The Rich Roll Podcast - “Cowspiracy”: The Devastating Global Impact of Industrialized Animal Agriculture on the Health of Our Planet

Episode Date: June 16, 2014

You care about the planet, right? Of course you do. We're all concerned about global climate change, melting ice caps, fracking, the pollution of our oceans and all the many more issues we currently face that threaten Earth's long term sustainable health. As such, we do our best to be good planetary citizens. To keep our carbon footprint light, we eat local, recycle and compost. We opt for the bike and leave the hybrid car in the garage to reduce our fossil fuel dependance. We've swapped our lightbulbs for those new expensive ones that for whatever reason are supposed to be so much better. And here in California (and wherever we face drought) we limit our showers and curtail excess water usage. This is a very positive shift in consciousness. These are all great habits. So go ahead. It's OK to feel good about yourself. In fact, give yourself a pat on the back for being awesome. But what if I told you that all of our individual good citizenship efforts are just the tiniest drop in the bucket when compared to the massively deleterious impact of just one particular industry most of us quite simply and unconsciously support on a daily basis every day of our lives? Whether we are talking about global climate change, the blindingly rapid destruction of our rain forests, over consumption of water, species extinction, the depletion and destruction of our soil, the pollution of our rivers, lakes and oceans or the obliteration of natural wildlife habitats, you might be surprised to discover the very inconvenient and uncomfortable truth that there is one industry single-handedly responsible for destroying and undermining the health and sustainability of our planet far more than any other. The elephant in the room – animal agriculture. It is indisputable that our global industrialized system of factory livestock harvesting is unsustainable. It's killing us and it's killing the planet. We must embrace this reality and work collectively to create new sustainable systems to feed the 7 billion people that walk the Earth. Because the point of no return is quickly upon us. We're in the red. If we don't promptly redirect, it truly will be too late. When it comes to conservation and ecological responsibility, the dialog generally focuses on fossil fuels. A big issue, of course; and worthy of our attention. But here's a truth that all too often gets quietly swept under the rug: the deleterious environmental impacts of animal agriculture dwarf the impacts of fossil fuel demand in every single category across the board. So why aren't we talking about it? This is the question explored by Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret — an incredibly sobering and powerful upcoming documentary that takes a hard, unflinching look at just why the issue of animal agriculture and its incomprehensibly negative impact fails to get the airtime it deserves in the global environmentalism conversation. Imagine An Inconvenient Truth meets Blackfish and you get the picture. Today on the podcast I am so excited to have the filmmakers here to tell us all about what is really going on — Keegan Kuhn and Kip Andersen. We truly are all connected on this small blue planet. And as such, no discussion about individual health in the micro is complete without conversation about global health in the macro. We have a collective responsibility to remove the blinders of denial, take the red pill from the Matrix, understand what is truly at play and marshall our planetary citizenship to catalyze the change this planet, our children and all its inhabitants deserve — before it's too late.

Welcome to episode 91 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Keegan Coon and Kip Anderson. The Rich Roll Podcast. How y'all doing? Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host and this is aptly called the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for dropping by. best, most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in wellness, fitness, athleticism, creativity, diet, nutrition, art, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and spirituality. The people that are walking their talk. The people that are rocking the tools and the knowledge and the experience and the inspiration you need to discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self.

Today's show is all about environmentalism. It's all about sustainability. And you care about the planet, right? You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if that wasn't a subject matter that you are inherently interested in, I'm presuming, right? We all want to know what's up with fracking and we all want to figure out how to resolve this issue of the melting ice caps. And we all do our best to live sustainably. We all pitch in with our little part, right? We watch our water consumption here in California. We take short showers to not overuse our limited water supply. We watch our fossil fuel consumption, right? We try to leave the car in the garage, take the bike when we can,

not drive too much, watch our gas consumption, we recycle, we compost, and these are all great things. Give yourself a pat on the back. It's awesome. But what if I told you that all of these efforts combined are but an infinitesimal drop in the bucket when compared to the deleterious impact of just one particular industry that most of us unconsciously support on a daily basis every day of our lives. The inconvenient and uncomfortable truth is that whether we're talking about global warming, the deforestation of the rainforest, the overconsumption of water, the depletion of our soils, the destruction and pollution of the oceans, or the obliteration of natural wildlife habitats. There is one single industry that is destroying the planet more than any other.

And it's one we really don't talk about that much. It is the elephant in the room. It is animal agriculture. is the elephant in the room. It is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is by far the biggest offender in every single category that I just mentioned. Point blank, our industrialized system of factory livestock harvesting is just unsustainable. It's killing us and it's killing the planet and it is time to embrace this reality and redirect before it's too late. This is the subject of a new documentary. It's called Cowspiracy, the Sustainability Secret. And this documentary takes a look at just why the issue of animal agriculture and its impact

just doesn't get the airtime that other environmental cause celebs do like fracking and today i have the filmmakers here to tell us all about it keegan coon and kip anderson i first became familiar uh with this project via their indiegogo campaign i think i saw it on twitter or on facebook i can't remember uh and i had the opportunity uh the other day to screen it And I had the opportunity the other day to screen it. And it is powerful. And I really appreciated the bold message. It's really solid filmmaking.

It's also funny and entertaining. It's kind of like, you know, as they describe it, I think aptly, this kind of mashup or sort of an inconvenient truth meets Blackfish type movie. And I think that's appropriate. It really is sort of like that. And after watching it, I really wanted to see if I could be involved and to help the mission, help what these guys are trying to accomplish by getting the word out about the movie. And I knew I had to get these guys on the podcast and do what I can to spread the word about the movie, which is going to be rolling out slowly at the end of June. In fact, if you're in Los Angeles on June 26, you can still come to the premiere.

There's still a few seats left in the theater. It's going to be in Westwood. I think it's the Crest Theater in Westwood on June 26. And I'm going to be moderating a post-screening panel with the filmmaker. So it's going to be awesome. It's going to be really cool. If you're not in LA, uh, but you're interested in trying to check this movie out, go to cowspiracy.com to find out where and when the film will be screening in your area. Um, they're just sort of coming up with all their plans now about how they're going to be kind of going across the country and screening this. Uh, so if you don't see your city up there, they're going to be updating it very soon. So anyway, this is a really cool conversation with two really passionate

environmentalists who have a lot of interesting things to say, some of which, many of which maybe you may not be familiar with. It's a powerful movie. These guys have a powerful point of view, and I'm really proud and happy to be able to bring their message to you guys today. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode. And that's it. Let's get into it right on. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

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Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery to find the best treatment option for you or a loved one again go to recovery.com i'm excited for you guys uh thank you for letting me take a look at the film early

we're honored that you want to see it oh Oh yeah, it was awesome. Um, and, uh, I'm really excited for what's coming up. It's going to be an exciting ride, I think. And I think that, uh, this movie has the potential to really, uh, influence, uh, how we look at our food system. And that's a big deal. You know, you guys have bit off uh quite a bit with this movie and uh it's going to be really interesting to gauge people's reactions on both sides of it because you certainly don't equivocate you know you're taking a very uh you're taking a you know a very hardcore stand and and what you're saying with the movie and i think it's great you know i think it's uh it's a message that needs to get out there. And so, before we even get into what that is, I mean, I'd like to have you guys describe the movie.

Yeah. So, the film is a journey, first and foremost. It's about Kip, my co-director's journey of finding out about the most destructive industry facing the planet today, which is animal agriculture. And if animal agriculture is responsible for, you know, number one cause of rainforest destruction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, topsoil erosion, climate change, you would expect the world's largest environmental organizations to talk about it. But when you go to these organizations' websites, it's nowhere. You don't see animal agriculture. They're going to be talking about fracking or transportation or dirty coal. So the story is the journey of finding out about this and going to these organizations and trying to find the answer. How do we live sustainably on the planet with 7 billion people? It is interesting. We talk a lot about how to cut our fuel costs or, you know, how can I get into, you know, an electric car or at least,

you know, a Prius and get my expenses down, you know, get my fossil fuel consumption down. That really seems to be the thing that is on most people's minds in terms of trying to be more ecologically aware or sustainable in our day-to-day life, you know, beyond recycling. It's, you know, it's pretty much all about fossil fuels, right? But what's really fascinating and what the film does a great job of really elucidating is the distinction or the, I guess, the sort of comparative impact of fossil fuels or our sort of, you know, fossil fuel dependence of that impact on the environment versus the impact of our factory farming impact on the environment versus the impact of our factory farming system on the environment. So, can you kind of draw that distinction? There's a lot of statistics

that are in the movie, and of course, I can't remember them off the top of my head, but, you know, paint that picture a little bit. Yeah, you know, I think it's, there is a heavy focus on fossil fuels, and rightfully so. The impact of burning fossil fuels on the atmosphere is just devastating, and the mining involved in it. But again, if we put things in comparison, it's about 100 billion gallons of water is used for fracking. Fracking is a hot issue right now. It's a hot issue because it uses a tremendous amount of fresh water, and then it pollutes groundwater. 100 billion gallons. We don't know what the long-term impact is also of kind of what that sort of subterranean damage will lead to.

Yeah, and it needs a lot of attention. But when you compare that to animal agriculture, we're talking about 15 trillion gallons of water. You can't even compare. So, again, it's the number one cause of water consumption and the number trillion gallons of water. You can't even compare. So again, it's the number one cause of water consumption and the number one cause of water pollution. This is making people sick. It's making entire ecosystems sick. And it's killing the oceans. This is an issue you would think would be at the forefront right there.

But it's not. And it's because it's an unpopular issue and it's an unpopular sentiment to talk about dietary changes. Right. And we're going to get into that. You know, why is it that this is not something that we're talking about more? But just in terms of how the, you know, the movie lays out, you know, I think my personal opinion being a film snob is that whether it's a documentary or narrative film, it has to operate on the sort of three-act structure. You have to emotionally draw on your audience. You have to entertain. I don't care if it's the most educational documentary on the planet. It really still has to function like

a narrative film that you would see, you know, if you're going to see the latest Marvel movie or what have you, you want to go on this hero's journey. And I think that's what you guys did a really great job of doing with Kip because it's sort of this POV, you know, it's sort of you're going on this adventure through your eyes, right, Kip? And Kip, it sort of opens with this idea of you being, trying to be the good Samaritan and being ecologically conscious and doing all the kinds of things that, you know, we're told we need to do to be kind of, you know, less in our footprint in a good way. And then, you know, sort of stumbling onto this discovery that really we don't talk too much about. So how does this, you know, how does this journey kind of begin for

you? Well, it's a journey that's really personal to me where it started with, I thought I was doing everything I could for the environment and then saw a post with the United Nations long shadow report that animal agriculture is the leading cause of greenhouse gases, 18% versus 13% of all transportation put together. And that's when I was like, wait, there's something going on here. So 18% for animal agriculture, 13% in that the umbrella over 13% includes all transportation. All transportation, trains, planes, cars, everything. Every single thing all put together. And these are global numbers.

Global numbers. And animal agriculture was 18%. And here I was riding my bike everywhere. So that's kind of where the journey starts. And here I was riding my bike everywhere. So that's kind of where the journey starts. And then, so I take it once, do some more investigating, and then find the World Watch report in 2009. Their calculations, animal agriculture accounts to around 51%. You know, that's three to almost four times as much as 51% of all greenhouse gases attributed to animal agriculture.

And, uh, that's from the methane, like what's going on, like describe, like, where is all this, where are all these emissions coming from? Their calculations combines, uh, the methane from the cows, the flatulence from the cows. It also combines with the, all the destroying of the rainforest and all these things that put out oxygen, destroying those and taking that out of the atmosphere. So it's not just the bad things we're putting out. It's the good things we're taking away. Exactly.

And then also the transportation to transport all this billions of pounds of food. So then you have to account that to in this entire industry of imagine how much you know seven billion people living on this planet everyone else get fed and the food that goes back and forth with these just destructive middlemen called you know basically animals for food they're just giant middlemen's eating or eating up our planet um all the transportation that's go back and forth with the grain. And then once the animal, unfortunately, gets killed, then you have to transport that into free frozen transportation, refrigeration transportation across the country.

And then it has to be stored in supermarkets, in refrigeration. So it just adds up on and on and on. Right. So the carbon footprint for the transportation and storage, everything that's required from wherever it's reared to getting it onto your plate. Mm-hmm. Right? Everything. So, yeah, it's an incredibly wasteful system.

Yeah. Right? And it requires a tremendous amount of water and carbon resources. But, hey, man, we got to feed the planet. Like, what are you going to do, right? Exactly. We got to feed the planet. Like, what are you going to do, right? Exactly. We got to feed the planet. Yeah, you know, and that's what a lot of people will say.

They'll say, hey, we got to feed people. So what else are we going to do? And I think that's why it's not a subject, why people don't talk about it, because it doesn't even seem like, well, why are we even going to talk about it? Because there's not an option. But the option is, clearly, if animal agriculture is consuming, you know, 70 to 80 percent of the world's grain that could be fed to humans, well then clearly there's another option. We can actually eat those grains ourselves. So we can feed, there's estimates anywhere between 12 to 15 billion people on the planet if we got rid of animal agriculture with the grain we're growing today. There's not meaning

creating more grain lands or farm lands. But Keegan, we would just have cows walking around everywhere if we did this. We can't do this. It would be chaos. It would be India and Manhattan. Yeah, imagine that. Imagine how peaceful that might be. If you flicked a switch, right? Like an overnight, everybody did this?

Yeah. I mean, that's a common argument. But I mean, obviously, it wouldn't happen. It would be a slow process of evolving. Millions of animals are bred relentlessly by force, unfortunately, most of the time. And that's what's really happening. And on the population note, we explore in the film, especially a lot of environmentalists, they focus on, oh, well, the real problem is we have 7 billion people and that's just too much for this planet. And we really go into exploring 7 billion is a lot of people going in upwards of 9 million in these next couple of decades.

9 billion. 9 billion. But what it really, we have to really look at is the 70 billion farmed animals that humans raise for food. These all, all these animals need to be fed and they need to drink their water. And it's 70 billion of them. And it's not the 7 billion humans necessarily is what those 7 billion humans are doing. So, yes, 10 times the number of beings that we're feeding versus humans, right? And that's a conservative figure. You know, that's roughly what the number of animals that are slaughtered per year. There's potentially, you know,

anywhere upwards of 150 billion farmed animals on this planet at any given time. Where do you get these statistics? Are these reliable? Is this reliable data, Keegan? Yeah, so that was a big part of the film. The film is very information rich. And we were very, you know, so that was a big part of the film. The film is very information rich. And we were very concerned that making sure that we could back up all of our information and all of our information is backed up by research papers, independent research papers. You know, for example, you know, you can, to produce a pound of beef in California takes anywhere between 1,500 gallons of water to 5,000 gallons of water.

5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef? In California. And those numbers globally can go up, you know, they can be upwards of 20,000 gallons. Why is it so much water? So, you know, cows have to drink. They drink 30 to 40 gallons every day, which is just phenomenal when you compare it to human being drinks, like about a gallon. And then all of the water is needed to grow the grain to feed them. So, yeah, it includes the water required to grow the food to feed the cow. And here we are in a drought, supposedly, situation where, you know, we're driving down the freeway in California, and it says severe drought.

Watch your water usage and then you hear on the radio watch your turn on your watch your sprinklers leaks in your faucet and domestic all the domestic water use only accounts for five percent of all the water and animal agriculture in california accounts for over 50 percent of all the water so So, you know, you're turning off your faucet and this and that. You're saving a fraction of a percentage compared to, say, one pound of beef is 2,500 gallons of water. Right. So you're better off taking a two-hour shower

and just bypassing on the cheeseburger. You could take a month-long shower, actually. Well, there's this great moment in the movie where you're sort of being the conscientious, you know, ecologically, you know, sort of good citizen and you're like trying to reduce the length of your showers, you know, because of this reason, right? Like that's what somebody does

who's thinking about things outside of himself. And then it dawns on you or you come into awareness of these statistics and you're like, it doesn't matter how long I take it. It doesn't matter how long my shower is. It makes absolutely no impact on this when so much of this water is going towards this system that is so unbelievably inefficient and at the same time, you know, really destroying the planet.

One hamburger is equivalent of showering six entire months. And it's, I mean, that's unbelievable. It's ridiculous. Right. We had David Simon, the author of Metanomics. I had him on the podcast, I don't know, six or nine months ago. And I was glad to see that he, that you guys interviewed him for the documentary. He goes into all these sort of numbers when it comes to the true economics of what's required to raise livestock for food and the extent to which government subsidies pass on these costs.

So, for example, the $2 hamburger is really $7 or whatever it7 or whatever it is because of, you know, what we pay in taxes and how that money gets funneled towards these industries. And it's similar, you know, it's similar to, you know, what you're saying when we look at how much waste there is and how we're going to, how are we going to begin to address this? You know, I think the only way we'll start to address it is when people have the information in front of them. And that's a big part of this film is that this information has been hidden or it's been intentionally avoided by these large international organizations and by governments. The focus of the film and the mission, I think, really of the film is to inform people. Give them all the information and let them make up their minds for themselves.

And that's the only way we're going to see change is when people have the information available. And with that being said, there's so much information packed in this film. What people really love, the screenings we've done, is just how entertaining it is because it is a journey. It's following a journey. It's not just a bunch of information thrown at you. It's following a journey that you go through and you go along and you visit the big green, as we call them, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and these other ones.

And you just see these humorous, humorous interactions where they're just so willing to talk about sustainability. But once you mention the word animal agriculture, things just get really awkward, and there's some funny answers, funny aversions. And as a lot of people said, a few people have seen it the second time, they just get so much more out of the humor, they see so much humor in it that you miss the first time

because there's so much jam-packed of information and little nuances of humor that you just don't pick up on the first time of these interviews. Right. So, Keegan, you're saying, you know, we're trying to get the information out there, and this is information that's been hidden. And in terms of the narrative of the movie, we watch Kip kind of come into this realization that we're never going to be able to really begin to address all of these environmental concerns until we really take a hard look at what's going on with animal agriculture. And then we start to watch you as you try to contact these organizations

to talk to these people about how come nobody's talking about this. We talk a lot about our fossil fuel consumption. We talk about our water consumption. But nobody's talking about the elephant in the room, which is how wasteful this system is that we've erected around how we raise animals for food. And then you go in and you visit these places from Sierra Club to Greenpeace, and you basically get nowhere with these people. You can't get any kind of answers from them about why they're not talking about this issue, which clearly is the biggest issue when it comes to waste. Yeah. And when you, you know, it's not only

is it the biggest issue of, say, deforestation, it's the biggest issue of all of them. There's virtually no environmental ill facing the planet today that the leading cause is in animal agriculture. I mean, literally, no matter what your passion is, you care about the rainforest. Well, hey, you know, upwards of 91% of all the deforestation in the Amazon was caused by animal agriculture, whether for clearing land to graze cows or to grow the feed crop, the soy, genetically engineered, you know, corn and soybean. That's fantastic. Yeah, you have this graphic where you use like a football field analogy and you show how much, how it's getting eaten away on a daily basis. The numbers are ridiculous. Do you remember what they are? It's about an acre per second of rainforests

destroyed. You know, and the vast majority of that is for animal agriculture. It's just astonishing. But again, you know, it goes way beyond just rainforest. You know, what do you care about? You care about the oceans. Well, you know, leading cause of dead zones in the oceans is from land-based animal agriculture. Explain that a little bit because I didn't really know how that whole, how those two things

kind of worked together. And the film did a really good job of explaining that. You know, I think that was one of the more surprising aspects for Kip and I both while working on this film is that, you know,

I felt like I was pretty well informed on this issue. And then when we did more research and you saw that, so you have these massive fields of, again, genetically engineered corn and soybean that's been raised just to feed to livestock. They use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and those all run off the fields. They run into the streams and rivers that lead out to the oceans. You have all this massive amount of manure and waste from factory farms and from feedlots and from lagoon pits. Those spill into rivers and streams that make their way to the ocean. This huge bloom of algae happens when you have high levels of nitrogen in the water, and that algae deprives the entire ecosystem of oxygen. So you have these massive

areas, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere you have large— Like the Mississippi Delta, right? Exactly. It's got to be probably the worst. It's one of the worst in the world. And we were talking about hundreds of square miles of areas completely devoid of life. And as the leading cause, according to the EPA, the leading cause is animal agriculture. But even beyond that that too is is the

fish you know there's more you know pigs are fed and eat more fish than human beings in this country i didn't know that i didn't even know that pigs ate fish that's it so you know an animal that would never naturally eat fish is force-fed fish and it's you know it's that like is it ground down into some kind of dry product for them? Or how does that work? Like a feed product? Yeah, so, you know, you have these massive factory trawlers.

They catch huge amounts of fish. You know, about one out of every five fish is considered by, or one out of every fish is the intended species caught. The rest of it is by catch. And then they take those fish and they grind them up and they feed them and a meal to factory farmed animals, so pigs and chickens and cows. So again, you know, it's like, if we care about fish, we

care about the oceans. The first thing we could do is stop eating pigs. And that's the bykill that they call it. You know, one out of five, four out of five, there's bykill that includes dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, animals that people love. And they don't realize by contributing these other things, actually. And the whales, you know, contributing to killing these other beautiful species. These nets are massive, right? Mm-hmm. So we have this idea that you're putting forth that we're not talking about this, but there's a concerted or a conscientious effort to really kind of sweep this under the rug and consciously not talk about it. I think it's kind of what you said, sweep it under the rug.

And a lot of the film is for discussion. Is it a conspiracy? Is it not? Why would the leading cause of all these things that are destroying, literally eating up the planet, why is it being swept under the rug? What is the reason? Is it conspiracy? Are they getting paid off, the big green getting paid off by animal agriculture? Or is it just internally they can't adopt their own choices of what they do internally within themselves and they don't want to change? Um, so the film explores all these different things. Um, so it, you know, it's a catchy title, but it is, you know, is it a conspiracy? So the film really goes into that and you know, we don't, we don't tell necessarily the audience of what to think or anything. You just learn all the information and, uh, and you can go home and explore on the internet and find out even more for yourself. And that's what we encourage

people to do. It's not, we're not, you know, here to preach or anything. We're just exposed, sharing the truth, really. Yeah. I like the idea of sort of just opening the door and then letting, letting the person go on their own journey with it and letting them do their own research and investigation. But when you, you know, you try to get, you try to get a sit down with Greenpeace, right? And your stymied. And that, and so kind of the inference with that is is that an organization like that you know maybe maybe greenpeace itself or some of these other larger environmental organizations you know they subsist on fundraising efforts right like they require it requires like a lot of people donating money to these organizations to keep them afloat. has contributed to the Greenpeace's of the world in such a way to sort of say,

hey, you know, we're funding you. Like, you can't, like, you know, undercut our bottom line or speak out of school about what we're doing. And when we started filming, ironically, maybe not ironically, Greenpeace had a big campaign just totally showcasing that KFC had these buckets that weren't rainforest, that were rainforest friendly, that they weren't, you know, the rainforest was not tearing down. KFC should be given a medal because they're using paper that was not from the rainforest. I mean, it was truly a promotional. It was the front front homepage of Greenpeace's website. And it was, yeah, that they don't use, they don't source paper pulp from rainforests in Indonesia.

This is KFC who's conglomerate of Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. And they're essentially promoting that they don't use rainforests. Congratulating them. And so what, you know, the phone explorers too is, are they, are they funding? How did that get on? I don't know if it was a homepage,

but it was very prevalent. It was a huge, huge article or campaign with it. And the whole thing is, is it profits over planet or planet over profits? What are these big organizations? Have they gotten so big that they need to sustain themselves and it's more important that they grow at a certain level when they go to these meetings? And lost the focus of we really need to save the planet or these profits don't even matter. You know, there's some calculations within decades or, you know, there are tons of different calculations. We might not even be here that long unless we make drastic, drastic changes.

And it's these environmental groups that we look to really lead the way. it's these environmental groups that we look to, to really lead the way. Um, it's not the, it's not the NY culture industry that needs to, you know, we need to point the finger at because we already know what they're about. They're about profits and they're very, you know, it's, it's, it's a company, but it's the people that you trust, the environmental groups that we look up to. I grew up, you know, looking up to Greenpeace to show me the truth. And then to find out this, you know, it was really disheartening kind of a letdown. So, you know, these,

they need to be accountable. Right. I mean, if their whole sort of mission is we're here to save the planet, but they're not willing to look at the one thing that seem seemingly, at least according to the statistics that you bring up in the movie really is the most, you know,

the largest contributor to the problems that we're experiencing and will continue to experience. Then there's something concerning about that. Something fishy. But it's like anathema. I mean, you're, you know, that's, it's a bold statement to kind of come out and go, you know, hey, Greenpeace is, you know, they're not, they're, they're focused on the wrong things. Yeah. You know, the thing with, you know, with all these organizations, they are doing good things. You know, it's like talking about any of the issues that they're talking about, it's important and it's all needed and we applaud them for doing that. But if you're misdirecting people,

if you're hiding information, that's a problem. Do you think it is a conscious effort or is it laziness or is it fear? Like, what do you think? I mean, if you had to guess. Well, an example, you know, we've mentioned Greenpeace a lot, but, you know, an example is Rainforest Action Network. They have four, if you go on their homepage, they have four major campaigns.

This is Rainforest Action Network. Four campaigns, and not one of the four is animal agriculture. They have palm oil. Palm oil is number one. Palm oil is a big deal, though, is it not? It is. We have a comparison. So, yeah, so palm oil palm oil is a big deal though is it not it is we have a comparison so yeah so palm oil here's a perfect one so but you know going back to rainforest action network because i've that's my i just walk around thinking palm oil is a big problem with the rainforest like i just i don't know why i think that but that's what's in my mind and and absolutely palm oil if you look at any of the large environmental organizations particularly ones

that focus on rainforest protection they're going to talk about palm oil. And palm oil is causing huge devastation in Indonesian rainforest in particular. They clear massive areas, traditional orangutan habitat for growing palm. But then again, you put it in comparison. Well, a huge percentage of palm oil is actually fed to livestock. So that's first and foremost. We need to talk about that. I just assumed it was like for peanut butter.

Yeah, right? Or candy, right? If you go on their websites, that's what they'll let you believe. They'll say, don't buy palm products. And of course, we should be limiting palm products. But then we compare that deforestation of Indonesian rainforest for palm versus the deforestation caused by cattle, you can't even compare the two.

Of all rainforests. Of all rainforests, you know, all around the world. You know, it's something like 15 to 1 or even higher for the amount of land that's been cleared for cattle versus palm. So again, absolutely we need to be addressing palm. It's destroying Indonesian rainforest. But let's talk about the real problem. The real problem is cattle.

So on this website, there's the four sort of things that the four-pronged attack or whatever, palm oil and whatever the other three are. But the point being that animal agriculture is nowhere to be found. Nowhere to be found and come on, this is a simple Google search where we find a lot of this information. I think a lot of people would already know about animal agriculture, would know the general public, I think, is not the leading cause, one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction. have that as one of their four. It's not even one of their top two, but it was coal, fracking, fracking, tar sands. Tar sands was above it. What is tar sands? So tar sands is in British Columbia. So it's not even near the rainforest. Why would a rainforest organization focus on this and not focus on cattle? That's part of the issue too. focused on cattle. That's part of the issue too. Uh, but you know, it's dealing, pulling oil out of Northern Alberta's, you know, shale. It's a hugely toxic, very destructive. But again,

if you're a rainforest organization, let's talk about the leading cause of rainforest destruction. And why would you not have that on there? Right. So it's, it's hard not to make the leap that they're in the back pocket of whatever lobbying group or special interest group. Is there a way? There's got to be a way to track the money, though. Can't you do some sort of forensic accounting or forensic investigation into how these companies are getting funded? Is any of that public record, or are they allowed to keep that private? So some of it's public record.

Some of them, large corporations can make contributions through basically a third-party donor. We looked into as much as we could. We had a very limited budget and very limited time on this film. from the agriculture industry. And the World Wildlife Fund will talk about animal agriculture, and they'll talk about how it's destroying habitat, and then their solutions are, we need more factory farms. Interesting. And we explore. We actually have a part where we finally get an interview with the country's own about the world,

with the U.S.'s, I think, biggest animal agriculture lobby group, Animal Agriculture Alliance. And we ask some of these questions. It's a very interesting part in the film where you have to watch it to see the reaction when we say straight up, do you support any of these organizations? Have you ever given money to Greenpeace? And you have to watch the film to see the reaction and see what you take away from that. What about the argument that an organization, at least the larger environmental organizations, can be more impactful if they are working within the system as opposed to being

like an outlier and taking a really hardcore stand on something that isn't going to happen overnight? So, for example, like saying, know, animal agriculture exists. It's part of our reality. It's not going away overnight. The only way to start to address this is to cooperate with the industry itself in a, that would be something. But they're not even addressing it. It's like we talked to Sierra Club and they said, we're going to release extended interviews eventually. But basically, it comes down to money. The return on investment for you put a million dollars into a coal campaign and the return that you're going to get versus a million dollars into an anti-meat campaign and the return you're going to get

we're not asking any of these organizations to put a million dollars into a anti-meat campaign just put it on your website you know it doesn't cost anything just just make the information available hey the one of the best things you can do to help the plant is reduce your animal protein consumption and we have a part in the film where we compare it to the American Lung Association. It's as if they were focusing on these side things like asbestos, but completely ignoring cigarette smoking. Because there's no way people are going to... And that was a reality about 10, 20 years ago or 20 or so years ago. Oh, we'll never get rid of smoking in public places. Don't even bother. Don't even bother. And for them not to address cigarette smoking and putting that to the side, it's almost like diverting it to these other things by hiding, as you say, the big elephant in the room. And so how did they work with the tobacco companies?

Well, it was pretty straight up. tobacco companies. Well, it was pretty straight up. It was, you know, essentially put warning labels on your cigarettes, huge taxes, as probably David was mentioning, meat taxes, animal agriculture taxes. So there's the conversation. Will animal agriculture want to have that conversation? But is it necessary is the question. You know, there are some organizations who actually are talking about this. There's some real champions. There's a Center for Biological Diversity. They've launched a campaign recently called Take Extinction Off Your Plate, and where they talk about reducing and elimination of animal protein from your diet. So there's organizations who are

successful in doing this. You know, the Western Watershed Project, there's an organization who actually talks about the damage that, you know that cattle grazing is having on Western lands in the United States. And did you ask any of these organizations, like, how come the Sierra Clubs and the Green Pieces of the world won't talk about it? I mean, did they have a response to that? You know, we didn't have a chance to interview either of those organizations because of time restraints. But from the advocates that we did talk to, you know, there's a lot of speculation. And the truth is that we don't necessarily have a hard-cut answer because I think it's different for each organization, different for individuals. So I think there's a lot of things at play.

What is going on legislatively like on Capitol Hill currently with respect to trying to address some of these animal agriculture issues that are coming up? I mean, are you versed in that? Yeah. I mean, what we're facing right now, there's a series of laws throughout a number of states in the country. laws throughout, you know, a number of states in the country. They're called ag-gag laws, which basically they criminalize exposing what farms are doing, whether that's the atrocities they're committing against the environment or against the animals themselves. And this is, you know, First Amendment protected activities, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, repression, because this industry is very threatened by undercover investigations. So, they're threatened by films like ours that expose the truth. And so, they're pushing,

you know, their state legislators to run through these laws that criminalize, you know, documenting abuses. Right. And for the listener out there who may not have any familiarity with what an ag-ag law is, I mean, essentially, it forbids you by law to go into any of these food production companies and film anything, or to get a job there under kind of false pretenses, right? And it actually goes one step further for a lot of the states

is that you can't even film from public lands. So you're standing on a public road and filming onto a farm. That's actually illegal in many states. Right, that's crazy, because it you contrast that with like paparazzi laws that are so liberal and completely insane, you know, living in Los Angeles and kind of seeing how that business operates, they have complete latitude to wreak havoc on people's lives because they're standing on public property or they're out in the public and so

the fact that you could stand on public land and get out your iphone and and film what's going on you know 100 yards away on some farm and that's that's illegal and there's a felony uh it's not a felony um but you know there have been people arrested there was a person arrested in utah for filming a slaughterhouse from public land. There was a National Geographic photographer who was arrested for flying over and taking pictures of feedlots in Kansas. And it doesn't matter what your intent is, right? It's not tied to like some kind of malevolent intent. And that's crazy. I mean, this has got to go before the Supreme Court because it's so clearly unconstitutional in my mind.

Well, yeah. And two, where was the motivation of these farms? Why would they not want us to see? And then the reason is, is they know when we see the horrors that are happening on these farms, we're all appalled by it and we don't want to support it. So, it's bad for business. Yeah. It's not even a question of legality versus illegality in terms of their practices. It's just sort of trying to immunize public perception from the reality of how food arrives on our plate, because it goes back to Upton Sinclair, really. I mean, what he kind of talked about with how hot dogs are made back in the 20s, or, you know, like, if you want to eat this food, then you should just, you should go to the factory and see how it's done. And if you're cool with that, then knock yourself out.

But most people, I think, because we're by our nature compassionate and if we're given the opportunity to kind of peel back the curtain and see it, I think a lot of people would look at it differently and they can't risk that. Absolutely. I think you got to the heart of it is that at our nature, we are compassionate. We're very compassionate people. We don't like the idea that we're causing harm to other beings or the planet. And so, yeah, these things have to be hidden. But the truth is, is we're compassionate. We can't, we can't hide from this stuff and we can't allow it to be hidden.

We've got to see the truth and we've got to see what's going on that because if we're supporting it, that's, we're responsible for it. see the truth and we've got to see what's going on that because if we're supporting it that's we're responsible for it so yeah it's uh there's got to be some kind of test case that can kind of go up the court system on this because it'll be really interesting to see how that shakes down and so when you think about like i mean when you talk when you use the word conspiracy it's like how do these agag laws even come into how do they even get passed like it's kind of insane it's almost like uh it almost feels like it comes out of some bizarre dictatorial society. Like, how could this law get passed in a democratic country where, you know, it's just bizarre

to me. There's a phenomenal book written by Will Potter called Green is the New Red. And it talks about just that whole issue of the repression that environmental activists and animal rights activists have faced. And then, yeah, these shaping of legislation to criminalize fully legal, totally protected under the constitution forms of activism. And what did, and Will's in the, he has a nice part in the film. He's great in the movie.

Yeah. And also Howard, Howard Lyman, who got sued with Oprah Winfrey by the Texas. Right. So tell that story for people who might not remember what went down. I think, I believe 95, about 20 years ago, Howard Lyman got sued by the Texas Cattlemen. Yeah, Texas Cattlemen. A group of Texas Cattlemen got together and sued him and Oprah Winfrey for him going on the Oprah Winfrey show by just telling the truth. At that time, mad cow disease was a big hot hot topic. And he was explaining what cows got fed sometimes. And just by telling the truth, it affected, according to them, affected the profits of beef.

Right. As I recall, he was very convincing. He was convincing enough to get Oprah to kind of, I can't remember exactly what happened, but did she commit to saying, I'm not eating beef anymore? Like she said on national tell, like this incredibly influential person's like, I'm done with, I'm done with eating meat. I can't eat beef anymore.

I'm not going to have another hamburger. And I think overnight. Yeah. Like the, she has the, the ability to impact the entire industry through that one statement. One, one statement and just her,

what she felt at that time. And they, they spent the next four to five years in litigation, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I believe with Oprah, it was over a million dollars. So she got sued, her show got sued, and Howard got sued for libel? What was the cause of action? There's a number of states that have what are food libel laws, which basically say it's illegal to say something you know to be false against a perishable commodity. And this is to protect industries.

They're pretty unconstitutional at the base. If you're lying about something, totally, that's not okay. You can't lie about things, and that's a problem. But when you say something that's totally truthful, you're just telling the truth. Yeah, truth is the ultimate defense, the libel. Exactly. And that's the reason why Howard and Oprah were eventually found innocent. The case was dismissed.

But ever since then, she's kind of shied away from this kind of issue. And absolutely, people, it has stayed in our collective consciousness as a society where people don't talk about it. Is that one of the reasons why? They changed the name of Mad Cow, right? Spun to form and stuff. Yeah, whatever. Suddenly, Mad Cow was taken out of the

vernacular. And what's interesting, Howard explains in the film that if he were to say what he did then, what if he would say now today, he actually would be found guilty because now it's not a matter of whether you tell the truth or not. It's matter of if you affect the industry or not. So even if you're completely telling the truth, um, you're found guilty. So, you know, that's one of the concerns we had by making the film. One of the controversies that when we were making the film, we wanted to pretty much film in silence until we were completely done with the film and then decide, Hey, do we really want to take this to say those 13 States, those States, Texas, um, um, that have these, some of these just unbelievable laws. But I believe, like Howard was saying,

it's under the Patriot Act, this is. So it's a federal. Yeah, it's TRIP. So for when he says that, basically, is that with respect only to food industries? Like if he's telling the truth and that has a negative impact on business, then he can be convicted of what?

Like that seems crazy. So under- How does that work? There was a law passed a few years ago called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, and it was part of the Patriot Act, which basically says to disrupt the business of an animal enterprise, whether that's a farm or a laboratory or anyone who's using animals for profit, is committing an act of terrorism. Right. So, that's using a very liberal interpretation of the word disrupt,

because if words can disrupt, then anything can disrupt. I mean, I would imagine it's bizarre that that would be under the Patriot Act, because the only sort of logical connection would be if terrorists were trying to screw with our food system at its core, right? But that can be applicable to so many things if that language is construed broadly. Well, the laws were actually manufactured to silence anti-vivisection activists. There was a very successful campaign, the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty Campaign. And that has a lot to do with the Patriot Act, right? Yeah. And there was activists who were standing up against the, you know, animal testing. And so, the pharmaceutical industry said, hey, we're going to create a law that's going to criminalize their legal activism.

But then because it's animal enterprise, again, that reaches to food production, any industry that profits from animals. So, yeah. And there have been people who have been imprisoned for under that law. So that is something that we went up against. that we went up against, but the truth- So Keegan, essentially by doing this podcast right now and putting it out there, are we gonna be, are we guilty of violating this law

if suddenly one listener out there decides that they're gonna reduce their meat consumption by 1%? We've negatively impacted the business. I'm sure you could argue that, yeah. Being a vegetarian or vegan is disrupting the business of Manila Enterprise. I mean, that's the whole –

I have to rethink my whole way of living my life, I think. We'll have to do this podcast from Cuba. I mean, it's very Orwellian, and that's the scary thing is that how did we get to this place? And the truth is we got to this place because people weren't willing to speak up, and we can't be afraid. It's almost like this – it has this weird kind of Snowden allegory to it, you know? Yeah. It's kind of, even what he said, I saw in a recent interview with him. You know, there's fear, say, from doing the podcast or making a film.

And, you know, there's personal fear that if we don't address these huge, especially something like this huge industry of animal agriculture and do something soon, the global fear of what's going to happen to us globally way supersedes any one of us. And that's the thing. So one of us is what is one of us. It's so much bigger than any one of us. Right. kind of reading on your your kickstarter page and and how you caught you guys wanted to kind of be under the radar and you didn't really want to speak to the the contents of the film too much because you didn't want to have to weather any reprisals or anything like that and i'm like oh come on that sounds a little dramatic you know and uh and then i watched it i'm like oh i get it

and especially at the end when you know i don't want to give away too many spoilers but when howard lyman's like you know you guys sure you want to do this? Like, do you know what you're stepping into here? Like, you better be ready to like, you know, get your shoes muddy, you know, if you're going to take this fight on and that's some scary shit, man. So, you know, if you guys had moments where you're waking up in the middle of the night thinking, do we really want to do this? Or what have we really bitten off here? What are we really saying? What is our risk? I mean, if these laws are, if it's possible to construe these laws so broadly, like there's, you know, there's some, you know, are you exposed? Do you think about that?

Yeah. And that, that interview is really powerful. It was, and it was scary actually. Sometime we'll release that entire interview because it's just, it's just such a powerful interview with Howard Lyman. Uh, after that we, Keegan and I were like, whoa, what are we doing? And that's what's, that's, what's fun about the film is you actually follow the journey of us, even me following the journey, us making the film and you see the reaction to that. You know, we actually did put down the cameras, like, what are we doing? Um, you know, should we continue or should we move on? And obviously just gave part of the answer. Right. And, like, what are we doing? Should we continue or should we move on? And obviously, I guess gave part of the answer.

Right, and what was the mental calculus that made you guys say, no, we're gonna keep going? What I was saying before is that we have to. I mean, say we don't do anything. In 10, 20 years, no one says anything. We're not gonna be around anyway. So just the one individual, it's the global community of what we have to do supersedes any fear that I could have for myself

or that we could have for ourselves. It's like, we have no choice kind of. Yeah. And then the truth is, if we stayed silent because of fear, we would be just as bad as these organizations that are staying silent. You know, we can't fall into that.

It's just, we don't have, we have a moral imperative to speak up. And that's really what it comes down to. So you have to listen to your heart and not to your, you know, that fear, that little voice. And what is your heart telling you about the future? I mean, are you guys optimistic or pessimistic?

That's a great thing about the film too, as you saw, is it was very, very scary. I mean, kind of giving quite a bit away the film. And then all of a sudden the light came on, we continued on, and then we just see how fast this shift is happening. Because it is being done. It's not happening in the future, the near future. It's already happening. We interview these incredible companies beyond meat, beyond egg, these veganic agriculture where they don't even use animal compost, these just thriving businesses

being funded by Bill Gates and Biz Stone. And you see everywhere around you, all these new restaurants opening up. Just the consciousness that is happening so fast now that, that I am just over elated how, how fast the shift is happening. And a lot of it already has happened. And now in a way it's kind of fun to enjoy the ride because it's already happened. You're either part of the antiquate antiquated barbaric system. You're part of this new,

exciting dynamic of, you know, compassion and true humanity coming together for this next generation, this next evolution that we've been waiting for. That was beautifully put. I mean, I am thinking the same thing. I would not have articulated it that well, so thank you for that. But yeah, I mean, even in the last two years, three years, four years, what you see around is completely different than what it was a couple years ago.

Like, yeah, like the Beyond Eggs, the guys at beyond eggs and the guys at beyond meat. And, and the fact that, that, that Silicon Valley and the tech sector has gotten interested and invested in this, they don't do that out of, um, you know, because they think it's, you know, sort of, it's out of the goodness of their heart. They realize this is where things are moving. They go where the trends are, and this is where people are going. This is where the future of our country lies. And to see that happening and unfolding so quickly is pretty encouraging, I think. Well, I mean, your show and your talks are a perfect example of that.

There's a reason why you have a top-rated podcast. It's because this is an issue that's very important and it's just growing. People, all people want the truth. And we were talking about this at lunch today, you know, sort of as we get more and more, as we spend more and more time getting our information online, as opposed to from the nightly news or, you know, the, the AM radio or what have you, we've become much more finely attuned. Our bullshit meters are like super sharp, right? So we know when we're being marketed to or lied to or pitched to, and I think people can just see through it, you know, and there's a desire and

an interest in really kind of tapping into something more authentic, something more sustainable, where you know it's real and you know it's the truth and you just can't be in denial about it anymore. And I think that as these covers continue to get pulled, that things are going to continue to change. But what's great is that we're providing these awesome opportunities and alternatives. It's not like, oh no, I can't eat at KFC anymore. What am I going to do? It's like, oh, well look, there's Cafe Gratitude. That place tastes amazing.

If you can get in, you can wait the line. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, the fact, I mean, every week there's new restaurants popping up and, and, and new, you know, natural food markets with, and it's becoming more cost-effective for people that are, you know, cause you know, a budget's a big deal with this stuff. Um, it's becoming more cost effective for people that are, you know, because, you know, a budget's a big deal with this stuff. It's becoming more democratic in that sense and more mainstream. And it's just, it's blowing up. It's like we're reaching that Malcolm Gladwell tipping point moment. And, you know, your film is just another kind of element in that, that is, that is sort of, you know, pushing the leverage past that point.

And it's cool. And I think, and I truly believe the tipping point already has, it has been tipped. And you see like Cafe Gratitude, these vegan restaurants, you can't even get in. And where capitalism is combining with this conscious, this conscious capitalism where, like you said, they're not doing it because they should or they have to for the environment or the health or whatever. They're doing it because they're making money and they're thriving. And to see that's just like the clean sector it's because it's making money say this whole new

capitalist society that's that's growing based on a conscious level that's exciting to see what's right i mean well and truly the way our culture is erected and functions that's the only way things are going to change is if it's good business to change. And the fact that it is now good business to be that way, that is powerful. Yeah, I think Hampton Creek Foods, who produces the Beyond Egg product, Josh Tetrick. Yeah, that's their whole model.

It's 10X. It's got to be 10 times cheaper, 10 times more sustainable, 10 times healthier. And they're doing it. They're showing that, hey, you can produce an egg substitute, an egg product that's 10 times cheaper than eggs. So it's not like this is an elitist thing. This is something that makes business sense that everyone in the world could potentially have.

That's real solutions. That's not, again, some elitist sort of vegan thing. That's real solution for the mass populace. And that's what we need. Right, right, right. All right. So it's cowspiracy. It's not chickenspiracy.

So is it just about the cows? Like, is it just beef? Chickenspiracy just wasn't as catchy. I don't know. I kind of like that. One of our taglines. That's the second movie? Yeah, yeah.

Our tagline was the sustainability secret. For a while, it was cows, chickens, and other fishy business. Or pigs, chickens, and other fishy business. Or pigs, chickens, and other fishy business. But no, it's the entire animal agriculture industry. Yeah. And then again, it goes into... What about somebody who says, well, I don't eat beef because I don't want to participate in that, but I need my salmon or I have chicken once in a while. It's healthier for you.

Yeah, look at – How do the numbers break down on that? You know, it is the least sustainable meat you could eat. Chicken or fish? Relatively sustainable would be beef. Beef. But as far as greenhouse gases, sheep produce more greenhouse gases per pound of their flesh than cows do. Yeah, chickens are going to be more sustainable, but it's relative sustainable.

Can everybody on the planet eat as much chicken as people in the United States are? No, there's not enough land. There's still about a four to one ratio for four pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken. Well, that's four pounds of grain that hungry people could be eating. We're throwing away three pounds of grain, just throwing it away, so we can produce animal protein that's killing us, you know. So on a global scale, and I think that's when we have to think about sustainability, people will constantly say, well, this is sustainable. Look at it global, 7 billion people. Can 7 billion people get away

with doing that? And the answer is no. The only way we're going to do it, you know, there's not enough land on this planet. Right now it takes, now, there's less than an acre of land per person, a farmable land per person on the planet. And it takes upwards of three acres to produce the food that the average American who eats meat needs. Right. So if we continue on this track and we make no changes, and the population, the global population continues to grow at the rate that it's growing. And we're just going to continue to feed people with this system that we have set up. Like how much longer would we be able to do this before there's just either no water left or no land left, or we reach some sort of cataclysmic, you know, end point.

California, we don't have much water left. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean, the numbers vary. I mean, they're saying within the next 10 years, upwards of 60% of Eastern Africa's population won't have enough water to meet their food demands. When people don't have enough water to grow their food, you're going to have massive violent wars. Hungry people are dangerous people. The part of the problem, though, is that that's so far away. So we're here in California and it's cheap. You know, you go to the supermarket or you can go to fast food and meat is cheap.

So what's the problem? You know what I mean? It's very difficult to connect the dots and to see that there's something wrong when it seems to be functioning perfectly fine. Yeah. Well, so that cheap, you cheap, as David Simon would say, let the Tea Party have their way, and let's get rid of federal subsidies, and we'll see what happens to the price of a hamburger.

That 99-cent hamburger is not going to be 99 cents anymore when it doesn't have federal subsidies behind it. It's going to be a $7, $11 hamburger. Right. Well, I'm not a Tea Party guy, but that's not such a bad idea, right? Right. You know, again, like, let's look at what is the true cost of it. And then, you know, as far as cheap, well, how cheap is it when we're paying for, you

know, trillions of dollars in healthcare every year? You know, how cheap is it when we're, you know, polluting the water that we all have to drink? You know, it's not cheap. There's nothing cheap about it. It's the most expensive, destructive thing we could possibly do. And we explore into, let's say, like grass-fed beef where, you know. That's what I want to talk about next, actually.

People think that's more sustainable, but it takes so much land for grass-fed beef compared to factory farm beef. It just does. It takes a lot of, I believe, with the factory farm was two acres per every cow. I believe with the factory farm was two acres per every cow and grass fed. It takes upwards, upwards of even in the film, a farmer said upwards of 50, 20 to 50 acres. Imagine 50 acres for one cow. So when people talk about sustainable, oh, I have grass fed beef. It's not sustainable.

It's privilegeable. You can afford this and you have some access to this ridiculously huge, huge farm that's taking up all the wildlife. So all the wildlife is being shut out of these huge grass-fed operations with fences surrounding thousands and tens of thousands of acres. So they can have the grass-fed beef and think that they're being sustainable and really, you know, it's privilegeable. And the entire planet, the U S alone, if the U S alone, we have a stat in the film with the U S alone decided to eat all their meat was grass fed beef. It would take every square inch up into Canada, every square inch of the entire North America of U S all the way down to central America into

Brazil, just to feed the U S demand on meat. If it was all grass fed beef, that's how much land it takes. into Brazil just to feed the U.S. demand on meat if it was all grass-fed beef. That's how much land it takes. Right. So it's really not. I mean, it seems to me that, yeah, I think that's a great word, privilegeable, you know, because people will say, well, it's grass-fed. So it's almost like, oh, I feel better about my choice because the carbon footprint is less if it's local.

Right. So I can feel good about that. And I can feel good from an ethical point of view, because these animals are having a little bit more of an enjoyable life experience before they arrive on my plate. But where's the divining line between kind of just a nice story or denial and the truth? Because I think that, I mean, is grass-fed, is that a term that is legally defined? Because it seems like there's a pretty wide spectrum of what constitutes grass-fed. As far as I know, there's not. I mean, there's USDA organic certification, but as far as grass-fed, I don't think there's actually legal definitions of it. And the truth is, too, almost all grass-fed cows are actually finished in feedlots. So they live 80% of their life on grass, and then the last number of months, they're living eating corn in a concentrated animal feed.

Oh, I didn't know that. So they get relocated from the nice pasture to some other kind of yeah they call it last stop on the train they call it finishing it's like the very end of hansel and gretel the last couple couple hours of binging on a bunch of food before they i mean it and it really is you know hansel and gretel is is the perfect example is that you know people will also go to the humane Well, it's more humane. Okay was huge. It was unbelievably 4,500 acres to feed. I think only what, 236 people or a couple hundred people. Yeah. That's about 70 people. Where was that in Northern California? Northern California in perfect conditions where it was, um, always a certain humidity and, you know, it was lush, but you know, you can't have

that in, uh, Nevada and most places, you know, you can't have that in Nevada and most places, Eastern California, you can only have this in certain locations. Um, and that's the other part of it too. You can't have this everywhere. And then, you know, with the grass fed and Keegan can talk about this, uh, what really affected me was how the wildlife is affected by, by say, grass fed beef. Um, you want to. Yeah, I mean, so we have, I think this is a shocking part of the film was the impact of cattle ranching on the West and how it affects wildlife like wild horses.

Right now, the government is rounding up wild horses en masse and putting them in concentrated feeding operations. Over 50,000 wild horses actually right now are in confinement. There's more wild horses in captivity than there are free on the race. Why are they rounding them up? Because they eat the same things that cattle eat. And so you have ranchers who get allotments. They lease the land from the federal government.

This is land that we all own, by the way. They lease it for a fraction of the cost, what it really would cost to graze those animals. And then they put pressure. They're totally decimating the American West. There's an author who wrote a book called Canary on the Rim about weapons testing in the West. And he starts off his book by talking about that cattle is doing more damage to the American West than nuclear testing ever could or would. Because it just totally destroys ecosystems. You know, topsoil erosion kills the native plant species, you know, competes with native fauna for the same feed.

And so, yeah, these cattle groups and ranchers put pressure on the BLM and say, hey, the horses are eating what my cows should be eating. So the government, instead of saying, yeah, get your cows off the land, they take the horses off. And what do they do with the horses? So there's a law that protects wild horses in boroughs that they can't be slaughtered. So they stay in these feed lots and they try and adopt some of them out, but you're not going to adopt out 50,000. So they can't legally sell them to kill buyers. But there was a report came out last year, ProPublica, that exposed that a number of horses were being sold to slaughter and they were being sold to kill buyers who then would drive the horses from the united states into mexico where you can legally slaughter horses for human consumption so you know

wild horses people care deeply about wild horses they care deeply about wolves wolves are being decimated because of cattle ranching you know the wolves you know prey on cattle sometimes and so rancher calls up you know the department of agriculture and says i'm one of my cows was attacked by a wolf and they'll come out and they'll annihilate the entire pack. So there's no legal requirement to protect the wolves, to relocate them humanely? They're allowed to just open fire on the wolves? There used to be under – when the wolves were listed as an endangered species, they were protected and they couldn't be killed. Now they've come off the endangered species.

Actually, the day that the wolves came off the endangered species list in Idaho, they opened up hunting for, they offered the first hunting permits for wolves. That's like an alcoholic celebrating a year of sobriety by getting drunk. Exactly. That's a perfect analogy. And there's all these, with these environmental groups, coming back to them, there's all these campaigns where they make a lot because I get them in the mail. There's a picture of a wolf. Let's save the wolves.

Let's save the wolves. Give us money. And I literally, you know, growing up, never even thought about, okay, I'll give you money without, like, why are the wolves gone? And then to find out this is why the wolves are being decimated. You know, it's because these, a lot of times the grass fed beef operations, the ranchers will go and have them killed. And so. And this goes for, you know, pretty much all large predators, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes,

all the way down to ravens. You know, there's this massive extermination of ravens in Idaho earlier or last year. And again, it was because they said, oh, well, they're, you know, preying on livestock. Ravens. All right. So, grass-fed ranching, no bueno. Yeah. And- And the water consumption, how does that compare with- because when I think about just sort of the economics of scaling up any business. You know, the idea is that you achieve efficiencies, right? Like you actually start to save resources per item because you're so scaled up.

But it doesn't seem to really function that way with factory farmed livestock. Well, you know, it is vastly more efficient to raise animals in high intensity concentration. To feed cows grains is way more efficient to raise animals in high-intensity concentration. To feed cows grains is way more efficient. So there is that when we compare it to grass-fed. It's extremely destructive to the planet, but it's more efficient. And, you know, livestock lobby groups say that. You know, it's more efficient. It's not going to—we're not going to feed the world that way, though.

I mean, we're not going to feed the world that way though. I mean, we're not going to feed the world, you know, in any sort of respect to the environment or to human health by raising animals in any manner. And, you know, with the water, no matter where you, if a cow is in factory fed or if a cow is grass fed or wherever, a cow drinks around 35 gallons of water, no matter where you put them. a cow drinks around 35 gallons of water, no matter where you put them. There's 1.5 billion cows on the planet versus around 7 billion humans. So what's that? One out of four, one out of five humans is a cow, yet humans only drink. About 7 billion gallons of water. Yeah.

And a cow. You know, a hundred, you know, we're talking about hundreds of millions of gallons. You know, it's, it's. Billions. Billions. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it is astronomical, the amount of water resources that go into feeding these cows. And that doesn't, that doesn't even include raising all the crops and all the feed of the 150 pounds of food that a cow eats every single day. Imagine how much water is being used

to grill that food. So they're just, I love, you know, I love cows. I love the animals, but in a way they're giant termites, you know, just kind of eating up the planet where just, you know, giant middlemen where we could be having these resources ourselves and back to the wildlife. So we were talking earlier about how, you know, we're collectively optimistic and, you know, you feel like we've already passed this tipping point, but what do the numbers say in terms of kind of where we're heading? I mean, is this livestock agriculture continuing to expand? Or is it starting to contract in response to these trends that are starting to occur? Well, so some good trends that are happening is actually the US demand on meat is lowering. And you know, the US is such the world leader

for so many reasons, you know, we are for fashion, for trends. And so what has been happening on the bad side is places like China, they're finally starting to get the money and the influence of the U.S. is kind of pouring on them. So their demand is getting much higher, but we're the world leaders as far as social change and all these things. And the good news is that our demand on dairy and beef is lower. So that's the future. That's where the tipping point already has happened. And that's a really good trend that I see. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to be, and I'm guilty of this,

like very provincial, like, oh, there's cafe gratitude. Like we're heading in the right direction with this idea that like whatever the United States does, like that's going to solve the problem or not. And completely overlooking the fact that like whatever the United States does, like that's going to solve the problem or not. And completely overlooking the fact that like China and India are on a completely different program, you know, and unless we're, you know, of a collective united front, like how much good are we really going to do other than setting this example? I mean, as those countries continue to industrialize and reach a level of prosperity that historically they haven't, you know, they're saying, screw you.

Like, now it's our time. We want to be able to enjoy all these things you've been enjoying. But that's the thing is I believe U.S. is so influential from, you know, from again, from fashion to music to everything. If they all of a sudden start seeing that, wow, the U.S. has started doing these major changes, everyone's going to start emulating us like they always have been doing. And so, you know, very soon, as I already said, the tipping point's already kind of happened. The truth is out there. Then they're going to be like, oh, well, that was yesterday where they're all eating meat and dairy. Now let's do the new cool thing and really care about the planet.

And so I believe we'll continue to be world leaders in that way and, and they will follow suit. And the other part of it is that we wanted to make this film as accessible as possible. So part of our funding campaign was to raise money to have the film translated and dubbed in multiple languages. So we're actually in the process right now of having the film dubbed into Mandarin and Hindi. And we'd like to have more languages spoken in china and india to make the film as accessible as possible so people there can be as as informed as possible right and you have uh all of your kickstarter contributors to thank for that right which was awesome like you guys did a great job in raising you know and raising money online you like doubled your goal right it was pretty fun we launched a indiegogo campaign. I keep saying Kickstarter, but it's Indiegogo.

We launched that campaign on Earth Day, and we reached our initial goal of $54,000 in six days, which was just phenomenal. We went on to raising over $117,000 online in 44 days. And again, yeah, I mean, 1,400-plus supporters. It's just been absolutely amazing. And these are supporters from all around the world. They are from India and from China and from Dubai and from all over Europe and Australia and Taiwan. I mean, everywhere in the world, there's people who say, yes, this is here is a solution. Here is an answer.

Here's people who are actually saying what needs to be said. And they're all lending their voices to that. So it's exciting. You know, Kip has said a number of times, we made a movie and now there's people making a movement. And that's exciting. Yeah, that's cool. And just in case we didn't make it abundantly clear, the real solution here is if you really want to take a stand for the sustainability of the planet, you've got to stop eating these animal products and adopt a plant-based approach to your life and your diet, right? And so how did the numbers break down in terms of water usage and greenhouse gas emissions, et cetera, when, you

know, when you compare somebody who is on a plant-based diet versus somebody who's eating the standard American diet? I mean, are there stats on that? Yeah. I mean, and for the average American, you'd save about 1,500 gallons of water per day. I think it's around 20 pounds. 1,500 gallons. That's a long shower, man. That's a lot of water. Yeah. And that's per day, just from switching from average American meat diet to a plant-based diet i think it's upwards around 20 pounds of co2 equivalent per day um you know i think somewhere in the land yeah it's something like 60 square feet of

forested land per day you know then you think about that and just you visualize those numbers that every single day by eating meat dairy and eggs you're destroying just just decimating um and not to say that a plant-based diet doesn't have its downsides as well, because, you know, animal agriculture for, or agriculture to feed 7 billion people is... Still going to have a deleterious effect on the planet. It is. But if we reduced, you know, right now, you know, about 70% of all the world's grain are fed to livestock, and that's 70% of all the world's farmland is

dedicated to raising food for livestock. So if we get lower meat consumption, we can allow all these fields of genetically engineered corn and soybean to revert back to forest. You know, that's where we can... You know... Now you're just talking crazy to me. You know, and it's

happened. You can look at places in the world... Do you think the good senator from Iowa is going to allow that to stand for one minute? You know, entire, and it's happened. You can look at places in the world. Do you think the good senator from Iowa is going to allow that to stand for one minute? All right. You know, when people start valuing ecosystems more than, you know, dollars in their bank account, I think then, you know, we'll be on the right path. And it is happening. You know, it's like things are changing and people are waking up. And the truth is that we don't really have a choice. The truth is that we don't really have a choice.

If we're interested in preserving the planet and any semblance of what we have today for ourselves or for our children or our grandchildren, we have to make radical changes. There's no other choice. And it's connecting the dots to seeing what's happening so fast, to seeing what our diet, what our food choice is, what it affects. So, historically, we ate for ourselves, for our own nutrition, for ourselves or even for our family. And a good analogy we have in the film is, again, going back to smoking, there's secondhand smoking. When you're smoking yourself, if you're in a car or in your home, you're affecting the other people, your family members around you. But for eating, call it secondhand eating. And the choice that you make not only affects your local community, your family, it affects everyone on the entire planet.

And that's where I really have to look at your food choices. It's secondhand eating, not only eating for yourselves, but eating for others. That's interesting. I've never heard that term before. But I think it dovetails nicely into, did you come up with that word? Is that yours? Kip Coyne's quite a number. Secondhand eating.

A brilliant, brilliant term. Well, we kept on coming back to smoking, like, oh, smoking could never be taken. I was like, quite a number secondhand eating a brilliant well we kept on coming back to smoking like oh smoking could never be taken i was like come on eating let's remember that's like conscious uncoupling you know and like mike but it might come back and bite you secondhand eating i don't know i'm gonna play with that one um but i but it does dovetail nicely into the idea of conscious capitalism like whether you're buying a pair of Tom's shoes because you know another pair of shoes is gonna get donated to somebody or buying Warby Parker glasses

because they donate a pair of glasses. Like the point of feeling good about your purchase, like you're contributing to something more than just whatever you selfishly are trying to acquire. If we can create that consciousness and infuse our food system with that same kind of mentality, I think that that would be a step in the right direction. Yeah, truly coming to that vision where we really are one living as a family on this planet and we're just one part of an organism all together.

And my nourishment, sure, that's one part of a cell of this entire organism. But what about these other cells around me? If there's a cancer in another part of the country, well, that's part of us as an entire species together, and that's going to eventually affect me. So I need to plan ahead and proactively eat for someone across the entire planet because realizing we're all connected. Right, and now we're going to go sing Kumbaya.

Right. I mean, I think a big part of this is, you know, a lot of these ideas, they're not new. Like they do come from that hippie generation. Right. But we're past that now. And how do we make these ideas accessible and palatable to somebody who kind of has that reaction like, whoa, you sound like a crazy hippie. You know, how do you communicate or effectively message a mainstream society to get them to really understand that like, no, this is actually something that affects all of us. And this is something that we really all should care about and, you know, vote with our dollars on and, you know, kind of carry in our consciousness.

you know, vote with our dollars on and, you know, kind of carry in our consciousness. You know, we touch on that in the film is just showing what are the impacts and what does it mean to you and what does it mean to us as a society? But yeah, on a personal level, you know, what does this, what does this really mean? And from very selfish reasons, we have to change because there's, you know, so here, this is an easy one. People don't want to, this summer in California, there's going to be water restrictions. They're going to, you know, so here, this is an easy one. People don't want to, this summer in California, there's going to be water restrictions. They're going to, you know, limit whether you can water your lawn or not. People don't like that. So it's okay.

Lower your meat consumption. People really don't like that. Yeah. Lower your meat consumption. You can water your lawn as much as you want. All day long if you wanted. Just lower your meat consumption. Did you guys see any of what Shane Smith was was doing at vice like on some of these environmental

pieces that he's been doing recently and he seems to be coming from a very pessimistic point of view like it's too late like we're past the point of no return you know there's doing research on this film it is very daunting what we're facing we are in dire times dire times. And the truth is that it's extremely scary. If we can't stop what we're doing, there is no hope. If we can change how we're doing things, we can at very least slow things down. We can buy ourselves some time. And ultimately, we can minimize suffering on this planet. We can minimize suffering for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren, for other species and entire ecosystems. So, you know, whether there's hope or not, we can minimize suffering.

And that's what I focus on. As James Cameron famously said recently, I don't know exactly what his words were, but they were something along the lines of, you cannot consider yourself a true environmentalist if you continue to ingest animal products. Right? Is that what he said? Something like that, right? Something like that. It was close, right? Howard Lyman says that as well.

Howard Lyman says it as well. And that's the clear message of this film. And I think what you just said kind of beautifully wraps it up. And that's a great place to kind of leave it off and tantalize people and encourage them to go see the movie. So thanks you guys for coming by. And I'm excited because we have the premiere coming up here in Los Angeles soon.

It's gonna be June 26th, right? Yeah. And there are some seats available. So for listeners out there who live in the Los Angeles area, come and join us. It's going to be at the Crest Theater in Westwood. You can get tickets online

by going to Cowspiracy.com. And you can find out for, we're going to be doing a national tour. So there's going to be screenings and premieres all across the country. Those dates should be up on our website pretty soon. We'll be able to get tickets. And it'll be, yeah, again, across the country

and then onto the rest of the world. Right, so it's going to be like a whistle-stop tour starting in LA. You're going to have, you're doing a premiere in San Francisco also on the 19th, right? 19th of June. Is that up on the website?

Yeah, that's the world premiere. We sold out actually of those tickets in two days. There is still some tickets available for an earlier screening. A few. And LA just has a few, so get them soon. And we're going to have a great panel discussion after the film in la and san francisco so it's going to be uh entertaining and good time it's gonna be good night so uh yeah and then uh and then going across

the country yeah speaking the good word right absolutely but if people want to learn more about the movie and what you guys are up to the best place to do that is cowspiracy.com right absolutely and are you guys on twitter or it's cowspiracy yeah facebook uh yeah our facebook is cowspiracy the movie the sustainability secret um and yeah we're on twitter as well i can't think of where else we're that's all you need to do yeah we're all over the place uh just you know search search cowspiracy we'll pop up for sure cool and uh yeah i can't think of where else we're at. That's all you need to do. We're all over the place. Just, you know, search Cowspiracy. We'll pop up for sure. Cool. And, yeah, I can't encourage you guys out there listening enough to go see this movie.

There's some really, really illuminating stuff and great talking heads from some of the leading pioneers in this movement. Even, you know, people like a couple of past podcast guests, Dr. Michael Clapper, one of my favorites. That's a good part. Yeah, he's great, right? And like we said earlier, David Simon, Michael Pollan, who are some of the other people that appear in the movie? Dr. Richard Openlander is truly brilliant.

Sea Shepherd's in there. We have a great, we didn't even explore that, the whole ocean section that's very powerful. Yeah, there's a whole list. Michael Pollan is in there, We have a great, we didn't even explore that, the whole ocean section that's very powerful. Yeah, there's a whole list. Michael Pollan is in there, whether you like him or not. There's a whole list of experts in the film from all different backgrounds. And it's definitely an exciting film on many levels. Yeah.

All right, man. I'm excited for you guys. It's going to be awesome. Thank you. Are you ready for it? Oh, yeah. It's all going to start happening, start happening man yeah it must happen all right cool all right you guys feel good about this do we do it yeah are we good yeah thanks so much thank you appreciate it peace plants

all right everybody that's our show that was was powerful, man. That was intense, right? It's pretty heavy stuff, I gotta say. But you know what, man? We gotta swallow this stuff. We gotta face it. We cannot be in denial about these issues. There is no sense in hiding from it. So let's do it together.

Let's face it together. Thanks for sticking around to hear the whole thing. If you wanna support the show, we hope you do. The big thing is to just tell a friend and of course, use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Put it up in your browser up there and it won't cost you a cent extra, but Amazon kicks us some loose change and helps us keep doing what we're doing. You can also donate to the podcast and I love it when you guys are sharing the podcast on Instagram, showing pictures of you guys running or commuting or whatever it is you're doing while listening to it. So keep that up. It's awesome. Maybe after hearing today's message, you're

inspired to get more plant-based. Well, a good way to begin, if you're not sure where to start, is to check out my ultimate guide to plant-based nutrition. It's at mindbodygreen.com. It's an online course, a couple hours of streaming video content, online community, downloadable tools. It's a pretty awesome way to begin. And if you're into online courses, I just finished a new one that's up right now. It's called The Art of Living with Purpose, and it's two hours of streaming video on setting and achieving goals and trying to do essentially what the theme of this podcast is, how to tap into, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. And really proud of that one. So you can check both of those out at mindbodygreen.com. Of course, go to richroll.com for all your plant power provisions. We have our nutritional products.

You know about Jai Repair post-workout athletic recovery supplement. We have our vitamin B12. That's a staple. That's a must-have, especially if you're on a plant-based diet. We've got a new product. It's called Ion, and it is our electrolyte supplement for the athletes out there. As you know, when you exercise, you sweat, and you sweat out your electrolytes, right? And you got to put those things back if you want to

function properly. The problem is most of the products out in the market for replenishing your electrolytes are also laced with tons of sugar, artificial flavoring additives, and they come in colors like purple, green, and orange drinks. Not so good, right? You don't want to be doing that. Stop that. So how are we going to get the electrolytes back? Well, this product is great because it's a balanced supplement that replaces... See, the thing is with these Gatorade drinks and the like, they're really good at replacing a lot of the sodium but not so good when it comes to like calcium and magnesium and potassium we got to replace the electrolytes in the same proportion in which we're sweating them out right so that's what ion is all about it's a completely balanced electrolyte product

that puts in what you need without giving you any more than you need. And it does it in a very balanced way to most effectively replenish what your body loses in sweat. So anyway, if you want to learn more about that, and you should if you're an athlete, go to richworld.com. There's much more information about the product there and also some pretty cool helpful infographics that help illustrate what I'm trying to say, as well as a sort of comparison between what the ingredients in ion are versus the ingredients in some of the other typical electrolyte replacement products out on the market. So that's it. Let's wrap it up, you guys. I guess I want to leave you with this thought, and that is this. We are either part of the problem or part of the

solution. I'm either part of the problem or part of the solution. So this week, you know, what would be awesome is if we all think about our own level of sustainability, the things that we have control over. What are you doing or not doing, and what can you you improve or what can you dial up so that we can increase that sustainability quotient in our own lives. So that would be great if you think about that because you know what? We're all in this together, you guys. All in this together. So that's it.

Thanks for staying with me throughout the whole episode and I'll see you guys next week. Peace. Plants.