person saying, I know life
(12:10):
is very challenging here, but I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Too good for what you cook.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
You know, there's a big cultural thing about consumption of
meat here, and it plays into it because now it's
kind of like there's something there's something about success to it.
It has the air of success. And this seems set
to continue if we look at projected trends. The Packaged
Facts Group has something called the Global Meat and Poultry
(12:39):
Trends and they expect, despite despite any disasters, man made
or biological, meat consumption is going to increase at least
one point four percent through twenty twenty three. And again
a large part of this is due to the economic
rise of some of the countries that you would you
(13:02):
would hear called brick once upon a time, you know
what I'm talking about there, right.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah, I mean that it's astonishing to think that meat
consumption would increase, you know, one point four percent year
of the year for that long given the challenges that
the meat and you know, the overall meat industry faces,
especially countries like the US, that that does produce a
ton of meat and then exports a lot of meat
(13:28):
as well, and just thinking about safety factors, you know,
we've we've heard stories of so many poultry and other
meat factories having to close or those factories continuing to
function even when there was an outbreak of coronavirus within
the factory on the factory floor and then was kept quiet,
which is something we will likely be talking about in
(13:50):
the future. It's just astonishing to think something like that
wouldn't wouldn't you know, put a big hole in that
growth or a damper on that growth. But as we
talked about before, we eat as humans so much dang meat. Anyway,
Sorry to get back to the brick countries. That's Brazil, Russia, India, China,
(14:14):
those countries. We've talked about them several times in the
context of brick and why they're called that.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
So we've set up a very high level look at
the global situation. But if you are asking where's the beef,
you have to ask about Uncle Sam. If we zoom
in in the Google Earth of your mind to the
US meat industry and we do the same thing, look
at production and consumption stats, then we quickly see Cattle
(14:43):
production is the most important agricultural industry in the United States,
accounting for sixty six point two billion in just cash
receipts in twenty nineteen, and overall this industry, cattle production
specifically represents about eighteen percent of the three hundred and
seventy four billion in total cash receipts that were forecast
(15:07):
for all agricultural commodities in twenty nineteen. The big cow
is real, and big cow is big, I guess if
we really want to simplify it. And in addition to
they're kind of in like a men's hair club. I'm
not just the president, I'm a member kind of situation,
because in addition to having the world's largest what they
(15:29):
call fed cattle industry, the US is also the largest
consumer of beef. This might not be true forever as
these other countries arising in their economic status and so again,
you know, the thing that really want to hit on
is that difference you mentioned map between an ultimate sticker
(15:50):
price and affordability. It's not just how big the slice
is out of your budget, it's how big the overall pie, oh,
mince meat pie is. So how did we get here? Well,
food used to be much more expensive. Actually, our spending
on food in the US, as you know, a slice
(16:12):
of our meat lover's pizza has actually declined dramatically, is
since nineteen sixty, but even since before then. You can
see charts from the Department of Agriculture that show, like,
if you went from nineteen sixty to two thousand and seven,
you would see it dropped by almost half, from seventeen
(16:33):
point five percent of a household income to nine point
six percent. We're purchasing more food for less money, and
we're using less of our income to do it.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I think fast food, yeah, because a lot of that
beef ends up in a burger from wherever, whatever fast
food joint you go to.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And think about the increase in portion size in places.
Think about the increase in dining out in places.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Think about.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
We're dining in now, dining in now, yeah, pre pandemic.
So it's odd, isn't it that with the price of
so many things rising over time, the cost of some
food stuff's meat in particular, seems there's actually declined in
the US over time. Why is this happening? Is this
(17:22):
a thing that is going to continue in the future, and.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
What does it mean? You know what I mean, what are.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
We actually what price are we actually paying for this?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, none of this happened by accident. That doesn't necessarily
mean it was planned to go down exactly this way,
but it wasn't an accident. It takes a lot of
work to maintain all of the things that we've been
talking about, specifically product and you know, keeping consumption at
levels is actually that's a marketing thing we can we
(18:06):
can talk about that later. There are a ton of
often ignored side effects and consequences, real consequences when it
comes to eating this much meat and producing especially producing
this much meat. And we actually may be paying more
for meat, just not in you know, the sticker price.
(18:27):
We the the end user consumer of meat isn't the
one necessarily paying for it with the dollars out of
their wallet. We might be paying for it with our lives, well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
For future. Here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
You know, we've got a lot of listeners in the
crowd who are maybe maybe themselves vegetarians. Maybe you're listening
along and you're saying, well, I don't participate in this
because I'm vegan or vegetarian. I don't know. If you
pay taxes, you are supporting this industry and will you know,
will show you how momentarily we've also got We've also
(19:05):
got a ton of people listening today. A lot of
us are listening, maybe in a meat packing plant, maybe
making food in the kitchen, you know, and breaking out
some ribs you were excited about, or something like, I'm
probably I'm going to try to cook some ribs.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I've always I've always got a.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Weird food project going on. But it's this is at
every level of American society. And maybe it's when we're
when we're exploring how this came about and what it means. Uh,
maybe it's best to propose a couple of factors and
then see which one is the primary driver or if
(19:40):
they all work together. First, geography, it's crazy, you know,
you don't know what you've got till it's gone. As
Joni Mitchell said, I think that was Joni Mitchell, right, Yeah,
as Jooni Mitchell said, Big Yellow Taxi, good song holds up.
The US has this tremendous abundance of natural resource. We
(20:00):
have a lot of space, there's a lot going on
between the East and West coast, and you may not
hear about it, but it's a very productive part of
the world. It's easy to grow food pretty cheaply here,
amber waves of grain and so on. But that alone
can't be the entire answer, because there are other parts
of the world that are you know, that are so
(20:22):
called bread baskets, or that are hubs of a cattle industry.
So what makes the US a little bit different?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I would say we have to.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Consider four basic things. Subsidies, lobbying, corruption, and security.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Hmmm. That makes a lot of sense because most of
the larger companies, even some small companies that are involved
in any way in the meat business, including these the
big old meat packers, like I guess the Tysons of
the world, they're represented by one or more of these
powerful meat trades. You've probably heard of this, we've we've
(21:05):
spoken about it a little bit before. But you know,
you can think of these as lobbying organizations essentially, groups
that are in they exist entirely to prop up one
or more meat product, like big pork. Essentially, this kind
of thing really exists. There's one called the American Meat
(21:27):
Institute or the National Meat Association, the National Cattleman's Beef Association.
These are powerful groups and a lot of them have
very strong voices in, you know, decision making heads of
Washington because a lot of these groups essentially represent workers
(21:48):
who are voters. And that's that's why it's there, that's
why it's so powerful.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Well, yeah, what do you do.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
You want to be that congress person who has to
go back to your constituents and say, hey, I approved
some new regulations that may be better for consumers, but
they are going to be much more expensive for the
companies that employ you. And that kind of stuff rolls downhill.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah. It's a convoluted process making sure meat is affordable
enough to be consumed at levels that are high enough
so that you have to continue producing. And so everybody
has jobs and you know, all like it's so it's
so complicated when you get into it. But these groups,
these lobbying groups, are making sure everything is functioning at
(22:39):
least to the best that they can make it.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, so think about salmonella scares, right, think about bullas scares,
things like that. This is where some of these groups
come into play, and they've been accused in the past
of pressuring members of Congress to stifle or hold back
(23:03):
regulatory moves. So they push against expensive safety standards and regulations,
but they also work continually to keep meat appearing very
inexpensive at your local store. There's a continued drive for efficiency.
It's kind of weird, right that chicken sells for less
than two dollars a pound. That's cheaper than peanuts in a.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Lot of parts of the world.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
So there's another thing here, another entity that often gets
painted as the villain, and that is government action, the
factory farm lobby. You'll hear it called. The argument is
they secure these huge handouts, and these handouts suppress the
true cost of meat. So when we say handouts, we're
(23:52):
not just talking about direct farm subsidies, which are a
real thing, right, and they're an important thing economically. We're
also talking about some indirects, some things you might not
be as aware of if you're outside of the industry.
Has someone made too much chicken or too much mutton
or beef or what have you, Well, there may be
(24:12):
a buyback program for excess animal products. There may be
programs that subsidize the promotion of meat.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
There may be loans.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That are subsidized over time on much more favorable terms
than any loan you or I could ever get.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah, it's not going to happen. And in the end,
the US spends around thirty eight billion dollars every year
to subsidize the food that is produced here. And that's
all of it, So everything from peanuts to pigs, So
thirty eight billion dollars, and almost all of it goes
(24:51):
to meat, or the vast majority of it goes to meat.
Think about this, Zero point zero four percent of that
thirty eight billion goes to subsidize fruits vegetables. That's seventeen
million out of thirty eight billion that goes to fruits
and vegetables.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
That's why you'll hear people sometimes argue that eating a
meatless diet is more expensive than eating an omnivorous diet.
That's not entirely true.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
It really depends on what you could what you do
with it.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I have one friend who's a lifelong vegetarian associate and
refers to himself as a French fi vegetarian because he
is a very unhealthy person, and he will you know,
it's for him, it's rice, beans and fries.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Oh, that's awesome. But also just think about this when
we're talking about that seventeen million for subsidizing fruits and vegetables,
think about the last time you visited, you know, any
grocery store or something. A lot of the produce that
you're going to find those fruits and vegetables come from
other countries, from Chile, from just anywhere, across a lot
(26:01):
of a lot, yeah, a lot of Latin America, a
lot of South America. And you know that's one of
the reasons that it's different there rather than subsidizing money,
because you're talking about imports.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Then yeah, very good point met. That is a very
good point here. So that's maybe that's not entirely our answer.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Though.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
If the government is doing this and the lobbies or
work or the trade industries working with the government hand
in hand, that's something that happens at a lot across
a lot of industries. It happens in the tech industry, right,
Maybe a more compelling explanation, maybe another piece of the
puzzle is that meat is cheap because it is so
(26:44):
ruthlessly efficient to produce.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
In a lot of.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Ways, this sounds absurd right at first, Blush, because all
sorts of activists have talked about the inefficiency of animal
agriculture and have raised very good points, like, if you
think about it, cattle grown for beef are it's tremendously
inefficient from a chloric intake perspective, a US cow takes
(27:09):
about sixteen pounds of water for each pound of weight
it gains. And of course, you know, admittedly cattle are
very very expensive part of this puzzle, but they're also
a smaller piece when you consider what people are eating,
because a lot of people are eating chicken because it
(27:31):
is so so cheap.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Right, yeah, that's correct. So let's take a look at
broiler chickens like it's it's a chicken to be eaten.
And there are lots of companies that have been working
out there for a long time to figure out how
to make chickens bigger, how to make them grow faster,
and really just increase efficiency all around. When you're talking
about a single chicken that then gets sold at grown
(27:54):
and sold and right now you only need two point
four pounds of feed to produce a pound of usable
chicken meat. Now, if you compare that to a cow,
I mean it's something insane, like a like twenty four
kilograms of feed that are required to make a single
(28:18):
unit of beef. It's crazy, but that just that makes
a lot of sense. It's cheaper to get one chicken
out there, and one chicken is a substantial amount of
meat when you think about how large chickens are, especially
in the United States, when you're when you're looking at
these modified versions.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
These blade runner chickens.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, it's it's absolutely nuts. Also, what
are corn nuts? This has bothered me for a long time.
Are they just are they like puffed corn?
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Is that what it is?
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, it's it's it's corn, right, it's hardened corn for
your pleasure.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
We've got a you know, we've also got to do
an episode on corn at some point, because it is
odd for people outside of the US to travel here
and realize corn is in everything in one form or another. Right,
corn syrup, when's the last time you ate some mean
that didn't have corn syrup in it? As the last
day you went without encountering corn syrup?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
When's the last day that I recognized that corn syrup
was a part of whatever it was that I was eating.
It's been a long time, it's been a long time,
which just.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Sort of accepted it.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
You're right, it's it is ubiquitous, but it's it's often
you know said that these subsidies are a huge part
of what drives down the sticker price of meat. But
there are also exceptions to regulations. So critics allege that
if the US government required some of these very large
(29:51):
scale operations to treat their waste appropriately the way that
municipalities are bound to do by law, then this would
cost the industry and estimated eighty to twenty billion dollars
a year. Guess where that cost would end up being recouped.
It would be if you buy meat. It would be
(30:13):
carried on to the consumer. So that leads us to
the question how much should this stuff actually cost? We'll
tell you after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And we're back. Now. If you listen to the show often,
you know that we cover the concept of hidden costs
within any given action or industry. We've done it all
the time, and those hidden costs exist everywhere in the
meat production machine. According to one David Simon. This is
(30:55):
the author of Metonomics, not David Simon, the creator of
the wire and other thing.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Right, different Davids, Okay, not everybody can.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Not one person could be that good at so many things.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Okay, Okay, So David Simon, he's the author of Meatanomics,
and he has found or he believes he has found
the answer to this question. These hidden costs are things
that everyone collectively will be paying for in the long run,
even though where we have relatively affordable meat, especially in
(31:28):
the United States. And he's looking at some pretty huge
numbers here in hidden costs.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Animal food producers, according to Simon, impose somewhere around four
hundred and fourteen billion dollars worth in hidden costs on
American society every single year. To be completely transparent. Before
we see how he defines that. David Simon is a
(31:57):
person who has a has a right agenda. Yeah, he's
partisan in this regard because he wants the same restrictions
that have been applied to tobacco to one day be
applied to meat. So he's definitely got a strong position here.
Here's how he breaks it down. He says, when we
(32:18):
think of hidden costs, we need to think of bills
for healthcare, those subsidies, the environmental damage involved, and other
items related to producing and consuming meat and dairy animal
food production, from his perspective, now surpasses both the transportation
industry and electricity generation as the greatest source of greenhouse gas.
(32:41):
So if we put it there's if we put it
in the old loaf of bread, jug of milk big
mac index we get, we can get a more concrete
sense of this. According to him, if we included all
the hidden expenses that the meat industry offloads onto society
(33:04):
in this price of a single big Mac, it wouldn't
be five dollars anymore. It would be thirteen dollars, which
means that every time a fast food place sells any
kind of sandwich in the big Mac example, if they're
selling a five dollars big mac to you, you are
at some point, in some way paying another eight dollars
in hidden cost. And it's easy to miss that.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Oh sure, absolutely. I would have to just point out
that the meat production industry is the transportation industry. And
when you think about how far the end of product
has to travel, how far all of the other goods
have to travel in order to produce. God, it's weird
to say produce and grow the cows, but to have
(33:49):
a cow become alive and then live long enough and
create enough mass for it to be a sellable product.
There's all kinds of transportation costs involved there, but yeah, no,
it's it's it's an interesting point that David Simon place
is there. If you imagine, if you imagine going out
(34:10):
to eat or just buying buying food at the store,
if you imagine your beef was another, god, another eight
dollars for that food. I can't imagine being able to
afford it.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Yeah, not every day, because.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
We eat every day, most of us. We try very
hard to.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
But good god.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Well, yeah, and there's there's another aspect to this too.
We see other countries taking a different tact, and often
their countries that import food, so it's already going to
be more expensive, but they also levy tariffs on different things, right,
so the other governments have tried to intervene in some
(34:54):
way to to address what they see as the hidden cost.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
But what I love about the fantastic point you make
with the how did you say it was the meat
industry is the transport industry. I think that's brilliant, especially
if you look at just the way that chicken may
be transported for processing across the Pacific it may be
(35:21):
grown here, sent to another country for processing, sent back here.
Those chicken wings may have seen more of the world
than a very horrible and enjoyable way than we ever will.
It's something that I think bears consideration. And at this point,
I think what we've done is this is just part
(35:44):
one of US series. We wanted to establish some of
the hidden costs to the meat industry, but we need
a disclaimer at the end. This is not some hit
piece on farmers or some sort of propaganda about the
benefits of being vegetarian. There are benefits to be vegetarian,
but Matt and Mission Control and I are not vegetarian.
(36:07):
So we're not going to criticize that lifestyle. But we're
also going to be honest. We are omnivorous. But there's
another thing about the livestock industry. It is mission critical
for the US economy right now. So many people do
this job. It's a job, it's a career, So you
(36:29):
can't just turn off the faucet. It would be economically disastrous.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
And then there's the part about alternative meats.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Have you ever had an impossible burger?
Speaker 3 (36:39):
I have, yeah, and I very much enjoyed it, but
it's not the same, and it's I don't know when
it will be the same, the same experience, the same
joy that you get for some reason, because our childhoods
were filled with I think seventy nine cents burgers or
however much they were at the time. They're so cheap,
(37:02):
Oh my god, they were cheap. But thankfully, across the
world there's all kinds of research and companies that are
focusing on alternatives to meat, ways to get protein that
we need, you know, for our human bodies to grow.
But the problem is it's not affordable right now. It's
(37:22):
just not affordable. However, there are alternatives, you know, that
would fall in the vegetarian category that can afford to
you know, it can give you the protein that you
need that don't cost as much as meat. But it's
not the same experience. It's not the same thing as
having some kind of alternative meat.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, some kind of meat like substitute. It's true, and
it's not it's not because those things are super fancy
or super crazy expensive so much as it is that
traditional meat is super super absurdly cheap. That's that's the
real hurdle there. Then, it's a strange system. You know,
(38:04):
farmers are some of the hardest working people in this
entire country, and you hear about those subsidies all the time,
But a lot of farmers don't get those subsidies and
don't get the things you hear people complaining about. In
the last fifteen years, something like two thirds of American
farmers didn't get didn't get a penny from direct subsidies
(38:27):
that were worth over one hundred billion dollars. Those funds
mainly go to big corporations, and that subsidy money spurs
the growth of these factory farms, which can be kind
of bad for local economies because they employ fewer workers
per animal than regular farms, and they buy most of
their supplies outside of the local area the local economy,
(38:49):
or they have control over multiple related industries, right like
now I own the trucks, now I own the grain,
Now I own the cattle.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, Oh, for sure, I'm reminded of our whole episode
on farm subsidies. Yes, we talked about a lot of that,
and I would recommend you listening to it if you
have a chance and you're interested in that stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, yeah, because it's the subsidies themselves become an industry,
you know. And right now eighty percent of this country's
beef industry is controlled by just four companies JBS, Smithfield, Cargill,
and Tyson. They have been accused of price fixing and
(39:28):
numerous times throughout recent history in a way that doesn't
benefit anybody on the beginning and end of the equation.
The idea is they'll keep live cattle prices low and
try to make beef prices higher, just a.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Little bit at a time.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
And this is at the expense of the American farmer
on one side, the American consumer on the other. And
there's a lot of litigation about it, but it's one
of those things that maybe isn't isn't the sexiest headline.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Well, think about what that means. They're working to make
sure the cows, the cattle are cheap. So when that
farmer who has put in all the effort, you know,
if it's not one of these giant companies and factory farms,
even if it's a small farm that's been purchased by
a giant company like a Tyson or Smithfield or something
(40:25):
like that, just by having the end product that that
farmer creates a cow that is ready for slaughter and
reducing it way down. It just means it's harder and
harder for that farmer to make a profit and all
of the massive expenses that are required to having and
maintaining a farm. It's just I don't know, man, it's
(40:48):
weird to think that that's what they're doing to then
keep it super cheap on the end user side. I
don't know, but it makes sense. I mean, it makes sense.
It's all about mass scale in those.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Instances, It's an economy of scale for sure. It also
becomes a matter of sustainability. How long can this keep going,
especially as we hurtle toward a planet where people are
more and more likely to be fighting over a potable
water like on a large scale.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Where are we going to get the water for this.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Kind of industry in the future, And again, how cheap
should it be? How many backroom deals happen between that
cow out there grazing in a field and the hamburger
that you've made or are eating. We have a lot
more to cover in the secrets of the livestock industry.
(41:43):
There are a couple of things, Matt that you and
I mentioned that are their own episodes. I would say
corn probably counts in the livestock industry because so much
of it is involved there. We're going to cover more
of this in the future. In the meantime, we want
to hear from you. Do you think that there is
(42:04):
a way for meat prices to more accurately reflect these
hidden costs we've described? Should they reflect those hidden costs?
Would you buy them?
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I mean, I'm gonna be honest. I love a good steak.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
I have no idea how much it would actually it
should actually cost, but it probably shouldn't be the price
it's at now.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, that's the big question that we want to ask you.
If beef did cost what it should, could you afford it?
Would you splurge on it for a special occasion or something,
or would you just stop eating it all together. We'd
love to know how you would handle it. You can
find us everywhere. We're on social media. You can find
(42:46):
us on Twitter and Facebook. We're at Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram.
We are a conspiracy Stuff show. If you don't want
to do that, you should head on over to this
thing we like to call Here's where it gets crazy, right.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
That's our Facebook page where you can out with our
favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners. If you
don't care for Facebook, if that doesn't quite wrestle your cattle,
then you can haul us directly one eight three three
st d WYTK. There are three minutes. They belong to
(43:18):
you and no one else. Give us new ideas for
topics you think your fellow conspiracy realist will enjoy ed,
or you know, just tell us what's on your mind.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Come with a cool nickname. It's up to you.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
It's really your three minutes. All that we ask is
let us know if it's okay to use your name
and or voice on the air, And if you don't
particularly care for that mode of communication, there's one more
way that you can always get in touch with us,
regardless of the time, regardless of the place, regardless of
the space, as our good old fashioned email address where
(43:52):
we are conspiracyantiheartradio dot com.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
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