The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 290: Is Wild Game Really Organic?

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Fred Gould, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: Jani rehabbing a target; the vegetarian GMO expert who used to live in a hippie van; bison garum and koji mold; MeatEater Campfire Stories and old dads giving life; asking for your ball joint back after a hip replacement surgery; the link between The Tox and entrepreneurship; strontium and a woolly mammoth that loved to walk; learning from spider mites; bitter cucumber peels due to Cucurbitacin C; the co-evolution between plants and insects; tobacco as the first plant to be made toxic to caterpillars; the safety factor; what does "natural" actually mean?; getting the chestnut back in the forest via genetic engineering; use of synthetic biology conservation; transgenic, cisgenic, gene editing, and genomic selection; crop yield quantity vs. crop quality; breeding potatoes so that they're less carcinogenic when fried; optimizing for shelf life and visual appeal; fishy strawberries; and more.Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light, go go farther stay longer this is uh this is on your instagram yanni i haven't posted it yet but you're fixing to yeah i was i was thinking about it i will at some point in the next week so if listeners were to go to your thing they would find it. Yanni rehabilitated a... Tell them what you did, Yanni. You rehabilitated... It's a Reinhardt Target. I got it used. Our buddy Ben O'Brien gave it to me.

And just after... It was in pretty good shape when he gave it to me. Explain what it is, though, because people might not know what that means. Yeah, it's a three-dimensional, life-size mule deer target. That's not life-size. It is.

Really? Oh, yeah. No. I'm telling you, it is. Okay. I mean, that thing is hard to carry. If you carry the body and the head and the piece that the antlers are attached to, his ear, forehead, chunk, it's a lot to carry. It's a big – this picture It's a, it's a big, it doesn't,

this picture makes it look out of scale. Anyways, close to life-size mule deer, a 3d target, uh, for shooting. So you changed the clothes too. Huh?

You just changed it. Yeah. To make you happy. So I want to hear about it here in five more minutes. If you say, well, it's actually only 32 inches tall instead of 36, which is a mule deer's height. Anyways, after a couple of years of sitting out in the Montana sun and weather, the foam was starting to degrade.

So I called up Reinhardt and she said, oh, yeah, no problem. This is what you do to bring it back to life. Take a can of spray paint whatever color you want to color your 3d target and uh you know repaint it and then take some thompson's deck sealant like water sealant paint that over it and you should be good to go and do that you know when you see it wearing off and if you know the water's not beating on it anymore and uh so i went and got i think a can of uh khaki was the closest i could get to like the tan coat of a mule deer's body already had some black and white and then i got a dark walnut because i wanted to as i was he i don't know what reinhardt was thinking but when i got this buck

it had these the antlers are like... I'm guessing they modeled them after a 200-incher, because they're giant. Yeah, it looks like one of those deer that... Who's that? It looks like one of those deer Randy Ulmer. Exactly. Type in Randy Ulmer mule deer, and then this is

what this target is modeled after. Anyways, they're very yellow, antlers i didn't feel like they were very realistic so i went to repaint those because i wanted to protect those too i thought you know it'd be kind of fun to turn him in and turn him into the mythical timber buck that steven and i heard about when we were hunting colorado together dark antler timber buck yeah yeah i get buck fever looking at Yanni's target. Yeah, no, he's intimidating.

Here, Fred. He even has ivory tips on the end. It is a high class. We were camping last weekend and I had my, I had a 3D elk target off in the meadow, you know?

And I mean, there must have been 10 times I come around the corner and kind of, I could not get used to that thing being there. Those are quite the antlers. They are.

How long did that take you? Oh, I don't know. As long as it takes to spray a whole can of spray paint. Well, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty detailed, so. We got a letter, we got a letter in, oh, I'm going to gonna do it oh i'm gonna introduce our guest fred gould fred okay here's how this goes people will remember people will remember a long time ago if you've been if you follow the show closely uh corinne our beloved producer had one day was kind of spouting off about uh is that fair phil yeah that's a great way to put it

yeah corinne was spouting off about gmos genetically modified organism it was well intentioned spouting off she wasn't spouting off she was just i don't know what she's doing god's talking about a gmo of like taking like ar Arctic char and mixing it up with strawberries. I don't know. And then, and then corrected herself a week later and then corrected herself a week later. But the emails kept coming.

The emails kept coming. And I said, well, cream, why don't you go track down a GMO expert? And he's here now. Used to live in a van. Fred Gould, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Entomology, that's studying bugs, and plant pathology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Is anybody saying that right? Raleigh. Raleigh. I know they're real particular. Raleigh. Raleigh. And the co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center. You got it. Once we get done with our up-top stuff and get into the interview,

do you have any idea what we're talking about with the strawberries and the Arctic char? Yeah. Oh, you do? Oh, phenomenal. Genuine vegetarian, used to live in a van, self-described former hippie. Corinne sent me an article about you. Right right right yeah did you quit being a hippie i guess i did yeah what about what you like aged out or like your interest i think i think i aged out um yeah that's gonna be a great conversation also the other thing that inspired uh uh that inspired us wanting to have a conversation about gmos and we'll get to this is it's a very

popular thing to have like a shirt or whatever it has a deer on it like a whitetail deer okay who and whitetail deer love people i mean they like they like edge habitats they like agricultural landscapes they like disturbed landscapes they like edge habitats. They like agricultural landscapes. They like disturbed landscapes. They like areas where the human presence decreases the predator load. They like crows, Canada geese. What else? Whitetail deer. Magpies.

Magpies. Seagulls. Just things that are sort of the winners of the Anthropocene. Dogs. Yeah, dogs. Increasingly, coyotes are finding refuge from persecution in the sort of urban, suburban landscape. I feel like increasingly a lot of more animals, especially predators. Yeah, they're kind of like, you know, these people aren't that bad.

You just got to learn how to deal with them. That's right. Anyways, people like to have a shirt or whatever, stickers and stuff. They have a deer on it and it'll say like organic. Or they'll have, they'll talk about mallard ducks being organic. Right. And we've, and we'll ask you about this. We've talked about increasingly, I would say that if you're eating a mallard duck in North America, in the lower 48, probably not, man.

Probably not, right? Right. They are all eating corn out of a GMO field. Somewhere. Soybeans? Like probably not organic. They probably wouldn't be able to be certified organic. I don't think so.

You know what? I don't have an answer for that. I'm not sure. They probably wouldn't be able to be certified organic. I don't think so. You know what? I don't have an answer for that. I'm not sure. Really? I'm not sure how they would certify something like that. But it's a high likelihood that it landed. The good likelihood is that if you're going to shoot it yourself, nobody's going to care. Yeah, but I mean, meaning that if he's migrating through, like if he's migrating from Canada to coastal Louisiana and it's utilizing agricultural fields, like it has a very high likelihood of stumbling into some kind of grain.

Right. Well, we need to get to all of this because it's really kind of curious. And I mentioned to you that on the U.S. reserves, for a long time, you weren't able to grow genetically engineered crops. So if you shoot a duck- On a waterfowl reserve. On a waterfowl reserve, right, it would have been non-GMO. So maybe that's the only- But that rule-

Well, that rule has been changed, and it's sort of filtering down, but it probably will change, right. So right now, if you want to get your non-GMO duck- Hustle. Hustle. will change right so right now if you want to get your non-gmo duck hustle hustle you know let before we do our some of our stuff we got we got to talk about these jars here of uh bison garum garum how do you pronounce that i have no idea that's a good research project for someone find out how to pronounce that so we don't sound stupid do you mind doing that phil sure uh tell real quick talk about those the the, the, cause you live in North Carolina.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you were talking about the, the, the least corn land. Explain that real quick. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing because, you know, I mean, you have all these reserves, right. And there's a lot of water, but there's, I have a lot of land there and they want to

have food for the ducks, you know, that migrate there. And what they've done is they allow farmers to grow corn on that land right and then they're allowed to harvest most of it but they have to leave some of it behind so they're not paying rent on the land like they would with a typical landowner right it's kind of funny because it winds up sounding like um it's reminiscent of the sharecropper system well it is exactly even the percentages they keep 75 percent right leave 25 yeah yeah and they leave that sharecropper system. Well, it is exactly. I mean, right, right, right, right. Leave 25. Yeah. And they leave that amount standing and that's for the waterfowl. But, you know, there's all, of course, you know, given it's a federal program, they have regulations and they don't want certain pesticides,

right. That would hurt the aquatic animals and so on. So they have regulations on what you're allowed to spray. And, you know, there are a lot of good reasons for having some of those regulations, but some of the others, you know, have sort of seeped in. And one of those was about using genetically engineered corn. And so- Like that was prohibited. So that has been prohibited. So, you know, it's a problem for the farmers because some of the weed problems, for example, are kind of really tough on those refuges. So, you know, they need to make a certain amount of profit off that amount that they're able to harvest.

So, you know, it gets a little bit tricky, but they have things worked out. But it'll be the farmers would love it if those regulations were changed. And so during the Trump administration, they lifted the regulation on, they lifted the prohibition. Right, they lifted that prohibition. And what was the argument, do you know what the argument, the for and against arguments? You know, I wish I could give you all the rational, but I don't think this was just a rational kind of thing. I think it was probably a lot political, but there is some kind of rationale because, a lot of the crops that are genetically engineered are genetically engineered for herbicide tolerance. Okay.

Right? So if you have herbicide tolerance, you can spray more herbicides on that. So if it's a herbicide that's not allowed or something like that, that's an issue. But I think more of it was really just that idea of natural. And I thought we could get to that. Yeah. Because I think more of the GMO thing has to do with natural

versus this whole thing about safety. And I think it's really useful, especially with your guys. It's really interesting to talk about that. But all I would say is that it would be great for the farmers if that changes. I don't think it's going to harm the refuges. But if you're a duck hunter

and you want an organic duck. But presumably there'll be more duck food. I don't think there'll be a big change in that. But I think you should tell all your listeners to lobby against relaxing that law so that they can continue to get organic ducks. This is a call to action. Yeah, this is a call to action. Call to action.

That's bold. You have, are you protected in your job? Are you protected by, see this is the difference between having a federal and a, so you have I thought you were going to ask me if I'm protected from losing my job when I say things like this. No, that's what I'm saying. Do you have, do you have, what's, the word's escaping me. When you get immunity from prosecution. Tenure.

Tenure. Yes, I have tenure. So you say whatever from prosecution. Tenure. Tenure, yes. Do you have tenure? Yes, I have tenure. So you say whatever you want. That's great. That's great. You're going to get the straight story today, folks. Okay, Fred, hang tight. If you've got anything to add in, add in.

But we have, I didn't know this existed. I got a package in the mail from Les Cheneaux Culinary School in the Les Cheneaux Islands or in Michiganigan's upper peninsula and the guy uh someone the director of the culinary school there director and instructor of culinary arts at lake superior state university i didn't know they had that program i went to that i'm not quite an alum because i only did a semester there i went to three schools before i finished like regular college muskegon Community College Lake Superior State University

Grand Valley State University I did one semester at Lake State and had no idea that this existed I thought you were at Ferris too No That was one of your brothers He runs the program there He sent me a beautifully typed letter And they've been experimenting with various forms of fermentation.

And they have a, they've been making koji mold. But he took, this is, this jar in front of you, Giannis, which looks like a jar of, if I handed that to you with no label, what would you think you were looking at? Oh boy. I mean, it's like the color of molasses I handed that to you with no label, what would you think you were looking at? Oh boy. I mean, it's like the color of molasses, but it just, it's, it's just liquid. Yeah. I'd say like soy sauce. Yeah. Soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, fish sauce, maybe.

So they've been, uh, they've been dicking around with koji mold, putting it on various forms of grain. Okay. The mold itself is sweet and fruity. They've used it for many things, including toasting it for salads, making risotto, lacto-fermenting it, which I don't know about, making bread pudding. Koji mold is also an important ingredient for many of the Asian pantry staples, such as, here I'm in more familiar territory, miso, fish sauce, shoyu, or soy sauce, and sake. They were making it with coffee.

Then they took a freshly slaughtered and ground bison meat. So the meat from a freshly, what am I trying to say, ground bison meat. And they put the koji on there, which is grown on barley. And they put the bison meat, koji, salt, and water. Placed it in a rice cooker set to warm. And they skimmed it and stirred it for 10 weeks. Then strained out the solids, which they then dehydrated and made a bison spice with and jarred it for use. My goodness.

I feel like maybe we should share one of these and auction one of them in the auction house of oddities. Or do you want your own jar? We have two jars. No, we could share a jar. I took one and I gave one to Yanni. We could share a jar. Have you cracked that open yet? No, man. I just got open the box right now. No, we could share a jar. I took one and I gave one to Yanni. We could share a jar. Have you cracked that open yet?

No, man. I just got open the box right now. Oh, okay. This is like... I'm curious about how open it is. This isn't even in the document. Okay. I challenge you to find this in the document.

It's not in there, Phil. Wow. Let me save you the time. It's not in there. Thanks, Dave. That's how fresh this is. Yanni's opened the damn thing up now. there, Phil. Let me save you the time. It's not in there. That's how fresh this is. He's opened the damn thing up now. Well, yeah, I think we should have a smell and maybe a taste. I want to save a jar for the Auction House of Oddities

to raise money for our access initiatives. Oh, yeah. You don't even have to put your nose to it. Here's what he says. He says, we've been marinating our bison backstrap steaks. This is probably making you want to laugh. This is making Fred. Fred's over there licking his lips.

Yeah. We've been marinating our bison backstrap steaks in it for a few days before we sous vide and butter baste them. Woo! It does a really nice job of breaking down the muscle fibers in the steak and tenderizing it. We also use the sauce as the umami component

in a sriracha honey glaze for sashimi salmon. Can anyone here, anybody here, Fred, you might be able to tell. Can anybody in layman's terms explain umami? Yeah.

Let's hear it. Phil, tell them. It's so easy. Phil can do it. I was going to say, it's one of those things. It's like the meat sensation. It's like that Supreme Court justice who was asked to define porn. He just said, I know it when I see it.

I feel like that's umami. You know it when you taste it. I can't describe it. Don't ask me. I can't either. Well, this sauce definitely is umami. I looked it up at Merriam-Webster. Oh, man.

I just want to drink that. Like put a little vodka or something in there. Merriam-Webster says it's the taste sensation that is produced by several amino acids and nucleotides such as glutamate and aspirate and has a rich or meaty flavor so you're right characteristic of cheese cooked meat mushrooms soy and ripe tomatoes very very uh prevalent in asian cooking i feel like they're always talking about umami have you found out how to pronounce what we're sitting on right now? I looked it up. I got two pronunciations, garum and garum,

but I think the biggest thing is that that U is an U sound. Garum. Like umami. There you go. So we're going to put a jar of this. Someone's going to tell us there's some kind of legal problem with this. Yeah, that's the only thing I was thinking. Well, you know what? We can't auction off food. Why with this. Yeah, that's the only thing I was thinking. Well, you know what?

You can't auction off food. Why not? I don't know. That's what I was thinking. There might be a legal issue with it. Homemade, not FDA, USDA inspected, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to. I'll figure it out.

I try to put in my used t-shirts with the essence of Yanni, because I know that some folks like those t-shirts, Steve. You know what I'm talking about. They shot you down on that? They shot me down. Why? They didn't really give an answer. They just said, I think that's too much.

It's like Ralph Nader works here now or something. Listen, I'm going to find out a way, because I'm also planning on auctioning off my big court jar of python oil the auction house oddities real quick is is we're starting an auction house and it'll all fund access like like we did the shiloh pond we kicked in money to buy shiloh pond in maine to turn it into public land um we just raised a bunch of money for uh to support state state level access initiatives like state level uh private land you know public hunter private land what's the word i'm looking for hunting access yeah issues um other projects so we're starting this thing and the first thing when we launch the auction house oddities it's all going to be stuff like gear used on season 10 of uh of our netflix

show media like actually used both my vinyl harnesses from that season my backpack from that season we got uh one of clay's guns from that season hopefully the raccoon hide all that kind of stuff. Tanned. We got paintings. We got crazy stuff. It's all one of a kind. Did I tell you that I reached out to our buddy Luke Combs and he's going to chip in for the Auction House of Oddities? No, but I meant to and forgot. He's from

North Carolina. You want to hear? Your boy's coming in big. What are you talking about? Luke is coming in big for the House of Oddities. Is he donating that tour bus? Okay, not that big.

But a signed guitar that he's played on stage with. You're kidding me. Along with t-shirts from the tour signed. He must have buttered his ass up. I want to that guitar no man it was one text and he came back with i am so in really here you go my favorite uh from that episode that we film with luke which is coming out with september 29 that's right i was explaining him i was explaining to luke I think pronghorn, when you smell them, like their fur, their hair, I think it smells like Frito corn chips. It really does. And I told him, I said, when you smell that thing, it's going to smell like Frito corn chips.

And he said, well, bust out the bean, dude. Oh, two more promo things we gotta do so on a previous episode of the show uh we played of our of our random house audio original meat eaters close calls no it's campfire stories right meters campfire stories close calls which i should point out is on its second month on the new york times bestseller list congratulations for audio originals i didn't know that we're doing more like we're doing more do we get that stamp as a company or does that count as like under your sort of list of author uh i would think it would be the company would

claim it nice yeah anyways we're doing more of those. And so we're looking for your stories. So campfire story. So if you, if you're familiar with the campfire stories and you have this campfire stories, audio original meat eaters, campfire stories, close calls. And you're like, holy shit. Those boys should know about x send that to campfire stories at the meat eater.com um savannah my beloved uh partner that work on all this with and brody savannah was saying if you want you can give shout outs to folks who sent in their dad's

stories and tell them we want more she said we have an overwhelming number from veterans like she's glad we have so many stories from veterans and a lot of stories about people's dads and she said uh the old sweet dads give me life and she said it's also funny how everyone's subject line is crazy ass story which i think we might have said to use that didn't we maybe yeah yeah so keep them coming and as well it kind of defeats the purpose when everyone is saying crazy ass stories it kind of it loses its effect when everyone's using it do you get what i'm saying i Okay. It's like if you asked my kids if something was epic. Like they go down the little five foot hill in the yard and it was an epic sled ride.

Yeah. The other thing we're working on, and I don't know how many we have, but we need a lot more. Keep sending in the, keep sending your submissions to fucked up old deer stands because i'm still pushing like now with the success of the calendar tremendous success now no one can stand in the way of making it a fine art coffee table book i'm proud of you no one can stand in my way. I told Ross he'd encounter zero resistance on that project going forward. So send your pictures of crazy old deer stands to fuckedupolddeerstands at themedia.com.

We've gotten over 1,500. I didn't even know that was a long time ago. How many are there now? What? That's a lot of pictures to look through. Seth looks them all. Yeah. Seth loves it. He listens to like walleye podcasts and-

He listens to walleye podcasts? Searches through those pictures. That's what he does all day. If people want to know what he's actually doing. Wow, guy draws a salary for that. Dream job, I was going to say. Do we pay him for this? He's like, I feel like i should be paying you guys um a surgeon wrote in saying

that he had a this comes off we were talking about a cannibalism article that was in vice of a guy that had like i can't remember why he had an amputation and then had a party and made tacos and like his friends came over, ate his arm. Foot, right? Foot. Foot. Is that what it was? It was in vice.

A surgeon wrote in and he had to go through a deal he had with a guy he gave a hip replacement to. And the guy really wanted his ball joint back. So the doctor had humored him and went through a lengthy process of getting it checked out for hospital the for the legality then she got it squared away gave the guy the his ball joint back and asked him what he was going to do with it and he couldn't decide between turning it into the handle on a gun cleaning rod or the shifter for his truck that's a redneck move

right there toxoplasmosis which we spent a lot of time on who do oh yeah we had a do we have a yeah we had an expert on for that toxoplasmosis you ever hear that Fred i've heard of it i'm no expert on it's like a bacterial infection that's passed through feline feces and there's this interesting um i was a skeptic but i've become not a skeptic tell my favorite quote of all time yanni skepticism is the chastity of the intellect whoa i told my i was telling my kids that there and i tried to explain that to them trying to teach how old are your kids six every night at dinner they're telling me something that some guy at school told some kids school so i'm like no just no it's like not he's not telling the truth oh right your kids are back in school already so that started oh yeah just the stretchers you know so-and-so's dad got attacked

by a grizzly i feel like i would have heard about that man you know um uh anyways there's this weird thing where it seems and there's like some research out of africa but like toxoplasmosis is transmitted like the host is through felines yeah even herbivores get it from just like grazing close to cat excrement but it seems that an animal infected with toxoplasmosis loses its fear of felines. Reduced inhibitions. And I don't know if it's just reduced inhibitions or reduced inhibitions of felines, but for instance, they were looking at, what was that animal that, what's the thing that everybody in Africa is always mad at all the time? Yeah, I was going to say, it was in Africa.

It wasn't the dingo dogs. No, no, no, no, no. It was the hyenas everybody in Africa is always mad at all the time. Yeah, I was going to say, it was in Africa. It wasn't the dingo dogs. No, no, no, no, no, no. It was the hyena. Hyenas. Yeah. They're looking at like 100% of hyena pups that are infected with toxoplasmosis that they track get killed by lions. Yeah. Ones that aren't infected, it's a very low percentage.

Right. a very low percentage. But there's a study in this journal that someone sent us that risky business, linking toxoplasma infection and entrepreneurship behaviors across individuals and countries. Whoa. You lose your inhibitions. You become more entrepreneurial

when, not in fact, yeah, You lose your inhibitions. You become more entrepreneurial when infected with toxoplasmosis. Yeah. Well, that's cool. I mean, there are a lot of these cases with plants, right, that they have compounds in them that when an herbivore eats them, right, they get a little bit of hallucinogenic kind of effect and they're happy and hang out. Well, hold on a minute. I think the plant would not want, oh, he does want to get eaten to have his seeds spread. They get a little bit of hallucinogenic kind of effect and they're happy and hang out. Well, I think the plant would not want, oh, he does want to get eaten to have his seed spread. No, he wants, if you're eating the plant and you lose your inhibitions and some carnivore comes and eats you. Oh, that's what's in it for him. Pretty good for the plant.

Yeah. So, you know, I told you I was a hippie, but I mean. You like the far out stuff, man. But think about it, right? Yeah, for sure. All of us hippies just hanging out. Do we have that here in North America? Easy prey.

Easy prey. Does that happen in North America? Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think. I mean, you know, psilocybin. Okay. You know, that's pretty much the kind of deal. Mushrooms.

Right, mushrooms, right. I'm going to read the first line of the abstract. Disciplines such as business and economics often rely on the assumption of rationality when explaining complex human behaviors. However, growing evidence suggests that behavior may concurrently be influenced by infectious microorganisms. Toxoplasma infects an estimated, man, how can this be true, 2 billion people worldwide. And has been linked to behavioral alterations in humans and other vertebrates. That would be roughly a quarter of the world's population, is that correct?

7 billion people on the planet uh you know rick smith i know that number always because when someone's saying like someone will mention like someone doing some crazy thing and people be like no and rick will be like there's seven billion people on the planet of course someone's into that um that's really interesting if you want to get like your spouse on board with an idea that they can't get on board with they think it's risky have her hang out by the litter box

go over to the old litter box this is a great story this is a legitimately fascinating story right here there's a research real quick though it's not really a correction This is a legitimately fascinating story right here. There's a research... Hey, real quick though. It's not really a correction, but in 2019, we're up to 7.6 billion. So you might as well just start saying eight.

I'll switch. Round it up. We're getting there, Fred. This right here is going to tickle your fancy all right um i i've i've known of this gentleman because my my uh brother in alaska actually studied under him uh there's a researcher named matthew wooler uh who interestingly matthew wooler who's doing work on woolly mammoths at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. So this is interesting.

This is good to look at. This guy focuses on stable isotopes. And he's looking at the isotope strontium. Am I pronouncing that right? Strontium, yeah. Strontium, yeah. Strontium. Now, strontium is like a stable isotope that occurs in soils and comes from

the natural ground. Okay? And the vegetation regimes change, but that stays the same. And it's one of these isotopes that varies across the landscape. But over time, right, the climate might change vegetation regime change animals

change it doesn't change and it's in varying densities across the landscape so this guy first these guys went and they were looking at some kind of shrew i think is it in here they were looking at some kind of vole or shrew and they were taking the teeth out of voles and shrews that are widely distributed across northern alaska and they have a very small home range so when you catch one and take his tooth out the strontium the stable isotope in the soil is grows into its teeth and he doesn't stray far. So when you catch one, you can assume that he's always been in some tight little spot.

And so you can look at how this isotope is taken up in this guy's tooth and his tooth continuously grows, right? So you can then measure that, like the level in the tooth, and you can make a map of how much of this stuff exists across the landscape

in various areas. They then, how do you feel about my explanation? That sounds great. You don't want to repair it in any way? No. Sounds good. They get a tusk off a mammoth.

It's a big ass tusk. And they take that mammoth tusk and rip it in a bandsaw all the way around. So they like run it through a bandsaw and they have this big curly split tusk. And apparently this is the same thing on sheep horns too. When you cut it and look at it in profile, it, as it grows, it grows in what looks like stacked ice cream cones.

And it's very clear on the inside. But on the outside, the differences get smoothed over from you, so you can't tell. But when you cut it, it looks like stacked ice cream cones, where he's continuously putting out new tusk. So these things, whatever, they get like an eight, nine foot tusk over the course of their life. This mammoth, their tusk, they're looking at with him, he's a 28 year old mammoth.

When he's a little baby sucking on his mother's milk, that's like the very tip of his tusk. And that grows out. And then when he's 28 years old, what's going on with his tusk is like emerging from his jaw. Then they can take and look at, because they put together this map of this stable isotope in the soil.

And then they can take and look as he grew, where was he living? And this thing, you look at the map they published. It's in the journal Science. You look at the map they published, the detail of how this thing spent the 28 years of its life, it is incredible. It was born and raised and spent its adolescence south of the Brooks Range.

When it hit around the time it was 14, I think, they hit sexual maturity. He migrated up through a pass to the north side of the Brooks Range. And then later made another migration near the Colville River. It seems like he walked enough to have traveled around the earth twice in his migrations. And then died of starvation along the colville and they could tell he died of starvation because his diet changed to just like to look like a carnivore and it was when he was he somehow had an injury couldn't eat anymore

it seems and just self-digested and was taking in no vegetation and And that's where he died. It's an incredible map. Was the map in the... It was a male. Oh, Beth Shapiro, who's been on this show, it was her lab that determined some of the demographics about the animal. 28 years old, 17,100 years ago, a male mammoth.

Are you looking at the Smithsonian link or the science link? I read about it in science. Oh, so you had to pay to get access to the whole thing. No, someone sent me one of those JSTOR or whatever links. I'd show you the map, Fred, but I can't pull it up. Yeah, I've seen that story. It's really impressive. It's an incredible but I don't know. Yeah, I've seen that story. It's really impressive. It's an incredible bit of work, man.

Yeah, excellent. Very cool piece of work. So I guess you talked to Beth about bringing back that mammoth. Yeah. She's great. We're trying to get her back on the show. One more thing, Fred, then we're going to... Yeah.

Two more. One's extremely quick. One's extremely quick hey whatever this is fun a guy wrote in about why do trap why do coni bears have the design the size designation they have i called some experts no one knows so coni bears like generally like traditionally coni bears are coming like 110 everybody knows 110 220 330 body gripping traps i called a trap expert i call him joe beaver but his name is mike uh he said i have no idea man he goes it's a very confused system so like a 110 conibear has a

four inch jaw spread unless you buy a blile 110 which is a 4.5 inch draw spread now if you say so 110 zero has one spring and a four-inch spread. A 120 has two springs, 4-inch spread. Then there's a 150 with a 5-inch spread. A 160 with a 6-inch spread. So at this point, you're thinking like, okay, 15, 5-inch spread. 160, 6-inch spread. Well, that goes to hell when you hit a 220, which has a 7-inch spread. A 280 at an 8. A 330 at a 10. He's like, there's no rhyme. It doesn't mean anything.

If anyone has corrected this, it's Minnesota brand traps. They launched a trap called the MB 1216 JC. And that's like a rifle caliber because it actually means something. MB, Minnesota brand. 12-16, it's 12x16. JC, it was invented by John Carretti of Michigan. You got a couple of those, don't you?

Yeah. So, in short, for your answer, the best I can tell in my casual research, I don't know. No one knows what the hell it means. Someone will write in. One is small, three is big, two is medium. We'll know soon enough. Yeah, I was trying to find something on it,

and I was looking all over the place, couldn't find anything. A guy from East Texas wrote in, he's conflicted about the use of orange plastic trail marking tape, surveyor's tape, that hunters use to navigate their way to and from their hunting areas. He says, on one hand, I understand that everyone has the means to purchase a GPS or even a smartphone to utilize mapping apps that have become so accessible. On the other hand, I hate walking through the woods and seeing orange flag and tape littered all throughout.

Some of it's been there for years. Some of it looks like it was just put up. He says, when I see it, I put it in my pocket and throw it in the garbage. Am I bad? Am I doing my fellow hunters wrong? I pick up every scrap I see. I do the same thing, Josh. I've left a lot of it throughout my life

because we used to mark blood trails with it. And not go back and pick it up. Whatever, you're lazy. Forget it. Most of it's plastic, right? Yeah, it's just plastic, orange, or various types. I hate seeing it. It's not okay to leave plastic in the woods.

I hate seeing it. I always go grab it. If you're using it to mark ways in, I think a much more nicer spot is to get those little glow-in-the-dark thumbtacks. You can see it in the daylight. At night, your flashlight hits it. We used to use those to get into duck spots,

stick thumbtacks in trees. We used to also walk through the woods with a machete and blaze all the trees. That was common practice. Just being dumb. But yeah, I've hung a lot of that tape i don't like it there's gotta be other ways well obviously onyx uh tracking function is definitely the easiest uh

fix yeah but he's trying to be he's trying to be compassionate and empathetic oh yeah yeah no i know acknowledging maybe not everyone has sure you got like a roll of surveyor's tape laying around i can't like i you know i can't blame someone for using it but i just think you should when you're done grab oh yeah exactly you're done grab Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know,

sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

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Alright, Fred. You're from Queens. Yeah. New York City. Yeah. You began your career, explain this, studying spider mite evolution. Yeah. And insecticide resistance. Right. Is that a good avenue into this?

Or what's the best avenue to get into your work? Well, that's not a bad one, actually. To get into GMOs. Yeah. So I'll tell you, the way I got into this whole thing is through that work in spider mites. Okay. So the thing is, is that plants are attacked by herbivores, right? And spider mites are one of them.

Spider mites are actually, I think you know, they're really tiny, right? Like aphids and such are really tiny. A big caterpillar is different, right? A single spider mite. They're attacked by what? The spider mites attack plants. Okay. All right?

So the spider mites feed on lots of crops. Okay. And as a matter of fact, spider mites, a single spider mite species, one called a two-spotted spider mite, attacks plants in your house and attacks crops like corn or soybean. And it's not an aphid And it's not an aphid. It's not an aphid. Okay. It's actually not even an insect.

It's an arachnid. It has eight legs. Okay. But the important thing is it attacks these crops and plant breeders, today's plant breeders, try to breed their crops so they'd be resistant to the attack of the spider mite, right? So they wouldn't have to spray an insecticide or a keroside as it would be. Mm-hmm.

So what's interesting. Can you explain that word, keroside? A keroside is because arachnid, right? So as opposed to insects. So of course. What is the base word you're using? Like insecticide, I get it. It's like a thing that kills insects.

Right. But what is the word? A keroside. But what is the keros? A keroside but what is the keros a keroside oh okay that must be my leftover queen's accent i got you i don't know okay i thought you're saying like a right yeah yeah right i'm with you so in any event that you know breeders breed that into their plants they do this all the time for pathogens as well, fungi that cause the Irish potato famine, right? Breeders will breed potatoes so that they won't be attacked by that fungus, right? The problem is that these are living organisms and they evolve.

And so those spider mites evolve to become able to feed on those crops that the breeder so carefully bred to be resistant to them. So the spider mites are interesting, right? Let me just say this. I worked on cucumbers, right? Have you ever eaten a cucumber and the peel is bitter? Oh, listen, yesterday. I left one in my garden too long. My daughter was like not into it and wanted me to peel it. Right. Yeah. Too bitter. Okay.

That's due to cucurbitacin C, right? It's a compound. It's a terpenoid compound. Doesn't really matter, but it's a chemical, right? It's a chemical that is making that cucumber toxic to those spider mites. Really? Yeah. So for my thesis-

Oh, that's what makes, that's what that bitterness when you- Well, so this is the deal. When it grows a thick peel? Right. So, but the thing is that that cucurbitacean is in the leaves as well. So the spider mites feed on the leaves. So if you want to protect them, that would be, that's a great resistant cucumber variety. So for my thesis, the question was,

wait, you're going to put all these years in. It could take 10 years to breed these cucumbers to be resistant. Well, I looked at those spider mites. They have a generation every week or two. How long is it going to take them to become adapted to it? And I did experiments in my thesis and showed that they could become adapted to that toxin and then you know then you wouldn't have any utility to that cucumber but do it do us a favor okay yeah go ahead i don't want to throw you out but i'm just trying to be i'm trying to be considerate of people tracking along yeah talk about by what mechanism they become adapted. Like explain that. Like they're having many offspring that are all a little different.

Yeah. Okay. So spider mites, like human beings, right? We're all different, right? Blue eyes, brown eyes, whatever. We have genes that control that. So with spider mites, they have genes that differ in terms of the metabolism of that spider mite. And spider mites have evolved

over millions of years, right, to feed on plants. So they've always had to been dealing with toxins before humans existed, right? Plants are always producing toxins to kill off the things that feed on them. It just makes sense. That's why you have all these spices, right, in the grocery store it didn't plants did not make spices for you they made it to protect themselves or and and some other things but mainly to protect themselves right against uh either insects or mammals or against um you know pathogens yeah imagine how helpful capsicum is right you know how many things are going to want to go eat it? How many wild animals are going to want to bite into a habanero? Exactly, right. And then, of course,

you have insects that have adapted to a certain plant, and they sequester that compound. They put that compound into their bodies, like a monarch butterfly does, right? They take from the milkweed that they feed on, they take the cardinoloids that obviously cardiac affects, and they put them in their bodies. So when a bird feeds on them in Mexico, where they all on, they take the cardinoloids that obviously cardiac effects, and they put them in

their body. So when a bird feeds on them in Mexico, where they all migrate, they would spit them out. Of course, there are birds that have adapted to be able to deal with that toxin as well. Got it. But anyway, it's a whole co-evolution, right, of the plants and the insects that I studied when I was in graduate school. But the whole idea is it would have applied implications, right? So that, you know, how could you have a sustainable agricultural system where you use less insecticide and the plants protected themselves? Yeah. So that's what I was studying, going about my business.

And some people cared about it. Most people didn't, right? But it was an important thing for sustainable agriculture. Right. I mean, at the big level, too. I mean, you know, we were having a real problem with wheat where the Hessian fly, right, would adapt so quickly to every time in the Midwest where they put out a new variety of wheat that was resistant to this Hessian fly that really is problematic. It would last for four years or so. And then the Hessian fly would adapt to it.

Well, that's not sustainable, right? Got it. So that's what I was studying. Because the ultimate goal is, it's, like, the ultimate goal is two-pronged. It's continue to produce food to feed people. Right. And to reduce how much chemical you need to spray. Yeah, yeah.

Right? Yeah. And to get back to your question, what happened there was that some of the mites had different metabolic pathways than others, just as in the same way that our digestive systems are different, one human to another. And those that were able to deal with that cucurbitacin, that compound that stays so bitter to you, were able to survive. And the ones that didn't died off.

So over time, the population shifted from the majority dying because they were, when they'd feed on a cucumber plant, to the end, the majority of them survived and did just fine because they had the enzymes or whatever it took to deal with that cucurbitation. Yeah. I think a good way, I want to try to explain this one. You correct me if it just doesn't work for people.'m trying to put it in human terms yeah um i am a human but i don't mean i just mean like in terms of not mites right but check me out on this right uh i i imagine most people will accept the idea there's a thing called celiac disease. Yeah. Okay. A wheat allergy. Imagine we were living in an environment where all we ate was wheat.

Something switches and only humans only eat wheat. Now you would find in the future that you had run out of people with celiac disease and you would have, there would be a strong selective pressure against people that had celiac disease and you could envision a future in which that had gone away. Right. That would be us evolving, right? Yeah. In the same way we're talking about. Yeah.

And of course, think about people who are lactose intolerant, right? A lot of cultures, almost everybody is lactose intolerant once they're adults, right? When you're young, you need to be able to deal with your mother's milk. But unless you're a milk-drinking culture, you lose that. So certain groups in Africa that use milk and certain groups in Europe that use milk have those genes. But in other places, you don't because that wasn't adaptive to happen. Except Wisconsin. Except Wisconsin. Except Wisconsin.

Africa. Wisconsin. Okay. Right. So the story, right? So I'm just working on my way. But then all of a sudden, people develop these genetically engineered crops, right? What do you mean all of a sudden?

All of a sudden. Well. What year was that? Around 1985. Okay. Well. What year was that? Around 1985. Okay. Okay. Really? Yeah.

So, 19. What did you think it was earlier or later? I guess we got to get into definitions. Okay. So, we're going to have to get into definitions. Yeah. Right. Right. What is a GMO and all that?

I'll tell this little story and then we'll get back to that. Yeah. Right? But the whole thing is that there had been an organic insecticide called Bacillus thuringiensis or BT, and it was sold called Dipel. And organic farmers used that. And basically, it was a fermented soup and dried down of bacterial spores. It wasn't bison garum, was it? Right?

But organic farmers used it because it was natural, right? It was a bacteria that kills insects. Produced naturally. Produced naturally. Abbott produced it in these big fermenters that they use for pharmaceuticals. This is a big industry. And organic farmers use it. But also back in my state, North Carolina, tobacco farmers used it against caterpillars. And this is pretty intensive. And you put it in the tobacco. And when the caterpillars feed on it, is you know pretty intensive and you put it in the tobacco and when the feet you know caterpillars feed on it they get diseased and they die right but they're one of the things about that bacteria is it had a single protein that it produced that was toxic to the

guts of the insect that actually made holes in the cells right okay so folks from Monsanto and other people were working on that but what they did was they found the gene that codes for that protein. And we'll get into this a little bit when you want to say what is a GMO and what is an organic duck. All right. Because what they did was they took the DNA code from that bacteria and they moved it. Back up one step because I got lost. I got confused. All right.

Good. What's. No, just one step. One step lost. Yeah, go ahead. I got confused. All right, good, good. No, just one step. One step back. What had the, okay. What had the thing that rots the hole through their gut? This protein. Okay.

All right. There are toxic proteins. It's part of that bacteria. Okay. Every time that bacteria, you know, makes a spore so it could last, you know, when there's no food around, it would sort of protect itself by making this toxin. And it was a protein toxin. Mm-hmm. Okay?

So that's what the farmers were using, right? They'd spray it. And when the caterpillar ate it- They'd spray this like living protein. Well, they'd spray, yeah, how do you call it? A protein within a living bacteria. Okay. Yeah. And sometimes they'd kill the bacteria to process it.

But whatever it was, they'd spray that. Yeah. And actually, it would only stay out there for about four days because with sunlight and everything else, it would decompose. But the main thing is that's how they killed caterpillars, right? Using that protein, which was toxic, right? Once the caterpillar ate it, it died. Yep. I'm tracking now.

So what these technology people did was they took the gene that codes for that protein. So, right, let's just go back to you have every organism has DNA, and the DNA is read, you know, in the cell by and becomes RNA, right? And that becomes protein. So for every gene, everybody says you get one protein, right? So that's the whole translation of you have a, people would call it like a blueprint is the DNA and the house is the protein, right? So you go from that blueprint to the protein. So the protein is what's killing that insect. So what these technology people did was it took that blueprint and moved it from the bacteria into a tobacco plant at first.

That was the, that was the, like the original one? Yeah. Tobacco was like the white rat of plant biology because it's so easy to work with. I know, I know it's so easy to work with. I know. I know. It's weird. But that's the first. That whole industry was largely driven by Chester.

Okay. Whoa, wait a minute here. What? No. Well, listen. So here I am. No, these boys started chewing as young babes. Oh, okay.

Well, hey. Not the GMO industry, just the tobacco industry. Chester doesn't want his mom to hear this. All right. Not the GMO industry, just the tobacco industry. Chester doesn't want his mom to hear this. All right. So let me tell you about that. All right, Chester. So here we have this, right? The first plant, the easiest thing to make to be toxic to these caterpillars. And it was. And anybody who grew up in North Carolina, some of your listeners know this, that if you grew up in North Carolina 40 years ago and you were a little kid, you got paid money for every caterpillar that you pulled out of a tobacco plant and squeezed.

Huh. Because they, you know, instead, you know, before all this insecticide stuff. Like little bounty hunters. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that was like, that's like, if you go into the history of GMOs, that's the, that's like the. Wait, wait, wait.

Okay. That's the first. No, I mean, that's like a, like the first, like, like you go into the history of GMOs, that's like the- Wait, wait, wait. Okay. That's the first- No, I mean, that's like the first, like, what people would have called a genetically modified organism. Well, I'd have to say in terms of something that could have been a commercialized crop, yes, that's probably right. Tobacco. Yeah. So let me tell you the story. Did you guys know this?

I did not. All right. Well, there's a reason why you don't know about it. Okay. And that is they developed that. And we were working actually with some of the companies to test some of this. Who? Which companies?

So these are companies that no longer exist. Tobacco companies. Roman Haas. Do you know Roman Haas? No. Yeah. Well, you wouldn't because they don't exist. It was a tobacco producer.

Well, no. They were a chemical producer. I mean, you know, these things get really complicated when you get to these companies. You know, there's no more Monsanto, right? Yeah. No, I didn't know that. Oh, there is. It's gone.

Bayer bought them. Okay. All right. Yeah. So that's what happens. But to get back to the story was that we tested some of these tobacco plants, and they were like 100% mortality of the caterpillars, right? Now, this is a protein that comes from an organic thing that people had been using in tobacco, right? And they put the gene. So it's a natural protein.

And they put that natural protein into that tobacco plant, okay? And we actually did have a meeting with Reynolds Tobacco Company to talk about this as to whether that would be a good idea for their tobacco. And, you know, I don't want to swear to this, but the word that came back to me was they considered it, but their PR people figured that their smokers would not want to smoke. Because they're so health conscious. Because they would have to. They're like, hey, I got my limits. Right.

I'll smoke. I'll smoke i'll smoke 20 of these things a day but there's just some things i won't do right exactly but now wait a minute now have you ever heard of organic tobacco yeah yeah right you've heard of organic tobacco because it's out on the market but not transgenic tobacco because that'll kill you no No. Anyway, I mean, people are funny. So even though they could have killed 100% of those caterpillars. Right. So this is why this human nature is interesting. So, Bahamut, now, did any big tobacco company pick up on it?

Nobody did. They didn't want it. I mean, we grow tobacco in North Carolina. You know, big acreage still. And they still spray it? really yeah okay that's really something all right what do you think about that phil i can't tell phil's paying attention no i'm i'm paying attention i just when you were talking about yeah these health conscious smokers it just reminded me of all the guys in my dorm room rolling their own cigarettes.

But oh, it's loose leaf tobacco. So it's good for you actually. Right. Exactly. So just to get around, we'll get to this health thing, right? But what got me involved, right? Because I'm interested in using this stuff, but using it so it's sustainable. And I learned from those spider mites, it only took them like two months to adapt to this cucurbitacin thing, right? Oh, real quick though. Backing you up. How would, when it makes sense to you, get into how you wouldn't have had the same problem with

your tobacco leaves? Well, that's where I come in, right? So I'm actually trained as an applied evolutionary biologist, right? So I'm interested in how these things evolve, right? So the idea is how can we stop evolution, right? So it was clear to me that if all of a sudden, so the organic tobacco people, when they put out their BT, the Dipel and stuff like that, it only lasts for a couple of days, right? So it's not out there all the time. But what the Monsanto people were doing was using a promoter that turns on this gene that makes that protein all the time from the time the seedling comes out until it dies, right?

So the insects are exposed to it all the time. It's like taking antibiotics all the time, right? Which is probably good or not good. Well, it's going to cause the bacteria to evolve resistance in the same way, right? So we were sort of saying, gee, this could be a good thing, but not the way you're doing it. We need to come up with a way that you could use it and have more sustainable agriculture so the insects won't adapt to it. And so that's my area of interest. But when I was doing this before GMOs, there were plenty of other things to work on, like the Hessian fly that I mentioned before

that I was working on. And who's that a pain in the ass to you again? Wheat growers. Okay. Yeah. But the amount of money that's available for crop breeding for Hessian fly resistance is not huge. So, you know, getting, making headway with that was kind of slow. But when transgenic crops came out, all of a sudden there was all this controversy about them, right? Yeah. And so there were the people who said you need it to feed the world and people said it's going to poison you.

And we were saying, hey, wait a minute, we've been using this for organic stuff, but if you use it too heavily, it's going to go away and it's not going to be sustainable. And so we were in the middle and all of a sudden there was a lot of attention to this to the point that when the first crops, the first cotton and the first corn came out with BT in it, the secretary of agriculture labeled that those crops a public good. That right. It's going to decrease the amount.

Who was the Secretary of Ag then? Oh, God, I got to go back. It was a long time ago. It was a while ago. What year was it? It was in 1996 that he, that came out, something like that. Phil, look him down there. Okay, look at him.

He's dying to know. But the main, the piece on that that was really important was, he he says it's a public good, so we have to protect it. So he involved or the USDA involved our group and some others to come up with what approach could you take to slow down the evolution of resistance to this. Yeah. And I could go into a bunch of detail, but I think – I don't know if you want it. But it's basically a way of actually actually like with an antibiotic, right? The doctor always says take it until the very end, right? As many days as you want.

Give those bacteria a really high dose, a huge evolutionary challenge that hopefully they can't meet. Gotcha. So our whole – we came up with lots of different approaches, but the one that the companies thought they could meet was coming up with a very high dose in the plant of this protein that's not at all toxic to humans. Not at all toxic to humans, right? And it can't be carcinogenic in a sense because it breaks down. But we could get into that. But the main thing was that you could have a high dose but also leave some of the crop without any of the Bt toxin at all. So that would produce susceptible insects that would then mate with any few resistant

insects. So it's called the high dose refuge approach. And the USDA made that and the EPA made that code. That was what was needed. Of course, you have to have enforcement, and that's the problem. People are planning refuges and using a high dose for some insects, but it hasn't turned out quite as good. But when it's used over the last 20 years, since 1996, those insects haven't become resistant. In cases where it hasn't been used, insects have become resistant.

So that's been, you know, a nice story, at least, you know, in terms of, you know, if you think and you plan carefully, you can do something more sustainable. Let's approach this. You're smiling. No, no, I love it. I want to approach this whole subject

from a different angle for a minute, though. All right. When you go to the Whole Foods store, not like Whole Foods, where you go to like a fancy schmancy store. Here in this town, we have the co-op. Co-op, yep. Yeah. I one time saw an advertisement in the co-op. I don't really like going in there that much,

but it's just a little too special. There was an advertisement in the co-op. I don't really like going into that much. But it's just a little too special. There was an advertisement in there for a cat psychologist. But it was one of those ones where you cut the fringe and write your number on all the fringe pieces on the paper and tear them off. Yeah. All of them had been torn off. For a cat psychologist. Okay. Anyhow. Somebody could have just been upset with that and then just like seeing orange tape in the woods you gotta tear it down i was hoping it

was just people calling her to goof on her but um anyhow you go down to this place okay whatever and you buy a box of cereal and bold letters on it. No GMOs. Right. Okay. What are they signaling to? Like, what are they telling people that people think they're hearing? What are they telling people that they actually need to know? Is it a non-point?

Oh, man. Yeah, you can get non-point? Oh, man. Yeah, you can get non-GMO water. Really? Someone bothered to put that on there? Well, you can get water that has no calories in it, too. So to back up, most of the stuff you buy in the grocery store, you couldn't get GMO if you wanted because it's not there. So, you know, a lot of people think that when they go to the grocery store, if they buy peppers, they buy carrots, they have to look out that they're not getting GMO vegetables. Well, there are a couple of vegetables that have been, you know, that are GMO.

But mostly it's just corn and soybean and cotton in the U S there are sugar beets. There's a specialty apple that doesn't brown and stuff like that. Oh, really? Yeah. But very little, would you like one of those special apples? Does it stay tasty? Good.

Yeah. Well, apparently they don't brown, you know, you could put lemon on them now. That's another way of doing it. But, you know, you could send your kids to school and they would have apples that wouldn't brown when you cut it. Apparently, yep, they don't brown. You know, you could put lemon on them now. That's another way of doing it. But, you know, you could send your kids to school and they would have apples that wouldn't brown. Sliced apples. Yeah. Or you could have it in a salad bar and you could leave it out for two days and nobody would know. Huh.

Yeah. It's a hell of an apple. But anyway, but there are a lot of good things coming along in those ways. But it's not out there so much. But to get to your point, you go to the grocery store. So hit me with a list again. Corn, soybean, like the cotton. Corn, soybean, cotton, sugar beets, canola, mostly the big crops and the big pests.

Because, you know, a lot of it's been done for herbicide tolerance, for glyphosate. Now the weeds, as so many people know, have become resistant to glyphosate because it's been overused. Same old same. Yeah. Right? So they're going to other compounds. But basically you have to think about it commercially. You know, what's the market for these different things?

Right? I mean the amount of market for corn seed is huge in the United States. So that's where you want to make your investment not in blackberries right got you yeah so so but but so so to get to your point let me get to your point but i want to i want to stay on top of that it's more like um it's not that you couldn't that someone couldn't mess around with carrots and find some improvement if they wanted to. It's just like, it's more like it's out there for things that there's been a need.

It's not that there's a reason why in the future you wouldn't have GMO carrots. Yeah, yeah. And people are working on it. If someone was incentivized to do it. People are working on that. There's been a recent article, I guess, in the New York Times about somebody working on tomatoes that would be more nutritious, right? And there's a lot of that going on, but they haven't hit the market. But to go back to your thing about going to the grocery store, go to any old grocery store and look at Cheerios in the

cereal section, right? And you'll see that they're on the boxes of Cheerios. If you look at the regular old Cheerios, you know, like good old, what, oats. You look on the box, it said no GMOs on it. You'll see the label. Well, I don't know what it's like in Montana, but in North Carolina, you go to the grocery store and the box says no GMOs. But you go and look at some of those fancier Cheerios that have some other things in them, maybe corn syrup, maybe. You mean fancier as in honey nut? Oh, probably. Maybe honey nut.

Whatever it is. Something that has corn in it or soybean in it. And those say contain some GMOs. Right? So they're being honest with you. Of course, the regular Cheerios that are made out of oats don't have any GMOs in them because there aren't any oats that are produced that have GMOs in them. Gotcha. But you could go down the aisle to another sort of like Cheerio-y kind of story.

Yeah, because it's sweetened with some kind of corn syrup. Then it's going to have GMO in it. Now we can get to the question of is corn syrup a GMO, right? So if you have corn that's been genetically engineered, right? Somebody put herbicide tolerance into that corn or somebody put that protein I was talking about into that corn. All right. Well, that protein was there. What makes it a GMO, right?

Well, of course, we can go back just to quickly. I think all your folks know that genetically modified is any crop that we grow, right? Corn was developed from Teosinte thousands of years ago by farmers in Mexico, right? Which was like a grass, right? It was, yeah. I mean, so all of these things, anything you have, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes grow wild in the Andes. They're these little things that might kill you because of the alcohol content. Yeah. I didn't know that. All of those things have been, yeah, so that's something that's really, really exciting.

And the apple is some little shitting thing from Kazakhstan or something, right? Right. All of these things. Can you give us a few more examples of that? Oh, gosh. Because it's fun. Yeah, well, it really is. It's really exciting.

So corn was a grass from the Western Hemisphere. Right, right. From Mexico. So potatoes, you know, well, the. This is fun. Yeah, well, it really is. It's really exciting. So corn was a grass from the western hemisphere from Mexico. So potatoes, you know, well, the main thing is, you know, this is way back at the turn of the century. You know, this is like you had Darwin, right, discovered all this stuff about natural selection. Russian agricultural evolutionary biologists got interested in, gee, can I use evolution to understand how to get better crops for Russia at that time, before the revolution? And his whole thing was going all over the world to collect the most diverse germplasm he could. Germplasm meaning the most genetic diversity right so he's go to kazakhstan he'd go to the united states or mexico collect all these seeds and bring them back to his

operation huge operation to save those seeds and breed better crops right but to get to your point you know where all these things came from so he was really one of these people who went back to find the grasses or to find what was the original potato thing that led to a potato so that you could find things in the Andes. So they came from different parts of the world. Right. I wish I could give you all of the details, but obviously rice came from Asia. Soybean came from China. Right. And then they spread over the world.

You know, we think of Italians being into tomato sauce, right? Well, they didn't have tomatoes. That's a great story. If you want to hear this story, it's in my first book. All right, great. How the Italians got turned down in tomatoes. And worried about them in the beginning. Right?

So, I mean, this is the story of this is really interesting. And even more interesting are the personalities who study it. There was this controversy about the origins of corn for like 30 years. of this is really interesting. And even more interesting are the personalities who study it. There was this controversy about the origins of corn for like 30 years. I thought it still was. No, I don't think so anymore. It's quieting down.

Yeah. Well, when Michael Pollan wrote that book, what the hell was that book called? It was about weed, about herb, marijuana, taters, apples, and corn.

Okay, yeah. Botany of Desire. That's right. It was about, we think that we're using these plants. And they're using us. It was about how they're using us. It was like how these plants conquered the world. Right.

They conquered the world by appealing to humans. But you were just talking about that, right? In terms of animals that love hanging out, right? All those squirrels in my backyard. What kind of squirrels you got? Eastern. Eastern greys? How many acres you got?

No, I'm in the city. You want to go hunt my squirrels? They're pretty smart. So let's go back to that thing, right? So all these crops are really, you know, we're genetically modified, right? They're genetically modified from something wild. Again, like those spices, they didn't come to you as the bounty of nature. They came to you screaming and hollering as you got them to come, or as you would say, they got us to breed them so they could live nicely in a big, huge cornfield.

Okay, now I'm getting, okay. Here's where we got to get clear. If there's a difference between, like if I, whatever, I'm messing around in my garden, and I'm, whatever, messing around with pole beans, and I mix the different kinds of pole beans, and I stumble across, and all of a sudden I realize i got some kind of weird variety that loves my yard yeah okay no one is gonna be like i'm not eating that son of a bitch's pole beans those are gmos

right they're like what is the difference there's a difference i don't know what it is i honestly don't know but i know that gmo i don't want to say GMO apologists, GMO explainers like to point to, well, everything is because everything's been manipulated. Right. Right. So, but there has to be a difference. All right. So, let me, you know, you're having me on your show because I was in charge of writing this 600-page report on GMOs. And we don't use the word GMOs.

You don't? We use genetically engineered crops and genetically engineered foods. And the reason we do that is to stay clear of this as we can because it is such an odd definition. It was a label that sort of stuck, you know, like frankenfoods or something. You know, like it's just the one that stuck. But it muddles the water because indeed people sort of what's happening here is, you know, we've been engineering, you know, genetically modifying food for a long time. We've sometimes made mistakes in the breeding.

You know, there was a potato that came out that had more alkaloid in it that had to be taken off the market. Because what would it do? It would make people sick. Huh? You know, alkaloids are, I don't know, they're just toxic to a lot of things, right? it that had to be taken off the market. Because what would it do? It would make people sick. Huh. You know, alkaloids are, I don't know, they're just toxic to a lot of things, right? And that's why when we bred, when the original people bred those tomatoes, the solanaceae, that, that lycopyrsicum, they got, you know, they kept breeding for the ones that wouldn't produce as much alkaloid.

Got it. Right? Mostly what happens in tomato or in some potatoes is they'll produce the alkaloid until they get ripe and then they get rid of it over time. Really? Well, so that makes it, well, one of the things is they defend themselves against birds eating the fruit too early before it's mature. Yeah.

Right? So once that seed is mature, then they want the bird to disperse it so they make the fruit taste sweet and nice. Those plants are smart, right? Or whatever, evolution has worked. But again, that's happened a lot. So what we differentiate, because people are interested in this new technology with the first applications coming out in 1995 were some commercially bred potatoes that had this protein, the BT protein from that bacteria. When that first came out, the idea was, wow, this is so new.

They're genetically engineering this. And we don't know if in putting that gene into the plant, they have caused some disruption of the plant's physiology. And now maybe it's making an alkaloid that's going to kill us, right? I see. Because we've disrupted the genome of that plant. I mean, we didn't know much about this. I mean, it was really interesting. When they first put that bacterial code, that blueprint from a bacteria into a plant, it

didn't work very good because those things have been separated so long that the plant didn't know how to interpret that blueprint very well. Got you. So they readjusted the blueprint, made it red. I don't know. They adjusted how those codes were so they could get the same protein out and the plant would recognize it better. So that was like an early fear was, I don't know what that is.

Right. And, you know, in a certain sense, it was such an early fear. I mean, I'm, I've trained as an evolutionary biologist. And when that was happening, I said, oh my God, wait a minute, this is not going to work. Like Pandora's box. Well, no, I was just thinking of it like, this is stupid. You know, you have these bacteria that evolved millions billions of years but different from the plants like these they haven't seen each other's code and and forever oh you're gonna

take something throw slap it in there and somehow it's expected to read it and it worked yeah you know and it was like whoa if you're like taking an old cassette tape and trying to get it on your computer to play it right yeah but anyway that that sort of stuff happened. And but people were still especially think if you're not that tuned in to all the ramifications of the DNA and the protein and the evolution, right? You think, man, this is wild ass stuff, right? You're going to put that in there and expect everything to be copacetic, you know? So a lot of the early concern. Well, what some of it was about the protein itself, right? Was, well, that protein is fine if you put it on the top of a plant and you eat a little bit of it.

But now it's going to be concentrated. Are you going to eat it? Do we have enough studies? There's no washing it off. Right. No washing that off. So the studies had to be done to make sure. And some people didn't trust the FDA or the USDA or the EPA to do it well or something like that. So there was a lot of controversy in the in the first years. So but I think that the issue was if it was bred by you and your garden or by a company like Harris or whatever, you know, some companies using traditional means to breed it. Well, we trust that we We've been trusting that for a hundred years, right?

We've always had that kind of agriculture, but this is brand new and I don't trust it. And by the way, I just generally don't trust the government, you know, or whatever it would be. And I think it's going to poison people over time, right? I think that was a major concern. Now, the other concern, and that's one thing I'd want to talk about, is the issue of, damn, this is not natural. I'm eating bacteria. I'm eating char in my strawberries. Yeah. You know? Oh, yeah. Make sure to hit on the strawberries with the char in it. You know, like, what is this? So there's this great sort of bio design art group that designed this thing that would be called the myo tomato.

Right? Tomatoes don't have a lot of protein in it. So we'll take myosin as a good protein and put that gene in a tomato. So when you eat the tomato, you could be a good vegetarian. Yeah. Not become anemic or whatever. So that could be kind of weird. And that's some of the safety stuff.

But the other part is that is it natural? So I would say that over time, those things have been tested. The ones that are out there have been tested over and over again. Some by the industry, and you might not trust industry, but some by academic labs or other groups or government groups and European groups, right? Europeans are very worried about GMOs, so they've done a lot of testing. When we wrote the 600-page report, we had a huge number of references about safety testing. And in the back of that report, we separate each of those references in terms of who did the study and who funded the study. So if somebody doesn't trust industry or government, you know, like they can pick and choose, but I think you find that if you go over all those studies, you still come to

the same conclusion that that corn in the Midwest is not going to affect your health in any measurable way. I mean, there's no way with anything for us to know if it's going to take a year off your life, right? I mean, you know, way with anything for us to know if it's going to take a year off your life, right? I mean, you know, eggs. Too many other variables, right? Too many other variables, but we have that all the time. We don't know if a Mediterranean, you know, Mediterranean diet is supposed to be good for you, but eggs were good for you, then they were bad for you, and cholesterol, you know, there are a lot of things where it's very hard to get that data because

it's so little. So you can say, I don't trust it, but why would you then trust something that Steve bred in his garden? Right? It was weird, right? You find this mutant. I know you didn't find it, but if you found it, you found that mutant in your garden, how would you know that that mutation hadn't done some weird thing to the chemicals that the plant uses to kill its enemies. It wouldn't occur to you to be suspicious? It might occur to me, but it won't occur to me. It won't occur to the USDA or FDA in any big way.

They do test things to make sure that they're substantially equivalent, they call it. They look to see that they have the same amount of vitamins and so on. Oh, they do. But only when it's something big, not something where somebody comes up with a new heirloom variety. They're not going to test that. So the deal is, is that, you know, over time, there's been enough testing on the things that are there now. But when people start messing around with the pathways themselves, so let's say somebody wants to give you a better tomato. And this was this article, I guess, in The New York Times about, I think it was The New York Times, making a better tomato that would have more of these antioxidants in it.

Right. Well, when you do that, you change the pathways because plants, every plant five to a hundred different of these compounds that serve them in some way right so when you shut off the pathway to make one of them you're going to make more of something else so we don't know in the future you know i don't want to say that just because we've proven that these few crops are safe that in the future you wouldn't be able to make a crop that would be genetically modified and would have health implications. So that is feasible that that could happen. So you just have to monitor well.

And now, compared to 1996, we have great tools. You know, the same way you do personalized medicine where you could get a blueprint of a person, right? And now you can do the whole genome of a plant and find out if there's anything strange that's been affected by putting that gene in. So there's more of that. I would – personally, I think that would be label is do you think it's nonsense no i don't think they were getting labels nonsense okay yeah but do you feel that if but but being a bna gmo or whatever hell, what's the word you like better? Genetically engineered.

Yeah. A genetically engineered organism or an organism that's been fed genetically engineered organisms isn't eligible for organic labeling. Right. Well, so you asked me if I thought organic labeling was a problem. But I think organic labeling is not just for GMOs. Yeah. It's all – yeah. So the issue –

Insecticides. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a value system, right? I mean I really like to get things that are grown locally just because I want – I think, you know, we really need our agriculture and we don't want it all to be grown in some desert in Arizona somewhere. Yeah. But, you know, so there are reasons why people do things. But in terms of the safety issue, if that's all you're concerned about, right, I don't think that the things you buy in the grocery store that are GMO versus non-GMO are going to be any different in terms of your health. Okay. I'll give you one exception.

But I think that the important piece that you're getting to, though, is in terms of eating a duck that had fed on GMOs, right? Sure. So think about this duck, okay? It goes into a cornfield out in North Dakota, right, where you did a show, right? And you shoot these ducks. We were hunting soybeans and corn. Right, exactly.

And almost certainly. And all of that was probably engineered. At least most of it was engineered, right? Yeah, like big, huge, like feed corn. Right, right. And so to worry about eating that duck because of the GMO that it eats, GMOs, as opposed to the lead that it was exposed to or whatever, maybe in your shotgun shell. You know, I mean, it wouldn't be an issue to me. And let me explain. Or the sound of your buddy's shotgun going off next to your ear. That's a whole other

part. Right. Yeah. What kind of risks are you willing to take, right? But the thing is, is that think about that duck, right? So the plant makes a kernel, that's, you know, the corn kernel that it's eating, right? It takes it in its gizzard. You talk about how it, you know, grinds it all up. It digests it. That DNA gets degraded, right? That DNA gets, you know, there's all sorts of enzymes and people have done testing to show that those, that DNA gets degraded, right? That DNA gets, you know, there's all sorts of enzymes and people have done testing to show that those, that DNA gets degraded in the gut, right? The digestive process. Digest that DNA and digest that protein to make great amino acids to build duct, right? It doesn't wind up putting that protein from the bacteria straight into the meat. I see.

So by the time you actually get that duck, and people have done testing more on cows, right? Yeah. You know, you don't find that in the milk. You find little fragments maybe, but you're not going to find a whole gene in there. And then, you know, so that, you know, it's that question of what makes it not be organic? Yeah, well, what does make it not be organic? Well, I think the idea is it's not about biology as much as a social issue.

Like organic beef. Okay. So you're saying. So organic beets. No, no, beef. Oh, beef. Okay. There are.

Okay. If you buy. I'm a vegetarian, so I think beets When you say beef If you buy organic beef You're looking for a handful of things Right It'll have to do with medications and all that

But um If someone did Let's say a beef producer Did everything Organic except one detail They fed it GMO corn. Right. Genetically engineered corn.

Right. That beef would be ineligible for organic labeling. Right. But you're saying that a chemist wouldn't be able to go into that flesh and find the incriminating DNA. If they found it, it would be little pieces. I mean, they would not find something. Right, right. They wouldn't find functional protein or functional DNA in that meat, right?

But let's get to the issue here. I mean, you know, it's not. I don't even know to the issue here. I mean, you know, it's not an issue about science, I think, sometimes. I think, why is it that, you know, you don't want to use certain antibiotics or certain like the you're going to feed them to that cow to keep it healthy. Yeah. Right? But the antibiotic breaks down as well. But the main thing there against that. Isn't it the worry like the growth hormones?

Okay. So that's a whole other thing, the growth hormones. Yeah. So, again, I don't think there's any evidence that using the growth hormones is going to make that meat bad for your health. Now, of course, the way that it's produced might make it bad for your health, right? So if you put all this antibiotic in and all these growth hormones in it so you can put all these animals together and not worry about them getting infections and stuff like that, you know, it's a whole production system. So I do think organic

is a statement, you know, about a production system as opposed to only health. Now, I'm not saying that's what every person who buys organic is feeling, right? I think there are a lot of people who buy organic because they worry about the health effects. You know what I'm saying? Like, so there's so many things, but I think- Meaning that you might be making a sort of landscape animal welfare decision, or you're making a personal health decision. Yeah, yeah. Or you don't even know, you just know that it's supposed to be right.

It's like, it's supposed to be good and you can afford it. Right, yeah. So it could be a lot of things to a lot of different people. But I know that there are some organic farmers who think that you should be able to use genetically engineered corn, right? Is that right? Yeah. But that's not the rules.

That's not the way it's set up. But, you know, actually, if you thought about each of these individual groups, you'd have eight different kinds of organic labels, right? So I think that's just the way it is. And there was a definite big debate with you in USDA about whether to include genetically modified corn and soybean as being okay to be organic. There was a debate. There was a debate.

And it came out with that not being in the, you know, the rule being not to have. Were you involved in that debate? No, no, I was not. And gladly. Why? Well, because it's, it's a issue about really, again, not about the science, it's about values, right? I think that, well, I mean, could have said something about the safety, but I don't think that was the big issue.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Let me just bring this around to you, all right, about the natural part, right? I think about your followers and people who are hunters who care, right, who are conservationists as well, right? When you go out to hunt, well, let's bring it back to fishing, okay? So if you go fishing for trout, would you feel better about yourself if you caught a natural trout or one that was released by a, whatever, the breeding? Absolutely, natural. Oh, natural. least by a uh whatever the breeding absolutely natural oh natural i i prefer native yeah um

like to me there's like extra points yeah um in my mind yeah if it's a native animal native to the landscape meaning a rainbow trout in alaska um to me has far more value than a rainbow trout in montana um i view a rainbow trout in montana as being like a corrupted and it came from a hatchery yeah it's corrupted it was brought in by man okay i hunt turkeys in a lot of areas where they're not native. And when I'm hunting turkeys where they are native, it feels more special to me. Ah, okay. That's what I want to, I mean, I'm sure that a lot of your listeners feel that way, right?

I can tell you a hell of a lot of trout fishermen. Yeah. They'll be like, native brook trout. I know. Native steelhead. Dude, a steelhead out of Lake Michigan isn't a steelhead. I understand all of this, and I agree with you, but I think that it would almost be down the middle

to people that are like, man, it eats the fly. It jumps. It looks pretty in the picture. I just don't know. I don't know if there's that many people that have your value system when they're looking at trout. Or fish in general. Let me put it this way.

You're probably right. Chester, you're the big fisherman here. I want you to speak to this. Well, no, because he's a guide who takes... Oh, and so somehow his opinion or his view is not as... You'll get your chance, Chester. Let me explain why I think that that's true. I don't even know what the hell he's going to say.

If you talk to a person who, let's say you talk to a person who lives and breathes Steelhead. A Steelhead fanatic. Okay. I don't know how many there are. Let's say there's 10,000 Steelhead fanatics. From the northwest part of our country. A Steelhead fanatic anywhere.

Okay. Great Lakes region. Pacific Rim. You go find me a hundred steelhead fanatics. Randomly sampled. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan. Oregon.

Washington. Alaska. You choose a very small subset of fishermen. I'm choosing people who are steelhead fanatics. You don't have a lot of steelhead fanatics from Kentucky. They don't have access. Go ahead. And you said to these steelhead fanatics,

would you rather catch a native steelhead or a hatchery steelhead 99 out of 100, 90 out of 100, is going to say, oh, native one. Of the fanatics.

Now, you got all these people that don't know. You didn't think? I was going to say don't know there, but I can't think of all the ones I know are not kid-friendly. You don't think I, but I can't think of all the ones I know are not kid-friendly. You don't think I'd agree with that? No, because you're guiding people who probably don't even know that rainbow trout aren't from here. I tell them all the time.

Like, that is a native fish you caught that's way cooler than that one. You hear that? Way cooler. Yeah. Okay. All right. So here we are, right? In a way, in my mind, I think it's cool.

You bring it up. Do they taste better? No. Well, that's not native. Not native. Salt water. Okay. All right.

Salmon out of the salt water tastes better than salmon out of fresh water, but that's nothing to do with just diet. Right, right, right. But I guess I just want to bring this around to the Cheerios, right? Oh, no, I'm tracking. I want to lay a very solid foundation for whatever the hell you're going to say. Okay. So, but those are your values, right?

And there's a reason behind your values, right? I could explain it, but it wouldn't be like terribly convincing. Right, right, right. And that's where I think we get in trouble with trying to get somebody who wants to buy organic. Steve, I think it feels like, to you, it probably feels like you're cheating or you're taking a shortcut when you don't catch something that's native. Kind of in your head. Is that how you would frame it? No, it's that I view if I was going to say what was

the most purest form of nature okay i love nature okay i regard it as a sacred thing um even though we are part of nature right we're like a component of nature i somehow have more respect and admiration for the sort of natural mechanisms of Nate, the non-human, non-intentional mechanisms that drove the distribution of species around the planet. Okay. To see, to be on the landscape with things that arrived in some way that was outside of my species manipulation seems to me more admirable. It's just the story is more intriguing to me. Yeah. So I think where this metaphor comes in is that where you kind of touched on it earlier, where you sort of said, well, Fred brought up the fact, well, we've been doing GMOs for thousands of years. But in your head, long-term selective breeding is not the same as I think what people picture when they picture GMOs now is someone in a lab with a hazmat suit on and some syringes and a Petri dish creating corn.

Big monsie and doughnut. Yeah, exactly. But I think Fred is kind of alluding to the fact that that's that's not what it's really happening well but but that's this is this whole issue right that's really interesting what you're saying so it goes back to these kind of values that people have you know like your kind of connection to it something that really was on the land and you're connected to it you go out there and you do it and yourself in a sort of natural way you're out there trying to deal with this dead carcass that you're trying to bring back a thousand miles or whatever right i mean it's you're you're out

there in that natural situation and that's valuable to you and and so getting around this whole thing about genetic engineering and natural you know that thing of the people in the lab coats, there seems to be, I think, to a lot of people who want an heirloom variety, or as you were saying, you know, that's pretty intriguing to hear how plants evolved, right? People who want to have that connection to not it being natural, but being our cultures have over time, the Chinese culture did one thing, the Mexican culture did something else, right? That's why Mexican hate GMO corn, right? You know, we bred this stuff. Our ancestors bred GMO corn, you know?

And now you're taking it and injecting it with all this stuff and sending it back to us, you know? You know, it's not natural. It's not our culture anymore. So I want to bring it, it connected to conservationists, right? So you know the story of the chestnut tree in the U.S., right? I know there is a story, but I don't know the story. But it was a major part of the forest in the U.S., and it got wiped out by a fungus. Chestnut blight, right?

Chestnut blight. You still can find it out there, but it's only little stumps because once it gets big enough, it gets knocked out. All right. So people have taken Chinese chestnut and crossed it with American chestnut to try to bring the Chinese chestnuts resistant to that fungus. Right. Try to bring that in and then plant that out. So you have a hybrid of a Chinese chestnut and an American chestnut. You try to get rid of as many of the Chinese genes, and it's very interesting that we call them American and Chinese, right?

But now genetic engineers have come up with a way of moving, I think it's a wheat gene, into the native American chestnut to protect it against the blight. And this has been going on for a while. And there are a huge number of people, probably some of your listeners, who are real proponents of getting the chestnut back into our forests. And the way to do that is to genetically engineer the chestnut tree. So it's a chestnut tree, more of a chestnut tree than the Chinese-American hybrid. You just put a little bit of DNA in there, and it protects that chestnut tree. But it's a genetically engineered transgenic chestnut tree. So the question—

Yeah, but it would bring the landscape back when Daniel Boone came down through the Cumberland Gap. Right, right. It would look more like that. Yeah, it would look more like that, but it would be transgenic. And there'd be black bears eating it. Right, right. And so what I bring up to people is how, you know, like, also you know, about the chytrid fungus, right, with amphibians.

What fungus? Chytrid fungus. I know Bill Chytrid's the poet. No, but the chytrid fungus has been causing the extinction of a lot of amphibians, especially in the tropics. Oh, I do know about this. I didn't know the name of it. I heard about this. But anyway, I mean, it's a big deal.

So, you know, one of those kind of things is, wow, what about if you genetically engineered all these frog species to be resistant to the chytrid fungus? So think 20 years from now. One story is, oh no, people didn't want that genetically engineered frog. And the other is they did. So you go to the forest on one side and then no frog, not much in the way of frogs. You go on the other side and you got all these incredible frogs. And I'm sure you've seen some of these incredible frogs, right?

But what does it mean to you to go out into a forest and have this experience and come back and see that, wait, was I in a natural forest? Or was this just a Hollywood movie I just was in? Right. What does that mean in terms of nature and where is genetic engineering taking us? And actually I have to say there is right now the IUCN, the International Union of Nature is having a meeting to discuss use of synthetic biology for conservation. Really? Yeah. It's a very controversial issue. You know, I'm working with a group that's trying to get rid of rats and mice from islands where they cause loss of biodiversity. And we're using a novel technology called gene drive. Well, we're trying to.

It's far away. It's not there. Tell me more. Well, basically, it's a way of having inheritance that pushes a gene into a population. And in this case, we'd be pushes a gene into a population. Yeah. And in this case, we'd be pushing a gene into a population that would cause the eradication of the mice on that island. What is the gene? It's a gene that makes males instead of males and females.

So you have a whole bunch of males. I mean, this is just, it's not there. It's like a jailhouse, man. I don't want anybody to think that that's it. The other is just to have basically infertility genes, right? So those won't go. But you want to restrict it to the island. But there are all sorts of things going on in terms of synthetic biology about just making the ferrets or something like that, black ferret, to be resistant to the diseases, right?

So that you can save biodiversity using genetic engineering. But the conservation biology group is really struggling with this. Right? And think about it. It goes back to your thing about the fish, right? Yeah. What kind of natural world do you go out into? Is it – what makes it natural?

If you guys need someone to do this, I'll do it. Just bring me – I'll tell you. Chestnuts, A-okay. Yeah, okay. The mouse thing, I'd think real careful about how you're going to keep those mice from getting away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think there's a lot of work being done. Yeah, I can handle all these.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's- The mouse one, man, I'd be very nervous about one of them mice. Yeah, right, right. Swimming off, climbing out. You're leaving, you're leaving, and he jumps on the boat. You're like, hold on, let me grab my-

Right, right, right. So actually, the work of the people I work with at NC State are trying to work on one of these gene drives that won't escape from the island. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to go into this. Well, you're into it now. But it's a great question. Yeah. But I mean, that has been, I mean, I have to say that of all the genetic engineering

stuff, the scientists themselves are probably more worried than the public in some ways. So think about this thing about you have a gene that could spread into the island and get rid of all those rats and mice and really be good for biodiversity. That's pretty clear. You know, some people say, oh, you're going to get rid of them and they're part of the food chain now. No. There's evidence that getting rid of those leads to higher biodiversity.

But you go ask anybody who rides the New York City subways about getting rid of, you know, using this technology. To get rid of the Norway rat? Yeah. Yeah. And what do they say? They say, do it. Oh.

Right? Because they hate rats. And it's a non-native there. And it's, and, and, but, you know, it, it, it's going to move back to Norway, no doubt. Right? I mean, I guess the thing is, people, the scientists who do it, who have ecological backgrounds, they're like you.

They're worried about this stuff. But the public has different opinions. You know, if you... Don't stereotype me, man. I'm sorry. I'm generally not... Like, on the food thing, it doesn't, like, just...

I could... It doesn't matter to me. Yeah, right. If my kids had a bowl of cereal, I don't matter to me. Yeah, right. If my kids have a bowl of cereal, I don't really like cereal. I mean, I'll eat it, but it has no bearing whatsoever. Right. What I do watch out for, and I should ask you about this. Somehow I got in my head in some kind of convincing way that I don't like them. I don't like the milk with bovine growth hormone.

Yeah. I was like, we can afford the other kind. Right. So I'm not saying, I don't know. But I'm like, it's just not a big deal. We can buy the other kind. They don't go through that much milk. We can buy the other kind.

And I don't need to wonder if there's something I'm supposed to pay attention to. That's probably like a lot of people. I don't really know. Yeah. But I just know something that i don't have the energy to go find out right right and that's that whole thing again that the people in the developed world get accused of wait a minute you know it's easy for you to be against genetic engineering because you got the extra money to buy that stuff yeah the extra whatever like yeah buck a half gallon right right but people in the developing world need GMOs. That's

a great segue into what I want to ask you next. Okay. Seven and a half billion people? 7.3? What is it, Yanni? Six in 2019. So, like I said, just round up to eight. Yeah, COVID trimmed off some. Not enough. Not enough.

I didn't mean that. Not enough to change a decimal. I don't think so. So whatever. Seven and a half billion people on the planet. And by your understanding, if we were going to globally, okay, we come to this global decision. We're done with GMOs. No more.

Can't put them in the ground. Um, is it true that we would, that you would by necessity need to probably, that you would by necessity probably be starving off a couple billion of that seven and a half billion people that you would starve them off? How do I answer that? I think it's a bad-

You'd be like, yes or no? I mean, if I had to give you a yes or no, I'd say no. Okay, really? You wouldn't necessarily be starving them off, right? Okay. But I think it's, a lot of people use that as an argument for GMOs. Sure. Right?

That's the one that resonates with me most. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess this is – this is a tough one for me because I want to go back. In 1996, the place where genetics were, which is pretty incredible, right? I told you when they made that tobacco plant, I was like, whoa, right? But things are changing that, you know, genetic engineering, we've got, better go back to what is genetic engineering, right? It's those people in the white coats, right? Who are doing this, right? But people in white coats do a lot of things. And one is to actually take a gene from a bacteria and stick it in a plant.

Mm-hmm. And other thing that they found that they could do is take a gene from a wild tomato that made the tomato resistant and just put that gene in, right? So they're not taking it from something really weird. They're taking it from something similar. So where you're taking the bacteria— Tomato to tomato. Yeah. Tomato to tomato.

Putting tomatoes in tomatoes. Right. So if you start out with the bacteria, it's called transgenic. Moving something trans across the species barriers. Oh. Right. So that's transgenic. This is called cisgenic because it's similar. Right.

So you put it in and it's not so weird. Cisgenic. I got it. Yeah. And now the big thing is something new. Instead of moving char into strawberries, you'd be moving like char into another char. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Char from, you know, one region of the country into another one to make it more tolerant. But now there's something called gene editing. Right. And this is something that's happened with humans in China. Right. Where you go in and you actually just tweak a human gene, right? But can you tweak just a plant gene, right? You're not doing anything coming from anyplace else. You're

just changing that gene. And that's called gene editing. And it's just one kind of gene editing. You use gene editing for a lot of new things. It's this thing called CRISPR that everybody talks about now, right? So that's seen as somewhat different by some people because it's more natural because it's not transgenic, right? But in terms of what you can do to the plant, you can do a lot of new things. But what's coming along behind that is something even to me more interesting

because as you know, like with human diseases, some human diseases are caused by one gene. So you could think, oh, well, we could fix that one gene. Like sickle cell anemia, right? Yeah, right. But most human diseases are caused by 10 to 100 genes acting together. You can't make a cure where you're changing 100 genes, at least with the technology we have now. Got it.

And the same thing with a plant. If you want to increase plant yield, it seems real simple. Oh, we're just going to put this one gene in and it's going to be salt tolerant. Well, that happens once in a while, but the way progress is really being made now by the big companies is they're doing something called genomic selection. And again, we could get into a lot of these things, but they're looking at the whole genome of the plants they're selecting and coming up with the best combinations that fit together. And it requires a lot of computer power, a lot of this whole thing about machine learning and all that artificial intelligence to come up with the best ways.

So plant breeding to get higher yields is happening because of high tech. But the new high tech is not transgenics. That's way back in 1996. Got it. So the, you know, so when people say, oh, we're never going to feed the world unless we have genetic engineering, I say, well, what do you, what do you mean by genetic engineering? You mean good plant breeding? Let's have good plant breeding, right? And so good plant breeding can do a lot, but it's no longer this narrow thing that happened in 1996 that everybody was focused on. And this other stuff is going on. And again,

nobody knows about it. It's like the genetically engineered tobacco, right? It's in the background. It happened now, but this stuff is coming. And, you know, for good or bad, I think a lot of the big companies are hiring a lot of computer people to help them with this stuff as opposed to people out in the field because you can improve a plant without looking at it you know there's another argument another pro gmo argument and i keep using the term yeah yeah that's okay we all know yeah we don't talk about is that from a conservation perspective. Yeah.

Is that I've heard people say from a wildlife conservation perspective, they work better. They put off more bushels per acre. So it winds up being less land needs to be converted into monoculture agriculture to meet our needs. Okay. Because it's just more efficient. And if you uh are look

if you're a duck hunter and the you're worried about the prairie pothole region and when grain prices are high more of the prairie pothole region gets tilled and it gets tilled closer to the pond's edge and more duck habitat is lost um why not solve that with more efficient agricultural systems? Right. So we have more ducks. Right. That's another argument. Right.

And I like the efficiency argument and conserving land. But let's ask that question about what has genetic engineering done so far since 1996 to increase yields of corn, soybean, and cotton? I can't answer that. I can. A lot? No. All right.

So yields of corn. Like per acre yields? Yeah. Hold on. Let me give you the deal here, right? Yeah. So Monsanto had an article published in a peer-reviewed journal showing how this has been increasing that.

So when we were doing this 600-page study for the National Academy of Sciences, right, we got down on it, right? We looked carefully at the data, same data they used, all right? And if you look at yields of corn, soybean, and cotton over time, right, and we were looking from 1980 to 2015, I think it was, is where we ended, to look at what's happening to yields. They're going up. You know, there's fluctuation from year to year. Like when we're talking about yields, are we talking about like per unit of space? Like per acre yield. Yield per acre for cotton, soybean, and cotton have been going up since 1980.

They've been going up since 1930. But I mean, we were looking at the data, as was Monsanto, for about 1980. And you see the yields going up on all three crops. And then 1996 happens, and all those crops are now genetically engineered in the U.S. Not every one of them, but most of them. And you ask, well, are the yields going up faster? I would expect they're just spiked. Yeah, not at all. Really?

That's the data. The line stayed the same? I can show you that line. That is a straight line. Now, some people will say. So what did we gain? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So some people say, oh, well, if we have climate change and all of that, if we didn't have genetic engineering, it'd be going down. But if you look at wheat or oats, remember, not genetically engineered, those yields are still also going up the same way. So there really isn't any evidence in the United States so far. I'm not saying it can't happen.

People have been trying since the 1980s to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis. But it's a hard problem. They haven't solved it. Let me put the same thing. Maybe you guys got into this or not. If you looked at amphibians that or pollinators or whatever the hell monarch butterflies, I don't know.

And you look at like amphibian counts from adjacent wetlands over from 1980 to 2015 in 1996. Does that pivot some way up, down? Ah, good question. Okay.

So there I can give you another answer, not for those amphibians, but for insects. Okay? Yeah. So by not using as much insecticide, there's more biodiversity of insects in the GMO fields than in the fields that are not GMO that are sprayed with the insecticide, of course, right? Yeah. I mean, that is there. So you are helping in the way of conservation.

But then there's a different question here about you wanting to keep your little areas that are natural from going into farming. So I'm good and I build this genetically engineered crop that is highly tolerated. I'm not saying I want to keep it. Oh, okay. No, it's fair. It's fair. It's fair.

Yeah, like prairie pothole region, whatever. Sure. I would like to retain as much waterfowl nesting habitat as possible. Right. So all I wanted to bring up is if some scientist uses genetic engineering in a way to make those areas commercially useful because now they have a plant that will survive better and also produce something for humans so we could have more meat and not worry about efficiency of eating, being a vegetarian. Right. I mean, so I guess what we get to, you know, of course, I'm with this Genetic Engineering and Society Center, you know, to keep asking these questions as deeply as we can to ask, wait a minute, you have a nice story, but is that the only way the story unfolds? Or could it unfold in a different way? I think what we find is that we need a lot of brains to be thinking about how it's going to be used, not whether we can make it.

You know, I'm sure you have examples of this in hunting, right? You know, you can make something. It's how you use it that determines, you know, whether it's an ethical way of killing animals and stuff like that. So I think that's important. Let's say we were hiking. Yeah. And you fall off a cliff.

There's no chance of surviving. Okay. And I yell down, so are gmos good or bad what would you yell back yes and no okay but i mean that's the deal right yeah i had that with some students right they they had this like so let's cut to the chase. Is it good or bad? Right, right.

So I would say, anybody who says to me, we should have a moratorium on genetic engineering research, I think such a moratorium would be a very bad idea. Right? But I think that we need to be very careful in the way we use these things. And I think there are examples of these where if it's not, well, interesting example in Africa. Burkina Faso is the first country

that said, hey, bring me genetically engineered cotton that has that BT in it, that has that protein in it, that kills caterpillars. And we won't be able to, won't be using as much insecticide,

which we can't afford anyway. Right? So they get this genetically engineered cotton. They start growing it. And they produce more per hectare than they would have without it. And they use less insecticide. And in a sense, you think the farmers are really happy about that. Right?

And everybody should be happy about it. Except that they didn't breed it right they brought over sort of an american variety that they back crossed into the they crossed it into the african type the african type in the franco-african countries produce this longer thread to count right yeah and so they were producing more but it wasn't of the quality that was needed so it sat on the market, and the country then banned it again. Right? So it's how you do it.

It would have been a great thing if they had done it right. Yeah. And other examples— So they had a lot of shitty cotton. A lot of American cotton. But I just want to bring—another really interesting example to me is about corn, is that actually using traditional breeding, they bred corn to be more drought tolerant. And who could be against drought tolerance? Like mother and apple pie, right?

But what was interesting was that when they gave it to farmers to farm, you think, oh, this is going to be good because it's going to lower the impact of drought. But there's a spacing that most of your, you know, some of your listeners know when they're planting corn, they planted a certain spacing. Well, if you plant the corn too close, you get to a point where in a normal year, you cause drought to happen because the corn plants are just sucking up all the water. So there's a certain optimal distance. Well, if you have drought tolerant corn, you can plant it closer in a good year and get higher yield. And then the field though is still drought sensitive. Is that making sense to you? Sure. Right? Each plant is drought tolerant, but it's the way the farmer plants it. So this is why yes and no is that we have to figure out

what is our goal with this genetically engineered stuff? You know, is it for more sustainability of specific farmers or global issues? I don't know that that's a bad thing, that you're having higher yields and it's still sensitive to drought because we do have crop insurance in the U.S. that's underlined. And also you're talking about a global economy where, well, too bad for Iowa, but man, am I making a killing in North Carolina because they're having a problem. I mean, all I'm trying to get at here is I don't have an answer. It's a system.

It's a whole system that you're dealing with. So when we talk about what are the issues with GMOs, and this is this whole thing about our group, the Genetic Engineering Society Center, is to sort of dig a little deeper. And it's not just about the genetic engineering. It's any technology. As they're coming on, we have to think about them more in terms of what the repercussions are. I'm not against risk. I mean, we always have to take risk. You always have to ask that question.

If you don't use GMOs, are we going to be able to feed the world, right? So you better have an answer to that about how you're going to do that if you don't use GMOs. And I would say that there are some places where you really, GMOs have decreased the amount of pesticide used by farmers in certain countries, and South Africa is an example, where decreasing pesticide use meant that fewer farmers wound up in the hospital at the end of the season. Well, that's the safety of GMOs. That's interesting. And I said I'd come back, and I should make this one comment. Uh, there's a group called Simplot.

Oh, yeah. Out in Idaho. Yeah. Right, and they breed potatoes. Well, they bred a potato that has lower acrylamide in it. Acrylamide, when you fry your potatoes or toast your bread, turns into something that is considered a probable carcinogen. Yep. So those potatoes are possibly less carcinogenic if you're eating French fries.

Really? Yeah, but then again, you shouldn't eat French fries, right? I don't know about that you know how jr simplot got his start no you ever hear that story no simplot was his dude jr simplot and i believe it was during the depression teachers were being paid with these bonds in idaho okay they're being paid with bonds and the bonds had to mature over some period of time. It was like a deferred payment. Okay.

Simplot. He. Wanted it like he. I'm not sure about the sequence, but basically started buying these bonds from people. 50 cents on the dollar. Because they need money. Gets himself a bunch of pigs, piglets, and takes them out in the desert.

Gets a big cauldron, takes them out in the desert, starts shooting wild horses to fatten those hogs. That's how he got his start in ag. And that's Simplot today. My goodness. Whoa, i didn't know that story that dude had toxoplasmosis risk aversion that's how he got his that's not that's what started that yeah my buddy's kid just went to work for sim plot yeah i bet he don't even know that no yeah well the world is complicated isn't I think, you know, taking a certain amount of step back and ask, you know, when somebody gives you these lines, you know, these simple answers, GMOs are good, GMOs are bad, you know, I don't know, it's harder to, when you jump off a cliff.

But we can agree that they're okay to eat. So I think the ones that have been tested and are on the market today, I would agree that those are fine to eat and I eat them all the time. I probably have eaten more GMO sweet corn than most people because we were growing that stuff. So I didn't mind. I, you know. Are you vegetating for ethics or health or combination? I told you I was a hippie. So I was, well, I was, I was, uh, hitchhiking cross country wound up at somebody's farm out in Nevada and, uh, he wouldn't eat anything.

He didn't kill himself. I thought, now that made sense to me. I'm not going to eat anything unless I kill it myself. Really? That started down the vegetarian path? That's how I started. And I got a bunch of chickens and after they stopped laying eggs, I couldn't kill the suckers. So that was the end of it, and I became a vegetarian.

How many years ago was that? When I was 19. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. You look good. Now I'm just a vegetarian, right? I don't think about that every day. Oh, no, no, I'm not going to eat that.

Well, hey, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this one, because my friends got some kids that are vegetarians, and I was messing with them because they're always eating marshmallows. Do you eat marshmallows? No. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I take that back. Okay, I'm not a vegetarian. I take that back. I'm a vegetarian that eats marshmallows.

I'm a vegetarian who eats marshmallows on campfires. Because that's natural. Yeah. Oh man, you guys got any more? This has been great. This is when I knew it happened. Yeah, this was great. I told Corinne to, you know what? This tells you the power of Corinne.

I told Corinne to find someone. I said, I don't want like an ideologue. A GMO ideologue. Did she say Steve? Yanni's going to want to know what that word means. Like a person driven by a sort of like severely drawn perspective would have an agenda some people say ideologue yeah ideologue yeah like a person who's you know full of fire and brimstone i've got a question so in wisconsin if you look at a lot of these corn fields, they all look the same. And some of these little farms where I grew up are organic dairy farms and they have, you know,

a hundred, 200 acres and their corn that they're feeding their cows looks exactly the same as the neighbor next door who does not have an organic dairy farm is that corn that those because it like looks exactly the same probably gmo corn no no well it could be of course i can't tell you but you could have two fields next to each other one being gmo and one being non-gmo and they will look the same so let's go back to when we said, how do you get it so that you could have this BT, this protein in the corn and not have the insects adapt to it? The way that that would be done is by having the BT corn that produces that protein and the non-BT corn, right? So farmers, even if you're a conventional farmer in the Midwest, many of them

plant that refuge. Some plant it to ones that are herbicide tolerant, but some plant it to non-GMO. So the companies have decreased the effort they put into producing new non-GMO varieties. So the yield on a non-GMO variety has become a little bit less than what you get from a GMO. Forget about the insects and everything, just because the breeding effort isn't as great. But they typically are not that different. So yes, you could be looking at it. A breeder, you know, has great eyes for looking at the differences, might see it, but you probably wouldn't. I mean, the differences among varieties, among hybrids, is greater than the difference between the GMO and the non-GMO. I know.

Oh, go ahead. You had a follow-up. I got a question. I got a question for Phil. Uh-oh. I'm good. When you're shopping for groceries, are you like, when you're picking cereal out,

are you keeping an eyeball out on GMO? Oh, no. Okay. No. No, I mean, I'm glad. I was just looking to see if this has changed your mind about it. I do occasionally shop at the co- Oh, no. Okay. No. No, I mean, I'm glad. I was going to see if this has changed your mind about it. I do occasionally shop at the co-op, Steve,

and I've got a great cat psychologist if you need one. There are just so many buzzwords these days that people are... You lost track. People are afraid of, you know, like GMO, gluten, MSG, and for various reasons uh so it's nice to sit down and like and

actually just throw out the facts and have you you know like steve said you're falling off a cliff sorry i still don't have the answer for you so yeah that's because it's just to the point where you can look at a can of mountain dew and it says gluten-free and it's like yeah no shit just like that's how these companies have to label things these days because people are afraid of things and they don't know why. Right, they don't know why and they have the money to pay the extra two cents,

right? It's not such a big deal. And if company A is doing it, company B is going to do it. They all jump on, yeah. But you were going to ask something else. No, I'm okay. No, I got to know what was it. Well, I was just saying like all that corn is modified over time no matter what.

So like I just don't quite get it. Yeah, well. You know, like in a way, so. So it's become a big deal because of the pressure on it right yeah so you have white corn and yellow corn right yeah they're more different yeah yeah you married fred no no wait a minute wait a minute that's it you're out yeah yeah i get to talk to someone i always might not want to know i know that we've covered it and we've had some people write in with the good answers but i think we should hear fred's uh take on it but like i i think the the question around if we have all this

power to just like mess around and make things like better to grow. Yeah. How come no one's doing that just to make my strawberries always taste? Like fish. Did we ever get around to the strawberry? No. Yeah. So that was another thing. Did your strawberries taste like what? Just like the strawberries out of my garden or for whatever.

I just feel like in general, out of all the regions I've lived, right now I live in the worst region ever for the quality of produce I get. Everything just tastes bland. Just give me some good berries, man. You can't tell if it's a – you might – I mean, if it wasn't for texture and looks and size, you might confuse the asparagus with the Brussels sprouts or the asparagus with the green bean. I mean, everything just seems to be just bad. That's how this whole thing started too.

Steve was talking about growing strawberries outside his house in Seattle and how they tasted so good. And then you go to the grocery store and things just kind of taste bland. And that's how Corinne jumped in. Like a tomato. I could win the county fair.

And you go to the farmer's stand there and all I do is I eat tomatoes and the watermelons and all that great produce here. But I haven't had a good tomato in Montana since I moved here. But yeah, we had a produce supplier. I want to interject my own and say that I could win the county fair with the strawberries I'm growing right now. Okay. growing right now okay but a produce supplier wrote in and he was saying because we were talking about that and he was saying the industry has optimized for shelf life and visual appeal he's like you put a big ass shiny waxy apple

that's bland in flavor next to a superb apple that's like blemished smaller its colors aren't as vibrant they're just going to pick up the big shiny one yeah i know we were putting a bow on this conversation but i mean and also taste is subjective but fred i don't know if you can touch on that at all like do you are there any studies about how gO affects the flavor of something? I don't – I have not – people have studied that and not seen an effect on the flavor of these things that are not flavorful to start with. So this was the whole thing. One of the first products was a flavor saver tomato. And you can look that up. What?

I remember that term. Yeah. I don't know what it meant, but I remember that. Oh, okay. So this is a great story. I mean, these folks were academics at UC Davis, and they made this tomato that would stay good on your shelf. So that means that you could pick them when they were closer to being ready, you know, so that you wouldn't pick them so green. So the idea was you would save the flavor that you had in that tomato.

They were very careful to advertise that they were genetically engineered. They went through all of the testing. They were not. They were genetically engineered. Oh, they advertised they were. I'm sorry. They went through all of the regulations to make sure everything was okay. But the marketing didn't work and the whole thing fell apart. And there is a great film that anybody could probably find on YouTube about the Laver Saver tomato and what happened with that.

That was a great example of, you know, the first things being tried was this little four-year tomato. But now there definitely are people who are trying to use regular breeding things, you know, this genomic selection thing I mentioned and other things to improve the taste that's been lost over time. So if you read academic journals, you'll see that there are a lot of small academic groups working on these things to try to make those things. But the question is, how do you get that through the regulations? And you're not going to be as a small academic going to market that stuff. It's going to wind up with a big company. And that big company's got to make sure that it ships right and it looks right and all of that kind of thing. So there are some hurdles.

But with this whole CRISPR new approach to genetic engineering and gene editing, we may be able to come up with some of those things. But then I do want to ask, where is the public going to be on the natural versus artificial? OK, I think if this thing tasted just so wonderful. I do want to ask, you know, where is the public going to be on the natural versus artificial? Okay. I think if this thing tasted just so wonderful. It'll be red state, blue state, man. Oh, there you go. You're probably, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think it would be a green versus purple state. No, I don't know. I don't know what it would be. But it would be, you know, people would differ, right? And wait a minute. This is totally unnatural. This is not a strawberry. But it tastes great.

I think people will take, this tastes great and I'm buying it. You know, so, you know, I think that if you could produce something really good, and there are companies doing this now. Some of them are venture capital companies have gotten investments from big companies. My sense is in the next 10 years, we will see some fruits and vegetables coming out that really do taste better. I sure hope so. Chester, that might be your next investment, man. I'm into it. Okay, last question.

Last question for Corinne's sake. All right. Now, what's going on with the strawberries and the fish? Okay. So one of the big deals is that sometimes you get a frost in the early season or something like that and you don't want your produce to just turn to mush, right, because of ice crystals forming. So I think there's been some of this kind of talk that, you know, some of these very arctic fish and stuff have antifreeze proteins. And the idea would be can you move those genes for this antifreeze into something else right and make it so but the first that's not on the market that is not i've never been on the market there was a guy who early on many many years ago came up with what's called ice minus

bacteria that wouldn't nucleate you know so when you you know one thing that happens is you know in terms of that frost affecting your crop is that it nucleates you know so the ice forms and then it proliferates yep yep so if it's certain bacteria that allow that to happen more than others so you could replace one with another i mean they use it apparently now where they have strains of when they make ice you know know, snow, artificial snow. They put some bacteria in it. It makes it work better. Really?

Yeah. Spray that stuff on the wing of an airplane or something? You know, I'm talking here. No, down at Bittersweet and Timber Ridge. Or I can't remember, the Boyne Mountain, when they got to make snow. No, no, no. I'm saying if you had something that would inhibit ice growth. Right.

Oh, inhibit. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I'm talking a if you had something that would inhibit ice growth. Right. Oh, inhibit. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I'm, I'm talking a little out of turn. This is not my area, but just to say that, that, that, that bacteria, you know, the, the story early on was, you know, because of regulations, this guy shows up in like a space suit to put out these bacteria on the plants and everybody thinks it must be really dangerous because he's wearing a space suit.

Oh, sure. So. Yeah. You don't want's wearing a space suit. Oh, sure. Yeah, you don't want to see a space suit out in your farm field. Something's going wrong, right? Yeah. All right, man. Thank you very much for joining. That was great.

Okay. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this is fun. I'm feeling better about everything. Good. I'm feeling more complicated about everything. We're definitely going to have Fred on again. Yeah.

This is fun. Come out to Montana again. We'll have him on for like a tasting. Like a meat tasting. Oh, yeah. If I can finally get that lab-grown meat in here, we'll have Fred on and talk about that. Oh, yeah.

Maybe you should gear up for a lab-grown meat episode. Oh, we could have talked a whole bunch about that. Dude, go study up. You can come back. There you go. Part two. All right. Stay tuned.

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