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

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

  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.

• 0:44Rich 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.

• 1:05Rich Roll?

  Welcome to episode 91 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Keegan Coon and Kip Anderson.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  How y'all doing? Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host, and this is aptly called the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for dropping by. If you're new to the show, what do we do here? Well, on a weekly basis and for free, I might add, always free, I do my best to bring you guys the best, most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in wellness, fitness, athleticism, creativity, diet, nutrition, art, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and spirituality. The people that are walking their talk, the people that are rocking the tools and the knowledge and the experience and the inspiration you need to discover, uncover, unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. Today's show is all about environmentalism.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

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

• 2:54Rich Roll?

  Give yourself a pat on the back, it's awesome. But what if I told you that all of these efforts combined are but an infinitesimal drop in the bucket when compared to the deleterious impact of just one particular industry that most of us unconsciously support on a daily basis every day of our lives? The inconvenient and uncomfortable truth is that whether we're talking about global warming, the deforestation of the rainforest, the overconsumption of water, the depletion of our soils, the destruction and pollution of the oceans, or the obliteration of natural

• 3:34Rich Roll?

  wildlife habitats, there is one single industry that is destroying the planet more than any other and it's one we really don't talk about that much. It is the elephant in the room. It is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is by far the biggest offender in every single category that I just mentioned. Point blank, our industrialized system of factory livestock harvesting is just unsustainable. It's killing us and it's killing the planet and it is time to embrace this reality and redirect before it's too late. This is the subject of a new documentary. It's called Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.

• 4:18Rich Roll?

  And this documentary takes a look at just why the issue of animal agriculture and its impact just doesn't get the airtime that other environmental cause celebs do like fracking. And today I have the filmmakers here to tell us all about it, Keegan Coon and Kip Anderson. I first became familiar with this project via their Indiegogo campaign. I think I saw it on Twitter or on Facebook, I can't remember. And I had the opportunity the other day to screen it. And it is powerful and I really appreciated the bold message. It's really solid filmmaking. It's also funny and entertaining. It's kind of like, you know, as they describe it, I think aptly, this kind of mashup or

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  sort of an inconvenient truth meets blackfish type movie. And I think that's appropriate. It really is sort of like that. And after watching it, I really wanted to see if I could be involved and to help the mission, help what these guys are trying to accomplish by getting the word out about the movie. And I knew I had to get these guys on the podcast and do what I can to spread the word about the movie, which is going to be rolling out slowly at the end of June. In fact, if you're in Los Angeles on June 26th, you can still come to the premiere. There's still a few seats left in the theater. It's going to be in Westwood. I think it's the Crest Theater in Westwood on June 26th. And I'm going to be moderating a post-screening panel with the filmmaker. So it's going to be awesome.

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  It's going to be really cool. If you're not in LA, but you're interested in trying to check this movie out, go to cowspiracy.com to find out. Where and when the film will be screening in your area. They're just sort of coming up with all their plans now about how they're going to be kind of going across the country and screening this. So if you don't see your city up there, they're going to be updating it very soon. So anyway, this is a really cool conversation with two really passionate environmentalists who have a lot of interesting things to say, some of which, many of which maybe you may not be familiar with. It's a powerful movie. These guys have a powerful point of view and I'm really proud and happy to be able to bring their message to you guys today.

• 6:32Rich Roll?

  So I hope you guys enjoy this episode and that's it. Let's get into it right on.

• 6:46Rich Roll?

  I'm excited for you guys. Thank you for letting me take a look at the film early.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  We're honored that you'd want to see it.

• 6:52Rich Roll?

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

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  And so before we even get into what that is, I mean, I'd like to have you guys describe the movie.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the film is, it's a journey first and foremost. It's about Kip, my co-director's journey of finding out about the most destructive industry facing the planet today, which is animal agriculture. And if animal agriculture is responsible for number one cause of rainforest destruction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, topsoil erosion, climate change, you would expect the world's largest environmental organizations to talk about it.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  But when you go to these organizations' websites, it's nowhere. You don't see animal agriculture. They're going to be talking about fracking, or transportation, or dirty coal. So the story is the journey of finding out about this and going to these organizations, and trying to find the answer. How do we live sustainably on the planet with 7 billion people?

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  It is interesting. We talk a lot about how to cut our fuel costs, or how can I get into an electric car, or at least a Prius, and get my expenses down, get my fossil fuel consumption down. That really seems to be the thing that is on most people's minds in terms of trying to be more ecologically aware, or sustainable in our day-to-day life, beyond recycling. It's pretty much all about fossil fuels, right? But what's really fascinating, and what the film does a great job of really elucidating, is the distinction, or I guess the sort of comparative impact of fossil fuels, or our

• 9:08Rich Roll?

  fossil fuel dependence, that impact on the environment versus the impact of our factory farming system on the environment. So can you kind of draw that distinction? There's a lot of statistics that are in the movie, and of course, I can't remember them off the top of my head, but paint that picture a little bit.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think it's, there is a heavy focus on fossil fuels, and rightfully so. The impact of burning fossil fuels on the atmosphere is just devastating, and the mining involved in it. But again, if we put things in comparison, it's about 100 billion gallons of water is used for fracking. Fracking's a hot issue right now. It's a hot issue because it uses a tremendous amount of fresh water, and then it pollutes groundwater. 100 billion gallons.

• 9:54Rich Roll?

  We don't know what the long-term impact is also, of kind of what that sort of subterranean damage will lead to.

• 10:03Speaker 01

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

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  Right, and we're going to get into that. You know, why is it that this is not something that we're talking about more? But just in terms of how the, you know, the movie lays out, you know, I think, my personal opinion, being a film snob, is that whether it's a documentary or narrative film, it has to operate on this sort of three act structure. You have to emotionally draw on your audience, you have to entertain. I don't care if it's the most educational documentary on the planet, it really still has to function like a narrative film that you would see, you know, if you're going to see the latest Marvel movie or what have you, you want to go on this hero's journey. And I think that's what you guys did a really great job of doing with Kip, because it's sort of this POV, you know, it's sort of

• 11:16Rich Roll?

  you're seeing, you're going on this adventure through your eyes, right, Kip? And Kip, it sort of opens with this idea of you being, trying to be the good Samaritan and being ecologically conscious and doing all the kinds of things that, you know, we're told we need to do to be kind of, you know, lessen our footprint, in a good way. And then, you know, sort of stumbling onto this discovery that really, we don't talk too much about. So, how does this, you know, how does this journey kind of begin for you?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Well, it's a journey that's really personal to me, where it started with, I thought I was doing everything I could for the environment, and then saw a post with the United Nations' Long Shadow Report, that animal agriculture is the leading cause of greenhouse gases, 18% versus 13% of all transportation put together. And that's when I was like, wait, there's something going on here.

• 12:10Rich Roll?

  So, 18% for animal agriculture, 13% in that, the umbrella over 13% includes all transportation?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  All transportation.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  Trains, planes, cars, everything.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Every single thing, all put together, is...

• 12:23Rich Roll?

  And this is, these are global numbers?

• 12:25Speaker 02

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

• 12:49Rich Roll?

  51% of...

• 12:51Speaker 02

  51% of all greenhouse gases.

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  Emissions.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Of attributed to animal agriculture. And that's

• 12:57Rich Roll?

  Is that from the methane? Like, what's going on? Like, describe, like, where is all this? Where are all these emissions coming from?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Their calculations combines the methane from the cows, the flatus from the cows, it also combines with the, all the destroying of the rainforest and all these things that put out oxygen, destroying those and taking that out of the atmosphere.

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  So it's, it's not just the bad things we're putting out, it's the good things we're taking away.

• 13:22Speaker 02

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

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And then has to be stored in supermarkets and refrigeration. So it just adds up on and on and on.

• 14:11Rich Roll?

  Right. So the carbon footprint for the transportation stored to everything that that's required from wherever it's reared to getting it onto your plate.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 14:19Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 14:19Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, it's an incredibly wasteful system.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:23Rich Roll?

  Right? And it requires a tremendous amount of water and carbon resources. But, hey, man, we gotta feed, we gotta feed the planet. Like, what are we, what are you gonna do? Right?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. Gotta feed the planet.

• 14:36Speaker 01

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

• 15:13Rich Roll?

  But Keegan, we would just have cows walking around everywhere if we did this. We can't do this. That would be, it would be chaos. It would be, it would be India in Manhattan.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, imagine that. Imagine how peaceful that might be.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  If you flicked a switch, right? Like, and overnight, everybody did this?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's-

• 15:29Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a common argument, like, oh, there'd be, but I mean, obviously, it wouldn't happen. You know, it would be a slow process of evolving into-

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Millions of animals are bred relentlessly by force, unfortunately, most time. And that's, that's what's really happening. And on the population note, we explore in the film, you know, especially a lot of environmentalists, they focus on, oh, well, the real problem is we have 7 billion people, and that's just too much for this planet. And we really go into exploring, 7 billion is a lot of people going in upwards of 9 million in these next couple decades.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  9 billion?

• 16:03Speaker 02

  9 billion. But what it really, we have to really look at is the 70 billion farmed animals that humans raise for food. These all, all these animals need to be fed, and they need to drink their water. And it's 70 billion of them, and it's not the 7 billion of humans necessarily is what this, those 7 billion humans are doing.

• 16:25Rich Roll?

  So, yes, 10 times the number of beings that we're feeding versus humans, right?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And that's a conservative figure. You know, that's, that's roughly what the number of animals that are slaughtered per year. There's potentially, you know, anywhere upwards of 150 billion farmed animals on this planet at any given time.

• 16:43Rich Roll?

  Where, where do you get these statistics? These are, are these reliable? Is this reliable data, Keegan?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was a big part of the film. The film is very information-rich. And we were very, you know, concerned that, making sure that we could back up all of our information. And all of our information is backed up by research papers, independent research papers.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  And we actually use conservative figures in the film. You know, for example, you know, you can, to produce a pound of beef in California takes anywhere between 1,500 gallons of water to 5,000 gallons of water.

• 17:19Rich Roll?

  5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  In California. And that's, those numbers globally can go up, you know, they can be upwards of 20,000.

• 17:27Rich Roll?

  Why is it so much water?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  So, you know, cows have to drink, they drink 30 to 40 gallons every day, which is just phenomenal when you compare to a human being drinks about a gallon. And then all of the water's needed to grow the grain to feed them.

• 17:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it includes the water required to grow the food to feed the cow.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  And here we are in a drought, supposedly, situation where, you know, we're driving down the freeway in, in California and it says, severe drought, watch your water usage. And then you hear on the radio, watch your, turn on, watch your sprinklers, leaks in your faucet. And domestic, all the domestic water use only counts for 5% of all the water. And animal agriculture in California accounts for over 50% of all the water. So, you know, you're turning off your faucet and this and that, you're saving a fraction of a percentage compared to, say, one pound of beef is 2,500 gallons of water.

• 18:24Rich Roll?

  Right, so, so you're better off taking a two-hour shower and just bypassing on the cheeseburger.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  You could, you could take, you could take a month-long shower, actually.

• 18:33Rich Roll?

  Well, there's this great moment in the movie where you're, you're sort of being the conscientious, you know, ecologically, you know, sort of good citizen and you're like trying to reduce the length of your showers, you know, because of, because of this reason, right? Like, that's what somebody does who's thinking about things outside of himself. And then it dawns on you, or you, you come into awareness of these statistics and you're like, it doesn't matter how long I take, it doesn't matter how long my shower is, it makes absolutely, absolutely no impact on this when so much of this water is going towards this system that is so unbelievably inefficient and at the same time, you know, really destroying the planet.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  One hamburger is equivalent of showering six entire months. And it's, I mean, that's unbelievable. It's ridiculous.

• 19:19Rich Roll?

  Right. We had David Simon, the author of Metanomics. I had him on the podcast, I don't know, six or nine months ago. And I was glad to see that he, that you guys interviewed him for, for the documentary. He goes into all these, these sort of numbers when it comes to the true economics of what it, what's required to raise livestock for food. And the extent to which, you know, government subsidies pass on these costs. So for example, the $2 hamburgers really, you know, $7 or whatever it is because of, you know, what we pay in taxes and how that money gets funneled towards these industries. And it's

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  similar, you know, it's similar to, to, you know, what you're saying. When we look at how much waste there is and how we're going to, how are we going to begin to address this?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  You know, I think the only way we'll start to address it is when people have the information in front of them. And that's a big part of this film is that this information has been hidden or it's been intentionally avoided by these, you know, large international organizations and by governments. The focus of the film is, and the mission, I think, really of the film is to inform people, give them all the information and let them make up their minds for themselves. And that's the only way we're going to see changes when people have the information available.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  And with that being said, there's so much information packed in this film. What people really love, the screenings we've done, is just how entertaining it is because it is a journey. It's following a journey. It's not just a bunch of information thrown at you. It's following a journey that you go through and you go along and you visit the big green, as we call them, you know, Greenpeace, Sierra Cloud and these other ones. And you just see these humorous, humorous interactions where they're just so willing to talk about sustainability. But once you mention the word animal agriculture, things just get really awkward. And there's some funny answers, funny aversions. And as a lot of people said, a few people have seen it the second time, they just get so much

• 21:23Speaker 02

  more out of the humor. They see so much humor in it that you miss the first time because there's so much jam packed of information and little nuances of humor that you just don't pick up on the first time of these interviews.

• 21:35Rich Roll?

  Right, so Keegan, you're saying, you know, we're trying to get the information out there, and this is information that's been hidden. And in terms of the narrative of the movie, we watch Kip kind of come into this realization that that we're never going to be able to really begin to address all of these environmental concerns until we really take a hard look at what's going on with animal agriculture. And then we start to, you know, watch you as you try to contact these organizations to talk to these people about, how come nobody's talking about this? We talk a lot about our fossil fuel consumption, we talk about our water consumption, but nobody's talking about the elephant in the room, which is how wasteful this system is that we've erected around how we raise animals

• 22:17Rich Roll?

  for food. And then you go in and you visit these places from Sierra Club to Greenpeace, and you basically get, you get nowhere with these people. You can't get any kind of answers from them about why they're not talking about this issue, which clearly is the biggest issue when it comes to waste.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when you, you know, it's not only is it the biggest issue of, say, deforestation, it's the biggest issue of all of them. There's virtually no environmental ill facing the planet today that the leading cause is in animal agriculture. I mean, literally, no matter what your passion is, you care about the rainforest. Well, hey, you know, upwards of 91% of all the deforestation in the Amazon was caused by animal agriculture, whether for clearing land to graze cows, or to grow the feed crop, the soy, genetically engineered, you know, corn and soybean that's fed.

• 23:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have this graphic where you use like a football field analogy, and you show how much, how it's getting eaten away on a daily basis. The numbers are ridiculous. Do you remember what they are?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  It's about an acre per second of rainforests destroyed, you know, and the vast majority of that is for animal agriculture. It's just astonishing. But again, you know, it goes way beyond just rainforest. You know, what do you care about? You care about the oceans. Well, you know, leading cause of dead zones in the oceans is from land-based animal agriculture.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  Right. Explain that a little bit, because I didn't really know how that whole, how those two things kind of worked together. And the film did a really good job of explaining that.

• 23:45Speaker 01

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

• 24:28Speaker 01

  and that algae deprives the entire ecosystem of oxygen. So you have these massive areas, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere you have large-

• 24:36Rich Roll?

  Like the Mississippi Delta, right?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be probably the worst.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  It's one of the worst in the world. And we're talking about hundreds of square miles of areas completely devoid of life. And as the leading cause, according to the EPA, the leading cause is animal agriculture. But even beyond that, too, is the fish. There's more... Pigs are fed and eat more fish than human beings in this country.

• 25:02Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that. I didn't even know that pigs ate fish.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  That's it. So an animal that would never naturally eat fish is force-fed fish. And it's-

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  Is that like, is it ground down into some kind of dry product for them? Or how does that, like a feed product?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you have these massive factory trawlers. They catch huge amounts of fish. One out of every five fish is considered by... One out of every fish is the intended species caught. The rest of it is bycatch. And then they take those fish and they grind them up and they feed them in a meal to factory-farmed animals, so pigs and chickens and cows. So again, it's like, if we care about fish, we care about the oceans, the first thing we could do is stop eating pigs.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  And the bykeel that they call it, you know, one out of five, four out of five, there's bykeel that includes dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, you know, animals that people love. And they don't realize by contributing these other things, actually. And whales, you know, contributing to killing these other beautiful species.

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  These nets are massive, right? And so-

• 26:10Rich Roll?

  And so, so we have this, we have this idea that you're putting forth that, that we're not talking about this, but that's a, there's a leap between kind of, eh, let's not talk so much about animal agriculture and conspiracy, right? I mean, the movie's called Cow Espiracy, so you're tipping your hat a little bit to the idea that there really is a conspiracy afoot, that there's a concerted or a conscientious effort to really kind of sweep this under the rug and consciously not talk about it.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I think it's kind of what you said, sweep it under the rug, and a lot of the film is for discussion. Is it a conspiracy? Is it not? Why would the leading cause of all these things that are destroying, literally eating up the planet, why is it being swept under the rug? What is the reason? Is it conspiracy? Are they getting paid off, the big green getting paid off by animal agriculture? Or is it just internally, they can't adopt their own choices of what they do internally within themselves, and they don't want to change? So the film explores all these different things. So, you know, it's a catchy title, but it is, you know, is it a conspiracy? So the film really goes into that, and, you know, we don't, we don't tell necessarily the audience of what to think or anything.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  You just learn all the information, and you can go home and explore on the internet and find out even more for yourself, and that's what we encourage people to do. It's not, we're not, you know, here to preach or anything, we're just exposed, sharing the truth, really.

• 27:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like the idea of sort of just opening the door and then letting, letting the person go on their own journey with it, and letting them do their own research and investigation. But when you, you know, you try to get, you try to get a sit-down with Greenpeace, right? And you're stymied. And that, and so, kind of the inference with that is, is that an organization like that, you know, maybe, maybe Greenpeace itself, or some of these other larger environmental organizations, you know, they subsist on fundraising efforts, right? Like they, it requires like a lot of people donating money to these organizations to keep them afloat. And so the inference really is that, is, is it possible?

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  That some of these animal agriculture companies, some of the big food companies or the big food lobby has contributed to the Green Pieces of the world in such a way to sort of say, hey, you know, we're funding you like you can't like, you know, undercut our bottom line or or speak out of school about what we're doing.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  And when we started filming, I don't know ironically, not ironically, Greenpeace had a big campaign, just totally showcasing that KFC had these buckets that weren't rainforest that were rainforest friendly that they weren't, you know, the rainforest was not tearing down. Here's KFC.

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  They should be given a medal because they're using paper that was not from the rainforest.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  I mean, it was truly a promotional. It was the front, front homepage of Greenpeace's website. And it was, yeah, that they don't use, they don't source paper pulp from rainforests in Indonesia.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  This is KFC, who's conglomerate of Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Pizza Hut.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  And they're essentially promoting that they don't use rainforest.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Congratulating them.

• 29:27Speaker 02

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

• 30:12Speaker 02

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

• 30:35Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean if their whole sort of mission is we're here to save the planet, but they're not willing to look at the one thing that seemingly, at least according to the statistics that you bring up in the movie, really is the most, you know, the largest contributor to the problems that we're experiencing and will continue to experience, then there's something concerning about that.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Something fishy.

• 30:58Rich Roll?

  But it's like anathema, I mean, you're, you know, that's, it's a bold statement to kind of come out and go, you know, hey, Greenpeace is, you know, they're not, they're, they're focused on the wrong things.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the thing with, you know, with all these organizations, they are doing good things, you know, it's like talking about any of the issues that they're talking about, it's important and it's, it's all needed and we applaud them for doing that. But if you're misdirecting people, if you're hiding information, that's, that's a problem.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  Do you think it is a conscious effort, or is it laziness, or is it fear? Like, what do you think, I mean, if you had to guess?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Well, an example, you know, we've mentioned Greenpeace a lot, but, um, you know, an example is Rainforest Action Network. They have four, if you go on their homepage, they have four major campaigns. This is Rainforest Action Network. Uh, four campaigns and not one of the four is animal agriculture. They have...

• 31:50Rich Roll?

  Palm oil.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Palm oil is number one.

• 31:53Rich Roll?

  Palm oil's a big deal though, is it not?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  It is, we have a comparison.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so palm oil, here's a perfect one. So, but, you know, going back to Rainforest Action Network.

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  Cause I, that's my, I just walk around thinking palm oil's a big problem with the rainforest. Like, I just, I don't know why I think that, but that's what's in my mind.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  And, and absolutely. Palm oil, if you look at any of the large environmental organizations, particularly ones that focus on rainforest protection, they're going to talk about palm oil. And palm oil is causing huge devastation in Indonesian rainforest in particular. They clear massive areas, you know, traditional orangutan habitat for growing palm. But then again, you put it in comparison. Well, most, a huge percentage of palm oil is actually fed to livestock. So that's first and foremost, we need to talk about that.

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  Interesting. I, I just assumed it was like for peanut butter.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, right?

• 32:36Rich Roll?

  Or candy, right?

• 32:38Speaker 01

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

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Of all rainforest.

• 32:56Speaker 01

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

• 33:16Rich Roll?

  So on this website, there's the four things, the four-pronged attack or whatever, palm oil and whatever the other three are, but the point being that animal agriculture is nowhere to be found.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Nowhere to be found and come on, this is a simple Google search where we find a lot of this information. I think a lot of people would already know about animal agriculture would know, the general public, I think, is not the leading cause, one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction. But then for them to not have that as one of their four, it's not even one of their top two, but it was coal.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Fracking.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Fracking, tar sands, tar sands was above it.

• 33:59Rich Roll?

  What is tar sands?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  So tar sands is in British Columbia, so it's not even near the rainforest. Why would a rainforest organization focus on this and not focus on cattle? That's part of the issue too. But it's pulling oil out of northern Alberta's shale. It's hugely toxic, very destructive. But again, if you're a rainforest organization, let's talk about the leading cause of rainforest destruction.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  And why would you not have that on there?

• 34:27Rich Roll?

  Right, so it's hard not to make the leap that they're in the back pocket of whatever lobbying group or special interest group. Is there a way? There's got to be a way to track the money, though. Can't you do some sort of forensic accounting or forensic investigation into how these companies are getting funded? Is any of that public record or are they allowed to keep that private?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  So some of it's public record. Some of them, people, large corporations can make contributions through basically a third-party donor. We looked into as much as we could. We had a very limited budget and very limited time on this film. There are organizations like World Wildlife Fund who receive contributions, pretty major contributions from the agricultural industry. And they, World Wildlife Fund will talk about animal agriculture and they'll talk about how it's destroying habitat and then their solutions are, we need more factory farms.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  And we explore, we actually have a part where we finally get an interview with the countries, I don't know about the world, with the US's, I think, biggest animal agriculture lobby group, Animal Agriculture Alliance. And we ask some of these questions. It's a very interesting part in the film where, you know, you have to watch it to see the reaction when we say straight up, you know, do you, do you support any of these organizations? Have you ever given money to Greenpeace? And, you know, you have to watch the film to see the reaction and see what you take away from it.

• 35:47Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. What about the argument that an organization, at least, you know, the larger environmental organizations can be more impactful if they are working within the system as opposed to being like an outlier and taking a really hardcore stand on something that isn't going to happen overnight? So, for example, like saying, listen, you know, animal agriculture exists. It's part of our reality. It's not going away overnight. The only way to start to address this is to cooperate with the industry itself in a way that we can come to some kind of consensus about how to decelerate what we're doing.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  You know, if that was the approach they were taking, that would be, would be something. But they're not even addressing it, you know, not even, you know, it's like, you know, we talked to Sierra Club and they said, they, you know, we're going to release extended interviews eventually, but, you know, basically, it comes down to, comes down to money. The return on investment for, you put a million dollars into a coal campaign and the return that you're going to get versus a million dollars into an anti-meat campaign and the return you're going to get. We're not asking any of these organizations to put a million dollars into a anti-meat campaign. Just put it on your website, you know? It, it doesn't cost anything. Just, just make the information available. Hey, the, one of the best things you can do to help the planet is reduce your animal protein consumption.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  And we have a part in the film where we compare it to the American Lung association, you know, lung association. It's as if they were focusing on these side things like asbestos, but completely ignoring cigarette smoking. Because, you know, there's no way people are gonna... And, you know, that was a reality about 10, 20 years ago, or 20 or so years ago. Oh, we'll never get rid of smoking in public places.

• 37:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, don't even bother.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Don't even bother. And, you know, for them not to address cigarette smoking and putting that to the side. And it's almost like diverting it to these other things by hiding, you know, they just say the big elephant in the room. And so, how did they work with the tobacco companies? Well, it was pretty straight up. It was, you know, essentially, put warning labels on your cigarettes. Huge taxes, as probably David was mentioning, meat taxes, animal agriculture taxes. So, there's a conversation. Will animal agriculture want to have that conversation? But is it necessary is the question.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, but there are some organizations who actually are talking about this. There's some real champions. There's a Center for Biological Diversity. They've launched a campaign recently called Take Extinction Off Your Plate. And where they talk about reducing and elimination of animal protein from your diet. So, there's organizations who are successful in doing this. You know, the Western Watershed Project. There's an organization who actually talks about the damage that, you know, cattle grazing is having on western lands in the United States.

• 38:35Rich Roll?

  And did you ask any of these organizations, like, how come the Sierra Clubs and the Green Pieces of the world won't talk about it? I mean, did they have a response to that?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  You know, we didn't have a chance to interview either of those organizations because of time restraints. But from the advocates that we did talk to, you know, there's a lot of speculation. And that's the truth is, is that there's... We don't necessarily have a hard-cut answer. Because I think it's, you know, it's different for each organization, different for, you know, individuals. So, I think there's a lot of things at play.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  What is going on legislatively like on Capitol Hill currently with respect to trying to address some of these animal agriculture issues that are coming up? I mean, are you versed in that?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, what's what we're facing right now? There's a series of laws throughout a number of states in the country. They're called ag gag laws, which basically they criminalize exposing what farms are doing, whether that's the atrocities are committing against the environment or against the animals themselves. And this is First Amendment protected activities, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, repression, because this industry is very threatened by undercover investigations. They're threatened by films like ours that expose the truth. And so they're pushing their state legislators to run through these laws that criminalize documenting.

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  Right. And for the listener out there who may not have any familiarity with what an ag gag law is, I mean, essentially it forbids you by law to go into any of these food production companies and film anything or to get a job there under kind of false pretenses, right?

• 40:22Speaker 01

  And it actually goes one step further for a lot of the states is that you can't even film from public lands. So you're standing on a public road and filming onto a farm. That's actually illegal in many states.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  Right. That's crazy because if you contrast that with like paparazzi laws that are so liberal and completely insane, you know, living in Los Angeles and kind of seeing how that business operates, they have complete latitude to wreak havoc on people's lives because they're standing on public property or they're out in the public. And so the fact that you could stand on public land and get out your iPhone and film what's going on, you know, 100 yards away on some farm and that's illegal, is that a felony?

• 41:04Speaker 01

  It's not a felony, but you know, there have been people arrested. There was a person arrested in Utah for filming a slaughterhouse from public land. There was a National Geographic photographer who was arrested for flying over and taking pictures. Of feedlots in Kansas.

• 41:20Rich Roll?

  And it doesn't matter what your intent is, right? It's not tied to like some kind of malevolent intent.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:27Rich Roll?

  And that's crazy. I mean, this has got to go before the Supreme Court because it's so clearly unconstitutional in my mind.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and too, where is the motivation of these farms? Why would they not want us to see? And then the reason is, is they know when we see the horrors that are happening on these farms, we're all appalled by it and we don't want to support it. So it's bad for business.

• 41:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not even a question of legality versus illegality in terms of their practices. It's just, it's just sort of trying to immunize public perception from the reality of how food arrives on our plate. Because it goes back to Upton Sinclair, really. I mean, and what he kind of talked about with how hot dogs are made back in the 20s. Or, you know, like if you want to eat this food, then you should just, you should go to the factory and see how it's done. And if you're cool with that, then knock yourself out. But most people, I think, because, you know, we're by our nature compassionate and, you know, if we're given the opportunity to kind of peel back the curtain and see it, I think a lot of people would look at it differently and they can't risk that.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think you got to the heart of it is that out of our nature, we are compassionate. We're very compassionate people. We don't like the idea that we're causing harm to other beings or the planet. And so, yeah, these things have to be hidden. But the truth is, is we're compassionate. We can't, we can't hide from this stuff and we can't allow it to be hidden. We've got to see the truth and we've got to see what's going on that. Because if we're supporting it, that's, we're responsible for it.

• 42:53Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  So.

• 42:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, there's got to be some kind of test case that can kind of go up the court system on this because it'll be really interesting to see how that shakes down. And so when you think about like, I mean, when you talk, when you use the word conspiracy, it's like, how do these ag gag laws even come into, how do they even get passed? Like, it's kind of insane. It's almost like, it almost feels like it comes out of some bizarre dictatorial society. Like, how could this law get passed in a democratic country? Where, you know, it's just bizarre to me.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  There's a phenomenal book written by Will Potter called Green is the New Red. And it talks about just that whole issue of the repression that environmental activists and animal rights activists have faced. And then, yeah, these shaping of legislation to criminalize fully legal, totally protected under the Constitution, forms of activism.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  And what did, and he wills and he has a nice part in the film.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  He's great in the movie, yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  And also Howard, Howard Lyman, who got sued with Oprah Winfrey by the Texas.

• 43:51Rich Roll?

  Right. So tell that story for people who might not remember what went down.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  I think, believe 95, about 20 years ago, Howard Lyman got sued by the tax cattlemen?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, Texas cattlemen.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  A group of Texas cattlemen got together and sued him and Oprah Winfrey for him going on Oprah Winfrey's show by just telling the truth. At that time, mad cow disease was a big, hot topic, and he was explaining what cows got fed sometimes. And just by telling the truth, it affected, according to them, affected the profits of beef.

• 44:23Rich Roll?

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

• 44:39Speaker 02

  "I'm not gonna have another hamburger." I think overnight, the.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, she has the ability to impact the entire industry through that one statement.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  One, one statement, and just her, what she felt at that time. And they, they spent the next four to five years in litigation, hundreds of thousands of dollars, I believe, with Oprah, it was over a million dollars.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  So she got sued, her show got sued, and Howard got sued for libel? Or what was the cause of action?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  There's a number of states that have what are food libel laws, which basically say it's illegal to say something you know to be false against a perishable commodity. And this is to protect, you know, industries. It's, they're pretty unconstitutional at the base. If you're lying about something, totally, that's not okay. You can't lie about things, and that's, that's a problem. But when you say something that's totally truthful, you're just telling the truth.

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, truth is the ultimate defense, the libel, every time.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's the reason why Howard and Oprah were eventually found innocent. The, you know, the case was dismissed.

• 45:37Rich Roll?

  But ever since then, she's kind of shied away from this kind of issue.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  And absolutely, people, it has stayed in our collective consciousness as a society, where people don't talk about it. Is that one of the reasons?

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  Well, they changed the name of mad cow, right? Like, would it?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Spun to a form and stuff.

• 45:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, whatever, like, suddenly, like, mad cow is taken out of the vernacular.

• 45:55Speaker 02

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

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a trip. So for when he says that, basically, is that with respect only to food industries? Like if he's telling the truth and that has a negative impact on business, then he can be convicted of what? Like that seems crazy. So how does that work?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  There was a law passed a few years ago called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, and it was part of the Patriot Act, which basically says to disrupt the business of an animal enterprise, whether that's a farm, or a laboratory, or anyone who's using animals for profit, is committing an act of terrorism.

• 47:10Rich Roll?

  Right. So that's using a very liberal interpretation of the word disrupt? Because if words can disrupt, then anything can disrupt. I mean, I would imagine it's bizarre that that would be under the Patriot Act, because the only sort of logical connection would be if terrorists were trying to, you know, screw with our food system at its core, right? But that can be applicable to so many things if that language is construed broadly.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Well, the laws were actually manufactured to silence anti-vivis section activists. There was a very successful campaign, the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty Campaign.

• 47:44Rich Roll?

  And that has a lot to do with the Patriot Act, right?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And there was activists who were who were standing up against the animal testing. And so the pharmaceutical industry said, hey, we're going to create a law that's going to criminalize their legal activism. But then because it's animal enterprise, again, that reaches to food production, use any industry that profits from animals. So, yeah, and there have been people who have been imprisoned for, under that law. So that is something that we went up against, but the truth-

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  So Keegan, essentially by doing this podcast right now and putting it out there, are we going to be, are we guilty of violating this law if suddenly one listener out there decides that they're going to reduce their meat consumption by 1%? We've negatively impacted the business.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  I'm sure you could argue that, yeah, being a vegetarian or vegan is disrupting the business of animal enterprise. I mean, that's the whole-

• 48:34Rich Roll?

  I have to rethink my whole way I'm living my life, I think.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  We'll have to do this podcast from Cuba.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I mean, it's very Orwellian. And that's the scary thing is that how did we get to this place? And the truth is, we got to this place because people weren't willing to speak up. And we can't be afraid.

• 48:49Rich Roll?

  It's this, it's almost like this on a, you know, it has this weird kind of Snowden allegory to it, you know?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  It's kind of, even what he said, I saw in a recent interview with him. You know, there's fear, save from doing the podcast or making a film. And you know, there's personal fear that you have. But then what supersedes that is the global fear that if we don't address these huge, especially something like this huge industry of animal agriculture and do something soon, the global fear of what's going to happen to us globally way supersedes any one of us. And that's the thing. So one of us is, what is one of us? It's so much bigger than any one of us.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  Right. And, you know, before I watched the film and I was kind of reading on your Kickstarter page and how you guys wanted to kind of be under the radar and you didn't really want to speak to the contents of the film too much because you didn't want to have to weather any reprisals or anything like that. And I'm like, oh, come on, that sounds a little dramatic, you know? And then I watched it, I'm like, oh, I get it. And especially at the end, when, you know, I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but when Howard Lyman's like, you know, you guys sure you want to do this? Like, do you know what you're stepping into here? Like, you better be ready to like, you know? Get your shoes muddy, you know, if you're gonna take this fight on and that's some scary shit, man. So, you know, have you guys had moments where you're waking up in the middle of the night,

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  thinking, do we really want to do this? Or what have we really bitten off here? What are we really saying? What is our risk? I mean, if these laws are, if it's, if it's possible to construe these laws so broadly, like there's, you know, there's some, you know, are you exposed? Do you think about that?

• 50:25Speaker 02

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

• 50:56Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and what was, what was the mental calculus that made you guys say, no, we're gonna, we're gonna take, we're gonna keep going?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  What I was saying before is that it's, we have to. I mean, if, say, we don't do anything, in 10, 20 years, no one says anything, we're not gonna be around anyway. So, so it's just the one individual, it's the, the global community of what we have to do supersedes any fear that I could have for myself, or that we could have for ourselves. It's like, we have no choice, kind of.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then the truth is, is if we stayed silent because of fear, we would be just as bad as these organizations that are staying silent. You know, we can't, we can't fall into that. It's just, we don't have, we, it's, we have a moral imperative to speak up. And that's, that's really what it comes down to. So you have to listen to your heart and not to your, you know, that fear, that little, little voice.

• 51:44Rich Roll?

  And what is your heart telling you about the future? I mean, are you guys optimistic?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a great thing about the film, too, as you saw, is, is it was very, very scary. I mean, kind of giving quite a bit away of the film, but. And then all of a sudden, the light came on, we continued on, and then we just see how fast this shift is happening, because it is being done. It's not, it's not happening in the future, the near future, it's already happening. You know, we interview these incredible companies, Beyond Meat, Beyond Egg, these vegan agriculture, where they don't even use animal compost, these just thriving businesses being funded by Bill Gates and, you know, Biz Stone, and you see everywhere around you, all these new restaurants opening up,

• 52:28Speaker 02

  just the consciousness that is happening so fast now, that, that I am just over elated how, how fast the shift is happening, and a lot of it already has happened. And now, in a way, it's kind of fun to enjoy the ride, because it's already happened. You're either part of the antiquated, antiquated barbaric system, or you're part of this new, exciting dynamic of, you know, compassion and true humanity coming together for this next generation, this next evolution that we've been waiting for.

• 52:55Rich Roll?

  That was beautifully put. I would have, I mean, I, I am thinking the same thing. I would not have articulated it that well, so thank you for that. But yeah, I mean, it's, even in the last two years, three years, four years, what you see around is completely different than what it was a couple of years ago. Like, yeah, like the Beyond Eggs, the guys at Beyond Eggs, and the guys at Beyond Meat, and, and the fact that, that Silicon Valley and the tech sector has gotten interested and invested in this. They don't do that out of, you know, because they think it's, you know, sort of, it's out of the goodness of their heart. Like, they realize, like, this is where things are moving. Like, they go where the trends are, and this is where people are going, that's, this is where the

• 53:38Rich Roll?

  future of our country lies. And to see that happening and unfolding so quickly is pretty encouraging, I think.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, your, your show and your talks are a perfect example of that. You know, it's that there's a reason why, you know, you have a top rated podcast, it's because this is, this is an issue that's very important, and it's just growing.

• 53:57Rich Roll?

  People, well, people want the truth, and we were talking about this at lunch today. You know, sort of as we get more and more, as we spend more and more time getting our information online as opposed to from the nightly news or, you know, the AM radio or what have you, we've become much more finely attuned. Our bullshit meters are like super sharp, right? So we know when we're being marketed to or lied to or pitched to. And I think people can just see through it, you know, and there's a desire and an interest in, in, in really kind of tapping into something more authentic, something more sustainable, where you know it's real and you know it's the truth and you just can't be in denial

• 54:36Rich Roll?

  about it anymore. And I think that as these, you know, covers continue to get pulled, that, that things are going to continue to change. But what's great is that we're providing these awesome opportunities and alternatives. Like, it's not like, oh, no, you know, I can't eat at KFC anymore. What am I going to do? It's like, oh, well, look, there's Cafe Gratitude. That place tastes amazing.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  If you can get in, you can wait the line.

• 55:00Rich Roll?

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

• 55:32Speaker 02

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

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, well, and truly the way our, our culture is erected and, and functions, that's the only way things are going to change, is if it's good business to change, you know? And the fact that it is now good business to be that way, that is powerful.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Hampton Creek Foods, who produces the Beyond Egg product.

• 56:20Rich Roll?

  Josh Tetrick.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's their whole model. It's 10x. It's got to be 10 times cheaper, 10 times more sustainable, 10 times healthier. And they're doing it. They're showing that, hey, you can produce an egg substitute, an egg product that's 10 times cheaper than eggs. So it's not like this is an elitist thing. This is something that makes business sense that everyone in the world could potentially have. That's real solutions. That's not, again, some elitist vegan thing. That's a real solution for the mass populace, and that's what we need.

• 56:51Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. All right, so it's cow-spiracy. It's not chicken-spiracy. So is it just about the cows? Like, is it just beef?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Chicken-spiracy just wasn't as catchy.

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I kind of like that.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  One of our taglines.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  That's the second movie?

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Our tagline with the sustainability secret, for a while it was cows, chickens...

• 57:12Speaker 01

  It was cow-spiracy.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Cows, chickens, and other fishy business.

• 57:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Pigs, chickens, and other fishy business. But, no, it's the entire animal agriculture industry that...

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, again, it goes into...

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  What about somebody who says, "Well, I don't eat beef because I don't want to participate in that, but I need my salmon, or I have chicken once in a while. It's healthier for you."

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at...

• 57:36Rich Roll?

  How do the numbers break down on that?

• 57:37Speaker 01

  You know, it is the least sustainable meat you could eat, relatively sustainable, would be beef.

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  Beef.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  But as far as greenhouse gases, sheep produce more greenhouse gases per pound of their flesh than cows do. Yeah, chickens are going to be more sustainable, but it's a relative sustainable. Can everybody on the planet eat as much chicken as people in the United States are? No. There's not enough land. There's still about a 4 to 1 ratio for the pound of... 4 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of chicken. Well, that's 4 pounds of grain that hungry people could be eating. We're throwing away 3 pounds of grain, just throwing it away, so we can produce animal protein that's killing us. So on a global scale, and I think that's when we have to think about sustainability, people will constantly say, "Well, this is sustainable." Look at it global. 7 billion people. Can 7 billion people get away with doing that? And the answer is no. The only way we're going to

• 58:29Speaker 01

  do it... There's not enough land on this planet. Right now, it takes... Right now, there's less than an acre of land per person, a farmable land per person on the planet. And it takes upwards of 3 acres to produce the food that the average American who eats meat. You know, needs.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  Right. So if we continue on this track and we make no changes and the population, the global population continues to grow at the rate that it's growing, and we're just going to continue to feed people with this system that we have set up, like, how much longer would we be able to do this before there's just either no water left or no land left, or we reach some sort of cataclysmic, you know, endpoint?

• 59:08Speaker 02

  California, we don't have much water left.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's, the numbers vary. I mean, they're saying within the next 10 years, you know, upwards of 60% of Eastern Africa's population won't have enough water to meet their food demands. When people don't have enough water to grow their food, you're going to have massive violent wars. Hungry people are dangerous people.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  The part of the problem, though, is that that's so far away. So we're here in California, and it's cheap. You know, you go to the supermarket, or you can go to fast food, and meat is cheap. So what's the problem? You know what I mean? It's very difficult to connect the dots and to see that there's something wrong when it seems to be functioning perfectly fine.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so that, that cheap, you know, as David Simon would say, you know, let, let the Tea Party half their way, and let's get rid of federal subsidies, and we'll see what happens to the price of, of a hamburger. That 99 cent hamburger is not going to be 99 cents anymore when it doesn't have federal subsidies behind it. It's going to be a, you know, $7, $11 hamburger.

• 1:00:10Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I'm not, I'm not a Tea Party guy, but that's not such a bad idea, right?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Right. You know, again, like, let's look at what is the true cost of it. And then, you know, as far as cheap, well, how cheap is it when we're paying for, you know, trillions of dollars in healthcare every year? You know, how cheap is it when we're, you know, polluting the water that we all have to drink? You know, it's not cheap. There's nothing cheap about it. It's the most expensive destructive thing we could possibly do.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  And we explore into, let's say, like, grass-fed beef where, you know...

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  That's what I want to talk about next, actually.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  People think that's more sustainable, but it takes so much land for grass-fed beef compared to factory, factory farm beef. It just does. It takes a lot of, I believe, with the factory farm, what is it, two acres per every cow, and grass-fed, it takes... Takes upwards upwards of even in the film, a farmer said upwards of fifty twenty to fifty acres. Imagine fifty acres for one cow. So when people talk about sustainable, oh, I have grass fed beef, it's not sustainable. It's privilegable. You can afford this and you have some access to this ridiculously huge, huge farm that's taking up all the wildlife. So all the wildlife is being shut out of these huge grass fed operations with fences surrounding thousands,

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  tens of thousands of acres. So they can have their grass fed beef and think that they're being sustainable and really, you know, it's privilegable and the entire planet, the US alone, if the US alone, we have a stat in the film, if the US alone decided to eat all their meat was grass fed beef, it would take every square inch up into Canada, every square inch of the entire North America of US, all the way down to Central America into Brazil, just to feed the US demand on meat if it was all grass fed beef. That's how much land it takes.

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's really not, I mean, it seems to me that, yeah, it's, I think that's a great word, privilegable. You know, because people will say, well, it's, it's grass fed. So it's almost like, oh, I feel better about my choice because the carbon footprint is less if it's local. Right? So I can feel good about that and I can feel good from an ethical point of view because these animals are having a little bit more of an enjoyable life experience before they're, before they arrive on my plate. But where do we, where's the divining line between kind of just a nice story or denial and the truth?

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  Because I think that, I mean, is, is grass fed, is that, is that a, a term that is legally defined? Because it seems like there's a, a pretty wide spectrum of what constitutes grass fed.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  As far as I know, there's not, I mean, there's, you know, USDA. Organic certification, but as far as grass fed, I don't think there's actually legally, legal definitions of it. And the truth is too, almost all grass fed cows are actually finished in feedlots. So they live 80% of their life on grass and then the last, you know, number of months that they're living, eating corn in a concentrated.

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that. So they get, they get relocated from the nice pasture to some other kind of last stop on the train?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  They call it finishing.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  It's like the very end of Hansel and Gretel, the last couple, couple hours of binging on a bunch of food before they get.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  I mean, and it really is, you know, Hansel and Gretel is, is the perfect example is that, you know, people will also go to the humane aspect. Well, it's more humane. Okay, maybe it's not sustainable, but it's more humane. It's like, well, what's humane about like treating an animal nicely and fanning them up and then killing them? There's nothing really that humane about that.

• 1:03:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, ultimately the end game is the same. Although I will say that the grass fed farm that you visit in the film, that did look like a pretty nice farm.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Your entire two years.

• 1:03:51Rich Roll?

  It was huge.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  It was unbelievably, 4,500 acres to feed, I think only what 236 people or a couple hundred people.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, about, about 70 people.

• 1:04:02Rich Roll?

  Where, was that in Northern California?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Northern California in perfect conditions where it was always a certain humidity and you know, it was lush, but you know, you can't have that in Nevada and most places, Eastern California. You can only have this in certain locations. And that's the other part of it too. You can't have this everywhere. And then, you know, with the grass fed and Keegan could talk about this, what really affected me was how the wildlife is affected by, by say, grass fed beef. You want to?

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so we have, I think this is a shocking part for, of the film was the impact of cattle ranching on the west and how it affects wildlife like wild horses. Right now, the government is rounding up wild horses en masse and putting them in concentrated feeding operations. Over 50,000 wild horses actually right now are in confinement. There's more wild horses in captivity than there are free on the range.

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  Why are they rounding them up?

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  put pressure on the BLM and say, hey, the horses are eating what my cows should be eating. So the government, instead of saying, yeah, get your cows off the land, they take the horses off.

• 1:05:47Rich Roll?

  And what do they do with the horses?

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  So there's a law that protects wild horses in burrows, that they can't be slaughtered. So they stay in these feed lots, and they try and adopt some of them out, but you're not going to adopt out 50,000. So they can't legally sell them to kill buyers, but there was a report came out last year, ProPublica, that exposed that a number of horses were being sold to slaughter, and they were being sold to kill buyers who then would drive the horses from the United States into Mexico where you can legally slaughter horses for human consumption. So, you know, wild horses, people care deeply about wild horses. They care deeply about wolves. Wolves are being decimated because of cattle ranching. You know, the wolves prey on cattle sometimes. And so rancher calls up, you know, the Department of Agriculture and says, one of my cows was attacked by a wolf, and they'll come out

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  and they'll annihilate the entire pack.

• 1:06:36Rich Roll?

  So they won't, there's no legal requirement to protect the wolves, to relocate them humanely? They're allowed to just open fire on the wolves?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  There used to be under, when the wolves were listed as an endangered species, they were protected and they couldn't be killed. Now they've come off the endangered species, actually the day that the wolves came off the endangered species list, in Idaho, they opened up hunting for, they offered the first hunting permits for wolves.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  And there's all these

• 1:07:06Rich Roll?

  You know, that's like an alcoholic celebrating a year of sobriety by getting drunk. Exactly.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  That's a perfect analogy.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  And there's all these, with these environmental groups, going back to them, there's all these campaigns where they make a lot, because I get them in the mail. There's a picture of a wolf, "Let's save the wolves, let's save the wolves, give us money." And I literally, you know, growing up, never even thought about, "Okay, I'll give you money without..." Like, "Why are the wolves gone?" And then to find out, this is why the wolves are being decimated. You know, it's because these, a lot of times, the grass-fed beef operations, the ranchers will go and have them killed. And so...

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  And this goes for, you know, pretty much all large predators, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, all the way down to ravens. You know, there's this massive extermination of ravens in Idaho earlier, or last year. And again, it was because they said, "Oh, well, they're preying on livestock." Ravens.

• 1:07:59Rich Roll?

  All right, so, so, grass-fed ranching, no bueno.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and...

• 1:08:04Rich Roll?

  And the water consumption, how does that compare with? Because when I think about just sort of the economics of scaling up any business, you know, the idea is that you achieve efficiencies, right? Like, you actually start to save resources per item because you're so scaled up. But it doesn't seem to really function that way with, with factory-farmed livestock.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it is vastly more efficient to, to raise animals in high-intensity concentration. To feed cows, grains, is way more efficient. So, there is that when we compare it to grass-fed. It's extremely destructive to the planet, but it's more efficient. And, you know, livestock lobby groups say that, you know, it's more efficient.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  It's not going to... We're not going to feed the world that way, though. I mean, we're not going to feed the world, you know... In any sort of respect to the environment or to human health by raising animals in any manner.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  And you know with the water, no matter where you, if a cow is in factory fed, or if a cow is grass fed, or wherever, a cow drinks around 35 gallons of water, no matter where you put them. There's 1.5 billion cows on the planet versus around 7 billion humans. So what's that, one out of four, one out of five humans as a cow, yet humans only drink...

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  About 7 billion gallons of water.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a cow...

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  You know, 100, you know, we're talking about hundreds of millions of gallons, you know, it's, it's...

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Billions.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Billions, yeah. I mean, it's just, it is astronomical, the amount of water resources that go into feeding these animals.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  And that doesn't, that doesn't even include raising all the crops and all the feed of the 150 pounds of food that a cow eats every single day. Imagine how much water is being used to grill that food. So they're just, I love, you know, I love cows, I love the animals, but in a way, they're giant termites, you know, just kind of eating up the planet where, just, you know, giant middlemen, where we could be having these resources ourselves and back to the wildlife.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  So, we were talking earlier about how, you know, we're collectively optimistic, and you know, you feel like we've already passed this tipping point, but what do the numbers say in terms of kind of where we're heading? I mean, is this livestock agriculture continuing to expand, or is it starting to contract in response to these trends that are starting to occur?

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Well, so, some good trends that are happening is actually the US demand on meat is lowering. And you know, the US is such the world leader for so many reasons, you know, we just are for fashion, for trends. And so what has been happening on the bad side is places like China, they're finally starting to get the money and the influence of the US is kind of pouring on them, so their demand is getting... Much higher, but we're the world leaders as far as social change and all these things. And and the good news is that our demand on dairy and beef is is is lower. So so that's the future. That's where the tipping point already has happened. And that's a really good trend that I see.

• 1:11:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's easy to be, and I'm guilty of this, like, very provincial, like, oh, there's cafe gratitude. Like, we're heading in the right direction with this idea that, like, whatever the United States does, like, that's gonna solve the problem or not, and completely overlooking the fact that, like, China and India are on a completely different program. You know, and unless unless we're, you know, of a collective united front, like, how much good are we really gonna do? Other than setting this example? I mean, as those countries continue to industrialize and and reach a level of prosperity that historically they haven't, you know, they're saying, screw you, like, we're it's now it's our time. We want to be able to enjoy all these things you've been enjoying.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  But that's the thing is, I believe US is so influential from, you know, from again, from fashion to music to everything. If they all sudden start seeing that, wow, the US has started doing these major changes. They're gonna everyone's gonna start emulating us like they always have been doing. And so, you know, very soon, as already said, the tipping point's already kind of happened. The truth is out there. Then they're gonna be like, oh, well, that was yesterday where they're all eating meat and dairy. Now, let's do the new cool thing and really care about the planet. And so I believe we'll continue to be world leaders in that way, and and they will follow suit.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  The other part of it is that we wanted to make this film as accessible as possible. So part of our, you know, funding campaign was to raise money to have the film translated and dubbed in multiple languages. So we're actually in the process right now of having the film dubbed into Mandarin and Hindi. And we'd like to have more languages spoken in China and India to make the film as accessible as possible. So people there can be as as informed as possible.

• 1:12:57Rich Roll?

  Right, and you have all of your Kickstarter contributors to thank for that, right? Which was awesome. Like, you guys did a great job in raising, you know, in raising money online. You like doubled your goal, right?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  It was pretty phenomenal. We launched a Indiegogo campaign.

• 1:13:11Rich Roll?

  I keep saying Kickstarter, but it's Indiegogo.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  We launched that campaign on Earth Day, and we reached our initial goal of $54,000 in six days, which was just phenomenal. We went on to raising over $117,000 online.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  In 44 days. And again, yeah, I mean, those 1,400-plus supporters, it's just been absolutely amazing. And these are supporters from all around the world. They are from India and from China and from Dubai and from all over Europe and Australia and Taiwan. I mean, everywhere in the world, there's people who say, yes, this is here is a solution, here is an answer, here's someone, here's people who are actually saying what needs to be said. And they're all lending their voices to that. So it's exciting. You know, Kip has said a number of times, we made a movie and now there's people making a movement. And that's, that's exciting.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. And, and just in case we didn't make it abundantly clear, the real solution here is if you really want to take a stand for the sustainability of the planet, you've got to stop eating these animal products and adopt a plant-based approach to your life and your diet, right? And so how did the numbers break down in terms of water usage and greenhouse gas emissions, et cetera, when, you know, when you compare somebody who is on a plant-based diet versus somebody who's eating the standard American diet? I mean, are there stats on that?

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and for the average American, you'd save about, about 1,500 gallons of water per day. I think it's around 20.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  1,500, 1,500 gallons. That's a long shower, man. It's a lot of water.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and that's per day, just from switching from, you know, average American meat diet to a plant-based diet. I think it's upwards around 20 pounds of CO2 equivalent per day. You know, I think somewhere in

• 1:14:59Rich Roll?

  Forested land.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's something like 60 square feet of forested land per day. You know, then you think about that and just visualize those numbers that every single day by eating meat, dairy and eggs, you're destroying, just decimating. And not to say that a plant-based diet doesn't have its downsides as well, because, you know, animal agriculture for, or agriculture to feed 7 billion people is

• 1:15:21Rich Roll?

  Still going to have a deleterious effect on the planet.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  It is. But if we reduced, you know, right now, you know, about 70% of all the world's grain are fed to livestock, and that's 70% of all the world's farmland is dedicated to raising food for livestock. So if we get lower meat consumption, we can allow all these fields of genetically engineered corn and soybean to revert back to forest. You know, that's a, we can, you know.

• 1:15:45Rich Roll?

  Now you're, now you're just talking crazy.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  You know, entire, and it's happened. You can look at places in the world-

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  Do you think the good senator from Iowa is gonna allow that to stand for one minute?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Alright, you know, when people start valuing ecosystems more than, you know, dollars in their bank account, I think then, you know, we'll be on the right path. And it is happening, you know, it's like, things are changing. And people are waking up, and the truth is that we don't really have a choice. If we're interested in preserving the planet and any semblance of what we have today, for ourselves, or for our children, or our grandchildren, we have to make radical changes. There's no other choice.

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  And it's connecting the dots, seeing what's happening so fast, is seeing what our diet, what our food choice is, what it affects. So, historically, we ate for ourselves, for our own nutrition, for ourselves, or even for our family. And a good analogy we have in the film is, again, going back to smoking, there's secondhand smoking. When you're smoking yourself, you know, if you're in a car and you're at home, you're affecting the other people, your family members around you. But for eating, called secondhand eating, and your choice that you make not only affects your local community, your family, it affects everyone on the entire planet. And that's where I really have to look at your food choices, it's secondhand eating, not only eating for yourselves, but eating for others.

• 1:17:00Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. I've never heard that term before. But I think it dovetails nicely into, did you come up with that one? Is that yours?

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Kip Koin's quite a number of-

• 1:17:11Rich Roll?

  Secondhand eating?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  Of brilliant, brilliant terms.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Well, we kept on coming back to smoking, like, oh, smoking could never be taken. I was like, come on.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  Secondhand eating.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  I just remember-

• 1:17:18Rich Roll?

  It's like conscious uncoupling. That one, like, might come back and bite you. Secondhand eating. I don't know, I'm gonna play with that one. But it does dovetail nicely into the idea of conscious capitalism. Like, whether you're buying a pair of Tom's shoes because you know another pair of shoes is gonna get donated to somebody, or wearing, you know, buying Warby Parker glasses because they donate a pair of glasses. Like, you could, the point of feeling good about your purchase, like, you're contributing to something more than just whatever you selfishly are trying to acquire. If we can create that consciousness and infuse our food system with that same kind of mentality- I think that that would be a step in the right direction.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, truly coming into that vision where we really are one living as a family on this planet. And you're we're just one part of an organism all together. And, you know, my nourishment, sure, that's one part of a cell of this entire organism. But what about these other cells around me? And if there's there's a cancer in another part of the country. Well, that's part of us as an entire species together. And that's going to eventually affect me. So, you know, I need to plan ahead and proactively eat for, you know, someone across the entire planet. Because realizing we're all connected.

• 1:18:32Rich Roll?

  Right. And now we're gonna go sing kumbaya.

• 1:18:37Rich Roll?

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

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  You know, we we we touch on that in the film is is just showing what are the impacts? And what does it mean to you? And what does it mean to us as a society? But, yeah, on a personal level, you know, what is this was this really mean? And for very selfish reasons, we have to change. Because there's, you know, so here, this is an easy one. People don't want to this summer in California, there's going to be water restrictions. They're gonna, you know, limit whether you can water your lawn or not. People don't like that. So it's, okay, lower your meat consumption.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  People really don't like that.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, lower your meat consumption. You can water your lawn as much as you want, all day long, if you wanted. Just lower your meat consumption.

• 1:19:49Rich Roll?

  Did you guys see any of what Shane Smith is doing at Vice? Like, on some of these environmental pieces that he's been doing recently? And he seems to be coming from a very pessimistic point of view, like, it's too late. Like, we're past the point of no return.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  You know, there's doing research on this film. It is very daunting, what we're facing. We are in dire times. And it's the truth is that it's extremely scary. If we can't stop what we're doing, there is no hope. If we can change how we're doing things, we can at very least slow things down. We can buy ourselves some time and ultimately, we can minimize suffering on this planet. We can minimize suffering for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren, for other species and entire ecosystems. So whether there's hope or not, we can minimize suffering and that's what I focus on.

• 1:20:38Rich Roll?

  As James Cameron famously said recently, I don't know exactly what his words were, but they were something along the lines of, "You cannot consider yourself a true environmentalist if you continue to ingest animal products." Right? Is that what he said? Something like that, right?

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  It was close, right?

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Howard Lyman says that as well.

• 1:20:59Rich Roll?

  Howard Lyman says it as well. And that's the clear message of this film. And I think what you just said kind of beautifully wraps it up. And that's a great place to kind of leave it off and tantalize people and encourage them to go see the movie. So, thanks you guys for coming by. And I'm excited because we have the premiere coming up here in Los Angeles soon. It's gonna be June 26th, right?

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Rich Roll?

  And there are some seats available. So for listeners out there who live in the Los Angeles area, come and join us. It's gonna be at the Crest Theater in Westwood.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  You can get tickets online by going to cowspiracy.com and find out for... We're gonna be doing a national tour, so there's gonna be screenings and premieres all across the country. Those dates should be up on our website pretty soon. We'll be able to get tickets. And it'll be, yeah, again, across the country and then on to the rest of the world.

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's gonna be like a whistle-stop tour, starting in LA. You're gonna have... You're doing a premiere in San Francisco also on the 19th, right?

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  19th of June.

• 1:22:02Rich Roll?

  Is that up on the website?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the world premiere. We sold out actually of those tickets in two days. There is still some tickets available for an earlier screening.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  A few. And LA just has a few, so get them soon. And we're gonna have a great panel discussion after the film in LA and San Francisco. So it's gonna be entertaining and a good time.

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  Right. So, yeah, and then going across the country.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Rich Roll?

  Speaking the good word, right?

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:28Rich Roll?

  But if people want to learn more about the movie and what you guys are up to, the best place to do that is cowspiracy.com, right?

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:35Rich Roll?

  And are you guys on Twitter? It's cowspiracy...

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Facebook, cowspiracy.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, our Facebook is cowspiracythemovie.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  Cowspiracy, the sustainability secret.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  And yeah, we're on Twitter as well. Can't think of where else we're at.

• 1:22:50Rich Roll?

  That's all you need to do.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're all over the place. Just, you know, search, search conspiracy will pop up for sure.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  Cool. And yeah, I can't encourage you guys out there listening enough to go see this movie. There's some really, really illuminating stuff and great talking heads from some of the leading pioneers in this movement, even, you know, people like a couple of past podcast guests, Dr. Michael Clopper, one of my favorites, right?

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  He has a good part.

• 1:23:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's great, right? And like we said earlier, David Simon, Michael Pollan, who are some of the other people that appear in the movie?

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Dr. Richard Openlander is truly brilliant.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Sea Shepherds in there.

• 1:23:28Rich Roll?

  Sea Shepherd.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  About the whole, we have a great, we didn't even explore that, the whole ocean section that's very powerful.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's a whole.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  Michael Pollan is in there. Do you like him or not?

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a whole list of experts in the film from, you know, all different backgrounds and it's a, it's definitely an exciting film for, on many levels.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right, man. I'm excited for you guys. It's gonna be awesome.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:23:52Rich Roll?

  Are you ready for it?

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  It's all gonna start happening, man.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  It must happen.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. All right, you guys feel good about this? Do we do it?

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Rich Roll?

  Are we good?

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks so much.

• 1:24:02Rich Roll?

  Thank you.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  Appreciate it.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.

• 1:24:09Rich Roll?

  All right, everybody, that's our show. That was powerful, man. That was intense, right? It's pretty heavy stuff, I gotta say, but you know what, man? We gotta swallow this stuff. We gotta face it. We cannot be in denial about these issues. There is no sense in hiding from it, so let's do it together. Let's face it together. Thanks for sticking around to hear the whole thing. If you want to support the show, we hope you do. The big thing is to just tell a friend and of course, use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Put it up, up in your browser up there and won't cost you a cent extra, but Amazon kicks us some loose change and helps us keep doing what we're doing. You can also donate to the podcast and I love it when you guys are sharing the podcast on Instagram, showing pictures.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  Of you guys running or commuting or whatever it is you're doing while listening to it. So keep that up. It's awesome. Maybe after hearing today's message, you're inspired to get more plant-based. Well, a good way to begin, if you're not sure where to start, is to check out my ultimate guide to plant-based nutrition. It's at mindbodygreen.com. It's an online course, a couple hours of streaming video content, online community, downloadable tools. It's a pretty awesome way to begin. And if you're into online courses, I just, I just finished a new one that's up right now. It's called the art of living with purpose, and it's two hours of streaming video on setting and achieving goals and trying to

• 1:25:37Rich Roll?

  do essentially what the theme of this podcast is, how to tap into unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. And really proud of that one. So you can check both of those out at mindbodygreen.com. Of course, go to richroll.com for all your plant power provisions. We have our nutritional products. You know about JY repair, post-workout athletic recovery supplement. We have our vitamin B12. That's a staple. That's a must-have, especially if you're on a plant-based diet. We've got a new product. It's called Ion, and it is our electrolyte supplement for the athletes out there. As you know, when you exercise, you sweat, and you sweat out your electrolytes, right? And you gotta put those things back

• 1:26:20Rich Roll?

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

• 1:27:05Rich Roll?

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

• 1:27:48Rich Roll?

  I guess I want to leave you with this thought, and that is this: We are either part of the problem or part of the solution. I'm either part of the problem or part of the solution. So, this week, you know what would be awesome is if we all think about our own level of sustainability, the things that we have control over. What are you doing or not doing? And what can you improve? Or what can you dial up so that we can increase that sustainability quotient in our own lives? So, that would be great if you think about that, because you know what? We're all in this together, you guys. All in this together. So, that's it. Thanks for staying with me throughout the whole episode, and I'll see you guys next week. Peace. Plants.

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  ...