Pod Insights The Rich Roll Podcast Farm Sanctuary on Factory Farming, Ag-Gag Bills, Health & Consumer Choice About this episode Today on the show I sit down with Gene Baur — activist, best-selling author and president & co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, the first animal rescue organization dedicated to farmed animals. You might have seen him in the documentary Forks Over Knives*. And I'd be remiss in not mentioning his is a pretty darn good marathon runner prepping for his first Ironman this summer (on a plant-based diet of course).
I've had plenty of vegans with strong points of view on the program. But this was the first time I have interviewed a true animal rights activist. I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but Gene is such a great guy, he made it easy.
I'm the first to admit that my original reasons for going vegan were far more selfish than ethical. But the more educated I become about how our food system functions to deliver meals to our plates, the more sensitive and attuned I have become to the indelible power of marketing; the extraordinary lengths to which BigFood and their adjuncts on Capitol Hill will go to keep the public immunized from the harsh realities of factory farming; and the unnecessary and horrific treatment of farm animals that inevitably results.
Please understand — I take no moral high ground. But as my awareness of this issue continues to broaden, I do feel a certain imperative to cast light on what I perceive as exceedingly cruel abuse on a systemic level. In my very humble opinion, our current system is both untenable and unsustainable in the long term. There is a better way. And Gene is a great ambassador of a worthy message warranting our objective attention.
If you come to this interview with a different perspective on this issue, I understand. And it's fine. Believe me, I get it. I ask only one thing – that you please listen with an open and mind.
Thanks. And enjoy the show!
Rich
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 19,813 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Rich Roll? Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.
0:44 Rich Roll? It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.
1:04 Rich Roll? Welcome to episode 35 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Farm Sanctuary's Gene Bauer.
1:20 Speaker 01 The Rich Roll Podcast.
1:22 Rich Roll? Hey, everybody. Rich Roll here. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for checking in. If you've been with us before, welcome back. Thanks for tuning in once again. I appreciate you guys out there, the audience. The audience that makes this happen, makes it all worthwhile. If you're new to the show, who am I? Well, my name again is Rich Roll. I am an ultra-endurance triathlete. That means that I'm not very fast, but I can go all day. And I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. I am a plant-based nutrition advocate. That means that I espouse the health benefits of eating a plant-based diet, eating a vegan
2:05 Rich Roll? diet, a whole-food, plant-based diet. I am a public speaker. I'm the bestselling author of a book called Finding Ultra, which I'm sure you've all already read, right? So I don't have to go into that. What else? I'm here to bring you... Paradigm busting personalities, forward-thinking individuals, the new voices of what it means to be healthy. So on the show, I've had all sorts of different kinds of people. I've had doctors, I've had nutritionists, I've had world-class athletes, everybody from Olympic
2:46 Rich Roll? gold medalists, swimmers, to MMA fighters, and world champion triathletes like Chris McCormick. And I've had entrepreneurs, too. In my opinion, health begins with what's on your plate, what you put down your throat. And I have a bunch of strong opinions about what's best in that regard. But I also wouldn't consider this to be a strictly vegan podcast. I've had lots of people on the show with different ideas about nutrition and food. I've had paleo people, I've had low-carb people, I've had people come in and talk about ketosis. And of course, I've had all the plant-based people, all my friends, all these people that I've met on this journey that I started about six years ago, when I turned my health
3:30 Rich Roll? around by adopting a 100% whole-food, plant-based diet. But I like to bring different perspectives into the fray and have a mature, adult, long-form conversation where we get to go deep into these issues, which in many ways is kind of a lost art form in this age of the sound clip and the soundbite. And it's been really fun, and I find it to be the best way to really get to know people and to really hear their side of the story and explore new
4:09 Rich Roll? ideas. And again, when I say health, it does start with what's on the plate, what we put down our throats, but that's not where it ends. That's really where it begins. Because in my opinion, true health, optimal health, really means a balance of mind, body, and spirit. You've got to tune the mind up. You've got to be grounded spiritually. You've got to take care of your body. Through what you eat and how you move it. And all of those things I think are important and critical in kind of devising your own personal protocol for how you live your life.
4:48 Rich Roll? And so my kind of goal or what I aspire to with this podcast is to bring to you all of these people and help you form your own opinions about what you want to do with yourself. In a sense, I guess what I'm saying is, let me bring these experts in, some of which you may have heard of, and many of which you probably haven't, but people that I believe in and feel strongly have something to offer. But the idea is to empower you, not to sort of put myself or anybody else up on a pedestal, but to provide you with as much information as I can, so that you can divine or mine
5:32 Rich Roll? from that and take away from it what works for you and incorporate it into your life. In other words, to have greater self empowerment over your choices. And again, what you put down your throat, but so much more than that. Again, the idea is to help you to be your best self, to unlock and discover and empower your best, most authentic self, deep down inside, yearning to get out. And today's guest certainly fits the bill.
6:10 Rich Roll? Today on the show, we have Gene Bauer, who is the president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary. Gene's an activist, he's a bestselling author, and like I said, co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, whose mission is to protect farm animals from cruelty and to inspire change in the way society views and treats farm animals, and to promote compassionate living. And he's an interesting guy. He's also, excuse me. A marathoner and he's preparing for his first Ironman on a plant-based diet. Of course, he's getting ready for Ironman like Placid.
6:52 Rich Roll? And he offers a really unique perspective on what it means to be vegan. And certainly, you know, I'm the first to admit, and I talk about this in my book, that I did not get into eating plant-based, eating vegan for ethical reasons. It was, you know, I did not become out of the gate an ethical vegan. My motivation was really much more selfish. I wanted to be more healthy. I wanted to feel better. I didn't want to have a heart attack. I wanted to feel my body again. And kind of animal rights issues really did not play into my mental calculus at all.
7:36 Rich Roll? But I have to say that the more I walk this path and the further along in this journey that I go, and the more I educate myself, the more books I read, the more documentaries I watch, the more attuned and sensitive I am to this issue. Because the truth is, is that we live in a society in which our food is provided to us predominantly by a factory farming system that is controlled by big agriculture, big food, with very strong and powerful moneyed interests in play.
8:14 Rich Roll? And the system has been erected and is sustained on the woefully cruel treatment of these farm animals. And there's just no escaping it. I mean, if you were to visit these factory farms and kind of observe how these animals are treated, you know, even the most hardened, ardent meat eater would have to agree that there's some deplorable conditions here. And To raise the issue, or to kind of, I guess I would say, to hide under a rock and pretend it's not there, or to just sort of convince ourselves that it's fine and we're at the top of the food chain, that's a very convenient argument. But I really think that, you know,
8:56 Rich Roll? it deserves our attention and at a minimum, an adult, objective dialogue about what's actually happening and what can be done. Because in my opinion, it is a very inhumane system that we perpetuate. And I believe that there must be a better way, and that there is a better way. And having Gene on the show is kind of my first, he's my first guest that I've had on the show to address and discuss these issues. And I guess I'm a little trepidatious about it. You know, my message is always to be very inviting,
9:39 Rich Roll? you know, I want to create a soft landing pad for people that are interested in these issues, to feel welcome and comfortable kind of exploring this way of eating, this way of living. And it gets tricky when you start using the word vegan and you kind of wear that hat. Everybody has their own, you know, sort of preconceived notion of what that means. And there are different camps within the vegan world. I mean, you have people that kind of come into it like myself for health reasons, and then you have people that get into it strictly for the animal rights issues that are involved. And that's great, and that's fine. Sometimes those groups don't overlap, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't get along, sometimes they do. But, you know, they have very different
10:22 Rich Roll? motivations for why they are choosing to live in this fashion. And I think there are a lot of people out there that get freaked out, or turned off, when the discussion turns towards animal rights. And my opinion is, it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be a scenario in which barbs are being thrown and Judgments are being made and accusations are flying around and somebody's standing up on a moral high ground, you know, from a pedestal, looking down on other people. That is not my perspective on this issue whatsoever, but I think it merits, you know, it merits our attention. We should, we should talk about these things. And wherever you
11:07 Rich Roll? come down on this issue, whether you agree or disagree, I ask only that you listen to this interview with an open mind, because Gene is a wealth of information. He's been doing this for a long time. Farm Sanctuary operates a large animal sanctuary in upstate New York, and they also have two sanctuaries here in California. He's doing amazing work, and he is a great ambassador for the message that he promotes. And he knows his stuff. I mean, when it comes to factory farming and GMOs and, you know, the ins and outs of how this whole huge, you know, behemoth of a, of a farming system operates, he can
11:51 Rich Roll? tell you exactly, you know, where it's going awry and how we can get it back on track. All the way from the legislation, much of which he's been a part of, either lobbying for or against, and kind of explaining how it works when these ag gag bills that are sort of preventing whistleblowers from talking about what's actually going on with these food companies and at these farms, to, you know, what Monsanto is actually doing and what they're up to next, and how the animals ultimately are affected in this kind of calculus. Certainly how humans are affected as well. It affects all of us. This is not an issue
12:34 Rich Roll? of protecting animals over humans. It's something that, that we all need to be made aware of. And like I said, we're here to just have an open discussion, to banter the ideas about. So, check it out with an open mind. Before we get into it, just a couple of quick announcements. If you've been enjoying the show and want to support what we're doing, the easiest way to do it is to click on the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. On the podcast page or on the blog page, you'll see it, just a little black and white Amazon banner ad. If you're going to buy something on Amazon, like the paperback of Finding Ultra, because
13:18 Rich Roll? Father's Day is coming up and you gotta get Dad something, click the banner ad on my site, it'll take you to Amazon. Buy whatever you're gonna buy, buy Finding Ultra, buy something completely different, I don't care, but I know a lot of you out there are shopping on Amazon anyway, so why not just click the banner ad? It will not cost you a penny extra. And when you do follow through and buy something, whether it's my book or anything else, they do throw a few nickels our way and helps keep the lights on, helps keep the bandwidth flowing, and allows us to continue doing what we're doing, because this podcast is free, and it will always be free.
13:58 Rich Roll? But we do have some costs involved, and it's a great, easy way for you to help out without even having to spend a cent. But if you're feeling so inclined and extra generous, you can donate too. There's donate button on richroll.com as well. You can subscribe to the podcast by throwing us a buck or two, or 10 bucks a month, or whatever you choose, you choose the amount. And a lot of people have been doing that, and it warms my heart, believe me, it's amazing. Thank you so much to all of you out there who are, you know, reaching into your pockets and throwing a couple dollars our way from your hard-earned cash. I mean, my goodness, it's amazing. So I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.
14:44 Rich Roll? But the podcast will always be free. So if you don't want to donate, you don't have to. I'm just letting you know it's there. That's all. What else? Thanks for all the feedback on our last episode, PS244. That was a great interview and I got tons of great feedback from that and what those guys, Christian LaDesma and Bob Groff are doing at that school with their vegetarian school lunch program and beyond, you know, the full extent of the wellness curriculum that they have woven into the fabric of that school is amazing. And it was my honor to try to help get that story out to an even broader audience. So I appreciate all the great comments on that one. If you've been enjoying
15:28 Rich Roll? the show also, you know what? Tag us on Twitter, tag us on Instagram. I'm at @RichRoll on Twitter. I'm @RichRoll on Instagram. I'll tell you what, throw a photo up on Instagram of you reading Finding Ultra or listening to the podcast and just tag my name on it, @RichRoll, and I'm going to pick a winner. You know why? Because we've got some t-shirts coming up, some Plant Power t-shirts that we're designing. We don't have the design locked in yet, but we will soon. And this is my pledge to you right now. Throw those Instagrams up, share them on Twitter, share them on Facebook, share them on Pinterest,
16:12 Rich Roll? and just always tag my name so I'll see it. And I'm going to pick a winner and give away a t-shirt sometime in the next 10 days when we lock down this t-shirt design that we're working on right now. So let's just cut it short now and get into the interview with Gene. Like I said, he's an awesome guy. He knows his stuff. And this is a fascinating interview from a very unique and passionate individual with an important message. So I implore you, open your ears,
16:54 Rich Roll? be objective, and give it a listen. Ladies and gentlemen, Gene Power.
17:14 Rich Roll? No, but what I was saying is, I know that you did a, like a cross-country sort of road trip a couple of years ago?
17:22 Speaker 01 That's right.
17:23 Rich Roll? For the 25th anniversary?
17:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:25 Rich Roll? The Farm Sanctuary and kind of visiting, I mean, did you visit farms along the way? Or, you know, sort of like a, like a whistle stop tour?
17:34 Speaker 01 Kind of. We got the old Volkswagen van that Farm Sanctuary started in back in 1986. And the way we funded the organization in the early days was by selling vegetarian hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts out of a Volkswagen van.
17:46 Rich Roll? You're a true hippie.
17:47 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
17:48 Rich Roll? Out of Hollywood.
17:48 Speaker 01 Come from that time, come from that time period. And so we got the van back on the road and took it cross-country and went to various restaurants that have vegan food and just, it was sort of like an exploration of vegan America. And part of that also included going by agribusiness facilities. So we would be going through Iowa and see factory farms and swing by to just sort of talk a little bit about what happens inside of those windowless buildings and to just talk about the reality of agribusiness and animal farming and what it means.
18:26 Rich Roll? Like with the farmers themselves or with the communities or?
18:30 Speaker 01 Well, we would usually not speak to the farmers. They, in fact, in one situation, we were outside of a dairy farm in Southern California, talking about what was happening on that dairy farm, and the farmer came out to shoo us away. He did not want us there. And on the back of his car was a bumper sticker that said, "Dairy farming is not a crime." So he obviously felt like he was being embattled.
18:51 Rich Roll? Yeah.
18:51 Speaker 01 And so he was pretty, pretty intense. And they don't generally like us talking about what they're doing. In fact, they're trying to pass laws right now to make it illegal to talk about.
19:01 Rich Roll? Yeah, the ag gag bills. And there's one, is it in North Carolina right now that's hotly debated?
19:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
19:08 Rich Roll? So what's going on, you know, what's going on with that?
19:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's an ag gag bill in North Carolina that is, has been moving forward. Farm Sanctuary and a coalition of other organizations are working to try to stop that bill. And right now, it's hard to know what's going to happen, but we're very concerned because agribusiness is very influential in North Carolina.
19:26 Rich Roll? And explain for the listeners what the ag gag kind of movement is all about for those that might not know.
19:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, in recent years, there's been lots of undercover investigations showing the abuses of factory farming and agribusiness doesn't like those to be hitting the airwaves. So they're now introducing legislation in various states to make it more difficult to obtain those kinds of undercover videos, to make it illegal to take those videos and to distribute them. So these ag gag bills is what they've been labeled as have been introduced around the country and many of them have died thankfully. But there's one in North Carolina that's still alive and it is a great concern of ours.
20:05 Rich Roll? Right, and it's not just, it's not so, I mean, it is an animal rights issue, but it's also a First Amendment issue, it's a human rights issue, it's a right to know issue, it's, it involves a lot of issues that we should all be really concerned about.
20:20 Speaker 01 Absolutely. It's fundamental democratic issues, you know, the right to speak, free speech is so critical and the right of a free press to be able to talk about when things are not being done well. And it's important for citizens to be able to make informed choices. And when you have these kind of ag gag bills passing, they make it a lot more difficult for advocates to speak out and for citizens to get information that they really should have about their food choices.
20:49 Rich Roll? I mean, it's really, sounds almost sort of despotic, you know, that we wouldn't, that we would be prevented by law from understanding or having an idea of how our food is being produced and delivered to us.
21:02 Speaker 01 It's really, really unbelievable and it's, it's actually not new. This has been going on for years. When Oprah Winfrey, for example, talked about mad cow disease back in the 1990s, she was sued by Texas cattlemen and she had to defend herself against them according to food disparagement laws. So you cannot say disparaging words about certain foods, otherwise you might find yourself in court as Oprah did with the beef producers.
21:25 Rich Roll? It's amazing to me.
21:26 Speaker 01 It's crazy. It's crazy.
21:29 Rich Roll? And is this, I mean, is it, everybody points the finger at Monsanto, is Mon, I mean, an obvious, it's the obvious target and the biggest player in the field, but who are the other kind of? Big movers in this issue.
21:42 Speaker 01 Well, Monsanto is very much a lightning rod. They're very easy to look to because of the way they try to control the seeds and control other farmers and make it difficult for farmers to farm, you know, without having to pay homage and to purchase Monsanto products. But you know, there's, you know, all the beef producers, you know, there's Cargill, I mean, and the fast food companies also are complicit. I think what is difficult is that these industries are so intertwined. The pharmaceuticals work closely with the agribusiness producers and with the crop producers, even like corn and soy people are very tied into animal agriculture because, you know, corn and soybeans are the primary feed crops that
22:24 Speaker 01 are heavily subsidized by taxpayers. You also have issues of water rights and property rights and agribusiness has preferential access to those things. Fossil fuels, they have preferential access to fossil fuels. So this is an industry that ties into so much of the economy, even banking and loans and finances.
22:42 Rich Roll? Right.
22:43 Speaker 01 And, and at the end of the day, though, most consumers are unwittingly supporting the system.
22:48 Rich Roll? Right, with an emphasis on unwittingly, I think.
22:51 Speaker 01 Yes, I think that's right. You know, most people are humane. Most people don't want to eat food that is coming from an agricultural system that's destroying the planet. But most people, unfortunately and unwittingly, are supporting that kind of a system by buying these animal foods without thinking enough about it.
23:07 Rich Roll? Right, and I've said this many times on the podcast, but the system is completely set up to prevent us from having any relationship or understanding from, with how the food is produced and how it gets to us, from the way it's packaged in the grocery store, the way it's laid out and displayed, the images on the packaging that show these pastoral farms and give you a good feeling about, you know, where your dairy product is coming from or what have you. And we are meant to be insulated from all that nasty business and there's a lot of energy and money that goes into maintaining that status quo.
23:44 Speaker 01 So true. And, and the fact is that when we're disconnected, we're going to be less informed and we will be sold products that don't really align with our own values and align with our own interests. And that's what's happening.
23:58 Rich Roll? Disconnected and also confused, you know, when we're bombarded with all these kind of different kinds of messages about what's good for us and what's not, the food business kind of relishes that because the more confused we are, the more likely we are to just keep doing the same thing that we've always been doing.
24:14 Speaker 01 So true, and then we become disempowered and then agribusiness continues selling us this stuff that is bad for us, bad for the animals, bad for the planet, and it doesn't have to be that way. But more and more people, I think, are now starting to recognize that they need to be more mindful of their food choices and to ultimately make choices that they can feel good about instead of relying on the government and relying on food companies to provide accurate labels and accurate nutrition advice. So people are starting to take more responsibility and as that happens, I think there's going to be a major shift. I think we're beginning to see parts of it now. There's more farmers markets than ever before. There are community-supported agriculture programs. There are more and more alternatives to animal
24:59 Speaker 01 foods, you know, both dairy products. You can get, you know, coconut milk, almond milk and stuff. So it's getting, it's getting better.
25:05 Rich Roll? But people are busy, they're distracted, and you know, what is it that, that somebody who might be listening to this, who wants to make the right choice, like what are, what are some things that they could do to help, you know, become more empowered?
25:20 Speaker 01 I think the most important thing is just to recognize that you do have control over your food choices. There's many things in this world that we don't have control over, but when it comes to what we eat, each of us every day has a lot of control and that decision is one of the most important decisions we make every day. It has profound impacts on our own health. And tragically, in this country, the way we eat today, we're eating in a way that makes us sick. Heart disease is the number one killer and the risk of heart disease can be seriously lessened by shifting towards a whole food, plant-based diet and away from animal foods. Risk of cancer can be reduced by shifting toward plant foods. Risk of the worst environmental problems we're facing can be reduced by shifting towards plant foods. So this is a system that we're currently supporting, this animal
26:05 Speaker 01 agriculture system that causes so much harm and, and each citizen, each consumer can take responsibility for their actions and play a significant role in shifting us away from that. And I think that is starting to happen.
26:19 Rich Roll? I mean, I think there's a sense of somewhat of a sense of powerlessness with with the consumer and thinking, well, my vote doesn't really matter. And, you know, I'm up against these huge companies. Like, I just don't, you know, Dancing with the Stars is on TV. So, you know, I'm just gonna check out. Like, there's nothing I can do. And it's easy to point your finger at the fast food companies and the Monsanto's and here are the bad guys and kind of go about your way. But really, you have to turn that finger around and point it at yourself and say, all right, well, what can I do? I can vote with my dollar. I can make the choice about what I'm putting down my throat, because no government can control that. And start with yourself, you know, I mean, it has to be that way.
27:01 Speaker 01 I think it does. You know, we can't control others. We cannot control the fast food companies. But we can control our own behavior. And that's where it ultimately starts. And at the end of the day, agribusiness depends on consumers to buy their stuff. And if we stop buying their stuff, they're gonna shift. They will, they ultimately depend on consumers. But right now, there's a strong effort to keep consumers confused, as you mentioned, and to keep consumers distracted, and to keep us mindlessly consuming in a way that is so harmful.
27:33 Rich Roll? Yeah. And yet, the ag gag bills are really a reaction, it's a fear-based reaction to this idea that consumers do want to know. And there are protests afoot. And there are quite a few, you know, anti-GMO rallies going on across the country right now. And I think people are getting more and more informed. And, you know, we'll see where that goes. But I'm optimistic with, at least with respect to this aspect of it.
27:59 Speaker 01 I am too. I am optimistic. I am hopeful. I think most people are humane. Most people want to live healthy lives. And they want to live on a planet that's not being destroyed. So I think we've got a lot going for us. And when people have the information they need to make informed choices, I think most are going to make humane, healthy, sustainable choices.
28:18 Rich Roll? And you've been doing this since 1986.
28:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, man. It's been a while.
28:22 Rich Roll? Yeah. We were talking before the podcast about, you know, what it must have been like back then, you know, sort of shouting from the mountaintops. And, you know, there just wasn't the kind of energy and mainstream interest in all of this that there is now. So, you know, that's got to feel
28:39 Speaker 01 Feels really good. We've come so far. Yeah, back in eighty six for soy milk, you'd usually have to get like a powder and mix it with water to get soy milk.
28:47 Rich Roll? Right.
28:48 Speaker 01 You know, now you go to the grocery store and there's all kinds of.
28:50 Rich Roll? Oh, you were an insane person if you were going to the, you know, I remember my mom, growing up in DC. There was one like natural food market in Bethesda and she and she would, every once in a while, she would courageously venture in to pick up some kind of, I don't know, trying to be healthy and bring something home. And she would say, I don't know what it is. Like, I don't know if the people in there, like, they don't look healthy. Like, either they're they're there because they're sick and they're trying to get better, or maybe they're sick because they're eating that kind of food. I remember her saying that to me. And it's like, you know, fast forward to Whole Foods and, you know, what's going on now? I mean, it's a universe of difference.
29:29 Speaker 01 It's amazing how far we've come. Absolutely. And you have people, you know, like Bill Clinton, for example, who was having heart issues and decided to go to a plant-based lifestyle to prevent those heart problems. And there's lots and lots of stories like that where you're seeing real positive results from eating in a way that is not consuming animal products and eating plants instead. And if you look at our bodies, we're we're better suited to eat plant foods instead of animal foods. So I think more and more people are getting that. There's more information. The internet has been a huge plus. You know, people can see, videotape a factory farming, see how bad that is. But there's also information about healthy recipes, where to get healthy plant foods. And so there's the information about why it makes sense to shift towards plant-based eating.
30:14 Speaker 01 And there's information about how to shift towards plant-based eating.
30:17 Rich Roll? Right. Yeah, it's great.
30:18 Speaker 01 It is. It is.
30:19 Rich Roll? It's cool. So, so what, what kind of got you going on this? I mean, what, you know, tell me a little bit about your background. And I know you grew up in Hollywood and and, you know, from, from what I understand, a relatively conservative upbringing. And, you know, then you become this sort of ardent, you know, firebrand, like, you know, how does this happen?
30:38 Speaker 01 Well, I grew up and my parents are conservative Catholics and I went to Catholic school and was sort of hit with a. Strong dose of morality, right and wrong, and the thou shalt and thou shalt nots and so on. And, and a lot of that stuff was too dogmatic and judgmental for me. But there were certain basic things that stuck. And, you know, the idea of don't kill, you know, treat the least of these kindly and do unto others, those types of things I thought made sense. And I wanted to grow up and do things that would be positive in the world. And I didn't want to be a cog in a wheel of a system that I thought was very harmful. Growing
31:20 Speaker 01 up in the Hollywood Hills, I remember seeing beautiful oak trees being cut down so that houses could be made bigger. I remember seeing, you know, neighbors backyards where wildlife was being harmed. I remember there was a deer, for example, that got stuck in a chain link fence that was killed because he got tangled in this fence. And those types of things had a very sort of visceral impact on me. And I didn't want to be part of a system that was causing so much harm. So in high school, I started volunteering at children's hospital, working with kids who were terminally ill. And then in college, I started getting involved with some adolescents, adolescent folks that needed help. And then I got involved with environmental issues, involved with Greenpeace, got involved with
32:02 Speaker 01 Ralph Nader organizations. And as time went, I started Meanwhile, your Catholic parents are saying what to you? Meanwhile, they, I don't think really understood what I was trying to figure out. But I was the oldest of six, so they had plenty of other kids to kind of keep them occupied as well. Yes, but our oldest son, our prodigal son. Yeah, well, you know, they had a family Where did we go wrong? It's those kind of things, right? You know, my father had a family business where he ran property, managed properties down near MacArthur Park. And I think that his kind of thinking was that I and my other siblings would go into the family business. Right. But it wasn't something that really spoke to me. And it wasn't something that
32:47 Speaker 01 changed the status quo of a system that I thought was harmful. And so I just started exploring different things. But yeah, I think there were some challenging moments. Right. And I Our son, the hippie. Our son, the hippie, exactly. I had long hair and, you know, things like that. And very much a nature boy. And I don't have long hair anymore. And I Don't have a beard anymore, you know, but, but I, I, uh, but it was, it was, you know, a time of exploration and growth and trying to figure stuff out. And I also hitchhiked around the country in the early eighties, which was another part of my becoming more aware of animal farming and what happens to rural America when you have these factory
33:28 Speaker 01 farms. And I started meeting other people that were vegetarian and aware of these issues. And that was really helpful because, um, you know, we are social animals and we learn from those around us. And if you've never met another vegetarian, you don't even think that that's a possibility. So I started recognizing that there were other ways that I could be living. And, and the thing about factory farming is that it combines so many issues. It combines our health. It combines environmental destruction. It combines animal abuse. And all of these things come together in this one huge issue that was not getting a lot of attention back in the mid 1980s.
34:04 Rich Roll? Right. I mean, even more than that, it's issues of indentured servitude and the democratic process. And, you know, like we said, the right to know. And now, you know, I want to talk about GMOs and the proliferation of GMOs and the kind of threats posed by that because there's, I think there's a lot of confusion about that as well. But there's a whole pantheon of issues that get raised by factory farming and the predatory nature of it and the imperiled farmer as a result. Like I just saw, my wife and I just rented, um, that Matt Damon movie, Promised Land, which I thought was really in a very interesting, I don't know if you saw that movie.
34:41 Speaker 01 No.
34:42 Rich Roll? It's really from the, the sort of, um, farmer's perspective of what's happening in small towns with, you know, the advent of factory farming, the pressures, the sort of economic pressures on these small farmers to grow or perish. And, you know, so it has, it has economic issues on the kind of heartland and the towns and the families that have, for generations have been farming a certain way and that way of life is no longer viable.
35:09 Speaker 01 Yes. No, it's very true. So in addition to producing unhealthy food, there's, as you say, this sort of indentured servitude, this sort of control of local communities that is imposed. And you sort of get with a program or you get out. You know, the USDA for decades has said, get big or get out. And that's what's been happening. And it's tragic to see what's happening in rural America. And this is something that's been studied by anthropologists. And they've recognized the social harm that comes from this kind of an industrial farming system, in addition to the pollution, in addition to, you know, people who can't even go out on their porch anymore during certain times of year because the stench is so bad, they can't hang their clothes up on the laundry line because it smells so bad their
35:54 Speaker 01 clothes will stink. So that's what happens in these factory farm areas.
35:57 Rich Roll? And so, explain a little bit about your perspective on GMOs and the kind of patented seeds and the grains and the sort of, you know, what we're growing to feed the livestock and how that's impacting us.
36:12 Speaker 01 Well, you know, there's a lot that is not known about it. You know, we hear a lot about allergies and it's possible that some of those are coming from these GMOs. But there's sort of a desire not to really look too closely. It's sort of a don't look, don't find approach because I think if agribusiness looked, they would see that there are really negative consequences. And if they are aware of those, then they become more culpable for those.
36:37 Rich Roll? Oh, that's interesting. So, I mean, usually you would have a pharmaceutical company, say for example, perform a study to establish that a certain drug that they're developing has a benefit. But in this case, it's, I guess what you're saying is it's the reverse, like, let's not do a study, then we can say there's no proof that this is harmful.
36:55 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly. For years, we were arguing that in the US, we were likely to have mad cow disease. But agribusiness and the USDA kept saying, there's no evidence that we have mad cow disease. And so, we said it's sort of a don't look, don't find approach because once you find that you have mad cow disease, export markets are now going to be much more difficult to find. And so, there's a vested economic interest in not finding certain problems. Because once you do, you are then culpable, potentially legally responsible. And these companies would rather just be selling stuff and making money, instead of really looking into the consequences of, you know, what these foods could be doing.
37:37 Speaker 01 They're very short sighted, unfortunately. And as a result, human consumers are basically guinea pigs. We're all kind of an experiment. We'll see how it works out. And that's just sort of life, you know? We can't predict the future, but unfortunately, agribusiness is really driven by profit and producing...
37:57 Speaker 01 Things in volume, selling as much as possible and
38:02 Rich Roll? And maintaining government subsidies to keep the prices.
38:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, and to keep the guarantees for them. So the government guarantees a certain price for their products. So if they produce a lot of it, they're going to get a lot of money for it. And then there's also risk aversion techniques where they have, you know, insurance policies that are also underwritten by taxpayers to make sure that they're not going to lose money. This is why you have finance people involved so often in farming. And then there's also tax breaks and tax incentives. If you have agricultural land, you know, there are some preference, you know, some benefits that come from that. So this is an industry that's very entrenched and it's very complex and it's very harmful.
38:46 Speaker 01 And, you know, most citizens are just, you know, unwittingly engaged in it. And, you know, the best thing to do is to just get food from, from places you know, from like farmers markets, from CSAs, grow your own. And, you know, and to become empowered in that way. Because, you know, buying into this food system, the way it currently operates, ties into so many bad things. And the pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest industries involved. Most of the antibiotics produced in the US are fed to farm animals to make them grow faster.
39:23 Rich Roll? Interesting.
39:24 Speaker 01 And then people eat these animals. And by the way, it's legal for diseased animals to be slaughtered and used for human food.
39:30 Rich Roll? Yeah, explain, explain that a little bit more fully. I was reading about that recently.
39:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, we actually had litigation against the US Department of Agriculture some years ago. And we argued that downed animals, those that are too sick to walk, are diseased. And legally, we argued that diseased animals cannot be used for food. The USDA responded to our petition in our lawsuit arguing that it was legal, in common, and appropriate for diseased animals to be used for food. So that's a USDA policy.
39:59 Rich Roll? Right.
40:00 Speaker 01 And so you have diseased animals going into the food supply. You have animals routinely being fed antibiotics to grow faster. So you then have antibiotic resistant bacteria developing. And then you have consumers eating too many of these animal foods which contribute to heart disease and cancer and things like that. So now then you have pharmaceuticals selling you heart medications.
40:20 Rich Roll? Right.
40:21 Speaker 01 That get you coming and going.
40:22 Rich Roll? It's the perfect cycle of keeping you kind of wed to these drugs at every stage along the journey, right?
40:31 Speaker 01 It's so horrible. And it's so disempowering because now you're dependent on the drugs, which kind of gets back to the Monsanto GMO thing a little bit, where you have farmers that are being prevented from saving their own seeds and being empowered in a sense to develop their own food products. And they end up having to buy Monsanto seeds that then comes with Roundup and Monsanto pesticides and herbicides that work with their seeds. And so a large part of the problem, I think, has to do with the socioeconomic control that Monsanto and these other companies then start having on farmers. And so farmers become
41:14 Speaker 01 disempowered and they just sort of have to go with the program. And it's not a healthy program.
41:19 Rich Roll? Yeah, I mean, they have to get new seeds every year or two, right? And they have to buy, you know, they sign these contracts that obligate them to do so. And it's essentially criminal for them to do otherwise, right?
41:30 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. And some of the seeds are actually called Terminator seeds because they will not, they're not perennial.
41:36 Rich Roll? Right, they're just one, yeah, so you.
41:39 Speaker 01 One season and out. Exactly. So you have to buy them every year.
41:41 Rich Roll? Right, right. And now with, I mean, I'm, I'm a real, you know, I'm, I'm no expert in this arena, but my understanding is that these seeds, you know, they blow in the wind and they start to, you know, germinate in other areas until it's just, you know, everywhere. And there's, it's basically, I mean, is it even possible to get corn that's not GMO? I mean, it's gotta be difficult, right? Even in small farms.
42:08 Speaker 01 It is difficult. Yeah. Because this stuff does blow. And in Monsanto, if, if some of these Monsanto seeds have blown onto a farmer's land, even if the farmer didn't plant it, Monsanto has actually challenged them in court, saying that they're growing their GMO.
42:22 Rich Roll? Right. Unlawfully growing their seeds.
42:24 Speaker 01 Crazy. It's crazy. So it's getting, it's been getting more difficult. But, you know, I really do think too, that there is a burgeoning small farm movement. There's a lot of young-
42:35 Rich Roll? There's no question about that. You know, it's sort of like, you know, the adage, rock is dead. And, you know, there's nothing new that could be said through rock and roll. And then Nirvana comes along. You know, there's always a reaction to every action. And there really is this amazing new movement of really dynamic, well-educated, young people interested in sustainable agriculture. And, you know, take, rather than going off and getting a job at a consulting firm, going and joining these farms and becoming farmers. And our family spent last winter, uh, living on the North Shore of Kauai at an organic farm. And, and it was a great experience. The kids got to work the land with some of the young people that, that were there working it. And they all
43:19 Rich Roll? had like graduate degrees. And they were there by choice to like, really learn about agriculture and how to grow their own food, like well-educated, really neat, like, young people. And I mean, that, that, that wasn't something that I would have thought of doing when I was right out of college, or anybody I knew for that matter.
43:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:37 Rich Roll? So it's pretty cool to see that.
43:39 Speaker 01 Very exciting.
43:40 Rich Roll? And they're happening all, it must be happening quite a bit in upstate New York.
43:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's happening, I think, everywhere. There's these, it's just an entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial spirit as well, where you have these small businesses, you know, people that are, or even people that have been in- You know, a regular business in the city and they leave that and move to the country to start a farm kind of business. So you have older people, you have younger people. There's a lot of energy behind growing food in a more sustainable way that is more aligned with societal values that is something that people can actually visit the farm and feel okay about it.
44:14 Rich Roll? Right.
44:14 Speaker 01 Which is very different than the mainstream animal farming business today.
44:19 Rich Roll? Right, right, absolutely. We started off the conversation talking about your, uh, your cross-country trek when, I think it was right when your book came out and it was the 25th anniversary of Farm Sanctuary. And, and before we were recording, you were asking me like, "Oh, it'd be cool to like, you know, go across the country or something like that." And I was like, "Yeah, I was thinking what would be fun would be to run across the US, like, create like this crazy endurance event."
44:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:46 Rich Roll? I mean, you know, people have run across the US. It's not like, there's plenty of people that have done that. There's nothing incredibly unique about that. But to, to sort of map it out so that every day you went up at a new organic farm or at a school and you really wed like the movement and the message and the educational aspect of it to the endurance aspect of it. So they're kind of one in the same. Like make a documentary and like, "Oh, I'm gonna go visit this farm today. I'm gonna learn how these guys are doing it. Talk to them." Or go to this school. "Hey, what are you guys eating for your school lunch?" Like, "Hey, well, you know, and talk to kids and, you know, kind of spread the word." I think that would be really cool.
45:23 Speaker 01 I think so too. Very exciting to see. There's so many people doing really good things all over the country. I mean, in the middle of nowhere.
45:30 Rich Roll? Right.
45:30 Speaker 01 You know, you have these schools that have gardens. You have veganic farms in like Iowa, you know. So there's people that are really making a difference in their communities. And I think that's ultimately how the change is gonna happen from grassroots.
45:42 Rich Roll? Yeah, no question. I was in New York two weeks ago and I went out to, uh, PS244 in Queens.
45:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
45:49 Rich Roll? So you know about those? Yeah, the first vegetarian school lunch and I did an interview with the principal and, and the, the teacher who's head of the wellness program there about how they got that going. And it's pretty neat. It's really neat. There's a woman named, I hope I don't get her name wrong. I think her name is Amy Hamlin.
46:09 Speaker 01 Amy Hamlin, yeah.
46:10 Rich Roll? In Ithaca, right, from New York Coalition for Healthy School Food? I think that's what it is.
46:15 Speaker 01 I think that's it. School food or school lunch?
46:17 Rich Roll? School lunch, yeah. And so I guess that's the organization that kind of they worked with to really get this up on its feet. And it's pretty cool.
46:24 Speaker 01 Yes, absolutely. It's very, very positive to see that happening. And school kids are the future.
46:29 Rich Roll? Oh, and they love it. You know, the kids love it. It's like, you know, you get them, you get them at that age and, you know, they, they want to do the right thing. And they're all, I mean, I was there, it was after school, but they were doing after school programs. And there were kids there that were doing a blackberry tasting. And there were other like kindergarten kids making their own granola bars. And they have, you know, it's on the, it's a city school. It's on a city block. But in the, in the playground and back, along the fence, they were hanging these pouches where they were growing their own food. And they have a tower garden in their library and, you know.
47:00 Speaker 01 How fun.
47:00 Rich Roll? So it's not just school lunch, like it's wellness is integrated into the DNA of that program. And what's so cool is that it's not like some crazy private school or, or even really a charter school or anything like that. It's a, it's a public New York City school. And if they can do it, then that, and that can be replicated.
47:20 Speaker 01 Huge.
47:21 Rich Roll? It's pretty cool, right?
47:22 Speaker 01 That instills healthy habits too, you know, because we grow up and we develop habits. And if we develop bad habits, those can stay with us and they can ultimately kill us much younger than we need to be dying. And cause a lot of suffering along the way for ourselves and other animals and the planet. And when you see programs like that, it's very encouraging because again, this, these kids have a long time ahead of them. And many years of habits that are going to contribute either good or bad to the world. And so when you have examples like that, hopefully, as you say, they can be replicated. And, and it makes all the sense in the world. That's the thing about it is that this type of food system is good for everybody.
48:05 Speaker 01 You know, except I guess the status quo, but it really is good for consumers, planet, animals. It makes all the sense in the world when you look at it.
48:21 Rich Roll? Let's talk a little bit about the environmental implications of factory farming because that's something that I know, you know, I know in a very general sense, oh, it's bad, or, you know, it contributes to greenhouse gases, but I figured you'd be a good person to kind of help educate me and the listeners about that a little bit more.
48:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, the United Nations put out a report a few years ago called Livestock's Long Shadow, where they talked about how animal agriculture contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation industry. So that's one example of it. The United Nations also talked about how animal agriculture is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems we're facing. And at the end of the day, to produce animals for food requires enormous amounts of resources. It makes a lot more sense to grow crops and for humans to eat them directly, instead of growing crops and then feeding them to animals. So when you start raising animals and feeding them these crops, you need a lot more land. And when you're raising these
49:23 Speaker 01 crops today, it also comes with petrochemical fertilizers, which then can contribute to, you know, environmental pollution. And then you feed these to animals who are kept in these factory farm warehouses confined by the thousands. So they're generating enormous amounts of manure, and the land cannot absorb it. So now you have this excess manure getting into waterways, polluting groundwater, and the animals are given drugs, and that results in the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. So now you even have antibiotic resistant bacteria in groundwater downstream from these factory farms. So this is a system
50:01 Speaker 01 that is destroying the planet. It is wasting scarce resources. And I think ultimately, it's just not economically viable over time. And I think it's going to have to change.
50:14 Rich Roll? What is the, you know, what is the reality of grass-fed beef and sort of this, this whole kind of upswing of humanely raised livestock? And, you know, how much of that is marketing spend to make people feel better about their, you know, animal product choice and how much is reality?
50:35 Speaker 01 Well, I think most of it is spend, unfortunately. And I think it comes out of a good place to begin with on the part of the consumer, who does not want to support the factory farm. But what is happening is that because people don't want to support factory farms, they're looking for alternatives. And from farm sanctuary standpoint, the best alternative is plant-based eating and not animal eating. But unfortunately, in animal agriculture, you have folks now starting to label products as free range, or cage-free, or organic. And these terms sound good. Free range, you know, makes you think animals are out ranging freely, right? But it doesn't mean that in most cases. Free range only requires that animals have access to the outdoors.
51:20 Speaker 01 But access is not defined. So what that often means is you have animals raised in a warehouse with a little door that goes to a crummy little paddock, and that is access to the outdoors, and that can be sold as free range. And in the case of chickens, you know, raised for egg production, for example, those birds are still so crowded that they have parts of their beaks cut off so they don't peck each other. So these terms sound good, but they don't really reflect very good conditions for the animals.
51:49 Rich Roll? So if, like, so what is the reality of beef that's grass-fed? Like, what does that look like?
51:55 Speaker 01 Well, in the case of beef, in the beef industry, you have different times in the animal's life. Most beef cattle in the US, whether they're grass-fed or feedlot-fed, start on a cow-calf operation where you have a cow who has a calf. And then at a certain point, the calf is taken away to be fanned, often on a feedlot. And in fact, in most cases, on a feedlot. With grass-fed, there are different definitions. It's very rare that a calf will grow up and live on grass for his or her whole life. Usually, they're fattened toward the end of their life on grain or on some kind of forage. So, grass-fed also tends to sound better than it is.
52:39 Rich Roll? Yeah, is that like a regulated term? Like, you know, organic, it has to be a certain way under the law, but is grass-fed something that is?
52:47 Speaker 01 It's starting to be, because there's been such abuses of the term. And so, it's starting to be looked at more carefully now in Washington. But it's still a work in progress. And there's a constant tension between big farms and small farms. Some of the smaller ones who want the regulations to actually have some meaning, and the bigger farms who want to push the standards down. And the bigger industrial farms tend to be more influential and tend to be able to push the standards down.
53:16 Rich Roll? Right, so that, you know, what you think you're getting isn't quite as good. Like, I could see the small farms, they want it to be for real, right? Because then that plays into their hand of what they're offering that's distinct from what the factory farms are able to offer.
53:33 Speaker 01 That's right. There are some small farms that want to do things in a more responsible way, but they tend to get pushed down, unfortunately. There was actually a slaughterhouse in Kansas, believe it or not, who wanted to test all of their animals for mad cow disease, because they wanted to be able to export to Korea, who at the time was saying, "We don't want to buy US beef." The USDA did not allow them to test all their slaughtered cows, which is pretty crazy. You'd think, "Why not?"
53:59 Rich Roll? Right.
54:00 Speaker 01 And there was really no good reason given, other than it would set a certain standard, and they didn't want to set that high standard. My thinking is that they probably didn't want them to test every animal, because if they did, there's a good chance they would start finding disease problems like mad cow disease. That's my guess, but...
54:17 Rich Roll? Right, you know, it becomes a publicity nightmare for them.
54:19 Speaker 01 It does, it does. If they're doing it a certain way and nobody else is. And so the problem is, there's very few farmers that are actually doing things very well. There's starting to be more, but generally speaking, the system is one that is factory farming. And a lot of the term, a lot of the products being sold as free range and grass fed and so on, still come from farms that are very much like factory farms.
54:46 Rich Roll? Right. Interesting. All right. So you're hitchhiking across the country. You've got to get to like farm sanctuary. How does, how does this path lead you to, to 1986?
54:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, I'm hitchhiking around the country, just learning about various issues. And I basically become very much an activist during that time. And I wanted to do something meaningful. I wanted to do something that was going to make a positive difference. And the factory farming issue was not something that getting a lot of attention. So decided that that was the area that I was going to focus. And early on, I felt it was important to know what was happening. So I started going into farms to document conditions and would literally find living animals thrown in trash cans, or living animals thrown on piles of dead animals, started rescuing them. And at the time, was living in a little row house in Wilmington, Delaware, that somebody was letting us use as a donated space. And
55:41 Speaker 01 we rescued animals, rehabilitated them, and placed them into good homes. So our Adopt a Farm Animal program began. Children from the neighborhood would come over and be very curious about the animals. They wanted to hear about where they came from. So we started talking about the reality of animal farming. And, and it became very apparent that these animals were ambassadors and people were learning from them. And so those early lessons ultimately resulted in creating Farm Sanctuary, the way it currently exists. So in 1986, we funded the organization by selling veggie hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts, very small, very grassroots. It's grown. And we now have three farms and about 250,000 supporters.
56:27 Rich Roll? Yeah, it's amazing. So you have this really large farm in Watkins Glen, New York, right? How many acres do you have there?
56:32 Speaker 01 We have 180 acres in Watkins Glen, New York. And we have 300 acres in Orland, California, which is north of Sacramento. And we have 26 acres in Acton, California, just outside of Los Angeles.
56:43 Rich Roll? Right. And that's the newest farm, right? That's pretty recent?
56:46 Speaker 01 That's right. Farm Sanctuary acquired that a couple of years ago. And we're very excited to be in the LA area because there's a lot of people here. There's a lot of people with influence here. And I think that ultimately, we need to reach larger and larger audiences. And being in LA, I think will help us do that.
57:03 Rich Roll? Yeah, for sure. I mean, tell us about what happened yesterday.
57:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, we had our Hug a Farm Animal Day. We had over 300 people sign up to come out and spend time with farm animals in a positive environment. At Farm Sanctuary, the animals are our friends, not our food. And that's the model that we try to put out there, the type of relationship that we think is the best for all involved. And it was wonderful to see so many kids come out and connect with these animals and to look into their eyes and to see that cows and pigs and chickens are not that different than cats and dogs. They have feelings, they have personalities, they develop relationships with other animals and with people. And it was a beautiful day. It was so neat to be out there with so many people enjoying a positive time with animals
57:50 Speaker 01 who sadly are too often seen just as commodities in our country.
57:55 Rich Roll? Right. I mean, I think when you get up close and personal and you develop that emotional connection, that emotional attachment, it becomes a very different thing. And it goes back to what we were talking about, about the way the system is set up to prevent us from developing that connection. And just, you know, from, on a personal level, I'm the first to admit that I got involved in all of this for health reasons. You know, I was not an animal rights activist by any stretch of the imagination. Like, I honestly just wanted to feel better and like lose weight, and I was worried about my health. But in the six years that I've been kind of, you know, on this journey... And the more I learn and the more I read and the more people that I meet like yourself,
58:36 Rich Roll? it becomes impossible for me to not develop a much greater compassion and capacity for being more vociferous about these issues. And I think it's really important and it's definitely become much more important to me even than it was a couple of years ago. It's not a sustainable system. It's not a humane system by any stretch of the imagination. And it's really important to, it's becoming more important to me to voice my opinions about this, whereas at first I was a little bit trepidatious about it, I think.
59:16 Speaker 01 You know, it's, it's, it's important to speak out and it's great that you're doing that, you know, and especially, you know, given what you have done athletically, you know, you can demonstrate that as eating plants, you can do all these things. So you're a great role model in that sense. But, but the ethical issue can be a little bit touchy. And people don't oftentimes like to think of themselves as cruel or participating in cruelty. So it's, it can be challenging to start raising these issues.
59:44 Rich Roll? Yeah, I think it's very delicate and it's important to, for me, it's always important to make people feel comfortable about switching their lifestyle rather than threatened or defensive about it. So it's about trying to find a way to create a soft landing pad that makes people feel good and excited about exploring something new and different as opposed to some kind of judgmental, you know, I don't know, holier than thou perspective. And we were talking about this, you know, before the podcast about labels and teams and joining a team and kind of infighting between groups and, you know, subcultures and all of this, where the forest gets lost, you know, for the trees. And I would imagine
1:00:29 Rich Roll? you've, you know, waged more than a few of these battles over the years and have, you know, weathered through plenty of this. I mean, how has your perspective evolved?
1:00:37 Speaker 01 Well, I think that, you know, each person has their own perspective and each person is on their own path. And ultimately, what we try to do at Farm Sanctuary is just encourage people to take positive steps in the direction of healthful, compassionate vegan living. And recognize that not everybody's going to become vegan overnight. But if people start taking small steps, I think those oftentimes lead to bigger steps.
1:01:01 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:01:01 Speaker 01 But I completely agree with what you said about trying to create an attractive movement that people want to be part of. You know, I think our movement is not so much a club, you know, an exclusive club, and it shouldn't be. And that's where labels sometimes come in. And if you say you're vegan, if somebody's not a vegan, it's a black and white situation.
1:01:23 Rich Roll? Right.
1:01:24 Speaker 01 So I oftentimes look at being vegan as really an aspiration. Because even the most vegan vegan isn't perfect. You know, like I fly in airplanes, which isn't perfect. And, you know, drive cars, things like this. So I do the best I can. And I think if each of us tries to do the best we can and just be open to making additional improvements and changes over time, that is, I think, a very positive approach. And for myself, as an animal rights person since the mid 1980s, you know, I wasn't eating all that healthy. Now, I'm trying to eat healthier. So that's an improvement I'm trying to make, eating more greens and stuff.
1:02:01 Rich Roll? Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, I think this idea of perfectionism or some kind of idealized persona, whether you're coming from it from an ethical point of view or a health-related point of view, creates, um, it creates problems for the person who might otherwise be interested. Because they're like, "Well, I could never do that. That's too difficult." Or, "I could never eschew all of this or that." And for me, it's like, "Just change one thing." You know, "Start your day with a green smoothie instead of pancakes." Or, "Just do one thing." And then try to empower that person to go on their own journey with it. And they'll go in a new direction and learn and grow and change in their own way
1:02:45 Rich Roll? and their own version of that. But it's about like these tiny little steps that set people on different trajectories, I think. Rather than saying it has to be exactly like this, or you have to be 100%.
1:02:56 Speaker 01 I think that's so true. You know, and each person's going to do it differently. And each person has to follow their own path. But I think most people want to be healthy. I think most people want to be compassionate. I think we are hardwired to have empathy. And when we see somebody else harmed, that we feel it. And I think most people would rather not cause harm. And I think most people also want to live on a planet that's not being destroyed by a factory farm.
1:03:24 Rich Roll? Or being an unwitting cog in a giant wheel that somebody else is profiting off of your sort of ignorance or lack of understanding of what's really at play.
1:03:33 Speaker 01 Yes, totally. It's tragic. I mean, most people, you know, good people are unwittingly part of this horrible system and disempowered and confused. And so I think people just need to think more and get more information about their food choices and what options they do have. And there are plenty of options now that are much preferable, much healthier, and feel much better in so many ways.
1:03:57 Rich Roll? Oh, it's ridiculous. I mean, even at the, you know, I mean, and you don't have to go to Whole Foods. I mean, I don't know what it's like in the Midwest or upstate New York, but I mean, Los Angeles isn't a great barometer because we have everything here. But I know you go to Ralph's or like the just the regular grocery store, and there's, you know, 10 different varieties of plant-based milks.
1:04:19 Speaker 01 Yes, it's incredible. And that's, I'm seeing that all over the place now, too. More and more plant-based milks. And there's also farmers markets that are popping up all over the country, all over the country, and community-supported agriculture programs. There's a Food Not Lawns movement where people are tearing up their lawns and planting food. So it's a very empowering, positive thing that we're starting to see.
1:04:39 Rich Roll? Right. Let's talk about, because we're talking about plant-based milks, let's talk a little bit about dairy. I mean, I think there's an idea that, well, I'm not, you know, I'm not eating beef, I'm not eating chicken, but like, you know, milk, I mean, the animal's still alive, you know, I'm not really, I'm not really harming that animal. I mean, can you talk a little bit about what dairy farms are really like, at least on a factory farm level, and also the impact of the Dairy Council and kind of their lobbying efforts?
1:05:06 Speaker 01 Oh, gosh. The dairy industry is one of the most influential in Washington DC. And that's why when school kids are given school lunches, you know, it's required that they be given a glass of cow's milk. And that's been the case for years. Now, there's some pushback against that and hopefully there will, they will have less influence, but that's been the way it has been for years.
1:05:26 Rich Roll? And I think most people don't realize how politicized this sort of food pyramid or the food plate is and, and all of the kind of government influence and lobbying influence that goes into play into what ultimately ends up on the wall in every, you know, public school across the country.
1:05:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, no kidding. And, and you know, when it's funny, when we go into schools and start talking about the benefits of plant-based eating, we're accused of brainwashing, whereas the dairy industry is in there every day and they don't recognize that is brainwashing. But the dairy industry, so they sell us their products, you know, through the school lunch program and the government buys up excess milk products to support dairy farms and the dairy industry. So, so tax money is going to bolster this business that otherwise would probably not be continuing.
1:06:17 Rich Roll? Where does the excess dairy products go that the government buys up? What do they do with it?
1:06:21 Speaker 01 School lunch program.
1:06:22 Rich Roll? School lunch?
1:06:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, and also military and foreign aid. You know, we use food as a weapon in international relations too, you know, give it to certain people and not to other people. So, these dairies are one of the most influential though in Washington and that's why there's so, this food is so apparent, so available. And on a dairy farm, you know, for a cow to have milk, she has to have a calf, like other mammals. They don't just lactate for the heck of it. They lactate to feed their baby. So on modern dairies, at big or small, the calf is taken away from the mother immediately at birth so that the milk can be sold to people.
1:07:04 Speaker 01 And the cow is hooked up to a milk machine two or three times a day and it sucks her dry. These cows are pushed to produce about 10 times more milk than they would produce in nature. Their bodies are under intense stress. In a healthy environment, a cow could live 20 years, but on these modern dairies, they're usually sent to slaughter after just about three or four years in production. And they're so worn out in some cases that they can't even stand and they're, they call them downed animals. So their lives are very tough. And then when the cows are taken out of the dairy herd and sent to slaughter, they become beef. So dairy cows become beef cattle. Their calves, if they're female, are raised to become milking cows. If the calves are male,
1:07:49 Speaker 01 they're not going to become milking cows, obviously. So the veal industry was actually created to take advantage of this plentiful supply of unwanted male calves born on dairy farms. So the veal industry was literally born out of the dairy industry. And these young male calves are taken from their mothers at birth, chained by the neck in small wooden crates where they live their whole lives to produce veal.
1:08:10 Rich Roll? Their whole, their whole lives being very, very short.
1:08:12 Speaker 01 About 20 weeks.
1:08:13 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:08:13 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yep. And, and, and these veal calves are fed a diet that's deficient in iron and fiber to produce a borderline anemia. So their flesh is a pale color to be sold as milk fed veal. So that's one of the ugliest industries. And people have heard about it and been educated about veal. And veal consumption has actually gone down in the US. So that's an indication that consumers do not support that kind of cruelty.
1:08:37 Rich Roll? Right. You see it with that and you're seeing it with, with foie gras.
1:08:41 Speaker 01 Yes. Very true. When people hear about this stuff, it is, it is appalling and people don't want to be part of it. But what the dairy industry is now doing is because veal consumption is going down, they're now starting to take these unwanted male calves from dairy farms and raise them for beef. So they end up in feedlots. And if you drive by, you know, some of the big feedlots in California, for example, you'll now see a lot of the Holsteins, the black and white Holstein cattle, which come from dairy farms and they're being raised for beef.
1:09:12 Rich Roll? Mm hmm.
1:09:13 Speaker 01 So, so the dairy industry has a lot of death involved with it. And, and at the end of the day, human beings don't need to drink cow's milk. You know, why not drink pig's milk or giraffe's milk or dog's milk?
1:09:27 Rich Roll? But the dairy lobby has done a very good job of convincing us that, you know, that's basically an essential element of any healthy diet. I mean, we've been told that since birth and it's so deeply ingrained into our psyche that to try to explain to somebody that you really, you really don't need that. And then in fact, it might not be good for you is anathema for most people.
1:09:49 Speaker 01 It is. It is a statement that a lot of people are very reluctant to hear because we have been so bombarded with this notion and with this assumption that drinking cow's milk is normal for people.
1:10:00 Rich Roll? And it shows you, it's a testament to just how effective, um, you know, marketing messages can be, especially when they're, they're, you're given those messages at a young age.
1:10:12 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:10:13 Rich Roll? Kind of reared with them. I mean, to overcome that, even if you show somebody all the science, they'll say, yeah, but still, you know, it's sort of like, you know, it, and it's, it shows you just how powerful advertising can be.
1:10:26 Speaker 01 Yes, absolutely. And how crazy humans can be in terms of rationalizing things. You know, people that have lactose intolerance, for example, that's an indication that they probably shouldn't be drinking cow's milk. But rather than shifting away from drinking cow's milk, they take lactate or they come up with some milk that has some additive or some, you know, way to prevent lactose from being a problem.
1:10:48 Rich Roll? Right.
1:10:49 Speaker 01 Instead of just shifting to a non-cow's milk based milk product, if you wanted, you know, so there's.
1:10:55 Rich Roll? Right.
1:10:55 Speaker 01 It's amazing how habits become so ingrained and those are habits in behavior and habits in thought as well. And I think when people step back though, and just think about these things and ask if they really do need to drink the milk of another species, it's not very reasonable or logical to be doing that. Um, and, and I think people are starting to get that. And the dairy industry, as well as the beef, pork, chicken, you know, egg industries, they're all starting to be more and more vulnerable.
1:11:28 Rich Roll? Oh, for sure. And I talked about this on an earlier podcast, but I mean, just using the dairy industry as an example, um, you know, it's undeniable, the proliferation of plant-based milks in the typical grocery store. So obviously there's a declining market share there.
1:11:43 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:11:44 Rich Roll? And so you're seeing their advertising shift to address that in these sort of attack ads.
1:11:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:50 Rich Roll? On a whoops.
1:11:51 Speaker 01 Uh oh.
1:11:55 Rich Roll? We went out for a second there. We're back. Yeah. So the, um, yeah, these attack ads on plant-based milks is being kind of unnatural. You know, he's like, I don't know if you've seen all those. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, that, you know, they know that they're up against it. Um, and there's a new battle being waged and it's going to be interesting to watch it play out.
1:12:14 Speaker 01 It will. And I think what's starting to happen too, is some of these dairy industry companies are starting now to invest in plant-based milks, which is an indication that they realize that that's where the future is and that's where the profit is.
1:12:28 Rich Roll? Interesting.
1:12:29 Speaker 01 It's, it's really cool to see. And, um, yeah, there's, there's, and at the end of the day, business is about making a profit. And if consumers start buying more of these plant-based alternatives, the businesses are going to go there. And I think we're seeing that with the dairy companies. I think also there's going to be, you know, alternatives to meat. There's a company called Beyond Meat.
1:12:51 Rich Roll? Oh, yeah. Beyond Meat. Right.
1:12:52 Speaker 01 It's a great thing to see.
1:12:53 Rich Roll? Have you tasted it yet?
1:12:54 Speaker 01 I have. Yeah. I think it's really good.
1:12:56 Rich Roll? I talked to somebody, who was I talking to who tasted it? It said, yeah, it's unbelievable. Like it has the, the consistency of chicken and like everything about it.
1:13:04 Speaker 01 Yes. And there's been taste tests by people like Mark Bittman, who's a food critic for the New York Times. He couldn't tell the difference between Beyond Meat and, and other meat.
1:13:12 Rich Roll? That's pretty amazing.
1:13:14 Speaker 01 It is. It is.
1:13:14 Rich Roll? And is that the one? Cause I know there's a couple of these, um, new products coming out, but there's one that was, the, the backers are like Biz Stone from Twitter. I think is he, and he's a, he's a friend of Farm Sanctuary too. I know that. Yeah.
1:13:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. He's a good friend of ours. Yeah.
1:13:30 Rich Roll? So that Beyond Meat is his, right? Or the one that he's involved with?
1:13:33 Speaker 01 He's one of the investors. And there's another company called Beyond Eggs that's developing alternatives to eggs. There's a restaurant, I think in New York called Beyond Sushi now. So there's this whole movement of beyond and moving forward from those old ways of eating. But, you know, we're very excited about what, what's happening with Beyond Meat. And I think Bill Gates also has an investment firm that's beyond that, be behind that as well as other plant-based food products.
1:14:00 Rich Roll? Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of press lately about the technology sector and the venture capital sector getting interested in these new food products, these plant-based food products. And, you know, like you said, it's a business, you know what I mean? And there's a business opportunity here and people are interested in this. So, you know, it's a new direction.
1:14:17 Speaker 01 Very positive. The goal is to produce something that will be a direct substitute. So you can use it just like you would use meat or eggs, but it will be cheaper to produce, and it will last longer, it will have less problems with salmonella, use less resources, and it will be able to compete directly against meat and eggs and other animal foods in the marketplace, and I think it can win.
1:14:48 Rich Roll? All right, so the mission of Farm Sanctuary, though, essentially, your core mission really is to rescue these animals from poor conditions in these primarily factory farms, right? I mean, so how does that, how does that play out on a day-to-day basis? I mean, do you, you know, when you find out about an animal, or, you know, I can't imagine these farmers are that keen on having you come and pay them a visit.
1:15:12 Speaker 01 No, they're not, usually.
1:15:13 Rich Roll? I mean, how does that work?
1:15:14 Speaker 01 Well, our, our, our, our mission is to stop cruelty to animals, to change how society views and treats farm animals, and to promote compassionate vegan living. And rescuing the animals and caring for them allows us to present a different sort of model and a different sort of relationship, you know, one where the animals are our friends, not our food. And when we approach farmers, you know, they oftentimes feel very threatened because our message and our vision is sort of exactly the opposite of theirs, where they're seeing the animals as commodities to be raised and slaughtered and then sold and profited from. Now, things have gotten so bad, though, on factory farms, that there are occasionally
1:15:59 Speaker 01 individuals that work at those farms that think it's gone too far, that the animals are being treated too badly. And they have actually contacted us from time to time and brought animals to us. For example, there was a guy in Northern California who's driving a rendering truck, and the rendering truck and the rendering business takes dead animals from farms to a rendering plant to be boiled into soaps and fertilizers and byproducts of the industry. So this is a guy driving a rendering truck, going from dairy to dairy, from farm to farm, picking up dead animals. And he went to a dairy, and the farmer had thrown out a calf who was severely injured and very sick. For the renderer to pick up, to take to the rendering plant.
1:16:42 Speaker 01 But this trucker, instead of just taking this calf to the rendering plant, knew about farm sanctuary and he brought the calf to us. And we were able to rescue and care for him. So occasionally have individuals like that that will do what they can in that industry to help individuals. And those, I think, are examples of human kindness that we like to talk about because ultimately, everybody has the ability and the capacity for empathy and kindness. Even people in the industry that are doing really bad things.
1:17:13 Rich Roll? Yeah, because it's, you know, it's amazing that a guy driving a rendering, you know, a truck for a rendering plant would do that because it almost has to be like this Stanford Prison Experiment kind of mentality where you have to kind of immunize yourself emotionally from what you're doing on a daily basis. Like you're, you know, I mean, in order to be able to do that every day, you can't develop an emotional attachment to anything you're doing, or you wouldn't be able to function.
1:17:38 Speaker 01 Yes, people shut off their empathy in these factory farms and people that work in these factory farms have to become very hardened. And I would also say that consumers who say, "Don't tell me, I don't want to know about what happens on factory farms," they're just in denial, you know, because maybe they haven't shut off their empathy, but they're not.
1:17:56 Rich Roll? Well, they're aware that they have empathy and they're aware that if they connect that empathy to the system, that it's going to create dissonance for them.
1:18:04 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly. And so they don't want to have that dissonance, you know? So that's kind of laziness in a way, I think. And I think it's important for people to confront their dissonance and ultimately make choices that they feel good about. And that, at the end of the day, is very empowering and very positive for everybody. But yeah, farmers feel threatened by the work we do, by and large, because we are challenging an existing paradigm, challenging this notion that these animals are commodities.
1:18:32 Speaker 01 And when you do that, um, yeah, you shake things up. But, but it's good because most citizens, you know, believe that what is happening on factory farms is outside the bounds of acceptable, acceptable conduct. And I think that we're at a time now where more and more people want to look at what's happening and want to make a positive difference.
1:18:52 Rich Roll? Mm hmm. So you get these animals and you provide shelter and you care for them, right?
1:18:57 Speaker 01 That's right.
1:18:58 Rich Roll? And then they become just residents of your, of your property, right?
1:19:02 Speaker 01 That's exactly right. The animals are rescued from these abusive situations. They come to live at Farm Sanctuary. Oftentimes they're very sick when they first arrive. They're very fearful when they first arrive because they've only known cruelty at human hands. So it takes them a while sometimes to warm up. And I think the animals that are residents at the sanctuary play an important role in welcoming the new residents because they can sort of pick up that this is a safe place, that these other animals are not afraid and that these other animals interact with people in a positive, healthy way. And so the new arrivals sort of take their cues from the animals who've been there for a while.
1:19:40 Rich Roll? That's interesting.
1:19:41 Speaker 01 And it really helps them to become adjusted to living in a sanctuary setting instead of, you know, the kind of abuse they've experienced in the past.
1:19:50 Rich Roll? Right. Do you have any good stories about that acclimation process?
1:19:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, there was a calf that I found at a stockyard who was sent to the stock. He came from a dairy farm. He was sent to the stockyard on the day he was born. He was still wet from afterbirth. He was dying of hypothermia and he was just left for dead. And I rescued him, brought him to Farm Sanctuary. It took him a while to respond physically because he was so sick, but he started warming up. He started suckling, which is very important. It's a very good indication that he's on his way back. He was able to stand within a couple of days. So those are all very positive signs in terms of his physical rehabilitation, but he still wasn't really thriving. He wasn't really enjoying life. So then I took him out to the barn with the other cows. And when I did that, they started moving to him.
1:20:38 Speaker 01 He started moving back to them. He started kicking up his heels and he started thriving. So. Farm animals are social animals, just like others. And that is an example of how they need to be with their people, in a sense. And by being with the other cows on the farm, Opie recovered and had a long, happy life at Farm Sanctuary.
1:21:00 Rich Roll? Uh huh. So you have a very optimistic disposition. You're very, you're a very positive dude. And I hear stories like that and they're, they're heartwarming and heart wrenching and all of that. But I'm thinking, you know, I can't help but think, well, we're talking about one calf and there's hundreds of thousands of animals that are in this system. And it's one, you know, tiny victory in this sea of, you know, kind of, you know, horrendous treatment of these animals. So how do you kind of maintain that positive outlook?
1:21:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, it can be tough sometimes. And the sanctuaries actually are a big, play a big role in that. Um, you know, early on, I spent a lot of time going into these farms and documenting things and videotaping and just seeing horrible, horrible things day in, day out. And being able to rescue individuals from those situations and watching them heal and watching them begin to enjoy life was healing personally as well. Because it was something you could do instead of focusing on and becoming disempowered by thinking about what you couldn't do. So for me, um, you know, we face a lot of horrible things in the world. I think we need to be aware of them. We need to deal with them.
1:22:14 Speaker 01 But I don't think we want to dwell on them because if we dwell on them, they can take us down a bad spiral. So being aware of them, but then dwelling in the good things that happen and focusing on and building on and encouraging and supporting and creating more of the good things, I think, has a way to push out the bad things. And, um, and it's something that I found to be very a positive way to deal with challenging situations.
1:22:42 Rich Roll? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great message for living your life too. Not just in your approach to what you do personally, but. To be able to look at the things you can change, what are the, what are the improvements you can make and focus on that?
1:22:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's that serenity prayer, right?
1:22:56 Rich Roll? Yes, I know that well.
1:22:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's really true. There's a lot of things that we can't control. But there are some things we can control. And to spend more time and energy and focus on the things we can control can be very empowering instead of being worried and fretting about things we can't control.
1:23:14 Rich Roll? Right. All right, so just to shift gears a little bit, you live in Washington and you're kind of mired in the, the sort of, you know, inside the Beltway goings on, like what's going on legislatively right now that's interesting?
1:23:29 Speaker 01 Well, you know, Washington DC is a tough place to be, as you can imagine, when you're working on these issues. Agribusiness is very entrenched, they're very influential, and whenever issues come up that address farming, we're very much outgunned financially and with the whole lobbying muscle of.
1:23:49 Rich Roll? I mean, what do you, like, paint a picture of like, how, how a lobbying group, you know, throws money around to change the minds of the powers that be? I mean, like, what is it, what are some of the things that, if you could, like, share, like, what you've seen that just makes you shake your head and go, I can't even believe I'm seeing this guy do this?
1:24:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, well, there's a guy, Steve King, from Iowa, who's attached an amendment to the farm bill to basically negate state laws protecting animals. And he's a guy that's very entrenched and very supported by agribusiness. And unfortunately, whenever you have farm animal issues come forward, they get referred to the Agriculture Committee. And the Agriculture Committee tends to be made up of legislators who represent agricultural interests. And you have folks that are just so immersed in that world that they're, and they've become very combative. When you start talking about animal issues, they see it as a threat to their livelihood.
1:24:43 Rich Roll? Yeah, it's an economic issue.
1:24:45 Speaker 01 Big time.
1:24:46 Rich Roll? It's not a, you know, it's not a...
1:24:47 Speaker 01 An ethical issue.
1:24:48 Rich Roll? Right.
1:24:49 Speaker 01 And you can look back at the abolitionist days, too, and it's a kind of similar mentality. And so those defending slavery were saying, this is business. And the folks that were speaking... out against slavery were considered considered to be sentimentalists and they have soft hearts and that's sweet and everything but this is business and business is more important so that's kind of the mentality and and money talks in a big way in washington dc so the factory farming industry has a big voice and so it's tough there's a bill that we're working on and and supporting that would require that egg laying hens be given more space and the united egg producers actually supports this they and the humane
1:25:31 Speaker 01 society of the united states made a compromise to both support federal legislation that they could both live with so that's something we're supporting too and they're supporting it because I mean I would imagine that would help reduce disease well they want to have a uniform standard across the us right now there are several laws in the us that have different regulations on what kind of space egg laying hens need we were able to pass a law here in california in 2008 proposition two was on the ballot citizens voted to require that egg laying hens have at least enough space to stretch their wings and turn around then there was another law that passed in michigan that gave egg laying hens some more space but it was not identical to the california law we've worked on some
1:26:14 Speaker 01 other state laws as well so united egg producers basically wanted a federal uniform standard so that was their interest and they also didn't want to keep fighting these state battles and getting beat up in the press and having these images shown to lots of
1:26:28 Speaker 01 the humane side of the us is supporting animal protection issues and they felt if we could get this federal law then it would be across the country and it would protect millions and millions of animals whereas going state by state meant that we were going to only be protecting you know handfuls of animals here and there so that was where there was sort of a combined interest but although humane side of the us and united egg producers which represents most of the egg producers in the us both support this legislation The cattlemen, the pork producers, the dairy people, the Farm Bureau, all these other agribusiness groups are against it. And so the chance of it passing is, is hard to say. It's, it's, it's, it's going to be tough. And so that just sort of speaks to
1:27:13 Speaker 01 how influential agribusiness is. Even when you have one of these groups that'll pull off, the others all band together and fight you. And that's what we're currently looking at now in Washington DC.
1:27:24 Rich Roll? Right. And how does it work with you cooperating with other like-minded nonprofits? I mean, I would imagine your interests are generally aligned, but there's got to be times when there you have different perspectives on things and.
1:27:36 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, there are some things that we may just not get involved in. But at the end of the day, we don't really know what's ultimately going to lead to the type of change we want to see. We got a long way to go. And this bill, we think is a positive thing. It will give hens some more space. We've worked closely with the Humane Society of the United States since the early 2000s on these anti-confinement efforts around the country. So we're, we've oftentimes been very much of like mind with HSUS. We also work the ASPCA, you know, on legislative issues. And we work with a variety of different organizations. And thankfully, environmental groups, consumer groups have started to come
1:28:19 Speaker 01 into these issues as well. But, you know, you, you work with folks that you see eye to eye on. And if you don't see eye to eye, you know, you just, you know, maybe take a pass on some things.
1:28:32 Rich Roll? Right.
1:28:33 Speaker 01 And so this is a bill we think would be good. The other thing about this egg bill we think is very positive is that it will require that all eggs being sold be labeled. So if they come from hens in cages, it will say from caged hens. And that I think is a positive thing because.
1:28:48 Rich Roll? I have a hard time believing that's going to pass, that they're going to let that kind of, you know, lexicon find its way into the label.
1:28:55 Speaker 01 Yes, I hear you there.
1:28:56 Rich Roll? The word cage, unless it's cage free, you know.
1:29:00 Speaker 01 Yes, no, very true.
1:29:01 Rich Roll? Cage in the affirmative is, I would imagine you'll be getting some resistance on that.
1:29:06 Speaker 01 I think that's right, you know, so that's probably one of the reasons the other industry groups are rising up to oppose it, but the United Egg Producers agreed to that. So that was part of the compromise with Humane Society of the US.
1:29:17 Rich Roll? Right. There needs to be, you know, some real clarity in a very elemental, elementary sense with respect to these food products. I mean, I just know you go to the grocery store and you see the eggs and there's like, it looks like there's 20 different kinds and they all have different words of, you know, whether it's cage free or whatever it is. And it all sounds good, but you don't really know what any of that really means. Is this good? Is this one better than this one?
1:29:43 Speaker 01 No, it's so true. It's so true. And there's a lot of different labeling schemes now. There's different certifying organizations, but there's not really an adequate infrastructure for the certifying organizations even to have proper oversight and to ensure that the conditions that they're espousing are actually being met. So this labeling thing is, again, it's good news and bad news. The good news is that there's widespread opposition to factory farming. There's a desire for alternatives. That's the good news. The bad news is that these labels tend to sound a lot better than they are and consumers are paying a lot more for certain products because they think the animals are being treated a lot better than they really are being treated.
1:30:27 Rich Roll? Right. And when we talk about the FDA and the USDA, there's a sort of, this sort of consensus, general public consensus is, well, these organizations are here to, you know, help the consumer make educated decisions. They're here to protect us. I mean, can you, knowing what you know, can you speak to that assumption a little bit?
1:30:48 Speaker 01 Gosh, yeah. Well, the USDA is very close with agriculture and they have sort of dual roles. One is to promote agriculture. One is theoretically to promote healthy nutrition and dietary guidelines, but they have a long history of not promoting healthy nutrition and dietary guidelines. And it's been very much influenced by the big meat and dairy industries. In the 1970s, Senator McGovern put together a commission of health experts to advise the government on nutritional guidelines. And in their recommendations, they suggested that US citizens should eat less meat.
1:31:28 Speaker 01 That report and that suggestion was in print for about a day, then it was changed to say that US citizens should eat more meat that's lower in saturated fat.
1:31:38 Rich Roll? This was in the 1970s?
1:31:40 Speaker 01 Seventies, like 77, 78, yeah. So it's completely reframed to, instead of saying eat less meat, to say eat more meat of a certain kind.
1:31:50 Rich Roll? Mm-hmm.
1:31:51 Speaker 01 And that's been the message. And so, and that's a USDA guideline that has continued to be the case, where the USDA is basically promoting the industry's interests. And it's not promoting consumers' interests. And that's been a big problem. And you have a very close relationship between USDA and agribusiness and lawmakers who kind of move in between these different groups. You know, lawmaker who's been, for example, Charles Stenholm was a congressman from Texas. He was the head of the livestock subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee for many years. Now, he's a lobbyist and he represents the horse slaughter industry in Washington DC, for example.
1:32:35 Speaker 01 So you have these former lawmakers who have a lot of connections on these committees, who are now representing agribusiness. And that's the type of thing that happens regularly.
1:32:45 Rich Roll? Right. And that's not just, that's not just the case in agriculture, that's the case with the pharmaceutical industry, with the defense industry. I mean, you know, it's...
1:32:57 Speaker 01 It is. It's very, so the legislative process is challenging.
1:33:01 Rich Roll? You're a lawmaker and you get in tight with all these lobbyists. You get to know, you know, the powers that be at these huge companies that are sort of kowtowing to your subcommittee. And then when your term is up, you just go work for them.
1:33:14 Speaker 01 Yes. That's exactly what happens.
1:33:16 Rich Roll? That's our system. I mean, it's a systemic issue. It's not, it's not, you know, just the food business.
1:33:22 Speaker 01 Very true, very true. No, it's the best government money can buy.
1:33:25 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:33:26 Speaker 01 Unfortunately, it's so sad, so sad. And, and most consumers are just not involved in that, you know? But it's the interest groups that have a lot of influence.
1:33:34 Rich Roll? Right. And have you seen any changes? I mean, how has, has the Obama administration been proactive in any regard? Neutral? Not so good? Like, how, how would you characterize kind of, or does it even make a difference?
1:33:48 Speaker 01 I think they've done some good things symbolically. You know, for example, there's the White House Organic Garden that Michelle Obama started, and they have this Move program where they're encouraging kids to eat more fruits and vegetables.
1:34:00 Rich Roll? Yeah, Let's Move, I think it's called, right?
1:34:01 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. So that's good. They have the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program within the US Department of Agriculture. But the woman who ran that has recently left, and so I think she's got a lot of resistance for it. So they've done some things symbolically, but systemically, I don't think that they have the sort of influence that would be needed to create the changes that are necessary. So I don't, I think they have done some things and have done better than some in the past, but the system is kind of rigged, and the influence is not at the presidential level. It's really at the committee level, and it's
1:34:43 Speaker 01 at the budgetary level, and it's, you know, in policies that are, you know, that tend to be the same year after year. So the Farm Bill is being discussed right now, and there's been some awareness about how factory farms get subsidized, and how, you know, small farms don't really get supported like the big farms. So there's awareness about that, but there's going to be very little, if any, changes, because a lot of these policies are actually made behind closed doors. The way it's done is crazy. You have the House Agriculture Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee who work on legislation, then it goes to the floor of the House and the Senate for discussion. Theoretically, it can be an open discussion, but there's very little, really, that's discussed when you have thousands of pages.
1:35:28 Speaker 01 Then after those discussions on the floor of the House and the Senate, the different bills, because they're usually different, go to a conference committee. The conference committee made up of legislators from the House and the Senate, who are the heads of the agriculture committees. And those are closed-door discussions, and there's no light on them at all. And that's where the final decisions are made. And the public has very little or no knowledge of what's being discussed. Years ago, we worked on a downed animal amendment to the farm bill to say that if an animal is too sick to walk, they should not be used for food. And the USDA cannot pay federal inspectors to inspect these downed animals.
1:36:10 Speaker 01 And if the USDA can't pay them, then they cannot go into the food supply. That bill, that language passed the House and the Senate. It went to the conference committee and then it was taken out. And that's what tends to happen. So the conference committee, operating behind closed doors, has a lot of influence.
1:36:28 Rich Roll? Right. And also, I would imagine the other way it would work would be pork, to use the term, getting put into other bills, you know, sort of, I don't know if secretly, but sort of surreptitiously snuck in here and there to advance the interests of this group or that group.
1:36:45 Speaker 01 Yes, very often that happens. So there's so many things that are discussed in Washington, but a lot of them are discussed quietly and move quickly without being widely known about, even by lawmakers.
1:37:00 Rich Roll? Right. So what's next for Farm Sanctuary?
1:37:04 Speaker 01 Well, what's next for Farm Sanctuary? We will continue operating our sanctuaries. It is visitor season now, so people are invited to come visit us in Watkins Glen, New York, in Orland, California, or in Acton, California. We have bed and breakfast cabins. We do events at the farms, and so people can come visit. And then just check out our website, farmsanctuary.org. And we work on various legislative issues from time to time, so people can plug into those. And we just encourage people to think about their food choices and ultimately to make choices that are aligned with their own values, aligned with their own interests, and to live mindfully instead of just sort of doing what we do because it's a habit we developed. So a big part of our work is just encouraging citizens.
1:37:48 Speaker 01 To live in more thoughtful compassionate ways.
1:37:52 Rich Roll? Balanced.
1:37:53 Speaker 01 Balanced ultimately.
1:37:54 Rich Roll? Yeah, you can't argue with that.
1:37:55 Speaker 01 Sensible, right?
1:37:57 Rich Roll? He's got an issue with that.
1:37:58 Speaker 01 Right, that's right. It makes sense when you think about it. People don't think enough about it.
1:38:03 Rich Roll? Well, I'm not ready to wrap up yet because we haven't talked about your training.
1:38:06 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, man.
1:38:08 Rich Roll? Getting ready for Ironman Lake Placid.
1:38:10 Speaker 01 I'm getting ready for Ironman Lake Placid.
1:38:12 Rich Roll? How do you feel?
1:38:13 Speaker 01 I feel pretty good. I feel pretty good. Took a little spill on the bike a week or so ago.
1:38:17 Rich Roll? I saw like on your elbow there. Is that where you went down?
1:38:20 Speaker 01 Exactly. Went down on my left side, went down on the asphalt. So I had a little bump on my hip.
1:38:25 Rich Roll? Yeah, I've got a few of those.
1:38:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've seen some pictures of some, you had some big bumps. I got little bumps. You had big bumps. But I'm feeling pretty good, you know, and don't really have a program as much as I would like because I travel a lot. You know, so when I'm on the road, I tend to run because I can do that.
1:38:45 Rich Roll? Yeah, you can always do that.
1:38:47 Speaker 01 Yes, but getting on a bike is tougher.
1:38:49 Rich Roll? Right.
1:38:50 Speaker 01 And can you do that just at a gym or not? It's not really the same.
1:38:54 Rich Roll? I think you can. I'm not one who's done that though. I mean, I've been traveling, you know, way more in the last year and a half than I had in the last 10 years prior. So I'm facing the same kind of thing and that's what I've been doing. I've been doing more running than usual. When I'm at home, I try to get my big cycling blocks in. And then you're sort of, then when you're traveling, you're running and you're focusing on your running. So when you are home, make it a more cycling intensive kind of focus.
1:39:21 Speaker 01 That makes sense. And just, you know, and the bike is a big part of the.
1:39:25 Rich Roll? Oh, yeah. You gotta, yeah, you gotta get some saddle time in.
1:39:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's something I'm trying to do. So that, that makes sense to just get on the bike a lot.
1:39:34 Rich Roll? Right.
1:39:34 Speaker 01 When I'm at home.
1:39:35 Rich Roll? When you're in, you gotta keep a bike here in LA. Come on, look at, look outside here, man.
1:39:39 Speaker 01 Beautiful.
1:39:40 Rich Roll? I know. We should be, we should have just done this on the bike today.
1:39:44 Speaker 01 That would have been fun as heck. Yeah.
1:39:46 Rich Roll? Next time.
1:39:46 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:39:47 Rich Roll? So, but you've done, I mean, you've, you've got some marathons under your belt. You qualified for Boston, right?
1:39:53 Speaker 01 I did, yeah. I've done three marathons and each time I qualified for Boston.
1:39:57 Rich Roll? That's amazing.
1:39:57 Speaker 01 Yes. I feel pretty good.
1:39:58 Rich Roll? You qualified for Boston, the first marathon you ran, right?
1:40:01 Speaker 01 I did, yeah, yeah. So my running is my strongest of the three triathlon legs. My biking is decent. My swimming is, is, you know, I'm kind of on the lower end of that one. But I'm working on the swimming. I've been getting in a pool and, you know, for me, a lot of it was just breathing and basic stuff, basic technique.
1:40:21 Rich Roll? Right.
1:40:22 Speaker 01 And so I'm making some progress there. But the nutrition is the other thing because I've done a half iron man and I didn't really pay much attention to nutrition and I basically was very dehydrated when I got off the bike. And so we were talking a little bit about that earlier about.
1:40:38 Rich Roll? Yeah, we're going to sort you out.
1:40:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, man.
1:40:40 Rich Roll? Getting hydrated. A new program, but like I always said, you got to practice, part of training isn't just getting the workout in, it's practicing your nutrition. So that when you arrive at race day, you know exactly what you're doing and you take all the guesswork out of it. And that involves a lot of trial and error, trying different things and you know, what works for me may not work for you and, you know, giving you a bunch of options and then playing around with that and playing around with how much and how often and seeing what, you know, what you're able to absorb and, you know, some people sweat at a greater rate than other people. So electrolytes are more important. You know, and some people are more sensitive to the humidity versus the dry heat. There's so many variables that go into it. So that's why I think it's really incumbent on you to really kind of put it to the test and, and be focused on that when you're, when you're doing your training.
1:41:25 Speaker 01 Doing like my long bike rides or long runs, that's when you really do that. Well, I like what we were talking about earlier about sweet potatoes.
1:41:33 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:41:33 Speaker 01 You know, and they use it like a gel, right?
1:41:35 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:41:36 Speaker 01 Squeeze the stuff out of the skin.
1:41:38 Rich Roll? Right. That makes sense. Great source of energy, easily absorbed on the, on the bike and easy to prepare too. You just bake them, you kind of like lightly bake them, don't overcook them and you can put them in a little ziplock, zip, ziplock bag in the back of your, you know, cycling jersey and.
1:41:55 Speaker 01 I might, I think I'm probably gonna do that.
1:41:56 Rich Roll? Try those, or even just like potato wedges, you know, like baked potatoes and cut them up into little pieces and put them in a Ziploc bag. Zip, I can't say that word.
1:42:05 Speaker 01 Ziploc bag.
1:42:06 Rich Roll? Yeah. And, uh, Enduralites are a good electrolyte capsule that you can take and coconut water might work well. Talking about freezing your bottles overnight, so you don't have like, coconut water gets kinda gross when it gets hot and warm.
1:42:21 Speaker 01 Right.
1:42:22 Rich Roll? It's getting hot in DC. It's gonna, it's gonna be hot soon if it isn't already, right?
1:42:26 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, it's been hot already.
1:42:27 Rich Roll? Ah, that humidity there is a killer.
1:42:29 Speaker 01 It's brutal. No, I definitely gotta get a bike out there.
1:42:31 Rich Roll? You gotta like, and run around like Haynes Point in that area?
1:42:33 Speaker 01 Sure have. Haynes Point, the Mountain Vernon Trail. Um, yeah, I've done a few laps around Haynes Point. That's easy because it's nice and flat.
1:42:41 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:42:42 Speaker 01 It works out very well. And, but I think Lake Placid is pretty hilly.
1:42:45 Rich Roll? It is.
1:42:46 Speaker 01 So I'm gonna have to.
1:42:47 Rich Roll? You're gonna have to get up to Watkins Glen and do a training camp, I think.
1:42:50 Speaker 01 That would be neat. I like.
1:42:51 Rich Roll? The riding up there's gotta be really beautiful, I would imagine.
1:42:55 Speaker 01 It's gorgeous. It's gorgeous. There's lots of forests right near our farm up in Watkins Glen. There's gorgeous, you know, we, we both went to Cornell, so.
1:43:02 Rich Roll? I know.
1:43:02 Speaker 01 It's gorgeous.
1:43:03 Rich Roll? Wait, what, what years were you there?
1:43:05 Speaker 01 I was there in the, like, 92 to 95.
1:43:08 Rich Roll? We were there at the same time.
1:43:09 Speaker 01 No kidding?
1:43:10 Rich Roll? Yeah, I was there 90, 91 to 94.
1:43:14 Speaker 01 Really? I used to walk by the law school almost every day when I was in class.
1:43:18 Rich Roll? Oh, you did? Yeah. I was the guy in Ruloff's most of the time.
1:43:24 Rich Roll? No, I lived way out, um, Tagannick, uh, on the lake in a tiny little cabin, um, just before that little, like, uh, little restaurant bar. What was it called? Can't remember.
1:43:37 Speaker 01 Huh. It's a beautiful area.
1:43:39 Rich Roll? Yeah, it was beautiful.
1:43:40 Speaker 01 Waterfalls and everything like that.
1:43:41 Rich Roll? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:43:41 Speaker 01 Which is really close to Farm Sanctuary too, and there's wineries up there.
1:43:44 Rich Roll? Mm-hmm.
1:43:45 Speaker 01 So it's, it's a beautiful area.
1:43:46 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:43:46 Speaker 01 You know, but I, uh, but yeah, when I was going to school there, I was mainly doing it at night. It was sort of a part-time thing. I did, got a, a master's in agricultural economics. The idea was to really understand the agribusiness industry.
1:43:57 Rich Roll? Right. That's the place to go to learn that stuff.
1:44:00 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, uh, so that was very illuminating and very interesting to see how students were.
1:44:08 Speaker 01 Sort of acculturated to accept certain factory farming thinking.
1:44:13 Rich Roll? But it's basically there, it's an agricultural school to train students to understand how farming works, just so that they can go and basically be a part of this system, right?
1:44:23 Speaker 01 Totally, totally. So that was what I witnessed, you know, there was this one class I had in animal science where the students were being shown routine farming practices on pigs, including cutting off their tails and cutting notches into their ears. And at first, these students were very squeamish about these cruel practices because the little piglets were screaming and bleeding and but the graduate student teaching the course was very comforting and encouraging and saying, well, this is what we do. And he even said, we do it for their own good, which is kind of ridiculous, but that's what he said. And that's the rationalization. And eventually, one of the young freshman students stepped forward and tried his hand at these mutilations.
1:45:06 Speaker 01 And as he did it, others watched. Then a second student stepped forward and did it. And each time one of these students participated, you could see the initial resistance in the group draining away and bad was becoming normal. And it really speaks to how we are social animals. We tend to do what those around us do. And everybody's doing a bad thing.
1:45:26 Rich Roll? It's just like we said, it's the Stanford Prison Experiment, you know, it is the psychology of the human brain.
1:45:31 Speaker 01 It's amazing how that works, you know, and stepping out of it can be hard, but it ultimately can be very empowering.
1:45:37 Rich Roll? Right.
1:45:37 Speaker 01 But yeah, for the training, man, it's gonna be, I'm very excited about it.
1:45:41 Rich Roll? It's gonna be good. And you got a half merit, you got a half Iron Man before that, right?
1:45:45 Speaker 01 I've done one half Iron Man, and I've got another one coming up, that's right, in June. And that's in Williamsburg, Virginia. And I feel pretty good. I feel like I'm gonna do okay at that. And I feel like I'm okay and I can finish an Iron Man, but I'd like to. You know, do it relatively well. I mean, not great, but relatively well.
1:46:07 Rich Roll? All right, man. Well, consider me a resource because I want to, I want to help you.
1:46:11 Speaker 01 That sounds great.
1:46:11 Rich Roll? Get across that finish line.
1:46:12 Speaker 01 Right on. I will definitely do that.
1:46:14 Rich Roll? All right, cool. Well, all right. So if people want to, first of all, thanks, man.
1:46:20 Speaker 01 Oh, man. My pleasure. Thank you.
1:46:22 Rich Roll? It's cool. We did pretty good, right?
1:46:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think so. Covered a lot of ground.
1:46:25 Rich Roll? Anything else you want to say?
1:46:26 Speaker 01 No, I think just, as I mentioned, come out to the farm, you know, and eat plants, not animals.
1:46:33 Rich Roll? That's right. Eat plants. So if you want to learn more about Farm Sanctuary, go to farmsanctuary.org. And if you want to get all up in Gene's kitchen, you can follow him on Twitter, Gene Bauer, and it's B A U R. No E, right? B A U R, Gene Bauer.
1:46:49 Speaker 01 That's right.
1:46:50 Rich Roll? And Farm Sanctuary is on Facebook, and they have a YouTube channel too, with a bunch of cool videos. I like the video with Steve-O.
1:46:58 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. That's right. Steve-O did a video for us.
1:47:00 Rich Roll? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're, we're, well, I know him a little bit. I don't know if we're friends, but.
1:47:05 Speaker 01 That's right.
1:47:06 Rich Roll? Yeah, no, he's cool. He's been a great. Oh, he's amazing. Yeah, he's amazing. His story is incredible, like, just kind of where he is now compared to where he was a couple of years ago. It's extraordinary.
1:47:16 Speaker 01 Beautiful. It's wonderful to see that kind of positive transformation.
1:47:19 Rich Roll? He's an amazing guy.
1:47:20 Speaker 01 Neat.
1:47:21 Rich Roll? So I'm glad to see that he's working with you guys.
1:47:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:47:24 Rich Roll? As are lots of cool people.
1:47:25 Speaker 01 Yes. No, we're very lucky to have Steve-O and others and people just engaging in these issues. It's, it's, we've got a lot of momentum right now.
1:47:33 Rich Roll? Yeah, it's great. So the website, farmsanctuary.org, Gene on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, anywhere else? People want to learn more about what you're up to?
1:47:43 Speaker 01 No, I think that's it. All the social networks and light up the social networks too.
1:47:47 Rich Roll? Yeah, for sure.
1:47:48 Speaker 01 One of the reasons that people are starting to get aware of these issues is because people are communicating through these social networks. So light them up.
1:47:54 Rich Roll? Absolutely. And I'm going to put in the show notes on the blog, some other links to some stuff that Farm Sanctuary is doing and some other stuff Gene is up to. I'm going to post that, that Runner's World article, which I thought was pretty cool.
1:48:08 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. We were really happy with that.
1:48:10 Rich Roll? And a couple of other things there too. So check that out. All right. So that's it, man. Thanks.
1:48:14 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Thank you very much.
1:48:15 Rich Roll? Man, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you. You're inspiring. You're doing great work. And I'm really happy that you made the trek up here to sit down with me.
1:48:23 Speaker 01 It's great to see your place out here in beautiful Calabasas.
1:48:27 Rich Roll? We just need some, we need some animals here.
1:48:29 Speaker 01 It can happen. We can arrange that.
1:48:31 Rich Roll? All right, we're gonna talk about that.
1:48:33 Speaker 01 Great.
1:48:33 Rich Roll? All right, cool. Thanks.
1:48:34 Speaker 01 All right, thanks.
1:48:35 Rich Roll? Peace. Plants.
1:50:33 Rich Roll? The.
Previous How PS244 Became the 1st U.S. Public School to Institute a Vegetarian School Lunch Program Next Holistic, Preventive & Functional Medicine Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
