Grubstakers - Episode 218: Factory Farming feat. Andrew Crowley

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Journalist for the Emmons County Record Andrew Crowley jumps in to talk about factory farming during the Coronavirus and in general. Follow Andrew on twitter at @FugaziTruther.

We find people that basically can't make enough to eat before they go into the fields. I don't believe that. I think that you're looking at other places that are not Central Romana. People actually who focus on and who like getting an orgasm never get one. Pull up your socks and figure out what you're going to do. Any chance we'll ever get to be a complete red state? Oh, yeah. Well, the future's always uncertain. But more uncertain now.

And listen, Blue Ivy is six years old. Beyonce's days, she tried to outbid me on a painting. Everybody in Atlanta right now at the Louis Vuitton store, if you're black, don't go to Louis Vuitton today. In five, four, three, two today in five that's why you need to take a meeting with Kanye West Bernard Arnault hello and welcome to grubstakers the podcast about billionaires and corruption I'm Andy Palmer I'm Yogi Paywall I'm Steve Jeffers and I'm Sean P McCarthy and joining us today is the editor of the Emmons County Record, Andrew Crowley.

Hello. Thanks for having me, guys. Of course. So today we're going to be continuing what we've been doing for this month of February, which is talking about animals and sort of the business of animals. And for this particular episode, we're going to be focusing on basically the meat industry, how it's become something of a cartel and how the business of it works. And so we're having Andrew Crowley on because he wrote this really good article, Local Cattle Industry Feels Pain from Pandemic, that both looked into kind of local farmers or local, I guess, cattle ranchers and sort of what they're experiencing and also what they're up against, which is, as you found, basically a cartel of three companies, three major companies that control the prices in meat producing. So part of my job, I'm the editor of the Emmons County Tribune, and I also sometimes contribute articles to another publication owned by the same ownership group.

The guy who owns us is named Mullen, which that the museum I took the job. But my editor down there, she had a couple of stories about COVID she wanted to have written. And she asked me if I wanted to do one on the cattle industry or I think the pork industry or maybe another industry that important. Other industry impacted by not the grain, but it was industries impacted by COVID. So she gave me some contacts. And Herman Schumacher was the bulk of my piece. And he founded this group for independent cattle ranchers called RCAF USA. I think it was founded in the 90s. He was doing what I did research on the article to learn more about those big corporations that kind of had the monopoly.

I dug into a little bit his history of advocacy for cattle ranchers. And there are other cattle ranching organizations, but they're a little bit more conservative. This one is a little bit more left-leaning, which, you know, it's kind of an anomaly from what I got talking to him. The cattle ranching industry seems to be, you know, on the more conservative end of things. Makes sense. And those companies that you mentioned in the article

are the ones that I guess ranchers have said are, are controlling, um, the prices of, uh, cattle that they sell, but also kind of playing with supply and demand, um,

to kind of, uh, tweak the prices. Could you maybe go into like sort of the, the process of what it is that these companies are doing? And then we can, uh, after that,

maybe go into some of the weird details that we've found about these companies are doing. And then we can, after that, maybe go into some of the weird details that we've found about these companies. Sure. So essentially, these major companies, they basically control the flow of cattle into slaughterhouses and such. They have some of their own feedlots and things, and they kind of set the prices of cattle. And this was a problem even beforehand, doing the research. I think within the last three or four years, there was an article in the WAPO or New York

Times or some other major newspaper or media outlet where they were kind of busted for price fixing. And as I told Andy, it kind of reminded me of the episode of King of the Hill where the propane sellers kind of form a syndicate and do price fixing. These cattle ranchers, their hands are kind of tied because they don't own the means of production to process their animals. So they're really at the mercy of these major meat packing plants in terms of the price they get for cattle. And as we've seen with basically every aspect of society,

these cracks in the system, these abuses you know, abuses of power and disparities in the dynamic between producers and business were only exaggerated by the pandemic. As you guys have probably read, a lot of meatpacking plants, you know, COVID swung through that, like the site of the Grim Reaper. And a lot of places had to have reduced staff, which meant less people were able to process animals, which meant a backlog of animals. In the case of the pig industry, they ended up having to destroy animals

because they weren't able to get them off the slaughter. And it was, you know, they'd rather take that loss than pay the cost of feeding the animals. And those animals were turned into fertilizer. But with the cattle industry, they were fortunate and spared from that. But on the flip side, like, normally they might sell animals, I think, like, at maybe a certain weight limit, like 1,500 pounds. And some of these steer were coming in at, like, 1,800 pounds higher.

And in grocery stores, early in the pandemic, there was a real, because of the effects of slaughterhouses, there was less meat available to purchase. And then a lot of producers saw less profit because the price for cattle fell. And people at supermarkets were paying a premium for beef. They basically get like the companies use the Corona as an excuse to mess with artificial supply and demand.

For our audience. That episode is a season 10, episode 10. Hank fixes everything where there's a propane collusion between Thatherton, Strickland, and a few others. I think in 2020, there's like,ane collusion between Satherton, Strickland, and a few others. I think in 2020, there's like

you were saying, there's a huge bottleneck of production for the slaughterhouses and the processing and packaging because they can't have people in close proximity, etc. There's like a 20% price increase for food

generally, but especially meat. Yeah, correct. And from talking to – I'm relatively new to the area. I just moved and took the job in October of last year. So I'm still trying to get the lay of the land and fucking to my coworkers. This is purely anecdotal, but they noticed kind of an increase in the price of even like ground beef over the summer due to the bottleneck. So like the ranchers, if I understand what the supply chain view of what happened, like, I mean, the ranchers were like probably actually pretty happy about the price increase, but they couldn't get enough. They didn't get enough buyers because they're like we can't process any of this

like there's just not enough people in order to do the work see that's where they actually saw like the price of the cattle the uh went down uh uh which is weird because of the uh uh like so like basically the uh these the big corporations kind of uh cut the ranchers out of you know increased profits so that they were able to limit the supply of beef and jack up the price, but the ranchers didn't benefit from that. They actually saw the price of cattle falling. They ended up losing money on the animals on the market.

Okay, so absent that sort of oligopolistic control, the ranchers would have been pretty happy about the situation, but they were cut out. Correct. It would have been a different story if the ranchers... Because these are all independent guys.

They don't have the means of these large corporations, but they had their own meat packing and processing plants. They would have been singing a different tune. They would have seen less of a loss because they would have made that on the back end something they needed at a higher price.

I see. And we're referring to these corporations and to the beef cartel. I wanted to be more specific. We're referring to, I believe, primarily Tyson, JBS, and Cargill. And just according to the Rainforest Action Network, those three control more than 70% of the processing of all U.S. beef. And so those are the good guys, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. The gang of beef, beef pork and yawn so I've done a little digging on these companies and each one I think we should investigate more maybe on their individual episodes but we can give like a little overview of them so is there

anyone that you guys want to hear about first let's do cargill and do cargill yeah all right let's go to cargill so cargill our first company is uh owned by the fourth richest family in the united states on the forbes list the family net worth is 47 billion jeez it was started uh by william William Wallace Cargill as an Iowa grain storage business in 1865. And after his death, his son-in-law, John McMillan, put the company on firm financial footing, getting rid of debts and such.

And that led to the family often being referred to as the Cargill-McMillan family. And members of both families are now actually on the board at Cargill. It's also a privately owned company. It's not publicly traded. And so it's hard to get a lot of information about them. The family also has a reputation of being very secretive. In 2019, however, this NGO named Mighty Earth released a 56-page report on Cargill. And the chair of Mighty Earth and the founder of it

is former U.S. Congressman Henry A. Waxman, who, as far as I can tell, was kind of a mediocre congressman, but he named them the worst company in the world. And if you... You know what you have to do to get a democratic congressperson to say that about you like look not even i would take money from these people the uh the 56 page document which is quite quite the thing it has a um what they call a timeline of bad behavior that starts in 2000 um the first thing they have is a deadly Listeria outbreak

where sliced turkey from Cargill was the source of a 10-state outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes, pathogenic bacteria. And the company had to recall 16 million pounds of turkey. The second thing they list, also from 2000, is fecal contamination, where Cargill provided meat to Sizzler restaurants

linked to an outbreak of E. coli illness that killed a three-year-old and sickened 140 others. But don't let that discourage you from taking your date to Sizzler's this Valentine's Day. That actually improved the quality of their food. They could have sold it as the Sizzler diet. Kind of like how they used to do it in the early 20th century, maybe late 19th century.

They used to sell tapeworms as a dieting tool. Yeah. Sizzler's, God, I remember trying trying their pizza and it's the most disgusting thing I ever had. And I was like 10 when all pizza is good. Sure. Sure. Sizzler did pizza. Oh, yeah.

It's a buffet style thing. thing um in 2001 uh had 254 000 pounds of cargill meat was potentially uh or was tested positive for e coli uh in 2002 they killed 50 000 fish by illegally dumping hog manure at a facility near martinsburg missouri wow they also had a salmonella outbreak causing one fatality and 47 illnesses linked to their ground beef. In 2003, they were caught union busting in Ohio after they hired a replacement worker during a salt miner strike

and tutored him on union decertification and violation of federal labor law. In 2004, more than 60 million gallons of toxic waste were dumped by a fertilizer plant in Florida into a creek that feeds into Tampa Bay. And also in 2004, they dumped another 65 billion gallons of acid uh acidic wastewater into tampa bay so in 2004 they just did everything they could to pollute tampa bay uh they also in 2004 had corn syrup price fixing in 2005 uh they were found in violation for forced child labor um big and coca beans uh also in 2005 uh they were caught using uzbeki

slavery at a literal cotton plantation uh in 2006 they killed more fish it just says here more dead fish in the document uh they uh violated water pollution laws spilling 218,000 gallons of toxic brine into the marshes along San Francisco Bay near Fremont, California. Now I'm not totally against that, like driving down property values in San Francisco. There, there are more ecologically friendly ways to do that.

Like someone could just fire a gun at night. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. They're big LA Dodgers fans. They just wanted to teach those San Francisco Giants a lesson. Let's see. 2005, also poultry.

Let's see. It poisoned some lakes and streams in Oklahoma in 2007. More E. coli, 2009, salmonella. And then it keeps going. Let's see, 2012, there was some child labor. Most of these are salmonella. Oh, there was a tax evasion thing in 2011. Illegal land grabbing in Colombia in 2013 and 2014.

More child labor. In 2017, they concealed huge markups. 2018, child slavery. And they also colluded to fix the price. And this is very 2000s America. They colluded to fix the price of high fructose corn syrup. Oh, not my high fructose corn syrup, you bastards. And for our listeners, some of what Andy's mentioning,

we will be covering on our worldwide fund for nature, our WWF series that we'll be putting out shortly as well. So although we won't go in depth into every scandal Cargill has, some of them will be covered on our WWF episodes. It is worth taking a quick pause on the high fructose corn syrup because as we've talked about previously, the reason it's so ubiquitous in the United States is because we have all these tariffs and such

to protect sugar growers. So Americans pay a lot more for real cane sugar than most anyone else in the world. But so high fructose corn syrup fills that gap uh but it's also terrible for you in every single respect and these these guys were like okay so not only do they not have real cane sugar let's just make it this crap just as expensive as real cane sugar exactly so andrew for you for you quick question I had was that, like, before you did this article and these few interviews you sent us on factory farming, what was your perception of the whole shebang going into it? You know, as a Marxist, I'm definitely skeptical of any corporation or, you know, any small business. I think if you're a capitalist or a business owner of any sort,

you're just going to be different from your workers. And in this country, unless business is reined in or just made nationalized, they're going to find ways to skirt around laws. It's like on The Simpsons in March vs. the Monorail, like when Burns and Smithers dump the nuclear waste in the trees, you know, that seems cartoonish, but, you know, honestly, that just seems like something that happens in the United States, you know. Right.

They're always game to find a way to do things more cheaply, fuck whoever, you know, gets hurt by the sludge or what a waste or whatever. My perception is not good, but I didn't know that I was unaware of the monopoly on lead production. I knew Tyson and some of the other major producers, but I didn't quite realize that they had such a stranglehold on it. Well, speaking of some of the other producers, which one do you guys want to do next, Tyson or JBS?

Tyson. Tyson? All right. So Tyson is... Oh, yeah. I did just want to make one more observation about Cargill before we moved on. You said this is one of the richest families in the entire world, and I'm starting to realize that there might be some sort of correlation

between richest families and lowest wages in their companies. There have definitely been multiple instances of this, and I'm starting to think the two things may be linked. Sean, the labor theory of value is a fallacy that has been disproven time and again. And one other stat from the Rainforest Action Network just about Cargill to put

this in perspective, their annual revenues are over $119 billion US dollars, which is apparently bigger than the GDP of 70% of the world's countries. Wow. Well, good news, as you might have seen, soon companies will be able to

start their own countries. That's right. In Nevada. Or is it anywhere? It might have been just in Nevada, but I can see them expanding. It'll be less like that Mr. Show sketch where David Cross' character starts his own country, more like Snow Crash or cyberpunk type stuff.

What a great future we're in store for. Now look, I'm the sheriff of this here Tesla town. And Elon Musk has personally given me a license to kill. So I suggest you go turn around and get out of these hundred square miles. Well, we're the rebel revolutionaries of Amazon, and we're here to take you out,

Tesla town. Oh my god. Now, you're driving a hybrid Honda Accord. This is a Tesla country, so we're going to have to expropriate your vehicle and lock you up. This is going to be a gigafactory in Nevada or something that has its own government. And they just issue money with Elon on it. Are they going to make everyone in the Tesla town drive their own Tesla,

but because they're only Teslas, the workers can afford they just explode on the regular? Sure. They're going to use broken Tesla frames. They'll drive Flintstone-type cars. They're at an electric service

station and they go, afford Mach-E? We don't serve your kind around here. The kids in the town will be, they'll work the charging stations like, you know, pump jockeys, work for tips. They'll hop on a giant hamster wheel to spin, charge the vehicles. Yes. In Oregon, actually, you can't jump on your own hamster wheel to spin to charge the vehicles.

Yes. In Oregon, actually, you can't jump on your own hamster wheel. You have to have someone at the gas station. Yep. And New Jersey. Don't forget about that. And New Jersey. I think they might have changed that law, actually. No, no. It's true in New Jersey as well, yeah. So,

Tyson Foods. actually. No, no, it's true in New Jersey as well, yeah. So, Tyson Foods. Started by John W. Tyson, passed on to his son, Donald J. Tyson, currently owned by John H. Tyson. He was born September 5th, 1953 in Springdale, Arkansas,

and has a net worth of $2.3 billion as of April 2019. His company is known a little bit for food and a lot for price fixing. In 2016, Tyson was sued by Maplevale Farms, which is a food service

firm from upstate New York. And they were also sued by other poultry producers and a class action lawsuit for alleged price fixing, uh, Cisco and us foods also joined in. Um, according to the, uh, New York times, Maplevale claims that the chicken production companies led by Tyson and pilgrims made coordinated production cuts in 2008, 2010, and 2011, destroying flocks of breeder hens responsible for producing eggs and causing the price of broiler chickens to significantly increase.

Broiler chickens are, by the way, I guess that's the name for chickens that are set for slaughter. Andy, could I just stop you for a minute? I've been listening to lectures by an economist named Thomas Sowell, and he says that what you're describing is actually impossible. Businesses never act in cartel together, and one would always undermine the cartel and underprice the other. So I do not think what you are describing is physically possible right now. So apparently the company is coordinated using a subscription data service called Agristats. And actually in the New York Times article, someone was like, these companies are not behaving rationally. It was like someone who is,

it's like, yes, they're behaving very rationally. It's in their interest to collude. But the chicken companies would share unusually detailed information with this service, Agristats, and it would have everything from the age of breeder flocks to monthly operating profits. And the data was technically anonymous, but so specific that it allowed other companies

to easily figure out whose data it was. And then they would coordinate their own, quote, stock reduction accordingly. Seems like the role of academic economists in the United States is to react to real- world events like Luke reacts to Darth Vader telling him that he's his father. No, that's not true. That's impossible. No.

It's like, as Noam Chomsky said, that there's two schools of economics, one about the theory and one about how it actually works. Which makes me picture like in one room at a university, there's like an economist explaining to students why collusion is not economically possible. Whereas in a room next door, there's like a business school like class where they're just explaining how to do it. Yeah.

So the DOJ got involved. They stepped in and blocked discovery from the lawsuit, quote, pending an investigation. And in 2019, Tyson Foots announced that it would be cooperating with the Justice Department on their investigation of price fixing.

And Tyson agreed under the Department of Justice's, quote, corporate leniency program, which according to the Department of Justice's own website, is described as the antitrust division's leniency program is the most important investigative tool for detecting cartel activity. Corporations and individuals who report their cartel activity and cooperate with the division's investigation of the cartel reported can avoid criminal conviction fines and prison sentences if they meet the requirements of the program so it's just a program where if you get caught in a cartel you

say okay we'll tell you how we did this and then oh it's not like a whistle i thought it sounded like for a minute like it was a whistleblower protection thing is that not exactly it's like if you get caught and you cooperate then it's easier to not get charges against you than it would be in other industries it looks like it's framed as a whistleblower thing but in practice it looks like it's just used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for corporations. I mean, I see nothing wrong with that. I don't know why we don't have more of those

all around the corporate world. Yeah, the DOJ, they have these leniency programs in every crime, right? Like drug enforcement, terrorism, right? Oh, yeah. They also have this in the GameStop price fixing industry.

Exactly. For the SEC. This clause in the DOJ is informally known as the Boys Will Be Boys Act. Yes. Indeed. I don't know if you... Go ahead. I don't know if you were about

to get to it, Andy, but also Tyson, just from Arkansas, has some pretty extensive links to the Clinton crime family. I believe Hillary sat on the board, if I'm not totally mistaken. That chick? Yes. They were going to have Bill sit on the board,

but actually they can't use male politicians, and so he was immediately killed. They put him on this device that cuts his head off. It's very cruel, but they can only use female politicians on the board at Tyson. That's why Bill speaks like that. Oh, this is OG Clinton stuff. Oh yeah.

From 78, 79. There's a whole Wikipedia page on the Hillary Clinton cattle futures controversy. Hell yes. See, this is how it starts see this is how it starts this is how it starts you start by looking at hillary clinton cattle futures and then suddenly you're looking at the autopsy for vince foster suddenly you're like you've got an entire map of the parking lot uh the crime scene, which cars were parked where, where his body was discovered. This is all you can talk to about your

friends. What's that game where you have like, they put you on a random wiki page and you're supposed to get to another one? Wikipedia racing? Something like that. GeoGuessr maybe?

It's like the same concept. Right. If the destination was Clinton cattle price fixing or something, it'd just be trivial easy to get there for most places. Say what you will about

Vince Foster. They got, they got a good kind of hanger stake off of him. So, you know, the Clintons really made him into something. Let's see how quickly I can get to Vince Foster. I'm on white water now. Andy, are you Wikipedia racing during the show?

Oh, hey. Two clicks to suicide of Vince Foster. Look, you might think it's cruel what happened to Vince Foster, but what, are you going to eat Impossible Burgers the rest of your life? Are you going to have celery instead of real beef? I don't think so. I got to save this page because it's very clearly ground zero for what I'm sure is a battle between Clinton truthers and Clinton supporters.

Just constant Wikipedia editing where like, you know, a segment will go in about someone who was found dead at a cattle ranch. And then a Clinton acolyte will remove it. And they'll fight in the talk section. Or they flag it as misleading. Yeah. Actually, it's unfair to blame Hillary for cattle mutilations. The Clinton crime family only mutilates humans. But it's something that we've mentioned briefly previously,

but unsurprisingly, the Clintons, their rise in local Arkansas politics, they had to make nice with powerful businesses in Arkansas, which includes Tyson. And then later on, they were sort of paid back with welfare reform. We've also briefly mentioned this. We'll hopefully explore it more in future. But because of welfare reform, when a lot of people were thrown off the welfare rolls,

a lot of these really horrible major corporations like Tyson that pay extremely low wages for extremely dangerous jobs were able to essentially recruit people who were formerly on welfare who just didn't have a choice. Like they would go to these welfare recruitment fairs. And if you're going to be a problem, if you're going to try to form a union,

they're going to throw you out on your ass because they have an entire extremely desperate, extremely poor labor pool that they can draw from. I think one of our hotel billionaires, we found him running one of those job things and playing up the advantages of welfare to work. He was also a major Clinton contributor. They got paid back for those cattle futures. That's why they agreed to take out Vince Foster. So do you guys want to talk JBS?

Let's do it jbs is uh the third company and uh it was started by jose batista sabrine ho uh no relation to the cuban batista uh government but well they, except a spiritual relation. Sure. They founded a small butcher shop in 1952 and grew by acquiring slaughterhouses in the region in Brazil where it was founded. Wesley and his brother Josley Batista took control in the 2000s,

leading to JBS's 2007 acquisition of U.S. pork and beef processor Swift & Co. for about $225 million. In 2017, Wesley was arrested as part of a large Brazilian bribery probe and reportedly held for six months. And then, according to Forbes, in May 2017, the brothers agreed to pay a $3.2 billion fine to Brazilian authorities to, quote, atone for their role in a large corruption scandal. So both brothers are worth $2.8 billion as of February 2001.

And, oh, Jean? Oh, I was going to say, you know, also Jose Bautista went on to be an all-star player for the toronto blue jays so that man had a very busy life to take that up so late in life so their operation uh came under scrutiny during operation car wash which was a Brazilian federal police investigation that was originally looking into money laundering. Eventually, they uncovered the bribes of associates in the Brazilian state-owned company Petrobras.

And later, they uncovered bribes to top government officials. And this included JBS bribing the president of the Brazilian parliament, Eduardo Cununha and when this came out cunha was pushing the impeachment of brazilian president dilma rousseff and in may 2017 joseley batista released a recording of dialogue behind between him and uh subsequent president michael temer And in the recording, Batista admits to paying bribes to Kuhnhoff for his silence. And when this was released by local news, there were a bunch of protests in Brazil and calls for Temer to resign, which he didn't. He served out the rest of what was originally dilma rusev's term right um and uh

two days after the recording was released jbs also admitted to paying bribes to michael temer dilma rusev and lula and a year later bolsonaro was elected president um as the fact that like after they were investigated for bribing Kunha, like after that, they admitted to bribing Lula. It seems a little bit fishy, especially with everything else going on with the election of Bolsonaro. And Lula, Rusev and Temer just before the recordings were released,

the Batista brothers sold $1 billion worth of their shares in JBS, knowing that the stock would tank right after that all came out. And so Josley was jailed in September 2017 and released on March 2018. Yeah, but there's no law that says you can't

sell a billion dollars worth of stock based on insider information, Andy. So I know Tyson Foods is trying to get into fake meat. And I would assume if they really are part of like a cartel, as it seems there's quite a bit of evidence to show for it in the real meat industry, what's stopping them from simply cornering the new emerging fake meat industry and like edging out some of like the upstart competitors like beyond meat or whatever and just like i um i'm like tentatively hopeful about fake meat catching on but we've had on other guests like uh Steve Hendy, who are super skeptical of it,

so I just don't know. But however that shakes out, I feel like it could easily turn into another cartel with Tyson Foods and Cargill running things. So what's the likelihood of that happening, I guess? Do you have any thoughts on that um but you know i think it's a good possibility uh uh you know like uh i remember uh seeing like some uh like you know other uh other variations on uh you know plant-based uh protein uh apart from

impossible and beyond it does seem like some of the bigger uh meat producers are trying to get in on that uh you know it's uh with any, they always want to have, you know, multiple revenue streams. And, like, you know, even if they're, like, in an industry that, you know, might be, you know, pushed out because of changes, you know, that basically it's evolve or die. I can see them doing that and be able to control it. I think it's a way of them hedging their bets like if people really, because I know more people are interested in vegetarianism, veganism. I can see them hedging their bets

if people turn on meat and want to buy less and less of it. Or if maybe governments maybe put restrictions on it. If a half-assed effort to combat climate change. less of it, you know, or if maybe governments maybe put restriction on it, if, you know, a half-assed effort to combat climate change. I mean, obviously, that's probably a factor in it, but it's, you know, kind of a futile

gesture if you're not, you know, changing your whole system of production and relationship with the Earth. But yeah, I think that's a good possibility and uh i think uh we're going to see uh more and more uh of it i mean we're seeing already seeing like national chains like del taco burger king uh i think taco bell's been incorporated uh i think some kfc locations have like a like a fake meat version of chicken uh and uh i and i think uh like the uh the vegetarian options have kind of improved i know like uh the big thing like with the impossible burgers they they make use of heme which kind of gives it it gives it more of a meat flavor to it but uh i don't know if that's

going to be a sustainable thing uh yeah i know there's definitely a cause for concern like uh that you know uh by getting it to taste more like meat you know it's uh about as healthy or worse than uh meat as i understand it but uh i will say that uh my experience with the plant-based stuff has been pretty good uh i've had the impossible whopper a couple times uh and. And I use like a plant-based protein. I made bolognese last year and it came out pretty well. So I think it's solid, but I'm not sure, you know, how sustainable it all is. I was thinking like either Tyson is seriously hedging this

and like they really do mean to get into the industry or they're just trying to raise the barriers to entry to eliminate competition so they can just go back to to regular meat stuff and keep fake feet fake fake meat as like a sideshow i can see them you know doing it both ways uh like kind of get like hedging their bet that way you know they keep out competitors but you know it really takes off then you know uh they're in the driver's seat and can take advantage of it, maybe draw out the price of fake meat, just like they did for the real deal.

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, Andrew, from what you mentioned there, it does seem like the franchise food corporations are taking notice of the vegetarian- vegetarian vegan crowd and accommodating to them as a consumer base but i don't know whether or not the meat corporations are going to figure out a way to shift production towards a meatless meat i always think like if i was tyson or cargo one of these people it would behoove me to think like oh maybe i should just make a meat that's like half meat half not like a hybrid to somehow appease people that are like all right i'm trying to not be a piece of shit that's always eating a dickload of meat well

that doesn't work yogi this you're not like a 50 vegetarian no of course like sure but look i don't believe in cruelty to animals i'm only gonna kill half a cow and that rounds down to zero cows yeah but i think that there's people that uh and my my question to you now andrew is that like you know if we torture cows where you you know you just cut off one of its legs while it's still alive and make that into a burger. But you're not killing it. So that's actually more humane. Yeah. Listen, veganism's hard. We need to develop a cow like the one from the restaurant

at the end of the universe that likes to be killed and doesn't mind being killed. That's going to be the key to our success. As wage our guilt, it'll be like the culinary form of the indulgences of the old Catholic Church. I want to say that maybe even some restaurants have items on the menu that are kind of, and I've seen some recipes that kind of, you know, do kind of a 50 50 blend of uh of the fake meat with

the real deal uh and i could see maybe somebody doing that as a kind of a jumping off point to kind of get a you know a feel for the meat like the fake meat see if they like it it's almost like uh it's kind of like detoxing i guess uh where you know slowly weaning yourself off rather than going cold turkey yeah right right yeah Yeah, that's my intent. Sean, I get that people that are vegetarian aren't going to be like, oh, it's only half meat, so it's not that bad. But I think that to get people that love pain in their food to get off that high horse,

that you'd need something along these lines. Also for context, the Sean and Yogi bickering is between a lifetime vegetarian and a lapsed vegetarian. Yes. I did. I started doing the impossible burgers and the impossible sausages again. And they're good. They're very close.

But then just recently for research for our animal month, I started Googling Monsanto glyphosate U.S. food supply. Right. And now I'm like, oh, great. There's no escape. No. You're just, if you're in America eating food, you're going to get cancer. And I want to say that maybe some of those pig meats, I think they might make use of palm oil. I know that's, you know, another sticky matter.

Yep. I'm saving animals by not eating meat and then you know your impossible burger is soaked in the ashes of poor orangutans who couldn't escape the forest fires or died of their habit being destroyed just

to fuel the palm oil love in this country oh yeah save a cow and slave a child I'm a love in this country. Oh, yeah. Save a cow and slave a child. I would be, as far as trade-offs go, I would be willing to eat food that was likely to give me cancer if it meant way fewer animals would be slaughtered, though. Overall.

Well, the nice thing, Steve, is you don't have to make a choice. Actually, both options come with the cancer. So, Andrew, rounding out a little bit of this episode, one of my final questions for you is that, like, you know, the phrase itself, seeing how the sausage is made, is sort of pulling back the curtain and unveiling the real process of how the meat is put together. So my question for you is, you know, why do you think most consumers of meat in the U.S.

are so blind to the, you know, outright corrupt practices of major meat conglomerates? Well, I think one thing that factors in is they're major conglomerates. They're able to, you know, use their PR division and the media to manufacture consent and, you know, kind of alive things. And I think part of it's

just kind of the way, you know, things are set up for us with these factory farms and such, you know, we're kind of divorced from our labor, divorced from, you know,

our food sources, which I think that's one factor really driving in the local food movements around the country and around the world. People want to be in more touch with what goes into the process. And I do think there is a tendency among Americans and other folks to kind of look the other way. As Phil Oaks saying, we're all links in a chain. And the old hobby horse, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but there might be ways to mitigate your impact in the world, but it's hard to do. I think people are just afraid, maybe not interested in examining their eating habits because they really

look into it. They might realize, yeah, I'm complicit in this. I'm not slaughtering all the animals, but I'm buying it so I help create the demand for it. I think that's one thing driving the local foods movement. These animals are

slaughtered, but they're cared after better. In theory, I'm sure there's small farms that don't do everything above the board, in theory you know the animals are you know cared for and you know not kept in awful uh conditions uh for their lives uh but yeah i i think it's also bad and then you know uh with like i mean look at how many hours everyone has to work you know like you know, with the wage not increasing.

You know, sometimes, you know, it's just easier to, you know, eat a burger that you picked up from McDonald's and, you know, watch CBS sitcom rather than, you know, wading to the weeds. And it's uncomfortable, you know, that not everyone is up to facing the reality. And so I kind of admire people who, you know, raise and slaughter their own animals and, you know, they know where their meat comes from. You know, they put in the sweat equity for that. And it's kind of more respectable than, you know, somebody who just buys stuff in the grocery store, you know, who might have other

signifiers of bulkness or being an ethical consumer. Right. You mentioned before we started recording here about, I don't know if it was a co-op or a local grocery store where they have a higher quality of meat products that are from local farms.

But the people working in the grocery store seem to have a different class than the people buying the product. Yeah, absolutely. It was, you know, like, you know, kind of artier, you know, Bahamian types, you know. And people like passionate about cuisine. You know, I had some great coworkers there, you know, taught me a lot about different cheeses, different dishes and stuff. You know, they're above minimum wage, but, you know, it's still not quite a living wage for some people unless you've been there for a number of years. My college roommate and then my roommate of the last two years, he's a manager of the managers he's a manager there and like one of the head butchers and he's uh he's making like 40 000 a year which you know it's uh not bad for indianapolis but it's still you know it could be hired to pay higher but uh

i got him reading uh marks and uh stuff and i've uh you put him on the path i think nice and yeah a lot of those people uh are you know, like one of them is like one of their regular customers is a local politician in Indiana. And, yeah, he's a Republican and, you know, kind of a jerk. And, you know, a lot of the other customers are, you know, liberal types where, you know, they'll have, you know, they sign to their front yard that a ubiquitous place like Portland, Brooklyn, you know, water is a right. We believe in science, you know, that type of thing. But, you know, basically the type of people who would be lampooned in love me, I'm a liberal. Liberal until it's inconvenient for them, essentially, I'd say.

I wanted to go back and highlight that phrase, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. I think it's very important for the listeners to hang on to in case somebody gives them a lecture about doing cocaine at a party. At least that cartel creates jobs in... The global south.

Disadvantaged communities, yeah. They entertain us. I mean, without the cocaine cartels, we wouldn't have Narcos. That's right, that's right. And several other TV shows that were poorly written at 3 a.m. coked out of their minds. We need a steady cocaine supply in order to inspire our entrepreneurs to start restaurants, coffee co-ops, bike stores slash record stores.

You know, they are our true innovators. You know, our graduates of Oberlin College, Bard, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, et cetera. Our top Brooklyn podcasters. That's right. That's right. And I'm not including us. It should be highlighted, you know, so the cocaine cartels, of course, use child slavery. But unlike Cargill, they don't have the fucking balls to go to the Supreme Court in 2020 and say, you should let us keep using child slavery.

Like, there's some honesty in not trying to legalize your child slavery unlike these fucking meat cartels and as far as i know cocaine's vegan but i'm not making that up cargill and nestle just went before the supreme court and said they are of course involved in cocoa production in uh ivory coast and ghana which you know millions of children are enslaved in that and cargill has said we can't be liable we just we just buy the slave-made coke oh no these children aren't employees they are independent contractors yep yes this is an internship program they'll move up after a year you'll see well this is nestleville and none of our children here are employees.

No, no, no. We've adopted them, so we're all technically a family. In Nestleville, the age that you can start working is eight years old. We changed the law as soon as we did. We are changing these children's lives. After one year of employment under us, they are eligible to apply for Kiva microloans. There's something like

2010 sort of EU globalist about this where it's like the defenses of the kids are like they're getting an opportunity. This is like an increasingly interconnected world.

It has a very complex supply chain that we can't necessarily know who's doing what in it. Right. But we do know that it creates quite a few jobs in the U.S. industrial south. So it has to keep continuing. You know, if Desley wasn't doing business on the Ivory Coast, jobs in the U.S. industrial south, so it has to keep continuing. If Nestle wasn't doing business on the Ivory Coast, there wouldn't be these jobs for these kids. How would they make a living to feed their parents?

We're not paying them that much, but it's more money than they would have gotten otherwise. We're kind of heroes here. Thomas Sowell, is that you? Sean, I think you had a question for me or a comment? Andrew, I did want to ask you two sort of related questions. And the first is just doing your research and talking to the people that you've talked to have been involved in these industries for, I would imagine, decades.

Did you have any takeaways in terms of what has changed over the most recent few decades in the uh the meat supply chain and the second related question is has doing your research changed your personal eating habits at all and if so how um from from uh talking to uh herman schumacher and the other gentleman uh better uh like and also doing research on the history of Schumacher's efficacy and ARCAP, it sounds like this has been an ongoing struggle for decades. I think ARCAP dates back to the 90s or 80s. So these independent ranchers have been fighting the cartels for decades.

And it kind of seems like trench warfare where, you know, just an endless slog where, you know, they're just, you know, trying to, you know, do their best to not get wiped out because, you know, it would be to the advantage of these big companies to have them wiped out better for the bottom line and less legal stuff. Because Schumacher told me he'd been involved in a number of lawsuits against these corporations. So they can squash them. It'll be even easier for them to get what they want.

I mean, they're already kind of automatic to begin with. As far as my eating habits go, you know, I don't really eat too much meat, you know, maybe, you know, a couple times a week. You know, I generally eat, you know, like more plant-based stuff, like, you know, lentils and other pulses uh you know i i'm italian so italian american so i eat a fair amount of pasta and a lot of it's like you know vegetarian you know like or maybe okay maybe some dairy stuff like if i didn't have like an alfredo but uh uh there was uh one one night recently uh i was at the small gas station in town uh you know where i live in a pretty rural area there's only like about 1,000 people in town and a lot of ranchers and stuff. And there was a cow in a trailer, and I just stared at it, looked at its eyes, and it was like, you know,

I started thinking, you know, why the hell do we eat these things? They're so sweet. So I've tried to cut back on my uh beef consumption you know yeah i know chickens aren't raised under you know great conditions but i feel a little uh a little less awful eating chicken but i know that they they also can develop personalities and stuff like that you know it's like i'm hoping uh for a future where you know um whether it's you know i think like lab-grown you know, I'm a little bit leery of it, you know, because it looks weird. But, you know, if it can, you know, save the need of people for meat and, you know, not kill animals, you know, that seems like a better outcome until we, you know, have the replicators that will never come like from Star Trek.

So, Andrew, what do you think is the most misunderstood part about factory farming when it comes to the general public i mean we've certainly covered slavery corruption and just you know the the myriad of uh crimes going on to produce uh meat but do you feel like is there's one aspect of it that's more misunderstood than others? I would say that to maybe somebody who doesn't know too much about food supply chains and such, I can see them maybe coming away from when the beef prices really increased last year, thinking that the ranchers must be making a killing as well. But as I learned, that's not really the case. Basically, the people who control the lion's share of the industry who really make

the profit and who control the means of production and the facilities to process these animals. I think maybe also, particularly when it comes to the beef industry, maybe people aren't quite aware of the impact it has on the environment, whether it's, like, the sheer no pun intended, for high fructose corn syrup, it no longer goes to cattle feed. And, of course, in the rainforest, they're sloshing and burning the trees, which are the earth's lungs, in order to have cattle raising land. And, of course, it's a cycle that feeds into itself because the cattle produce more methane.

And, of course, know the cattle produce more methane and uh and of course you're transporting you know the the cattle uh processed or not to you know other other countries to know like uh i believe mcdonald's uh other uh you know major companies uh sorts of beef from brazil and other parts like uh uh and like especially with those big producers you know uh you could have uh you get like a steak uh or ground beef that's made up of multiple cows from multiple countries. Yeah, from one of the books I'm reading about the WWF, it was covering fish farming in South America. And from what I learned that shocked me was that half of the fish that they catch is used to feed the fish so that they have enough protein to be good enough for the market so like you know because if they don't do that and feed it like

some sort of vegetable meat protein the fish then aren't good enough quality wise for the market and there's something when you read like that where you're like wait half half of the fish like so you're telling me if they just didn't factory farm these fish that we could have probably a quarter of them at regular quality if not to deal with i mean it just seems like so many hurdles to then you know increase the bottom line for the people on top and you know certainly i will get more into this on our WWF episode, but everyone from the people that previously lived there to divers that are supposed to take care of the fish netting that goes down to 40 meters, even though it's only legally allowed 20 meters. I mean, just the population at the bottom is getting fucked left and right, be it due to the profit or not.

Well, it's especially cruel with the fish that while they're feeding them, they put signs in the water that say, this is your mother you're eating. It kind of reminds me of, you know, Leonardo da Vinci's reference, the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon where Itchy serves up Scratchy's own belly and he keeps eating the same piece of it. And I think that's the same problem like in the cattle industry and other parts of the factory farm. As I understand it, some cattle producers will feed bits of cattle to other cattle. And I know another concern with the beef industry, which you might get to in another episode, or the meat industry in general, is this huge amount of antibiotics in the food. I believe it's impacting, like, you know, viruses, bacteria and such that are resistant to treatment by antibiotics. So, you know, it's kind of exacerbating the problem. I know that's already a concern that, you know, nobody's really researching new antibiotics.

And there's a chance that, you know, we're going to get some, you know, nasty infections, like I know, like staph infections, I know, or like one of those types of infections that, you know, are resistant to antibiotics. So, yeah, we're looking to a great future, you know, we're either going to die of another disease or burn ourselves to death, you know, good to have options. Yeah, on the Mighty Earth document about Cargill for 2002, their salmonella outbreak that had one fatality and 47 illnesses, that was also antibiotic resistant. And I think we looked into it a little bit on our, one of our early episodes where we looked into antibiotics and how it's like used in livestock where oftentimes when people talk about like antibiotic

resistant bacteria, it'll be in a like kind of tusk tusk sort of tone where they're like, and don't ever leave a bottle of antibiotics unfilled unfinished because that's how you create antibiotic resistant bacteria. Meanwhile, most antibiotics are just being shoveled into animals to make them like thicker, you know, without any sign of disease. And that's what's actually driving the antibiotic resistance. But, you know, because the agriculture industry is so strong, they don't that's not reported on and uh another thing like you'll probably get in this in other episodes but i know that uh like factory farms like you know america loves to talk about how much they love small businesses but you know a lot of those uh

factory farmers are you know putting smaller farmers out to bit out to pasture no pun intended uh you know it's like it's right yeah it's it's uh yeah it's harder and harder for people, you know, trying to make a living, you know, and raise animals humanely and, you know, without all the awful conditions and antibiotics and other stuff that they feed the animals to get them, you know, appealing and profitable in the market. This used to be Microsoft country, but then the Tyson virus came in and took out all the market. This used to be Microsoft country, but then the Tyson virus

came in and took out all the servers. Fortunately, the Nestle vaccine saved some of us, but the AWS services couldn't save us all. That's going to be like how you get a job at one of these companies. They just ask you, like, have you played Fallout and how good at it

were you? Now I'm never going to get a job. I gave up at the radioactive giant dog. They give you the food industry version of the Voight-Kampff test. They want to make sure that they'll test you to see if you have any, how much antibiotics you've had, if you're not consuming enough of their beef or chicken. Yes, we analyzed your stool samples

and your blood, and it appears you purchased your beef exclusively at a co-op, but yeah, you know, that's a little too out for us. We don't like you environmental activist type, so we're going to have

to pass on you. Good luck in your future endeavors. Ugh. Do you think there are people out there bodybuilding and, like, using steroids who specifically ask for the cows that have the growth hormones? Like, give me the cow that looks like Vin Diesel. I'm trying to get as much HGH in here as possible.

There's a whole industry of people who specialize in making buff cows. Our cows are injected with steroids right before we kill them so that you get the benefits. What if they put too much growth hormones in the cows

and they get too powerful and have a Spartacus rebellion? Just these like super swole cows take over Indiana and form a provisional government. I like it. I think this was a far side cartoon.

Mooism with kettle characteristics. Alright, well this has been Grubstakers. Mooism with kettle characteristics. All right. Well, this has been Grubstakers. Andrew, where can the people find you? You can find me on Twitter at FugaziTruth. Follow me there. As far as my newspaper goes, we're at the ecrecord.com. We do have a paywall,

but if you feel like subscribing, we're grateful to have the revenue. I'm also pretty liberal when it comes to sharing my articles and stuff, but if there's any interest, you can check it out there. Thanks for having me, fellas. It was great. Appreciate it it out there. Thanks for helping, fellas.

It was great. Appreciate it. Of course. Thanks for being on. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Yogi Bollywood. I'm Stu Jeffers. I'm Sean P. McCarthy.

Check us out on Patreon for more episodes about the business of animals this month. Thank you.