Meatonomics: How the Bizarre, Rigged Economics of the Meat and Dairy Industries Co-Opt Consumer Choice

Sometimes I feel like some kind of fringe conspiracy theorist. I didn't used to be this way, I promise. But the more I delve into how things work — truly work — the more amazed I am by what I discover. I don't care if you are vegan, locavore, pescatarian, paleo, primal, high-carb, low-carb, or slow-carb. Everyone deserves to be optimally informed when it comes to how our food is harvested, distributed and marketed. And yet, quite unfortunately, most consumers lack even a basic awareness of the dynamics at play, let alone a working understanding of the formidable economic protocols that function behind the production of meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. It is incumbent upon all of us to take personal responsibility for educating ourselves about the economic machinations that dominate and drive our food system. Why? Because these forces affect all of us, irrespective of dietary preference. And because informed choice is power. Today on the show I am pleased to introduce David Robinson Simon, attorney, advocate for sustainable consumption, and author of the newly released Meatonomics* — an important, groundbreaking and astoundingly revelatory deep dive into the potent economic, marketing, regulatory & legislative forces that support the meat and dairy industries' masterful ability to influence and downright undermine informed consumer awareness and decision making when it comes to what — and how much — to eat. David's thesis is that such consumer decisions aren't just misplaced, but in fact manipulated and compelled — often on an unconscious level — by the behemoth animal food producers who effectively co-opt consumers’ buying choices with artificially-low prices fueled by out-of-whack farm subsidies; ubiquitous, powerful but misleading marketing campaigns; and heavy control over legislation and regulatory policy at the highest echelons of government. Over the course of our conversation, David provides vital insight into how the economics of institutional animal food production hold sway over our spending, eating, health, prosperity, economy, environment and longevity. A perfect storm of almost conspiratorial circumstances that serve — in the macro — to exponentially increase (among other things): * Annual US taxpayer dollars spent to subsidize meat & dairy; * The rapid depletion of our forests & soil; * The level of greenhouse gas emissions that catalyze irrevocable climate change; * The collapsing of wild fisheries; * The proliferation of “farmed” fisheries; * US dietary cholesterol intake; * The incidence of cancer, diabetes and heart disease related to meat and dairy consumption * Healthcare costs allocated to treat US cases of diseases related to meat and dairy consumption For a quick source-supported primer, check out David's Meatonomics Index– 40 facts and figures that paint a picture of how our meat and dairy intake has spiraled out of control since 1935. Food for thought. Thanks for checking out this post and the episode, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Rich Roll?

  Welcome to episode 62 of the Rich Roll Podcast with David Simon.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  Hey, people. Welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for dropping by. What do we do here each week? I bring to you the best and the brightest, the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, and athletics with one goal in mind: to help you unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. Today on the show, my guest certainly fits the definition of paradigm-busting. He is an author. And a lawyer. I think he might be the first lawyer that I've had on the show other than myself. His name's David Simon. He's got a new book out. It's called Meatonomics.

• 2:06Rich Roll?

  And essentially, what this book does is a deep dive into the bizarre economics of the meat and dairy industry. It's pretty fascinating. He breaks it down in terms of economics, the money that is spent and how it's spent to market and distribute these products to get them from the farms, particularly the factory farms, to your plate. The marketing that is entailed in doing so, and how the whole farm subsidies thing comes into play to keep prices cheap, and how in fact, those prices are actually, those added costs are passed on to us. It's pretty interesting, and I think that you will be, your eyes

• 2:51Rich Roll?

  will be opened by this discussion. So whether you're a plant-based person, a paleo person, maybe you're a McDonald's person, I don't know, it doesn't matter, but I think it's all incumbent upon us to be educated about how our food system works, how food arrives on our plate, what is entailed in that process. And what David does is he really pulls the covers on the business. We get a look at the lobbying efforts, the marketing companies, the USDA, and how all these sort of power players conspire to convince us that we should continue to buy products that arguably are not in our best interest at price points that seem cheap and yet are passed off to us in other ways. So, anyway, I'll let David

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  do the talking. If you're in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving. Hope everybody's getting ready for a healthy, a healthy version of Thanksgiving. And if you're looking for some tasty, delicious recipes so that you can feel good after your Thanksgiving meal, go to richroll.com. Julie and I put together a series up there. I think there's seven, six or seven recipes up there that you can check out. Our kids love them. They're easy to make. They're delicious. They're healthy versions of what you would typically expect to eat on Thanksgiving. And we love them. We're gonna make them ourselves. So I just wanted to alert you to that if you haven't already visited.

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  All right, so let's just get right into it. David Simon, Meatonomics, author, lawyer, activist, advocate for sustainable consumption. Let him blow your mind. All right. Enjoy.

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  Thanks for coming to the Garage Studio.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's great to meet you. We tried to hook this up quite a while ago. We had some scheduling stuff to try to make it happen, but I'm really glad to have you here today. I think your message is really powerful and really important, and I'm glad to be able to put a microphone in front of you and hopefully reach some people with it, you know, some more people with it.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, fantastic.

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  So tell me, before we get into like your background and all of that, like let's just get it out upfront, like what is Meatonomics all about?

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Meatonomics is really about a new look at the way that meat and dairy producers in this country have managed to put together a program that allows them to control consumer behavior. And I argue in the book that producers, meat and dairy producers, have largely diminished the ability of consumers to make informed and independent decisions about what to eat.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  And so give me an example of what that might be.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  So meat and dairy producers team up with the USDA and they put together these programs called checkoff programs, just like when you check a box. And most people have never heard of these. I've talked in many cities and I ask people to raise their hands if they've heard of them and no one's ever heard of them. And yet these programs spend about $550 million a year.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  To bombard consumers with messages like milk, it does a body good, beef, it's what's for dinner, pork, the other white meat.

• 6:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  We've all seen those messages or heard them, or they've been on the internet, or the radio, or TV.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  They're some of the most effective marketing campaigns of all time.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  They are, they comprise the fabric of our life.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  That is, that is right, and, and we can measure their effectiveness because the checkoff programs themselves publish the data that shows their return on investment. Based on the, the, the data that they publish, there's about an eight to one average return investment. So for each dollar that those programs spend, they see about eight dollars in increased sales. So for that 550 million dollars, there's about 4.6 billion dollars in extra sales that results. So that's one of the ways that producers are controlling our behavior. Now, we don't even think about that. People go into the grocery store at five o'clock to shop for dinner, and what's going through their head is beef, it's what's for dinner, beef, it's what's for dinner. And you don't even know why that's the case.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  It's because you've been told that a thousand times in a thousand different ways.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  More than a thousand times. I mean, I've, I've told this story before, but I was in a high school gymnasium recently, public high school, and there's Got Milk banners hanging in the gym, you know, at a public institution. And it's pictures of young strapping, you know, high school athletes at the bench press, or, you know, shooting a jump shot, I can't even remember exactly what the images were, but, you know, with the milk mustache, and, you know, so, so even if you're not looking at it, it's just subliminally, it's getting its way into your unconscious mind, and it's just, it just sits there until you sort of behave without even knowing it when you're in the grocery store instinctually.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you're right. And that example you give of the schools is great because the, the milk checkoff programs spend over 50 million dollars each year selling milk to schoolchildren.

• 8:07Rich Roll?

  Right, and I think it, it, it sort of... begs the question of the nexus between the USDA and what it's real in, you know, and the consumer, you know, consumer interest and government interest. So I think that there's this sort of public conventional wisdom that the USDA is out there looking out for our interest. And, you know, why don't you, if you could elaborate a little bit more on what the USDA's function is?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the USDA has a complicated, really, it's a two-part function and it's, and its mission is often divergent. On the one hand, the USDA is charged with promoting meat and dairy. It literally has clients, the industry is its client base. And so when, when it acts through the checkoff programs to sell more meat and dairy, it's literally executing one of its missions. But its other mission is to team up with the Department of Health and Human Services and provide dietary guidelines to Americans. And in fact, those two federal agencies, the USDA and HHS, together publish the dietary guidelines

• 9:15Speaker 02

  for Americans, which are the most influential set of nutritional recommendations that we have in this country. And they guide all sorts of things, school lunch programs and programs for the elderly. And that's what we base our own, most of our own nutritional programs on. I mean, that's, that's where we get the idea that you need this much protein, you need this much calcium. So these two goals, on the one hand, pushing meat and dairy, on the other hand, telling people what's good for them, often come into conflict. And we see many examples of that at the USDA.

• 9:49Rich Roll?

  It, it almost seems, I mean, you're a lawyer, like, it almost seems, I mean, it's more than a conflict of interest. I mean, is there a constitutional argument here?

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Well, that's a very good question. A lot of people have brought lawsuits against the USDA, arguing that it's simply not doing its job. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM, has one pending today.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  That was, that's just on the food pyramid, or the, right?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Right, right. And the argument is that, that pyramid and the associated guidelines are misleading.

• 10:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Legislators routinely bring this up and say, we should bifurcate these duties. The USDA should not have both of these duties, but, you know, they're routinely overruled. The, the animal food lobby

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Finds it very important for the same agency that is promoting meat and dairy to make nutritional recommendations because it ensures that Americans will continue to be told they need to eat meat and drink milk.

• 10:52Rich Roll?

  Well, of course, right. But it seems like there's, you know, who's the, you know, other than organizations like PCRM, who are the consumer watchdogs that are, you know, what are the checks and balances on organizations like the USDA? There really aren't, right?

• 11:08Speaker 02

  There really aren't.

• 11:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So that's the situation. This is meatinomics, right?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's really the unfortunate circumstance for consumers is that this, our watchdog agency is routinely challenged to give us the kind of advice that it's supposed to.

• 11:27Rich Roll?

  And you make a really compelling argument in the book about this idea of internalized costs and externalized costs in terms of the built-in, you know, the true expense of what it takes to harvest and produce milk and dairy products and put them on your plate. Because we all know that you can go to McDonald's or Taco Bell and it's essentially the same price it was when we were kids, you know, and it's flabbergasting, which then sort of perpetuates this socioeconomic crisis when it comes to dietary habits. If you're, you know, if you're underprivileged, it's hard to argue with somebody who's ahead

• 12:10Rich Roll?

  of a household who can go to Taco Bell and, you know, feed their family for $10 and you're trying to tell them to go to Whole Foods. So what I like is how you went into the real economics behind this and what's really going on.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. And just to flesh it out a little bit for people who may not be familiar with the concept of internal and externalized costs, if I take my garbage to the front of my driveway and leave it there for the garbage service to pick up and I pay them to pick it up, I internalize my garbage collection costs. But if I take my garbage, put it in my trunk, drive over to a park at midnight and dump it there, I've externalized my garbage costs. And

• 12:47Rich Roll?

  In other words, the taxpayers pay for that.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Taxpayers have to pay to pick up my garbage.

• 12:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  And the point that I make in the book is that metaphorically speaking, animal food producers are dumping their garbage in our parks at midnight because they're offloading or externalizing the vast majority of their production costs onto the rest of us.

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And so, explain how that works. I mean, this is, this is sort of, you know, an endemic kind of entrenched system that starts with farm subsidies, correct?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, farm subsidies represent a big component of that. There, I add them up to about $38 billion. Different people have done the math differently. That's probably one of the larger numbers. I include in my calculation, things like subsidies to feed crops. Those aren't always included in that calculation, but because in this country, more than half of the feed crops that we raise go, more than, more than half of the soy and corn that we raise in this country ends up feeding animals who are raised as livestock.

• 13:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  We really have to include those, those subsidy figures. So, that's, that's $38 billion. That's a big number. That's, that number is more than half of what all states spent on unemployment benefits to unemployed workers last year.

• 13:59Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Unbelievable.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  To put that in perspective.

• 14:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think you, you cited a statistic, the price of a pound of chicken in 1935 versus what it is today.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  So, what was that again? I think it was adjusted. It was...

• 14:14Speaker 02

  On an inflation-adjusted basis, chicken has come down almost 80% in the last 75 years.

• 14:20Rich Roll?

  Right. So, it was like, I think the number you had was like $5 and change or something like that. If you adjusted for inflation in 1935, and now it's like a dollar 34.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Right. And that is, that is largely the effect of, of chicken producers externalizing many of their costs. They've also figured out ways to make chickens grow bigger and grow faster, and that helps a lot. But, all of those... What what appear to be improvements in efficiency always drive externalized costs. So, for example, chickens get bigger faster because they're dosed with antibiotics. Those antibiotics damage our health and and healthcare costs result. Those antibiotics end up in our rivers and streams because we eliminate them after we eat them. The chickens eliminate them after they eat them or they're dosed with them. And they those those chemicals damage ecosystems.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  So there are all sorts of costs associated with what we just normally think of as, hey, that's great. It's efficient.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  Right. So in terms of externalized costs, I can I can spend the rest of my life eating a vegan diet. But I'm I'm by paying taxes, I am participating in this system because I'm contributing to the farm subsidies. And if my healthcare costs go up and I pay that, then I'm subsidizing that as well. So I'm taking on, no matter what my personal habits are, my choices are, I'm still bearing these costs.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's really unfortunate. Even if even if you don't ever touch another animal food product again in your life, you will be continuing to spend money to support those who do.

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  And so is there, you know, in your research, when you look at dairy farming, you look at beef, you look at chicken, and then you look at the fish industry. I mean, is there any one of these that stands out as any worse than the other? Or are they all kind of doing the same thing?

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Well, that's an interesting question. It they they have there are higher and lower costs associated with them according to different attributes associated with them. So, for example, the the metrics for measuring cruelty, I include a cruelty figure in the book. That's determined based on what would an average person be willing to pay to end cruel practices in a particular industry? Those costs tend to be higher in the pig and chicken farming industries than in the fish and cattle farming industries.

• 16:52Rich Roll?

  People don't care about the fish as much.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that tends to be the case. So so there are some minor there are some minor differences like that. But for the most part, all all of these industries today resort to to factory methods, including fishing. More than half the fish that we eat in this country today is farmed, which means it's basically raised on a factory farm for fish. And all of those all of those factory farms share that that. That common theme that they externalize the vast majority of their costs, environmental damage and subsidies.

• 17:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, you make a very interesting argument on the harvesting of fish. And, you know, I know a lot of people who, they're very interested in eating a plant-based diet and maybe for the most part, you know, they're 80, 90% plant-based, but they say, they'll say to me, "Yeah, but I just, you know, I gotta have that piece of salmon every once in a while. I feel like I need it," you know, or, you know, "I gotta get my omega-3s," or what have you. And you had some interesting ideas about that, too.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, unfortunately, that, I hear that a lot, too. And, and what, what we find in, in the two ways of producing fish, either capturing it in the wild or farming it, are that, is that they both damage the environment in different ways. Fish, fishing, commercial fishing, which is the predominant method of capturing fish today, has already decimated a third of the planet's fish stock, or what, what are referred to as fisheries. And some scientists expect that by the middle of the century, all of the commercially fish species that are out there today will be gone as a result of commercial fishing operations.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  And fish farming, for its part, while it's often touted as sort of the future of food production, has all sorts of problems of its own. It, it causes eutrophication, which is a process which, which results from fish feces literally concentrating in the water and causing algal blooms and hypoxic zones. Fish are dosed with chemicals, too, just like land animals, to prevent the spread of disease. So they get, so there's antibiotics in the water that damages local ecosystems. And so unfortunately, they both, they both have, they both have problems. And then there are all sorts of places to get omega-3s that don't involve fish, like flax and walnuts.

• 19:14Rich Roll?

  Right, of course. But I think you had said even that, that fish that are factory-farmed really actually don't have very much, if any, omega-3s in them. So there's a lot of misinformation revolving around that.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  That's right, because omega-3s come from Vegetation that grows in a marine environment like seaweed and kelp and and fish and factory farms are often fed things like corn and soy. And they just, corn and soy don't have omega threes in appreciable quantity.

• 19:42Rich Roll?

  They're feeding the same thing that they're feeding the cows.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just incredible. Yeah.

• 19:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. What is this, the state of of legislation in terms of, you know, overfishing our oceans? I mean, is that, is there anything to keep that in balance or?

• 19:59Speaker 02

  The problem is it's an international issue and there's just no, there's no international consensus on how to approach it. The US subsidizing, subsidizes fishing pretty heavily, but we are by far not the most aggressive subsidizer of of fishing. China, Japan, and Russia subsidize fishing much more aggressively than we do. And and when you've got countries around the world spending over fifty billion dollars to subsidize a practice that that otherwise would be money losing. It's, it's very hard to to control what what what amounts to a continued sort of decimation.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And, you know, I think that it's become very popular lately, which in some ways is a really good thing. To, you know, this priority on eating locally, locavores, whether it's people that are eating on a paleo diet who are interested in getting their beef grass fed. Or, you know, the same thing with the fish that they're eating, going to the farmer's market, making sure that, you know, the the sort of carbon footprint of the food that they're purchasing. Comes from nearby to reduce that. And and so, you know, I, from your book, there's, there's a lot to be said about some sort of misinformation in this world as well, right?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And while I don't want to discourage people from the idea of of consuming products that are that are raised locally, because I do think it's a good idea. I do point out in the book that it is very easy to overlook the the much more important components of food production, which tend to be in production, processing, and preparation, which together account for like seventy percent of food's carbon footprint. And to focus on transportation, which only accounts for eleven percent. So there are, there are all sorts of examples that that show that when you add in the the bigger carbon footprint items. It it's often more environmentally friendly to import food from from vast distances.

• 22:00Rich Roll?

  Because the, I mean, the focus really is usually on transportation, right? If it comes from far away, it must cost a lot and have a huge carbon footprint.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 22:09Rich Roll?

  But the bigger, you're saying the bigger carbon outlay is what the harvesting itself?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  The, the process of producing it, which, for example, in New Zealand, where sheep are raised often using renewable energy like geothermal and solar and wind-powered technologies, and they're, they're not raised in factory farming conditions the way they might be in England. The, the math works out to be that it's more environmentally friendly for the British to import sheep from New Zealand because of the way that they're raised in New Zealand, which is, which is environmentally friendly, than to eat their own sheep, which are raised

• 22:50Rich Roll?

  down the road.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Right down the street in a factory farm.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Huh, amazing. So this is, this is like sort of painting a bleak picture here, right? I mean, what are we, what are we to do?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's painting a picture that, that is, that is trying to address some of the arguments that people throw out to say that, well, if, if you don't think meat can be raised sustainably, try this, try local, try organic. And I think what I, what I've done in the book is to show that, that there really is a fundamental sustainability problem with, with trying to, trying to provide meat to meet our current level of consumption in this country. And because the rest of the world is, is trying to catch up with us, soon we'll be having this problem on a worldwide basis. And yeah, there are some things we can do.

• 23:42Rich Roll?

  Such as?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Well, we can eat less, people can eat less meat and dairy, or they can decide to give them up completely. And that's, as somebody, one person on a plant-based diet to another, that's certainly something that I'm sure you can relate to. And, and obviously, there are all sorts of benefits that, that are associated with that, health benefits, environmental benefits.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Ethical benefits to the animals.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  Right. You know, it's an interesting time because there is this movement, particularly among young people, that are really interested in permaculture. They are interested in the environment in a way that maybe our generation was less interested until maybe now. And this idea of, you know, grass-fed and all this kind of thing, that's very much of the moment. And I think that that is obviously a move in the right direction. But I think when we're looking at the population of the planet, that it would be impossible to feed the planet the way that we're feeding them now, the extent of meat and dairy products, and do it in any kind of sustainable fashion. Like, there just isn't room for that, right?

• 24:52Rich Roll?

  I mean...

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Exactly. If the rest of the world wanted to eat the same amount of meat that we consume per capita in this country, we would need another two-thirds the mass of the planet, just to provide the space to raise the feed and graze the livestock, to produce those animals. So, we don't have it. It's an unsustainable diet.

• 25:19Rich Roll?

  Right. And we've arrived at this place where we're eating, I think the number you cited was, was it 1935, when the average American would eat 100 pounds of meat, or meat and dairy, a year?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100 pounds of meat, yeah.

• 25:32Rich Roll?

  100 pounds of meat. And now, in 2011, it's 200 pounds.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:39Rich Roll?

  And so, when you sort of look back, like, if you're an archaeologist and you're studying this behavior pattern, is it just the sort of advent of farm subsidies and the USDA and these lobbying efforts that are responsible for this? Or, you know, what was the impetus for this increase?

• 25:56Speaker 02

  I believe, and I argue in the book, that the most important reason why American consumers have doubled their consumption in the last 75 years is that prices have come down. You know, as we discussed, the price of chicken has come down, something like 78 percent. Ham is down 50 percent. Steak is down 25 percent. And the law of demand says, as prices come down, consumption goes up. And I really believe that that has been the effect of those prices coming down. And to go back to an earlier theme...

• 26:34Speaker 02

  That is one of the ways that producers manipulate us. By keeping prices artificially low, they get us to buy a lot more of these goods than we would otherwise.

• 26:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's really, the thing that really gets me is the sort of underhanded nature of the marketing aspect of it that kind of eludes us, you know, we just sort of, you know, we don't really realize what's going on right underneath our feet. And, and, and the extent to which we're being, you know, I don't know, I don't know if we're being lied to, but we're certainly being pushed or, or maybe manipulated.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, sometimes you're being lied to.

• 27:10Rich Roll?

  I mean, what would be an example of that, I mean, in your research?

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Um, here's an example. In, in 2009, we had an epidemic of swine flu in this country. And it started in April. It ended up killing 12,000 people and hospitalized a lot more than that. The, the pork industry was not happy that it was being called swine flu and they literally leaned on the USDA to change the name. And the federal government has, has the authority to change the name of a disease. So what happened was Tom Vilsack, the secretary of the USDA, appointed by Obama, called a press conference in the spring of 2009, and he announced, "This is not swine flu. This is H1N1."

• 27:56Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  And he went on to say, we have, he, he, his message was focused on the pork industry. It wasn't even focused on Americans or Americans' health. He said, "We are concerned about the pork industry. We want the, we want pork workers to know their jobs are safe and that that industry is going to be fine. This is not swine flu, it's H1N1." And I actually quote him in the book, there's a great quote from him in the book. Now, why do I call that a lie? Because two months later, in, in the journal Science, which is a peer-reviewed prestigious published journal. Thirteen scientists from around the world published their study on swine flu.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  And they conclude that swine flu actually does start in pigs. And it's a zoonotic disease, which is to say it starts in pigs and spreads to humans. And they go on to say that by ignoring its zoonotic origin, by ignoring the fact that it starts in pigs, we subject ourselves to further risks of similar diseases in the future. And when our own government misleads us about where a disease comes from and how it starts, that's dangerous for us.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah. You didn't see the same thing with bird flu. They didn't change the name of bird flu, right?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  I'm sure they would have loved to. And if it was associated with chickens.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  You can be certain they would have changed the name.

• 29:30Rich Roll?

  How did this all begin for you? Like, what got you interested in this world?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Well, five or six years ago, I sent an email to... I was just... I had just either gone vegan or was on the path of going vegan. And I sent an email to a bunch of friends, asking them what they thought of a factory farming video that I included a link to. And I got all sorts of responses, but the one that really intrigued me was from a friend who was the dean of a major law school. He wrote that the imagery that he saw in the video was certainly disturbing and deplorable, but in his view, it was illegal. And that meant that it was exceptional. It was anomalous. It didn't represent a systemic problem. And it didn't concern him for that reason. Because, yeah, I mean, anyone can take film of illegal activity.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  That's not the standard. I didn't know how to respond to that because I just didn't know what the law was concerning farm animals. But I started to look into it, and what I found shocked me. And that was that... In the last several decades in this country, animal food producers have embarked on this very aggressive legislative agenda to essentially emasculate all cruelty protections that once applied to farm animals. They've passed ag gag laws, they've passed what are called cheeseburger laws, they've passed what are known as food defamation laws.

• 30:57Rich Roll?

  What's a cheeseburger? I mean, I know about the ag gag laws, and we've talked about that on the podcast before, but I've never heard of the cheeseburger laws.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Cheeseburger laws. These, we now have these in half of the United States, in the United States. A cheeseburger law is a law that says, a plaintiff cannot recover against a manufacturer or retailer of food, under the theory that food caused the plaintiff to become obese or to suffer an obesity-related disease.

• 31:26Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  So, on the one hand, you might think, well, that's great, you know, we don't want these crazy lawsuits anyway.

• 31:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  People will be out suing McDonald's because they're a few pounds overweight. However, it's important to remember that it is exactly this sort of ability to bring lawsuits which has led to major reform in the tobacco industry. And $400 billion has been extracted from big tobacco in this country in the last few decades and paid to state Medicaid agencies because of the ability to bring lawsuits like this.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  It's also resulted in all sorts of public education and new awareness. And we've, in this country, we've gone from smoking at a rate of about one in two people to about one in five people. So we've significantly reduced our smoking in this country. By preventing this kind of lawsuit, as it applies to food, we are foreclosing our ability to accomplish the same sort of result down the road when new facts emerge, as they likely will, that show that producers are engaged in some sort of Torts this behavior to to to mislead people about food being good for them.

• 32:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it has to pivot on the misleading aspect of it, right? I mean, these tobacco lawsuits really pivoted around warning labels, ineffective warning labels, misleading warning labels, or just misleading information about the product in general, or failure to warn about the health hazards. So in the in the context of cheeseburgers, or beef, or chicken, or what have you, you know, what is the responsibility of the manufacturer, the producer, to warn? And what would that warning warning be? You know what I mean? It's a little bit like, how do you even, how do you approach that?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Well, today, it's today, that question sounds absurd, because culturally, it's it's crazy to think that a cheeseburger is not good for you, or that, you know, a wedge of cheese is not good for you, or that a nice, healthy chicken breast is not good for you. But but give that time, in 20 or 30 years, as as the medical community, among others, become sort of more receptive to the idea that animal foods might, hey, guess what? They might not be good for us. We will probably change how we look at that. And and there certainly might be some basis, as that evolves, to to look at some of these

• 33:52Speaker 02

  manufacturers. I mean, look at when in the in the 1950s, cigarette companies promoted ads that said things like, smoking, four out of five doctors believe that smoking smoker, smoking is not dangerous, it doesn't cause cancer, there's not, there are no ill health effects associated with smoking. And that's exactly the same kind of clinical literature that that Chekhov-funded research programs are putting out there today. And I think it's likely that as as medical science catches up with sort of the rest of us in the next few decades, we'll start looking at at meat and dairy differently from a health perspective.

• 34:34Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, there's a lot of people that would say, how dare you, David Simon, to say that that, you know, there's nothing wrong with a nice chicken breast, or or a piece of salmon, and you're telling me that this is like damaging my health. It's anathema.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, it's crazy. Well, in in the last 30 years, hundreds of studies have emerged that that show fairly conclusively, and certainly, people, people differ on this. But but the studies.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Are, you know, in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journals like the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, New England Journal of Medicine, they say that animal foods cause disease predominantly cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, but also, you know, a list of others like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and gout, arthritis, et cetera.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm with you, but you know, there's a, there's a lot of people that listen to the podcast that come from all different walks of life and, and you know, I think it's just, you know, the message to the listener really is just, you know, it's incumbent upon you to do your own research, you know. I don't think David or I are here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but you know, you really need to take control and responsibility for your own decision-making power about what you put on your plate and how you vote with your dollar. So, check out some of those. You know, if you were going to direct somebody to something they could read, you know, of course, your book, but anything beyond that, what are some of the things that have influenced you?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  T. Colin Campbell's book, The China Study, is certainly a great place to start. That's, that's my sort of foundation for the nutritional perspective on animal foods that I have. But I also, in the book, I cite seven, over 700 end notes. Many of those are studies that are really easy to Google and you can, you can read the abstract for free. If you pay a few bucks, you can, you can get the whole study.

• 36:19Rich Roll?

  All right, good. So that's plenty for people. That'll keep people busy, right? So, I mean, you know, back to the sort of legislative landscape, the thing that really gets me are these anti-gag laws, you know, and I, Gene Bauer, in here from, from Farm Sanctuary, and we were talking about it at length. And, you know, just from a First Amendment perspective, and I know, you know, you're interested in First Amendment issues, it's just, it, it amazes me that a law could get passed that would prevent you from speaking out about a certain practice that is occurring in an industry, no matter what the industry is or what the practice is.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. And the best thing that I can say about ag gag laws today is that it seems that they are on the radar of state legislatures now in a way that they weren't a couple of years ago when they first started to be introduced. So, seven states have them now, and 13 states have defeated them. And I think that maybe we're seeing a level of visibility and awareness that will result in their being defeated routinely in the future. Well, you never know, especially in the big farming states like Iowa, North Carolina, etc.

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's difficult. But you think, we're in California, we're all interested in, we're eating sprouts all day, right? Out here in crazy California, but we couldn't even get a GMO labeling initiative the past year.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  I know. Unbelievable. And I live in the county that defeated that by the widest margin. I think it was two to one in my county.

• 37:50Rich Roll?

  Were you involved in any activism around that?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I did what a lot of my friends did, which is, we went out and signed up voters to get it on the ballot. And I also participated in some marches, carrying some signs and stuff like that. I actually thought it was a shoo-in. In fact, the early polls showed that it had 30% lead over the no's.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Do you, I mean, in your research for the book, did you, what are the economics and the marketing tactics behind how Prop 37 sort of transpired? And for the listener who might not know what we're talking about, or who's new to the show, Prop 37 was a voter initiative, and essentially, it was an initiative so that food products, food manufacturers would be required to label food products if they contained GMO content, GMO ingredients, right?

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  And that was it. It's really just the labeling thing. And the Monsanto's of the world kind of marshaled their lobbying efforts to defeat this measure, based upon arguments that range from it was going to drive up the price of the food, or, what were some of the other arguments that were used?

• 39:05Speaker 02

  That was the main argument, that it would drive up the price of food. And Monsanto, PepsiCo, some other companies ended up spending something like $50 million to defeat that. Now, I had written That part of my manuscript, this is before the book went to the publisher, I had to rewrite it. I had written based on a number of polls that show that consumers want to know about GMO, that there was a widespread preference among consumers in this country for labeling. And after the defeat, it wasn't just California, it was some other states where Monsanto came out in strong form and got these measures defeated.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  I had to reword that because big money is capable of getting its message across more effectively than those without the same resources.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  Right, and it's amazing because the argument was so weak and it still prevailed. It's like, the food, the cost of your food is, why? Because of the, you know, the one, you know, one, I mean, one sort of, you know, tenth of a gram of ink that you're gonna have to add to this label? Or, you know, I don't understand. Like, where is the, you know, where are these hidden costs that are gonna drive the price up here?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Right, right. I think the basis for that argument was very, very shallow.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  And yet, you know, effective, obviously.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really works. People respond, anytime something is gonna cost somebody money, people respond to that.

• 40:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, they're on it, right? Yeah, just like that. Alright, so back to the story, you had sent this video out to this dean of this law school and got this reaction about, well, that's fine, but that's illegal. And I take it your research sort of led you down this path where you started to realize, actually, these things aren't illegal, this is like, common practice in many states?

• 40:58Speaker 02

  It's common in every state today in this country and in virtually every province in Canada, and really in every western country where animals are raised in industrial conditions, that farm animals essentially have no protection whatsoever from cruelty. The way these statutes are worded, and in states that don't have the statute, it's typically based on judicial decision making that is known as the common law. If something is generally accepted as an agricultural practice, that is, if a number of farmers in the community are doing this, then by definition, it's not cruel. So, what, what, these are called, the generic term for these is customary farming exemptions, or CFEs.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  What these customary farming exemptions do is they essentially take from state legislatures the authority to decide what constitutes animal cruelty, and they turn over that authority to the, to the farmers who are raising the animals themselves. That's, that's, the analogy is, that is like letting nursing home operators decide what constitutes elder abuse. And you can imagine that if that decision were up to the operators of nursing homes, all of a sudden, we, we, almost nothing would, would be defined as elder abuse.

• 42:11Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:13Rich Roll?

  So, how did it, I mean, is that, how did the law end up that way?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Um, at the, at the, at the legislative level, it was through lobbying. And at the judicial level, I assume that it was through sort of economic arguments. The common law historically has only protected animals as economic units, has not protected them as beings that have rights, and has never recognized that they have the right to be free from cruelty. So, when the law looks at an animal as an economic unit, much as, you know, your laptop or your car, if, if something, if, if the owner of that economic unit can make an argument that it's economically beneficial to, to treat that animal in a particular way, then

• 43:01Speaker 02

  judges respond and say, okay, yeah, that's, that's fine. So, you know, for example, it's legal in every state to, to castrate an animal without, without anesthetizing him. That would cost about 25 cents, which might seem like nothing.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  But if you're a rancher and you raise a hundred thousand animals a year, that works out to twenty-five thousand dollars, and that's a lot of money. So economically speaking, it's not something you're going to do, and the law will support you on that. The law will say, yeah, you're entitled to run your business to make a profit.

• 43:35Rich Roll?

  And so this is kind of the impetus for you adopting a vegan diet initially, right? It was sort of this ethical argument, learning more about these inhumane practices?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  For me, that was what did it, yeah.

• 43:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And this was 2008?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, 2008.

• 43:55Rich Roll?

  2008. But you've also experienced some health benefits from this, yes?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  I did, yeah. And I didn't even go into it with that in mind. But when I went vegan, I had a body mass index of about 25, which put me right at the threshold between a healthy weight and being overweight. I had high cholesterol, I had GERD, or acid reflux, and all those, my weight dropped 17 pounds, my cholesterol went from 200 to 140, and I haven't had a problem with acid reflux ever since.

• 44:32Rich Roll?

  Were you on statins before?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  No. In fact, this is a weird irony. My doctor put me on the Atkins diet for my cholesterol. Can you believe that?

• 44:43Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  And initially, it actually worked because, well, I can't tell you why, because I'm not a nutritionist. I think it was just because I was paying much more attention to what I was putting in my body than I ever had before, and my cholesterol dropped maybe down to 180. But long-term, it went the other way, and my cholesterol just went back up. It was right around 200, so it wasn't high enough to warrant being on a prescription drug, but it was at a level that clinically is right at the threshold.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  Are you familiar with these new statin recommendations that are being made?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  Read up on this lately?

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw that. That's uh.

• 45:21Rich Roll?

  I mean, this sort of dovetails into your economics argument kind of perfectly, right? It just brings another gigantic organization into this, which is the pharmaceutical industry and their investment and interest in, in sort of getting as many people as possible onto this, these drugs, right? I mean, am I a crazy conspiracy theorist for submitting that? I mean.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  No, I think you're right. And the, the, and the medical community supports that too, because doctors make more money when people go to visit them and get prescriptions written for them than if they tell people to, to eat a healthier diet and they never see them again.

• 45:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Um, so yeah, and, and that's been, that, we're certainly not the first people to point out those, those strong economic benefits in the, both the medical and the pharmaceutical communities.

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's amazing. I was, uh, at the supermarket last night, I was at Whole Foods, uh, last night picking up a few things and I ran into this guy, um, just shopping for his family and he's like, "Oh, I, I listen to the podcast, I, you know, like, I, I, somebody had told me about you and, you know, I tuned in and I've gone plant-based and, and I got off my statins." And like, my doctor couldn't believe, you know, couldn't believe it. And he just said, "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it." But it was completely unfamiliar territory to this doctor, like, "Oh, what? Like, this diet change is actually, you know, managed to reduce your, reduce these numbers so that you're off this drug?" You know, it seems like it should be the first thing that, uh, that should be explored,

• 46:47Rich Roll?

  but, but it's the, it's a sort of knee-jerk, you know, "Let's, let's write the prescription."

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really does. In fact, I have to admit, when people tell me that, that, um, a relative or a friend has cancer, I often ask, "And did their doctor recommend any diet change as part of their treatment?" And usually the answer is no. And it always stuns me, like, "Really? I mean, wouldn't you think about, about eating less red meat at least, you know?"

• 47:14Rich Roll?

  Now you're getting radical. I mean, forget meatonomics, you know, now you're out of control.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, I know, well.

• 47:21Rich Roll?

  So how, I mean, how did we get, you know, what is the history of the farm subsidies? And how did this all come to pass? And, you know, how do we get to this terrible crisis point that we're in now?

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Well, farm subsidies grew out of the New Deal and FDR's desire to stabilize the farm ministry. We also had had some some Dust Bowl issues in in the 30s that resulted in major problems for most farmers in this country. Originally, the idea was not subsidies, but but supply management. Supply management is a technique where you hold goods back in order to keep prices steady, and then you allow those goods onto the market at a at a time when when prices have gone up, and so you you sort of control both supply and price in a healthy way.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  And we practiced that in this country substantially for a long time, right up through about the time that Reagan was in office. Some people might remember government cheese. Reagan Reagan is sort of remembered for for giving out these huge orange blocks of cheddar cheese.

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  I remember that.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't get one, but I know some people who did. And there was sort of a push during the Reagan administration to do away with supply management. It was seen as sort of too much government involvement, and we should let the market run itself. Unfortunately, the this particular market doesn't do well running itself. People just don't have the right incentives. What happens is when when prices of agricultural goods drop a bit, rather than dialing back production, which would be a good way to to allow those prices to to move back up, farmers actually respond by increasing production. So it creates this vicious cycle where the prices go go lower.

• 49:21Rich Roll?

  Why do they why do they increase production?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Well, because it's sort of every person for him or herself, and that's just the way we think. So if you're if you're running a farm and you see your revenue go down slightly, you respond to that by thinking.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  You're going to have to sell more.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  I'm going to have to I'm going to have to produce a few more units in order to increase my revenue. But it works the other way around. And with everybody responding in the same way, it drives the prices down across the board. That is one of the main reasons why the government has had to step in with all sorts of subsidy programs. And and these programs are so complicated, most people have never even heard of the names, you know, they have things like cyclical.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Crop insurance and milk loss contracts and irrigation subsidies and then they have these these technical and lengthy names, but they work out to these huge amounts of money and in ways and in places that we never had any idea.

• 50:17Rich Roll?

  And so, but I mean, over the years, we've gotten to this, you know, it seems like the volume just continues to get turned up. I mean, is, how does this evolve into this behemoth that we now have that is sort of unmanageable and, you know, seems impossible to alter?

• 50:36Speaker 02

  We, so every four to five years, Congress passes a farm bill. I think this might be, we might be in a stage where it's six years this time because this particular farm bill is taking forever. But, you know, it averages about five years and that farm bill routinely includes these massive subsidies and because there is so much other stuff in the farm bill, most significantly including food stamp allocations, what's now called SNAP or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. Because all these other programs have been worked into the farm bill, there's a little, something for everyone. There's, there's, there's log rolling. There's kind of, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And so,

• 51:19Speaker 02

  if, if you're from a, a state where you want to make sure you get your food stamp benefits for your people, you've got to agree to the subsidies that are going to the people in the farming states. These, everybody hates them. I mean, routinely, one of the points I make in the book is that you try to find some, some commentator saying something good about subsidies, it's impossible. Everybody on both, you know, Democrats, Republicans, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, everybody across the board says they're terrible. And yet, for some reason, every time a farm bill passes, there, there are again, other, you know, dozens of billions of dollars.

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, if tomorrow, all the farm subsidies went away, would it, would our economy collapse? Or would it self-adjust quickly? I mean, how?

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Personally, I think it would, I think you would get different opinions on that from people in the, in the farm industry, but I think it would adjust pretty quickly. I think prices of, of goods would go up a little bit, not significantly. You know, I, I show some math in the book that suggests that the prices of animal foods might go up by. Three or four cents on the dollar, nothing to to prevent people from continuing to buy at the levels that they do now. And we would just have significantly lower tax burden.

• 52:32Rich Roll?

  Right. So the example you use in the book is if you're buying a McDonald's hamburger or a Big Mac, right, it's four bucks, it's about four bucks. It's been a while.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  It's actually, I think it's more like five now.

• 52:45Rich Roll?

  Is it really? That's gone up. Subsidies are not effective.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, they are, they are to some extent.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  So that's your internalized cost, right? You buy your Big Mac, five bucks, let's say five bucks. But when you tack on the externalized cost, it was somewhere more like $11, right?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, more actually like.

• 53:06Rich Roll?

  The true cost of what it takes to create this product for you.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  That's right. So every time McDonald's sells a $5 Big Mac, if it's $5, which I think is a fair average, about $8 of costs are externalized on top of that, so that that that Big Mac ends up costing society something like $13.

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  Right. How does that break down? Like, how do those externalized costs get allocated across the board?

• 53:32Speaker 02

  The majority of them are healthcare related. And the, again, controversial, but the clinic literature that shows that the animal foods are responsible for some portion of of clinical cases of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease suggests that that that animal foods might be driving about a third of those cases. So what I have done is come up with a number in the book that takes our total cost to treat those cases in this country and and allocates the portion attributable to consuming the high levels of animal foods that we do. And so of that $8, probably $6 would be healthcare costs, probably a little

• 54:17Speaker 02

  under a dollar would be subsidies, a little under a dollar would be environmental costs, and the remaining pocket change would be associated with cruelty and.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Fishing, which is not applicable to a Big Mac, but it's just an average number.

• 54:33Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to look at those statistics. But then I think about human behavior and it's sort of like, well, that's fascinating, but my Big Mac's still five bucks, you know, like, is that going to modify any kind of personal choice or behavior patterns? And how do you get people to think differently about these products and modify their behavior, their choices?

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Well, that's where I think institutional change comes in. And I recommend institutional change in the book that would give people better incentives and allow them to make choices about foods that they buy that are more reflective of the economic realities.

• 55:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that you have to, to win the game, you got to play the game and you have to create a profit motive somewhere along this chain where somebody is significantly incentivized to implement the kind of changes that are going to eventually radicalize this system. I mean, and it seems to me that the best way to do that is to go to all these CEOs of these huge companies and go, look at how much you're spending on healthcare. Like, if you could just get your employee force healthier, you're going to reduce, you know, those costs substantially and your net revenues, your annual net revenues are

• 56:01Rich Roll?

  going to be increased without you doing very, it's not going to cost you very much. But implementing kind of programs, like I know PCRM has done that, they did, they had a really successful one with GEICO, that just seems to me to be like a no-brainer.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  I think it's a great idea. Why can't health insurance companies provide a discount for people in a plant-based diet?

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  Well, now, why would they do that?

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Okay, let me rephrase it.

• 56:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  What, what, how about this?

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  Because the CEO of the healthcare company goes golfing with the, with the guy from the USDA, right?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Right. Well, we, we know that if, for example, if, if you apply for life insurance, if you smoke, your premium is going to be higher, right? So, so we know that the, that the insurance companies are at least aware of some of these risk factors. One way to approach this might be to say, look, if you get your cholesterol checked every year and it is always below X, name a number, 160, you're entitled to a 10% discount on your health insurance.

• 57:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. I like it.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  It's, it's objective and it doesn't even refer to, to what your diet is. It just says that if, for whatever reason, your, your blood cholesterol level is below this threshold, we think you're going to be less at risk for di- disease. And by the way, clinically, that's completely supported. And as a result, we're going to pay less in doctor visits on your behalf. So we're going to charge you a lower premium.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  David Simon, you're in the healthcare industry. Come on. How do we make this happen?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Well, I wish it were that easy. I know, I know that people have proposed this before. In fact, I've, I've written some, some emails to some, to some health insurers in the past. I, I think it's coming. I mean, I really do. It's, it's just a matter of time and acceptance in the medical community.

• 57:58Rich Roll?

  Right. I interviewed this woman, Deborah Zake, who's sort of, she's like the godmother of wellness. She, she is the founder and proprietor of a place called Rancho La Puerta. It's over the border on Tocate, like in Mexico. It's like the first wellness resort in the country. And like, her legacy in wellness goes back to like the early 30s. She's an incredible woman who's now like 91 and she held a government post in DC for 17 years and is like a, you know, she's rubbed elbows with all the presidents and all this kind of stuff. And her big idea, which I think is kind of brilliant, is, uh, listen, you've got to create your own lobbying group that is just as powerful as these other lobbying groups.

• 58:43Rich Roll?

  The only way to do that, it's like the kale lobby isn't going to do it, right? The broccoli lobby, like you've got to get all these fractured groups that are all kind of on the same page in terms of wellness, health, nutrition, these various subject matters. And get them to all agree, at least on the bigger picture, and pool their resources so that you can go to Washington and you can butt up against, you know, the Monsanto's or whatever. But until you get to that place, how are you ever going to have a center of gravity with enough, you know, sort of heft and magnitude to get anything done, at least in the current system?

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's a very good point.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  So, how do we do that?

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Well, there are groups that are working on it, you know. Humane Society of the United States, or HSUS-

• 59:28Rich Roll?

  They're huge.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Huge, big budget, over 300 million a year, and they are very effective. They're certainly the most effective advocacy group at the legislative level for animal-related issues. And it's different from the Kale Lobby, you know, the agendas don't always match up, but I would say that they're getting a lot done. You know, they've been, the current farm bill has a rider attached which would essentially eliminate state-level protections from animal cruelty. And HSUS has been very vocal in opposing that version of the farm bill. And if it weren't for them, who knows? That thing might be passed already.

• 1:00:09Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, there's some, there are some good things in this farm bill, are there not? I'm not intimately familiar with what's-

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  I gotta tell you, it's changed so much that I can't even stay on top of it. The main thing on my radar at the moment is this rider related to, which would essentially eliminate Prop 2 in California. And for those who don't know, Prop 2 is the most important animal welfare legislation in this country in the last 100 years. Because it mandates that animals have to have the space to turn around and to live in some moderate degree of comfort, the current, the current language that has been attached to the farm bill would essentially eviscerate Prop 2 and make it go away.

• 1:00:57Rich Roll?

  So, it would literally make the conditions much worse? Like, the penned-up conditions of these animals, they wouldn't even be able to move enough to turn around?

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, a sow, female pig, mother pig, spends her life in a gestation crate in which she's unable to turn around, unable to even reach or touch her piglets, and- Prop two would change that, but but if Prop two doesn't take effect as planned in two thousand and fifteen, it's going to be status quo.

• 1:01:26Rich Roll?

  So wait, so I don't, I'm not familiar with, so Prop two passed, but it doesn't go into effect for another year?

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  It passed a few years ago, and it was given an effective date of January one, two thousand and fifteen.

• 1:01:38Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  So it's, it hasn't gone into effect yet, but but the the the big animal food producers are doing everything in their power to get it in, sort of eliminated before it ever takes effect.

• 1:01:53Rich Roll?

  Right, and the rationalization to eliminate it would be what, they can just pack more animals into a more cramped space?

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, the the legal rationalization that is being used at the legislative level is that the the Commerce Clause requires that states don't burden each other, and so if California says, you know, animals have to be raised in a certain way, that affects suppliers in North Carolina who might, you know, otherwise not be able to ship their product to us. But the economic rationale is just as you state, that it's much, it's much more cost effective if you're a producer to raise animals in the in the closest space possible.

• 1:02:29Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  And that's, that's how, that's how you maximize your profits.

• 1:02:32Rich Roll?

  Right. So, excuse me, back to the the sort of through line narrative of you sending this video to the dean of this law school and and being very interested in this this issue, I mean, where did, how does that transform into you being, you know, so interested in the economics behind how these industries work that would compel you to write a book about it?

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Okay, so, as I, as I sort of dug deeper and found this, this legal framework that surrounds the factory farming industry, it was not, it was ag gag laws, it was the cheeseburger laws that we've talked about, it was these customary farming exemptions, eco-terrorism laws, it was just this, this...

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  A framework is really the best way to describe it. It's a cocoon that surrounds meat and dairy producers and it provides them with very significant economic benefits because it is these laws that allow them to externalize their costs. These laws provide the legal basis for them to shift their costs to society.

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  To the consumer.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Once I sort of keyed in on that, I thought, well, there is some literature out there which talks about the costs associated with, you know, mineral remediation, for example, or the costs associated with climate change remediation, and no one has ever added up all of these numbers as they apply to factory farming. So, maybe I should do that and see what the number comes out to, and it came out to a pretty big number. So, I thought there's a book there.

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  Interesting. And so, how does that... So, you just start writing it, or how does this... Like, I'm interested, just as a fellow writer, like, I'm always interested in the story of how a book is birthed.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Well, let's see. First, I wrote a proposal, and then I got an agent. I don't know how you...

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  It's the textbook way of doing it. Now, that's... Well, yeah. Well, I got the interest of an agent first, who then said, "You need to write a proposal," because I didn't know anything. So, you knew enough to write a proposal first.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  I actually talked to another writer who had written a book in this genre, Melanie Joy, who wrote a book called "Why We Love Dogs." And she advised me. She told me how to do it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known, I wouldn't have had any idea. So, yeah, I wrote a proposal. I sent it out to a few agents. I got very fortunate to get an agent I really liked at a New York agency. She made all kinds of recommendations to change the proposal, as I'm sure you've gone through too. And what emerged was sort of the outline for the book.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Once, once the publisher accepted it, then I just sort of fleshed in the, the missing parts of the outline.

• 1:05:20Rich Roll?

  Right. And when did you, when it came out, how long, how many, like four or five months ago?

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  It came out just in September.

• 1:05:25Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Rich Roll?

  So just in September. So, how has it been? You've been on the road doing the book tour thing?

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Been traveling, doing the book tour, mostly east coast, some, some California stops as well. Uh, the book has been, uh, about a half dozen publications have reviewed it, all favorable. And that's been nice. Some of them are bigger names than others, but the Huffington Post is a big one that said, uh, anyone interested in, in the politics of food should have this book.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  Veg News said it was riveting, you know, some other good stuff like that.

• 1:05:56Rich Roll?

  Good. Has Mark Pittman read it?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Uh, not yet, but, uh, I, I think it's on, I think it's on his desk or on its way to it.

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  Probably with a lot of other books.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think he's got some competition.

• 1:06:08Rich Roll?

  Everyone wants him to read the book.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  Um, well, yeah, I mean, I just think that you, like, I see a future in you, you know, getting up in front of large audiences, whether it's at business schools or universities, uh, to speak this message because it's really important. Um, you know, forget about vegan, whatever. It's just, we need to be educated about what's really going on with the business of food, whatever your preferences are, and to understand the economics behind how food arrives on your plate and who is really profiting and the messages that they want you to know and the messages that they don't want you to know, so that everybody can make a more informed choice. And the economics aspect of it, I mean, you're the first one to really kind of delve into

• 1:06:53Rich Roll?

  that, do a deep dive on that. I would think like, you, you should be on the college tour.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and I've, I've spoken to a few academic, uh, institutions and people about, about the possibility of doing that as well. Yeah, I think it's, I think the book is just sort of getting out of the radar and as it, as it, as it evolves and increases in visibility, uh, you know, I'll be doing some more of that.

• 1:07:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, good.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Rich Roll?

  So, but, but you're still full-time job, general counsel for a healthcare company?

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Rich Roll?

  You want to keep doing that? Are you going to be, you want to be a full-time, uh, vegan wellness, wellness, animal rights advocate?

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Um, I, I prefer the latter, it just doesn't pay as well is the problem.

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  No, it doesn't.

• 1:07:36Rich Roll?

  The general counsel gig, yeah, I think is probably a little bit more secure.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, and I can't complain. It's actually a good job. I don't have to work nights and weekends the way a lot of lawyers do. So I don't have that headache.

• 1:07:50Rich Roll?

  Did you start in, did you, did you ever work in big law firms?

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  When I, when I first started practicing, I worked in downtown LA at a, at a, at a pretty big firm for a few years. So I've got that on my belt.

• 1:08:01Rich Roll?

  Which one? You want to say, you don't want to say?

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  I can say it's, it's Nassim and Gauthner, Knox and Elliott, about a hundred lawyers.

• 1:08:07Rich Roll?

  You're a litigator?

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  I, I was a transactional lawyer and I, I continue to be predominantly transactional, although I do a little bit of litigation today.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The big law firm life wasn't for me.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Uh, so I guess.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  It's not for many people, you know, the, the only thing is if you stick around long enough and make partner, then you know, you make so much money that you're, you got the golden handcuffs. But for most people, it's, it's hard to.

• 1:08:32Rich Roll?

  Emphasis on handcuffs. I don't know. For me, like, I just, I don't know. I just, I did, I looked around at the partners and maybe, you know, listen, if you're wired for that and it makes you happy, that's great, you know, more power to you. But I just, I saw a lot of unhappiness. I saw a lot of money being made, but I saw a lot of unhappiness. Maybe I was just seeing my own unhappiness, but you know, I don't know.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:53Rich Roll?

  But, uh, that's cool. Well, I mean, I, I hope that you can find a way to continue to, you know, sort of spread the word.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks.

• 1:09:03Rich Roll?

  You can't be distracted by your general counsel job.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  I know, it's a job.

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  You know, that's cool. So where's, are you, are you, have any, any speaking gigs coming up or any places where people might be able to gather to hear you give your talk?

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Well, uh, on Tuesday, the 26th, I'm actually giving a book talk in Costa Mesa at a, a market called the People's Seed, S E E D Market at Bristol and Baker in Costa Mesa. And that's, information on that is on my website, meetonomics.com.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  The, the next big thing I'm doing is, uh, I'm doing some other stuff that's not on a, it's not fully planned yet, but I've been invited to talk at, uh, Dr. McDougal's, uh, Advanced Wellness Program, which is in Santa Rosa.

• 1:09:48Rich Roll?

  Fantastic.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Colin Campbell will be there, Michael Greger, um, some other big names.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  That's great. Have you met, uh, Michael Greger yet?

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  I have, yeah. He's great. He's, I saw he was on your podcast.

• 1:09:58Rich Roll?

  He was, yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  He was double oh seven. I love that.

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  Did you notice that?

• 1:10:02Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't, you know?

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Rich Roll?

  He's, he's my favorite. I love that guy. And then I did another podcast with him. Uh, we were both at Summerfest in Pennsylvania, which was another like event. And, uh, and my freaking computer blew up in the middle of it and I lost that. I lost the file. Like, or no, what happened? I dropped my hard drive like that night or whatever and lost the file. So tragic, but he's, he's, yeah, I love that guy. So that'll be good. That's great.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, and Colville Esselstyn will be there too. So, yeah, these big names in nutrition.

• 1:10:34Rich Roll?

  The big.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  I have not met those guys. I've just met, uh, Dr. Greger.

• 1:10:37Rich Roll?

  The grand poobas of the plant-based movement.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Rich Roll?

  Very cool. Well, good. Well, thanks for, uh, dropping by the podcast today. I appreciate it.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot for having me.

• 1:10:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're an inspiration. Your message is powerful and, uh, people go out and get this book. Meatonomics. You can get it everywhere, right? Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those places.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:10:57Rich Roll?

  So the best way to do that though, is to go to richroll.com and use the Amazon banner ad and then buy it on Amazon. And that helps support the podcast, but you should go to Meatonomics. Is it dot com or dot org?

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Dot com.

• 1:11:08Rich Roll?

  Dot com. Um, you've got some really interesting blog posts up there that are related to the book, um, and more information about David. And, uh, yeah, man, what else? What else can people? You're on, you're, uh, you're Meatonomics on Twitter.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:11:22Rich Roll?

  Anywhere else people?

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Facebook, facebook.com slash Meatonomics.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Um, also on Facebook is, uh, Dave Simon. If you'll find me there.

• 1:11:29Rich Roll?

  Cool. Are you going to write another book? Uh, yeah, but probably not one with 700 end notes. The research killed me on this. How long did it take you to write it? Took me almost four years. Wow. Yeah. That's a big, that's, that's a big one. Long time. So you need a, you're, you're in your gestation period now.

• 1:11:49Rich Roll?

  You gotta recoil and regroup. Yeah. I know the feeling, so. Exactly. Well, good, man. Uh, I appreciate you coming by. I appreciate the message. So thanks, man. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Peace. You too. Plants.

• 1:12:07Rich Roll?

  That's it, people. That's the show. I hope you enjoyed. David, he was awesome. Definitely check out his book. If you want to support the podcast mission, The Plant Power Revolution, here's what you do. First of all, sign up for my newsletter at richroll.com. And if you're going to buy anything on Amazon, holidays are coming up. You gotta pick up a gift or two. Click on the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. Won't cost you, won't cost you anything. Nothing. Zero. But they'll kick us a few extra bucks. And we appreciate that. You can donate to the podcast, a buck here or two. You can do it weekly. You can do it monthly. The amount of your choice. The podcast will always be free, though.

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  So we appreciate the support. If you're enjoying the show, tell a friend. That's it. If you're really inspired, leave us a comment on the iTunes page. The comments there help us a lot and we appreciate that. What else? Uh, we got some products at richroll.com. We got our digital e-cookbook, GIC, 77 pages of awesome plant-based recipes. We have our meditation program, guided meditation, series of MP3s. We have our plant-based recovery formula, G.I. Repair. I got a vitamin B12 supplement, G.I. B12. We got a lot more stuff coming. I'm going to get the T-shirts up in time for the holidays, for gifts. And speaking of gifts,

• 1:13:37Rich Roll?

  Maybe you want to help a loved one learn more about eating a plant-based diet. We have our online course at MindBodyGreen, MindBodyGreen.com. Three and a half hours of streaming video content and online community, all kinds of good stuff. Really proud of this online program, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition. Check that out if you haven't already, and you can gift that to a friend, too. Makes for a great holiday gift to reboot for the new year, so you can go into January energized, pumped, psyched to unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. That's it, people. If you're in America, have a great Thanksgiving. I'll catch up with you the following week. And for everybody else out there, thanks for listening. We love you guys. Peace.

• 1:15:47Rich Roll?

  I'm sorry, I can't assist with that request.