Animal Ag is DESPERATE: Regenerative Agriculture Claims & Teen Slaughterhouse Tours | Rising Anxieties

But anyway, this is rising anxieties. This is the portion of, um, well, it's not a portion. It used to be a portion of the podcast. Now it's its own podcast all by itself, where I talk about what's going on in the industry from what I can glean from their publications, which I try to take a look at.

And a lot of what I can glean and what we like to hear is that they're very worried. They're worried about a lot of things and they don't know what to do about a lot of things. Of course, they're, they are very confident and they do make a lot of money. I'm not gonna deny it, but I like to look at the negatives.

Anyway, our first story for today is from Watt Poultry, WattAgNet is the name of the actual website. And this is a, you know, a egg industry website, and they have a lot of different blogs. And one of the blogs is by Elizabeth Doman and uh, she says, A four step regenerative agriculture roadmap for poultry.

Now, regenerative agriculture is all the rage within the industry. They like talking about it. Nobody really knows what it means. It's kind of the new sustainable. It's just one of those words: it sounds good, it doesn't really have any rules, it makes people feel better about what they're eating.

And so they would like to get on on board the regenerative train. And she says that it's important to think through any positives and negatives before adopting a new farming practice. Well, that seems true. And she defines regenerative agriculture, or she says that advocates define it, as a set of farming and grazing practices that help to reverse climate change.

Wow. That's pretty ambitious. They're not only going to stop contributing, but apparently they're gonna reverse it. Through the rebuilding of soil organic matter, and the re storage of soil biodiversity. I, you know, fine, like it does have a lot to do with soil. There's a lot more to it than that. And a lot of people have very, very ambitious definitions, but like I said, nobody really has exactly the same definition.

All right. Her first piece of advice, which is based on a talk that she saw at the meat conference- don't you wish you could go?- Um, is to address farmer needs- that makes sense. Two, assess strategic fit.

This is companies who I guess who were thinking of encouraging their suppliers to adopt these practices. Decide if regenerative agriculture aligns with your company's strategic values and point of view. Okay. Like, like, do you wanna save the world or not? I guess you have to make that decision first. Consumers, she says, are increasingly choosing to purchase brands and poultry products that align with their values.

So there may be a financial incentive. Well, that's, you know, that's the kind of language that the industry can more likely hear, that it might make them more money. And you know, imagine that aligning your purchases with your values. That would be nice, wouldn't it? The next, uh, suggestion, which is the one that really caught my attention, is tackle low hanging fruit. Alright, now we really get into exactly what people are going to mean when they talk about regenerative agriculture because she says it doesn't have to be all or nothing. And you won't be surprised to hear that, you know, close to nothing is really basically fine. And I assume shouldn't actually say it, but I assume they feel that they can use the term regenerative no matter how little they are doing.

And so, she identifies the low hanging fruit that should be tackled as what will be easiest to change or will make a major impact. And the two suggestions here are tweaking packaging. Like what does that have to do with the agriculture? Like make your packaging less environmentally destructive?

Okay, well that would be a good idea, but I'm not sure it counts as regenerative agriculture. But you know, she apparently does. Finding a new use for poultry manure as fertilizer. Oh, good. Spreading more shit on the ground. That's how we're gonna save the world. And the final piece of advice is to create a new narrative.

Well, yeah, that's what it's really all about, isn't it? Make sure you get credit for the changes made by telling your sustainability story. Yeah. Like I started out saying, regenerative agriculture is definitely the new sustainability. Like it means whatever people wanna think it means and it sounds good to everybody, it makes them feel better.

Alright, from meatingplace.com, this is a constant issue for the meat industry. Shockingly, people don't tend to wanna work in the meat industry. Slaughterhouses are not everybody's favorite workplace. And so they're always talking about attracting workers, usually not by paying them a lot more money, but trying to figure out how to do it.

One, of course, one of their major resolutions is to hire desperate people. But this guy wants to talk about the new generation coming up, people who're in high school right now, and how we can attract them to work in the meat industry, IE in slaughterhouses. Sounds challenging to me. And he admits that it's not easy.

I should have mentioned this is from Beyond the Grind by Chris Williams, Attracting New Talent in Difficult Markets. And he admits this is not easy and the work is hard, physically hard. It's cold, it's wet, and there are long hours. So far these sound like negatives, but then their positives are like, what?

You get to kill animals all day? I don't know, like, um... all right, so he says by the time that the companies create internships for the more sophisticated positions, they've already captured those people. And the problem is that they're not capturing enough people, so they wanna hit the high school students and they're starting a program.

And he says that high school students represent a virtually untapped talent pool. Are you shocked to find out that high school students are not in every slaughterhouse in the country? Uh, yeah, I was, um, no, not really. Introducing 16 to 18 year olds to careers in the meat industry could significantly increase workforce interest and participation.

Now, you might be surprised to hear I am all for this initiative. Get kids into slaughterhouses. I really think that's not gonna work for them. I really do. I have enough faith in humanity and you know, I don't have a whole lot of faith in humanity, but I have enough faith in humanity that I think that actually getting kids into slaughterhouse is gonna make them rethink like any career goals in that direction.

I hope I'm right. Uh, 'cause that's what they're doing. He wants kids, 16 to 18 year olds, to consider food manufacturing and meat science jobs or education as possibilities when they graduate. Getting real world hands-on experience is important for students to truly understand what opportunities are available.

Okay? Real world hands-on experience in slaughterhouses? Okay. Like if you think so. Recently, they invited nine local high school districts to four of our processing plants, these were juniors and seniors. And they observed production, they spoke with the employees, and they even spent a few minutes working on the production lines, attempting to keep pace with trained staff.

That must have been fun. Like a, a real adventure. They, they get to try to do it real fast because it has to be done real fast, or you lose your job. Um, like what!? Is this really a good, I I, I, I, I have to admit. I'm astonished by this one. But you know, he thinks by reaching out earlier to educate students on the benefits of hands-on careers, literally hands-on.

I mean, I'm sure they don't take them to the killing floor. I'm sure it's other parts of the plant, as they like to call them, that they see. And by providing real world exposure, we can change perceptions that attract new talent to the meat industry. Well, I'm all for this. I really am. Get more people into slaughterhouses.

You know, I do know that people get enculturated to everything. Uh, so I guess this is an attempt to do that. But I'm gonna try to have confidence in high school students. Alright, I hate this article from the New York Times. There's really just something so awful about it. Lab Animals Face Being Euthanized as Trump Cuts Research.

The subtitle is, animal testing remains a fundamental part of biomedical research, but as funding evaporates, mice, rats and even monkeys may be euthanized. This is by one Emily, a Anthes, A-N-T-H-E-S. I don't know how you pronounce that. And as I mentioned, it's in the New York Times. That's just the title and the subtitle, but, there's a few things wrong with it already. Euthanized?

Like, I hate the use of the term euthanasia when you're talking about killing animals because you have no use for them. That is not what euthanasia is. If you use that term for killing people, people would be horrified. The word means what the word means, so use it properly. This is killing. Lab animals face being killed as Trump cuts research.

And then the whole idea that being killed is worse than their lives is just, it's just offensive to me. Everything about this is, everything what we do to these animals is horrible and wrong. Killing them just gets them out of it. I'm not saying that killing them is what should be done. I sure would never say that, but you know, that's what happens when you've gotten us into this situation where you've put all these animals into existence. There's no place for them to go. You're not willing to spend the money to keep them alive unless you could torture them. Anyway. Alright, it starts out talking about, you know, some glab that you know, and of course what's going on in Trump administration is insane and completely unplanned and nobody knows what they're doing.

So they're talking about The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and how a whole bunch of employees were being terminated and losing access to the building and, quote, left behind were more than 900 lab animals. The institute ultimately managed to relocate about two thirds of them, primarily mice, as well as a handful of rats. Relocate?

Yeah. Where were they relocated to? What are you talking about here? The whole attitude. It's the whole attitude of this article that that just acts like they're coworkers and you know, it's a shame that they're gonna be killed as if they're not being tortured their whole lives. All right. So these ones that were relocated were sent to university labs.

And the remaining 300 were euthanized last week, which is, which of those two things is worse? I don't know. Which would you choose? These moves which have left many scientists out of work and disrupted clinical research, have profound ramifications for the lab animals that serve as the basis for much of the nation's biomedical research.

Yeah. Profound ramifications, but like stop acting like, like their lives are okay just because you're talking about their deaths not being okay. There's a lot of quotes in here from Paul Locke, who is actually a proponent of alternatives. And he points out there are going to be a lot of animals that are going to end up being sacrificed- killed.

That's what they call it, sacrificed. As if they think it's a fucking religion. The ultimate toll is difficult to predict- because we have no idea how many animals there are because we don't count them. And, um, many scientists were reluctant to speak openly- yeah, I bet they were- about what might become of their lab animals, fearing backlash from animal rights activists or retaliation from their employers or the Trump administration.

Dozens of interview requests to animal research facilities and researchers went unanswered. Yeah, I bet they did. Because they don't wanna talk about what they're doing. They don't wanna talk about any of it. Then, it says that animal rights activists are cheering the disruption, even if it means euthanizing animals. Like, are they really cheering it like, I don't know, like that's so dismissive of the actual position of people who care about animals. But many researchers said they were devastated by what they considered to be the worst of both worlds. The deaths of a lot of animals without any gain in scientific knowledge. We don't take using animals lightly said Kyle Mandler a pulmonary toxicologist.

The fact that their lives and sacrifice will just be a complete waste is equal parts depressing and infuriating. Yeah. Do you really care about their quote unquote sacrifice? Like sacrifices have to be voluntary. I'm sorry, people. Stop using that word. They distort the language so much, they distort the use of the word euthanasia. They distort the use of the word sacrifice. It's a long, pretty long article, which you might wanna take a look at. It does talk a little bit about how animal research, you know, that a lot of people are moving away from animal research, that it's not like, as popular as it used to be.

It does talk about a private donor stepped in to spare some monkeys in a tuberculosis vaccine project spared like spared what? Not spared torture. Just spared death. Lab animals, many of which are bred to displace certain behaviors or health vulnerabilities are not wild and cannot simply be released.

I guess they have to say that 'cause people are fucking stupid. But how stupid are people that they would think that you can just release lab animals? Of course, they can't be released. They've been bred to be defective. Oh, this is the one that I love. And the sudden surge of surplus lab animals may be more than the nation's animal sanctuaries can absorb, experts said. As if in normal times all these animals go to sanctuaries after their, you know, sacrifices by spending some time in the labs. They don't go to sanctuaries. What are you talking about? I mean, it actually sounds like they, they would otherwise all be going to sanctuaries.

There's a quote here from Ann Linder, who runs the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard. And she worries that the fate of many lab animals will come down to the whims and temperaments of individual researchers and lab employees, quote, without oversight, some of those decisions will be poor ones.

Yeah, I bet. And many will be made out of callous necessity without regard for the welfare of the animals in question. Well, of course they will. 'Cause the welfare of the animals in question is not going to be an issue here. Their science is their issue.

The welfare of the animals, you know, I mean, their animals are born to be tortured and die. Many researchers said that they also worried about the National Institutes of Health's effort to sharply limit funding for indirect costs associated with scientific research, including those related to maintaining animal care facilities. And this is, this gets into, just an interesting funding issue. Like the NIH is pulling away from animal re or trying to, thinking about pulling away from animal research and not, not funding the care for animals. And, you know, things are shifting. Things are shifting for sure. As a last resort, it said primates may need to be euthanized.

No, you may think they need to be killed. For some animal rights activists- way back down at the bottom of the article, they finally get to animal rights activists, um, except for that brief, like annoying mention earlier on. For some animal rights activists, downsizing the federal animal research enterprise is something to celebrate.

Quote, for a lot of these animals being euthanized before being experimented on is probably a best case scenario. This is from Justin Goodman from White Coat Waste Project. It's so hard to say. Great quote. Yeah. Like if your life is shear torture, death is really not that big of a problem.

Also, a quote from Delcianna Winders, from Vermont Law and Graduate School. And she's worried that even if funding for research goes down, funding for animal care is going to go down even further. Paraphrasing her, but I think that's about, about her point of view. Really interesting article.

Really, really annoying attitude. Like how naive that just the deliberate and enforced naivete that everyone imposes on talking about animals in any situation. It drives me insane. Well, you know that.

Alright, finally, there's another article from Mea ting Place, which I just thought I'd throw in here.

This is by Lisa Keefe who writes, the Center of My Plate column. Is Denmark So Rotten? And the main reason I wanted to talk about this article is because it's talking about something that she wrote, which is about something coming out of Denmark. New research from the technical University of Denmark that concluded it is possible to fulfill the nutritional needs of the global population without draining the planet of its natural resources only by curtailing consumption of pork and poultry and eliminating beef entirely.

I mean, we need to know more about that research. That is very powerful. And you know, she's concerned about it. Of course, she doesn't think that, you know, it's really gonna end everything. But she is a person who does think about these issues in a little different way than a lot of people in the industry.

She points out that the research authors acknowledge that diets without animal protein must be fortified or supplemented with vitamin B12, vitamin D to meet people's nutritional needs. And the study's ultimate conclusion isn't quite so neat as the article's title would suggest. That's her one criticism of this research.

Of course, like people's diets without animal protein would have to be supplemented with B12 and D because animal foods are supplemented with B12 and D, and we get the supplements by eating the animal foods. Alright, I'm, I'm digressing. I'm digressing. But that's really her only real, I mean, she says that, you know, that the research is taken mainly based on US diets and the US system of food and animal protein production.

But really that's her one, one issue with the study. And the study sounds amazing and her question about it, really, other than to question like some silly things about it, like that is to think about what the meat industry is supposed to do about this. She concludes with this quote.

Part of our job is to make sure our readers know what's coming at them from over the horizon, whether that's next week or a decade from now. Well, I hope this, really, hope this doesn't take a decade. And what's coming is not some forcible restriction or elimination of animal protein from our dinner plates, which is the kind of thing that the meat industry tends to talk about a lot. Like that somebody wants to pass laws to prohibit meat consumption, which personally I would love to do, but unfortunately I'm not in charge.

What she does think is what the industry should be paying attention to is a growing concern about sustainability, not just from Danish scientists, but from your ultimate consumer. And which brings us right back to the regenerative, the new word for sustainable. And the fact that the industry's anxieties really are starting to rise about this.

Probably a little too late to save the planet, but, you know, hopefully not. Not to end on a cheerful note, and that's it for this week's rising anxieties.

[00:19:30] Thank you so much for joining us today on Rising Anxieties. Please remember to subscribe and like wherever you listen or watch or whatever, and if you're able and you want to, you can donate at our henhouse.org/support.