RawPetMedics Tuesday Live: Sustainable food

very hot potato of sustainable regenerative farming and beef in particular. It's a very big subject. So we're just going to concentrate mainly on beef, but not religiously so. And we are just going to get a few ideas out on the table. We're not making judgments, but we just really feel very passionately that we need to get this stuff out on the table and, and, and look into things. Guys, how are you? Brendan, how are you?

Oh, fine now, I've settled down after the initial glitch. Sorry guys, we're 5 minutes beyond, that was me rebooting, but we're here, we're here. Fantastic.

Brady, how are you doing?

Good, yeah, I'm great. Nice bit of weather today, nice big long walk along the top of Bray Head here in Greystones, just a lovely way to start the day. Don't do that enough, you know, when you go on a cracking walk, you actually go to that really nice spot and you go I need to do this every day. I feel amazing, better than any yoga. So that was just a lovely start of the day. So yeah, feeling good, raring to go for this because this is just such an interesting topic.

Fascinating. And it kind of all started with your— you did a post. Tell us about your post and move forward from there.

I think we've been talking about it a lot. You guys have certainly been talking about it a lot. I conclude my book with it and, you know, I just think it's a relevant, very relevant hot topic at the moment about, certainly if you look at the new UN climate report and there's like eat less meat, it seems to be all over the media. And when you look into the carbon footprint of the stuff that's going on at the moment, it's a little bit hair-raising. And you look at us and it's, as me, and we'll talk about the veggie stuff later, that alarmed me. And I'm kind of thinking, my God, look at the amount of meat my dog is eating. So the The post I put up was like, I kind of looked at the meats on offer and going by the figures that are coming out of the UN and everything, I said, well, Jesus, beef is 5 or 6 times worse. Red meats are 5 or— or pork and beef worse than chicken. Go for the white meats. And you get a good lot of people understanding that and agreeing because they're probably reading the same material as I am. And then you get a lot of people that suddenly pop up, a lot of voices you respect, and they say, oh no, hang on, Conor, because they haven't factored in this and this. And this is where we are tonight. I went, that is very, very interesting. So a massive can of worms. But just fiercely interesting. So when it's explained beautifully by the likes of Bren and Nick, it is just fantastically interesting and it gives you a lot of hope, which I hopefully people can take away from tonight. So it doesn't matter where you are from, vegan, vegetarian, meat eaters, whatever. It's just stuff we need to learn and get everybody on side on the same page, you know. So yeah, that's my thoughts on it. Where are you on it, Bren?

Yeah, well, it's really a journey, isn't it? This is never a fixed point. And I hope tonight all of these guys, you know, commenting already, you know, hi guys, in the side comments are going to help out here because they'll have a view and I think that's a valid view. And so, you know, you can butt in at any point and just put your things in. You won't physically butt in because we just talk and talk and talk, but, you know, we will try and spot these comments. But really, I think it's always been generated there. I've always wanted to look at organic and you guys know that I'm rearing some organic stuff on the the field at the moment, just to try and make sure that it's possible in a very extensive way. And Nick's going to talk a little bit about the realisms of what could be considered free range and not, I'm sure, as we go on. But it was really a journey from looking at things like the Catherine Shanahan book and looking at, you know, why, you know, some of these meats are really important for ourselves and not just our pets. And then thinking about how, yeah, we could make this sustainable enough, you know, is there enough food in the world to be able to feed our pets in this way? You know, are we just being typical Westerners, you know, blinkered and thinking that we can do it because we can and actually the rest of the world is starving? Or is there a way that we can go forwards? And there's lots of books that you come across when you start on this thought process of how we eat. And actually, just the fact that we don't eat grain could massively change the amount we need, the amount we eat. Okay. And that then sort of brings into the amount that we feed our pets. Grain at the moment could also be massively reduced. And so we need to think a little bit about the whole thing of changing the process for where we're rearing meat, how we're getting that meat into our pets' dinners, you know, what part of, you know, is it, you know, we're going to talk about beef tonight, but there's so many other animals in the whole sphere. I think one little note that came up was really this whole thing about 60% of the world's, you know, farming surface area is unfarmable for arable. You know, there's no way that you can rear vegetable matter on it. So what on earth are you going to be doing? You know, if you truly think you can take animals away and then, you know, give us, you know, a vegetable option, that's realistically not going to happen. You know, you're just cutting off 60% of the farming land. Yeah. And so with, yeah, there's whole loads of processes there. And then it's also about this green element. You know, I've just gone out and bought an electric car, you know, now being told that I shouldn't have bought an electric car because all of this stuff for the batteries are, you know, terrible from a point of view of, you know, the minerals and stuff that we're digging out and I should wait for hydrogen to come along, you know, but you know, you want to be as environmentally friendly as possible with all of this. And we've got to think about the carbon footprint. We can talk about that tonight. I think, you know, looking at that, actually the capture of carbon in grass, the amount of grass we grow, yeah, um, you know, and the type of grass, that's just another thing that we need to talk about tonight. Um, so look, so much, um, in that journey to get to a point where I feel comfortable about eating, feeding meat. And, you know, but I'm trying not to alienate at all, you know, those of you who've decided for whatever reason, ethically, you know, just your feelings, your emotional connection, your dietary needs to become vegetarian, you know, that you've got a valid viewpoint. And Conor, I know you're in that camp. So I, you know, want to listen to, to what's going on there. Yeah.

How about you, Nick?

I'm going to— I'll just give you a little minute and then, Conor, would you be able to just ask the questions from a vegetarian's point of view that you hear most? And we maybe, maybe Bren and I and the three of us can then maybe examine those.

Yeah. Yeah.

Can we do that?

That'd be really good. I can certainly ask you the questions as I would have had them you know, a few months ago, you know, those concerns. And the main thing was, okay, like, you know, I'm gonna—

I need to— I'm gonna do my minute for a moment.

I thought he was gonna go to the loo again.

It's like, like the blue touch paper and stand well back with Brady. Okay, so just— I'm just gonna give you a minute. Okay, uh, it just— I, up until a few months ago, I would— I completely drank the Kool-Aid. I was understanding that to produce beef, it's very, very energy intensive.

Big echo there, sorry, one second. Brian, you getting that echo? No, no, it's just me. Okay, sorry, fire ahead, just me.

Okay, um, and, uh, it was very energy intensive and it was leading to global warming because of cows farting and what have you. But, and so I've done some really deep diving. I've read Sacred Cow by Wolf and somebody else. I've read Defending Beef by Nicolette Hahn-Niman, which is a recommendation from Brendan. And I'm just halfway through The Vegetarian Myth by a one-time vegan. And in a nutshell, there are a thousand arguments, but the really simple thing is that Cows turn grass into something which we can't digest, into something that is very, very, very nutrient-dense. But almost more important than that, they manage grasslands, which prevents soil erosion. Because all the great civilizations, every single one— the Greeks, the Mesopotamians, the Phoenicians, you name it— They all— the Romans as well— they all petered out because of soil erosion. And we, with our modern farming methods, modern, uh, corn and soy and wheat, those monocultures, they are— that is a one-way street to soil erosion. And there you go. I could go on forever on this stuff, but yeah, that's kind of where I am. So That's just so that everybody knows where we are on these things. So Conor, what would you say is the first major query that many vegetarians or vegans have about beef?

I think, like, you know, even coming— the way I leapt to this position where I am today is that welfare has always been a concern for me, but that didn't make me become a vegetarian. Welfare has always been a very big concern for vegans in the past, but they've always been a small part of the food chain, let's face it. And they have tried to push the welfare message and people just don't pick it up because we don't get the ads on TV, we don't see how farming methods are being done. It doesn't work just to tell people to care about cattle. We think it's a good idea to spend half a million for the RNLAI to save a baby cow from the side of a cliff, but you don't actually see how that stuff goes on in the past. So just pushing welfare, it didn't work for me personally. Then it came into the way the meat was being slaughtered, which really bothered me because I found out that like, uh, 6 or 8 years ago, one-third of the lambs in Ireland are being killed without stun. And that really bothered me because it wasn't being labeled as such for my needs. And so that killed off lamb for me very quickly. And I started thinking, I don't want any unstunned meat in my, in my dinner. So that was me nearly there. And then the carbon thing came in, and hook, line, and sinker, uh, absolutely same thing. I drank the Kool-Aid. I read what I could on it. And it made perfect sense to me. For example, the latest UN climate report, massive, massive amount of scientists behind it, huge investment, big findings, all that you— as you'd expect, the temperatures are increasing, it's human-led, and the chief 3 words: eat less meat, eat less meat. This is something you can affect. You need your car to get to work until you get into an electric car, and even then, are you doing much carbon reducing when you think of all the stress? Whatever about all that. I thought, oh, that's it, carbon is my, my biggie. And then boom, vegetarian. That was about 3 years ago and 4 years ago maybe. And I now, because of the Catherine bloody Shannon book that you guys put me onto, uh, it makes such sense from a nutrient point of view of all the stuff that I was cutting out that I'm now, let's say, 99%. I go for a meal with you guys, I'll get meat on the menu if it's outdoor and it's British, it's grand, I'll eat it. So, um, That's where I am now. And I think the carbon thing is a big one. The UN climate. So let's start off with this one. The UN are saying eat less meat. Okay. I now fully understand as you were talking about it, Nick, thank you for that share of this video, this TED Talk, guys, that we'll share later on the Facebook page. Cows, Carbon and Climate by Joel Salatin, easily the best 17 minutes on this subject I've ever heard. You know, you get, you get a lot of kind of hardcore facts from people and they don't really bed in. You watch a 17-minute TED Talk and you couldn't disagree with a single word the guy said. It's like, that makes perfect sense about the way the cows manage the grasslands. But first of all, the UN climate— the UN are saying eat less meat. Why would they come out with the wrong factoids?

Because they've got a political agenda, and they're— they— I, I think a lot of their advisors are not looking at the big picture. Now, if I was cynical, I would say that there is some very big agribusiness who don't want the status quo to change. They just want to carry on producing too much corn, too much soya, uh, too much wheat. You know, um, half the— I think it's about 30% of all the corn grown in the United States, which is subsidized by the government, by the way, as is sugar, which is amazing. But 30% of the corn is used to turn into ethanol to put into petrol, which is more energy intense than just using petrol in the first place. Yeah.

Yeah.

You're growing this stuff and then you're refining it. And to dilute your thing.

It's—

there's a lot of absolute madness.

It's a big lobby.

There's a lot— there's massive money lobbies. The American government is up to their necks in it. They could change the world overnight, but they are not doing it. So I think when one looks at these figures, you've got to kind of think about the reality of of politics, of human politics. And I think that Joel— I say Salatin, yeah, you say Salatin, whatever— he is a great place to start. He wrote a book called This Ain't Right, Folks, okay? And it's a really gentle meander through his farming methods. And I think that is a really gentle place to start with, with just reviewing it, because When he talks about— he talks about he's a grass farmer, he— and he moves his cows so that the grass is always kept at just the right length so that there's maximum growth, so that there's maximum carbon fixing. He's never used an antibiotic, he's never used a vaccine on his farm in 40 years. He, he's never used grain. And his farm is about, I think, was it 4 times more productive than any other farm, including the ones that use fertilizer and vaccines and antibiotics, about 4 times more productive per acre than anybody else in the county. So yeah, it's just such a big, interesting topic because what was happening is We've all been taught this thing, beef is, is part of the problem. But actually, when you look at it really, really carefully, beef is the only thing standing between us and our civilization going down the pan.

Can I give one, some, just a couple of figures? I'll come to you, Brent. The, the, what this guy was explaining was that grass, when it's short, and we leave cattle in the same field in Ireland all year and they graze this short grass and that's it, he, he, he got bases at his whole farm on migratory patterns where they would have moved over, let the grass replenish, come back, eat it again. So he uses fencing to replicate these migratory patterns to hit— the cattle would hit the grass every 60, 70 days because it's in that medium, medium stage where it grows fastest. They harvest it, and he can produce— normal farms produce 2,500 pounds, American pounds, in weight of grass per acre per year. His farm does 4 times that, 10,000 pounds of grass per— that's 4 times the carbon being eaten by cows. And what do cows do? They poo out 50 pounds of cow pat every day, bang, into the soil. That's—

you missed the point. That's 4 times the amount of carbon trapped in the grass.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that the cows eat. Now you've got, instead of pumping nitrogen and crap fertilizers that hit our soil tables, you've got a cow pat that now builds the soil, that our soils are so depleted. We think when we eat a carrot and a pepper, it's the same thing as 40 years ago. It is a completely new compared to 40 years ago, nutritional bereft item. We think that putting nitrogen on top of soil replenishes the soil. What about all the nutrients that those plants need to create all those phyto compounds that they need? So his points were staggeringly effective. And he said his long grass has clover in it and flowers and pollinators and little mammals running through it. And he just says the carbon sequestration of grass is way more effective than a tree. We see a tree and go, look at all the carbon. It took 60 years to get there, or 10 years with a pine tree. You know, grass is just growing all the time, but we don't see it. So that was a real big one for me. And the fact that cows then dump it out and build the soil, because we have a mega problem with that at the moment. We can't keep going this way, but we haven't got a way out of it.

We've got 100 more crops, I think they said, 100 more harvests.

Like, it's— oh my God, that's a staggering thing to say. Oh my jeez, I never heard that.

100 more harvests, uh, if we carry on farming the way we're farming, they reckon, you know, we will just outstrip, you know, you'll— with the soil erosion, with the plowing, with the, the way that we use fertilizers and pesticides and everything else, you know, 100 more harvests, we'll start getting massive failures because it just isn't sustainable. But, and what have we been doing? You know, we should be doing a bit more of of this, you know. You can't grow crops on that hillside. Yeah, yeah. You want to be building the soil, um, you know. That's been part of what I'm doing with the goats here, you know. I've been experimenting to try and build the soil back because it's just been so massively depleted. And to transfer fields to try and keep parasite loads down and things like that. Obviously, you know, you have things that can change that— stress levels and stuff like that. But it's, it's all about trying to work out how can you build a more diverse pasture, a more diverse, you know, I've been reseeding it with wildflower, reseeding it with other plants as well, not just trying to keep it grassed up, but also the amount of crop, you know, one of the biggest crops in this country, okay, in fact the biggest crop in the UK is grass. It's not corn, it's not wheat, it's not barley, It's grass, okay? And that's what we're trapping our carbon in, and we should not miss that fact. You know, the amount of carbon it takes to produce these NPK fertilizers, the amount of destruction, and that's just a carbon footprint. But when we talk environmental, you've got to think about building up the soil that we should be building up, not depleting every time we plough it, not shoving it in the rivers and back out into the ocean.

That's a, that's a really, that's a really crucial point, right? So this guy, Saladin, is from 2,500 pounds of grass to 10,000 pounds of grass by migrating the cattle properly. So 4 times the amount of grass, that's 4 times less cereal. So he has saved 7,500 pounds per acre of weight of cereal and crap that they need. If people are wondering why is beef so carbon expensive, it's because not so much the cow. Yeah, cows burp and all that kind of stuff, and I don't get the methane thing, which has moved on. Okay, whatever about all that. It's the fact that CAFOs in the States, concentrated animal feed operations, which is designed by— it's initiated by Chinese farms. The Americans took it and perfected it, and there are now— there's now 1,000 mega farms in the UK. The reason it's so carbon intensive is because they're trying to grow this little beastie in whatever, 10, 11 months, 12 months, to this half-ton animal using wheat and corn, completely unnatural food sources. So they use huge amounts of this using huge amounts of monoculture and all the chemicals that go with it. So the footprint per kilo of that terrible quality concentration camp meat they call it— if you saw these things, lads, look at CAFO, look them up, you wouldn't feed it to the mother-in-law. And this is the meat that 90% of the US is eating. So it's the fact that the guys now producing— this guy Slatnik, you keep popping up because the the grass that from 2,500 pounds per acre to 10,000 means all that free grass he just got from the air, carbon dioxide and sunlight, no transportation of this shitty grain around the place, no carbon footprint, actually sequestering a savage amount of carbon down into the soil that gets replenished. That's what got me eating a steak with you in Birmingham 2 weeks ago, that video you shared with me, Nick, more than anything else.

It was only a little one.

It was.

I will tell you a story.

I literally am wedding anniversary you know, and went out last night, went to a lovely Italian restaurant, happened to look at their steaks on their, their steak menu, and unbelievably— and I'm sorry to all the Canadian watchers, uh, I really do apologize— um, they had the Scottish steaks and stuff at the top, they, you know, aged 28 days, pasture-reared, you know, great. The next step down was stuff about barley finished. So what they're doing is adding grain in because it's a fattier consistency, coming all the way from Brazil, believe it or not. The third one down was their archetypal, the best of best, grass-reared in Canada but fed barley for the last 150 days. I.e., CAFO. They've moved it in for 6 months nearly and fed them grain. Yeah. And they were passed off as the best cattle ever, the most expensive on the menu. And I was just like, it's really a shame. That's catfish that night.

It's all about the breed and not the nutrition of the piece of food that's in front of you. That adds flavor. Nutrition adds the flavor. What were you going to say, Nick?

I'm going to say what Because some vegans are of the opinion that we should just get rid of all beef animals off the planet. Okay. Or maybe only have them in zoos so they can grow old. Okay. There wouldn't be very many. Okay. What would the world look like, guys? I'm going to ask you, what would the world look like if we got rid of all the ruminants on green pasture? What would happen, Bren?

Uh, well, you couldn't. I mean, really, realistically, what, you're going to go out and cull all of the goats in all of the Himalayas? Uh, what, what's— you know, it just is, you know, these aren't just farm animals. Ultimately, you know, the, the buffalo and everything else have descended, uh, from a wild origin. I think, you know, you just can't get rid of all of the— what, you know, the ruminants. You'd end up with an ecology that would just not work, you know.

Yes, the ecology of the world would collapse because they are, they are essentially the stewards. They're keeping the grass trimmed. They eat little saplings so that there is, you know, a decent area of grass. Therefore, then they, they plow the soil with their feet because they're such, you know, uh, uh, ungainly beasts. Yeah, they will, they plow up, which is why Joel Salatin puts his, his beef animals onto the grass for about 3 days. They chew it up, they get, get the grass right down, and then he moves them on to another, another pasture for after that. So they are, they are helping disperse seed for all these grasses and plants, these annuals and these these, the, all the plants rely on the clover pollinators, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, they rely on that. And so it's, if you have an ecology and you take out one element, even if it's a minor element, it's not. Cattle are a massive part of the whole ecology of the world. If you remove them, that ecology is going to crash.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I love that point there by Karen, right? So Karen's the boss there. Not this vegan. I just want the animals who are reared for me to have a decent life while they're alive. So I'm, I'm 100% in that, in that group.

Okay, we all are.

Yeah, so one of the questions that's come up there in the feed a few times is that, uh, well, there's going to be a couple, but the first one standing out is that, okay, this idea of migrating, um, cattle around your farm using fences and what other ways they can do it, um, that's all well and good, but do we have the space to continue feeding everybody? Americans are eating 90 grams of animal protein a day. A ferocious amount of feeding. So is it possible to produce the amount of milk, cheese, butter, meat that everybody wants in Britain, let's say? Okay, 60 million people, whatever you have on that island. So is it possible to do that with the grasslands that we have available at the moment, assuming that we can take back a lot of the wheat and corn pastures and that? Is it possible to feed everybody, or is there a— where people do have to understand that with this movement to save the bloody planet and keep everybody fed and alive, uh, we have to accept that you're not only eating less meat because you can't be eating 20p burgers anymore. Stop going into McDonald's and buying 5 hamburgers. Now it's like you get your piece of lamb on a Sunday. People have to accept that. And, and later the question will be price, which we'll come to. But what about that?

Do we have the space to grow the animals in the way that Karen wants My reading of, of the books that we've just mentioned, Joel Salatin, The Sacred Cow and Defending Beef, my reading of that, and Bren, you've, you've read at least one of those, is that yes, you can, because as you say, Conor, you're going to take all the wheat and the corn, which is vast. You know, the whole Midwest is basically just one big field. Yeah. Yeah, you put all that down to, to grass, uh, and so that will raise a vast amount of cattle. If we combine that, and we do that all over the planet, uh, on, on, on grasslands, we reinstate grasslands, which is going to take 30, 40 years, but we've got to start it now. If we do that and we, we cultivate the environments all over the world to maximally use ruminants, so goats and cattle and sheep. If we do that, it is possible, I believe, that we can feed 10 million people— 10 billion.

Yeah, the number of zeros, right? Otherwise there's a big cold going on.

We may have to moderate how much food meat we eat. But if you're eating really good quality nutritious meat, you don't need to eat that much. Only once a week, twice a week.

That's the point.

Totally good.

Yeah.

But, and dogs, well, we may have to have fewer dogs, we may have to have smaller dogs, but I think that as part of that, there will be a meat economy— good, well-raised, very happy economy. And I think that dogs can be part of that because I think dogs are more important than just—

I don't know, it could be an essential part of it because they are important.

We need to go back to using the whole animal, not discarding so much stuff that, you know, oh, they won't possibly look at that because it's got a bit of freezer burn or it's got a, you know, it's got a nose on it. Oh my God, you know, look, if you're going to You know, you should almost be, you know, praying to these beasts that are giving up for us, you know, and using and respecting every last bit. So respect them when they're alive and making sure that they've got the best life possible. And so that's less per acre, pay more for the meat. You're going to have to, you know, we've got to touch on this because there is a survey out there that suggests that people aren't prepared to do it. Be able to eat less because we now know that it's not all about calories in, calories out. Your body will adapt your calorific output depending on what you're taking in. And there's a lot of hormonal stuff on there. Stop driving our, our gluttony over cereals and that side of things that are driving us to eat huge portions of everything and actually get some proper nutrition into ourselves. Will make a massive difference. Yeah, I can also reflect on what we feed to our pets because we're feeding the bits that people don't necessarily want to eat, rather than grinding it down and just spreading it out as fertilizer or whatever else they need to do. I think, you know, we, we could make a massive difference. And, you know, we, we are missing here— it doesn't have to just be pasture— the amount of woodland that you can then put, you know, and the fact that you can do a rotational system, it doesn't just have to be one animal out there.

David Kemp touched on that, he said, yeah, like, don't forget arable and cattle, arable and ruminants can be used together on the farm, so you're doubling your output again there.

It's just mixing, you know, cattle, goats can go through woodland, so can pigs, so can chickens.

I heard a great piece there that said, I'm going to throw this figure out there, don't be relying on this, but they they said 50% of Britain is upperland or highland where you can't grow— of the pasture, of the grasslands that you have is where you can't grow vegetation. And on that you have sheep essentially, but they have such a sparse amount of sheep here and there that it's just like a tiny token that they don't use these upperlands. But there's so many ruminants that can eat that material when it's handled correctly, but they just don't. They don't handle that correctly. It's no, no, we want the greeny grass of river basins. And it's like You've got goats that you could— that could be munching to their heart's content, and deer, uh, but flat-faced deer. But like, the goats will just eat anything. They eat poo on a stick. And so you can put those up there. Zebras eat unbelievably poor diets. Have you seen what zebras eat? Like, they are the absolute scavengers of herbivores. They just eat stigs and twigs and, uh, twigs and Twix, uh, round biscuit with a bit of toffee. Yeah, you know, But like, that's the sort of thing that, like, these are the sort of thoughts that we want to put out there. So coming back to that UN question, because it's kind of like a rhetorical, because I understand what the issue is at the moment. We are looking, when it comes talking about carbon and the UN, they're talking about the meat that we have available at the moment. When I'm talking about smart carbon choices for my dog, I'm looking at the beef and chicken that I have available at the moment, not the non-organic ethical stuff in, in the supermarkets. And yes, the red meat is going to cost more, but it's been raised all wrong. So Yes, the carbon of the way the meat we have, the meat chain we have at the moment is wrong. So the UN would say, you're going to keep getting this meat, guys, so just eat less of the red stuff that we're producing. As opposed to saying, lads, we need to ditch the current setup that we have and move towards the new way. The UN can't say that because they have a powerful lobby behind them. So they say eat less meat, which is like the American nutritional group saying move more to lose weight. It's bullshit. You're never going to outrun a bad diet. You're never going to eat less meat because burgers are tasty. So they just say that as a bullshit way to keep it going for another 10 years. So very disappointed in the UN that they don't take these advanced ideas and say we need to shift things because farmers are going, we're not changing a thing here. We're mega farms. We've got our thing. We're keeping the small farms out of business. Let's face it. And we control this. 4 or 5, 6 small groups contain, like, control all these cattle. They're not going to change. They've got billions. So that's why the big messages don't come down to us. That's why we don't graze the Highlands. That's why we don't do these things that you guys are talking about, which frustrates me immensely. Like, it's again, it's going to be driven by customer demand, just like the raw food movement, which was they've got the guns, but we've got the numbers. We started buying raw dog food. We ignored what the messages that were being given to us, no offense, by the veterinary sector in connection with the pet food industry. And we said, no, we're going to start buying raw based on some things that we learned about on Facebook. And now there's is going to be a hockey stick effect towards raw because people moved. It's going to take an awful lot of customer responsibility to start doubling up on their meat bill, eating less meat, and rewarding the likes of Dave with his ethically raised raw dog food company, uh, and organic farmers. And it's, it's gonna—

there are a few out there. We've got to be careful of though, because there is limitations. I think, uh, you know, another great company that's been around for a long, long time, okay, um, I'm not affiliated to them other than I've, you put some clients their way. Honey's Real Dog Food, you know, they've got an organic range, they've got a free-range range. They've been great, you know, as a company over the long term of raw food feeding, but they've got limitations. You know, actually accessing the raw ingredients, you know, to their standard is limiting them. You know, we've also got on the other side, you know, there's companies out there that are trying to find ethically sourced foods, you know, doing more pasture-reared stuff. But their query to their customer base, they've always, you know, when they try and bring this out and they're slightly more expensive, they end up with feedback, well, your meat's too expensive, I want to go for cheaper. And actually what they look at is, although everybody, you know, commenting down the stream here at the moment is saying how they really want to go down ethically sourced meat and it's great for you guys, but the vast majority of the English public, okay, I'm going to pick on the English, okay, here are all talking about environmental stuff, all talking about ethically sourced meat, all talking about how they want it to be just pasture-reared. That's great. You put 10% on the price and that switches 90% of those people into, no, I want to buy the cheaper one.

Oh my God.

That's 10% more. Now you think that actually to do that, to rear the meat in that way, it's about 50% more cost. Yeah. You know, there is, you know, people need to get their heads around what they need to do with their food bill.

10% drives 90% of the market away. We are buggered because the likes of, the likes of Honey's Pet Food, you're starting 30% more, 40% more for these raw dog foods of higher, whatever the word quality, but a more ethical organic And like, and you're saying 10% increase is enough to drive away 90% of the market. Jesus, what are we going to do?

Unbelievable, isn't it? I was gobsmacked.

If you, if you eat 50% less meat, and I think that's not an unreasonable thing to do, then you can pay twice the price for the meat that you do eat.

Yeah.

And that meat is going to be more nutritious.

Yeah.

It's going to taste a whole lot better.

Yeah.

And because you've been veggie for a couple of days, you're really going to look forward to that meat when it actually comes. So it's a, it's a double whammy. But the current farming systems are not geared up for this. They're geared up for cheap meat, and they do it with the welfare of the animals, uh, compromised. They're the ones who are suffering.

Yeah, I want to introduce at this point— there's a great New Zealand model okay, which is about effectively taking out vermin. So they, you know, all the invasive species like rabbits, you know, possums, things like that, that they have that they need to keep some degree of control, you know, they actually will go out and hunt those and use them for their dog foods. Okay, so, you know, it's just like, you know, we've got some invasive species in this country You know, there are those species which will, you know, populate the same farmland as our cattle and everything else which are extensively reared. But why aren't we— you know, we can keep the cost down, we can introduce some of that into the diets, but we have to get our heads around how we can do that to pass the legislation on meat hygiene, etc. Yeah. So those are the only bits that we need to look at. So that we can achieve that.

I was in a position there that like, you know, I just want to push Paleo Ridge, Honey's, the next brands that come up that are outdoor as much as they can be organic. The good news is about when people start doing this, by the way, is that an organic farmer needs X amount for his chicken. Okay, every farmer needs X amount for his animal. And if you shop with that farmer, if they are suddenly inundated with business, they grow more meat. If they can sell their byproducts to the raw dog food companies for more money, suddenly they buy spurious bits, necks, carcass, gizzards, hearts. They weren't worth a lot of money for the organic farmers. Now they have a really lucrative market in raw dog food manufacturers. So suddenly they can charge less for their organic meat to the human sector, which means more people will buy the organic. So I actually see raw dog food, Organic Ethical Outdoor Reared, or those guys driving organic meat prices down because they will suddenly be able to be able to produce more birds, and that will be the slow grow there. I think that's a positive thing. In the meantime, I don't believe that we're going to be able to leap to this quickly. There's going to be decades of this to go, and we can't just jump to grass. Everyone, like you said, Brian, you made it painfully clear with that stat that we're not going to jump to this, this, this. So there has to be an intermediate. This is where I am now. I'm like, these guys, Honey's and Paleo and all the other guys, they're not able to keep up at the moment with demand. They can't. There isn't enough wild English rabbits at the moment with nobody hunting them because there's no money in pulling a rabbit off the mountain. So they— there's going to have to be a transition where, okay, we'll just go for minimum red tractor, whatever that means, if it means anything. You guys are telling me the free— give me some of the stuff on free range, guys. What were you telling me, Nick, there before we came on about free range?

Okay, the definition of free range is that they have access to an outdoor area. So what you can do technically, I don't know the detail, but basically you just have to have one smallish door at one end of an entire chicken shed with 40,000 birds in it that they have access to go outside. And only 2 to 5% of those birds will go out 2 to 5% of the time. That's— and then you can put free range on the package.

50% more expensive in Ireland, guys, for free range meat. And it's the exact same stuff. It might be okay quality, this barren, weird stuff. It's— someone, an organic chicken farmer, was telling me— he was just so brutally honest— and he goes, He goes, what do you think? That's— it's really good for birds to be sitting outside. He goes, I'm going to have more problems. I'm going to have predation. I'm going to have diseases that I have to worry about. He goes, do you think I can't use drugs on organic farms? Wrong. I can. It's a certain amount of time. And it's like, Jesus, is there any good news to be had here? Like, I thought they were sitting in hedges just being sung music.

And I know for the majority of the populations, you know, it's really hard. I mean, it's slightly easier for me. 'Cause I can go, you know, half mile, I know the farmer, I know he's rearing the meat, he will supply me with what I need. I've got fields where there's rabbits, you know, grey squirrels, which are considered a pest 'cause we're trying to get the red squirrels to thrive. You know, we've got, you know, so many overruns of escaped pheasants and things like that that are out there and being shot left, right, and center as well. Grouse as well, you know, being extensively reared up on the moors. You know, all sorts of options that get given to us. But a lot of that bypasses the standard meat hygiene. You know, you have to— and fortunately I'm a vet, so I can look in the carcass and know what I'm looking for as to whether it's an okay one to feed to my dogs or not. But there are so many people that aren't going to have access to that purely and simply on a bacterial fear basis that's out there. So it is a problem that needs to be fixed. I'm not giving a solution necessarily here, unfortunately. But I wish there was a way to make that availability to more of our population.

Reward the good companies where you can is definitely one of them. I have a good news story here, guys, which I might have mentioned before, but because it's about seaweed, I feel like I have to. There's a guy in Scotland who's just unbelievable. I can't remember his name, but his friend, he was called Dodd, that we helped out. So this guy is sequestering carbon faster than anybody else on the planet, and he's doing it with seaweed. So the idea is so simple. You get— it's a 40-foot by 40-foot rig, a seaweed growing rig. It's very simple. Steel drums, no plastic for the sea, simple little iron or steel bars between them, and you drop ropes. You don't even have to seed the ropes. You can drop those things anywhere and the seeds will populate with seaweed. And in 3 months, you can harvest some savage amount of seaweed. So I know seaweed grows quicker than any other plant out there, up to half a foot a day for Laminaria. Kelp that the seals swim through. And it grows under the water, so it takes no land. It actually deacidifies the, the water. It's a habitat for fish to live in. It's just— anyway, so much things about seaweed, seaweed. So do you know what else he did? He puts a little mini car crusher on top of this platform. They haul the seaweed up through it, chop off the seaweed, leaving the stipes intact so it can grow quicker next time. Now they get a huge big amount of seaweed, crush it into a big block and throw it over the side. And you've just sequestered— well, not just throw it over the side, I'm sure there's other plans for it. But they can use gabions for the bottom of the cliffs, make them out of solid seaweed blocks. It's carbon for the ocean that the fish can feed on, live in, swim in. And he can grow them anywhere. So if you want 40,000 tons of highest quality protein, far more nutritious than soy and none of the damage, you can just drop a rig out the back of the plane beside poorer countries. And it just grows this protein. They haul it in and there's just this incredibly nutritious protein that grew at sea and cost nothing. But those ideas don't get sponsored by cash, you know, and he's always— he's doing it. He's getting small donations because countries have to hit their carbon limits. So the dream is, to end on a good note, is that as countries are forced to bring their carbon under control, are forced to do it, and they won't force big industry because that's not fair, okay? We get locked into our homes, but it's not okay to stop, you know, chocolate bars being made or cigarettes being sold. That's not fair. And take away their rights. But I think that countries, as they're forced to get their carbon under control, they're going to look to these solutions such as the grassland ideas that we're talking about. And that will speed up how quickly— maybe there is a bit of sense to, you know, putting goats in the Highlands or using seaweed. And the more natural, more normal, everyday ways we used to do it are going to come back because they're going to be forced to do it via carbon taxation. That's what I think. And I also think the public are going to have to be forced via carbon taxation not have to be, it's going to happen. People won't like it. Clearly, when I mention on my page, they go bananas. But people will say, you can buy this beef for 5 times the cost of chicken because the carbon is more expensive. And people will be forced to make these decisions. They'll be forced to eat less meat because the modern meat practices produce so much carbon that that will become a carbon-expensive product. I think that's the way it's going. And then the public will bend because a good taxation bends public will, doesn't it? So, uh, that's— I don't know if that's a good news or bad news story, actually. I went into the bad news.

I started off well, but, um, okay, Brendan, uh, final word, final thoughts from you?

Uh, final thoughts. Look, you know, I just— thanks for all of those people commenting. Yeah, all got a valid point of view, and I, I'd love to see their thoughts. Um, this is not necessarily the classic nutritional thing that we were going to discuss tonight, but I from a point of view of, you know, it interests us and it sort of enhances what we feel ethically we want to be achieving. And so, and it interests us enough when we were talking down in Birmingham and we did start that conversation then and we've sort of been talking about it since. So it's great, it's amazing how quickly the time has flown, you know, just opening that topic. And yeah, maybe we need to revisit that with some of these experts that are out there. And, you know, try and see if we can actually make a change.

Yeah, non-sustainable clothing next week, I think, guys.

Well, I did say about my recycling reef product anyway.

That's a good idea. Yes, your shirt. That was—

guys, who are you guys watching? If you want to see more of us talking about ecology and, you know, the planetary stuff and, you know, regenerative agriculture, which I find absolutely fascinating, then just shout and we will, we will go there again. We'd love to. But if you don't like it, then we will talk about it amongst us.

Maybe approach one of the head honchos in the business. You know, why don't we get Saladin on and say, come on here and just blow our minds away with your TED Talk? You know, that'd be a good one.

Brilliant.

And I volunteered to go out to California and interview Nicolette.

Is that so generous? Dirty Junkers for Brendan.

I want Polyface Farm to see the old Talisman.

Hydrogen-powered Corvette, no doubt.

Yeah, do Route 101 down the West Coast.

A little bit of it anyway. My God, that was great. Listen, as always guys, you'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Please, if you can afford the price of a cup of coffee so Bren and Nick can keep buying books and reading them, and filling us with knowledge, that would really, really help us because we can just pump them for information, so to speak. That's Raw Pet Medics on patreon.com. Anything helps and we really appreciate it. If you don't have it, no sweat, we're going to be here every week anyway because we love it. And that's it. And then I'm sure we are going to announce our topic in the next couple of days as we bat around. We've got ears.

We've got ears.

Right, ears next week.

That sounds good.

Yes.

All right, yeah, all ears indeed. All right, pleasure, lads. I love that.

Fantastic.

Thanks everybody for coming along.