The Meat Mafia Podcast

In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Texas Slim, a passionate advocate for the American rancher, to discuss the dire state of the beef industry. Texas Slim has dedicated his life to exposing the deception within the beef industry. Growing up in the heart of Texas cattle country, Texas Slim witnessed firsthand the devastating changes that have occurred over the past 50 years. Through his work with the Beef Initiative, Texas Slim has become a voice for the American rancher, tirelessly advocating for a return to sustainable, community-driven food systems. His passion for building relationships between consumers and ranchers is evident in his motto, "Meet your rancher, shake their hand."

Texas Slim reveals the startling truth about how just four multinational corporations control the majority of the cattle industry, leading to a consolidation that is pushing small, independent ranchers out of business. He shares his personal journey of discovering the correlation between our broken food systems, declining health, and the commoditization of our currency. 

Other key topics include:
  • The importance of building relationships with local ranchers and supporting sustainable, community-driven food systems
  • Texas Slim's personal journey and the founding of the Beef Initiative to advocate for American ranchers
  • The alarming consolidation of the cattle industry by four multinational corporations and its impact on small, independent ranchers
  • The correlation between broken food systems, declining health, and commoditized currency
  • The innovative solutions developed by the Beef Initiative to support small-scale processors and promote a more transparent, locally-focused beef industry
  • The national security implications of losing control over food systems and the urgent need to address this issue
Timestamps:

(00:07) Cattle Industry Challenges and Collaboration
(04:27) Focus on Quality and Integrity
(08:34) Revolutionizing the Beef Industry
(18:56) Connecting With American Ranchers
(26:17) Global Food System in Crisis
(41:08) Advancing Microprocessing Centers in Texas


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Creators & Guests

Host
Brett Ender 🥩⚡️
The food system is corrupt and trying to poison us... I will teach you how to fight back. Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod 🥩
Host
Harry Gray 🥩⚡️
Leading the Red Meat Renaissance 🥩 ⚡️| Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod

What is The Meat Mafia Podcast?

The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry with the mission of addressing fundamental problems in our food and healthcare system. Our concerns with our healthcare system can be drawn back to issues in our food system as far back as soil health. Our principles are simple: eat real foods, buy locally, and cook your own meals.

When you listen to our podcast, you will hear stories and conversations from people working on the fringes of the food and healthcare system to address the major crises overshadowing modern society: how do we become healthy again?

themeatmafiapodcast.substack.com

00:07 - Speaker 3
There's a train wreck coming in the cattle industry. Big time Cattle industry is controlled by four multinational corporations. That's what we're up against, and what we've done the last 50 years is not sustainable. This is not Amazon. This is not Whole Foods. This is not shopping online. This is about personal development through relationships.

00:27 - Speaker 1
What does that actually do for the small American rancher? How does that affect them? Put them out of business.

00:31 - Speaker 3
We used to feed our families, we used to feed our communities, we used to feed our nation. We've lost that. We're feeding everybody around the world to the highest bidders by saying that we've surrendered over control to our food systems. What happens whenever you lose, basically, control of your food systems as a nation? Well, you lose your nation.

00:55 - Speaker 4
Texas Slim. Hello, sir, what's happening? This is like a reunion. It is We've all grown up Our first podcast guest ever.

01:04 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you were episode one. Yeah, you were number one. Yes, I think.

01:08 - Speaker 3
And when was that so? Cause I don't know what year. It is March 1st 2022. Really yeah. So two years, two years yeah.

01:16 - Speaker 4
Almost on the dot.

01:16 - Speaker 3
Wow, isn't that a trip yeah.

01:18 - Speaker 1
I think this is episode number three for you. So we had we obviously had you on episode number one, right? We had you on right before the Beef Initiative, Crawford conference, I believe. And now we've been on a long hiatus, but we're back now.

01:32 - Speaker 3
Yeah, we're back. Yeah, uh, y'all been in many places and it's nooks and crannies and people's minds and everything. And I've been around the world and one and a half times just not once, but one and a half times but yeah, it's been a journey. We've come a long ways and it's good to have these reunions back into my old hometown, definitely.

01:54 - Speaker 1
And for someone that hasn't met you before, I would recommend going back and listening to episode number one. We did it, we did. We did it right over Zoom, but I think it was very fitting for you to come on episode number one. We did it right over Zoom, but I think it was very fitting for you to come on episode number one, because it was you and Harry that connected originally back in 2021. I think we always love to give our listeners a little backstory of how we got to meet the guest.

02:15
So, Harry, maybe you start how you met Slim and some of the content and the writing you were doing for him, and then we'll dig into it.

02:20 - Speaker 4
Well, I remember coming across your piece Harvest of Deception. I think it was the summer before I even reached out and moved down to Austin but found that piece. I was down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and was just trying to figure out how to make an impact in the food system. Came across your piece on Twitter, was very interested in kind of what you had to say around big food, big ag and how our food system was being manipulated by these big players and how our food system was being manipulated by these big players, and got down here and was looking to figure out how I could start to build out a little bit of a writing habit and then kind of understand what you would put out there, do a little bit more research for myself and start putting some content out there in regards to what's happening in the food system. So I remember reaching out to you. You had posted something. You were like I'm looking for some writers and I was like well let's see what I can do.

03:10
And you're, you're all about it and, um, I remember just contributing, for a few weeks at least, some, some newsletter articles and blog posts, and from there we were, we were buddies and we started going to, uh, some of your micro summit events and participating in those, which were awesome, just great ways to meet some of these ranchers that we've grown to become very good friends with, like the Warrens and the Jason Ricks of the world and the Charles Mayfields of the world and getting to know just like, yeah, the Brooke Millers of the world like this great community of people that have just naturally gravitated towards your message, people that have just naturally gravitated towards your message.

03:48
Um, so we're we're, uh, incredibly grateful to have gotten connected with you and all the people that you've gotten us close with Will Harris, too, I mean.

03:53 - Speaker 3
We wouldn't have that and have that relationship.

03:55 - Speaker 4
So we are forever indebted uh to Texas slim so well, it's been a hell of a journey. Yeah.

04:01 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I remember that first phone call. I remember where I was sitting whenever I talked to you on the phone for the first time. I have a mind like that. But what's cool about that is that you know there was a lot of beginnings with you guys and with you know, the Beef Initiative, everything that we were doing. And you know always from the day one, our ethos is, you know, this is open source and crowdsourced. From day one, our ethos is this is open source and crowdsourced. This is a collaboration. I could tell that you had a lot of desire to really bring some truths. I think we spoke for about an hour that first time.

04:37
Then absolutely nobody read your first article.

04:41 - Speaker 4
That's how it always goes right. It is Slim. Did anyone read this? You're like ah, maybe a few people, no, probably not. No, but. I told you.

04:49 - Speaker 3
I said don't look at the numbers, that's not what it's about. It's about getting people that identify and who have ears to hear and eyes to see, and quality. What's the content? Is it quality? It always happens that way. And don't chase numbers, chase quality, integrity, character.

05:06 - Speaker 4
You know everything, yeah, so well, I think one of the things I remember. I was sitting in a Starbucks parking lot, we were talking through the first blog post that I had done for you, and I remember one thing you said, and I think this is actually probably something that we've hung our hat on multiple times. Just coming back to this message of pretend like you're in the end zone yeah, before before you get there before you get there.

05:28
And that was just like some guidance that I think brett and I both needed to hear in order to go from this embryonic state of like literally not knowing what we wanted to do, but we wanted to contribute to the message that you and others were putting out there, and so it. You know, just just this feeling of like hey, you guys can actually do this. Just like you know, make. Make yourselves the source of credibility by presenting yourself in that way.

05:52 - Speaker 3
You bet you know it's you know my father taught me that very young and I think that quote came from you know it was either Daryl Rule. I'll say it's Daryl Rule because University of Texas. You know here we go. But you know because University of Texas, you know longhorns, here we go. But you know it's a form of manifestation, kind of, you know, believing in yourself, because you don't always have that confidence that you need. As far as presentation, you might know everything that you're saying but you might not feel it basically in a presentable way you know, and that's hard to do in today's society.

06:21
You know, to actually, you know, come with authority, but with humility, yeah. And so if you can put your mindset there first, kind of live it out a little bit, then you usually create that mental, you know roadmap, and I think that's what you guys did and I remember you guys did respond to that pretty well. I said just act like you're already in the end zone.

06:42 - Speaker 4
Definitely.

06:42 - Speaker 3
And you know, screw everything else.

06:45 - Speaker 1
You're going to get there.

06:47
Yeah, and it was one of those things where I think, once we started putting content out, we just really felt like this was our God-given purpose and I think a lot about I can very vividly remember. I have a similar memory to you. I remember reading the Harvest of Deception for the first time, which was a piece that you wrote close to four years ago Harvest of Deception for the first time, which is a piece that you wrote close to four years ago and just I think I just had that epiphany moment of like just thinking about the way that the beef industry and the food system truly is broken, and we're just feeling very fortunate that we're people like you that are really willing to be the voice of the American rancher and be willing to speak up and say the things that need to be said.

07:21
Once you have those light bulb moments of what's actually going on behind the scenes, with the beef packers and the commoditization, you can't unsee it and you basically have to say to yourself like, if I don't choose to do something, who else is going to do something? And so that's how we view you as really being the voice and the spokesperson for the American rancher, even though you're way more than that. I feel like you're the person that's given the American rancher a voice that they desperately need in 2024.

07:45 - Speaker 3
Well, and I appreciate that, Thank you, and I have a lot of respect for those words and actions. And you know I grew up in the belly of the beast of the commodity cattle industry. You know Canyon, texas, and that's you know, 30 miles right away from you know Hereford, texas. You bring up Packers. You know we can go right into it. You know our industry. Cattle industry is controlled by four multinational corporations and you guys now know that.

08:15
You've talked about it many times now and that was a progression that happened during my lifetime. So I've seen every phase of that and I know where we came from, I know where we are and I know where we're going. And by having that type of ingrained, you know basically all my phrase. I like to say the source of the seed of the issue. Well, we got the source of the seed of the solution and that's what I knew that we had to do.

08:42
Coming from where I came from, commodity cowboy country and you know what we've done the last 50 years is not sustainable in the cattle industry. That's what we're up against and nobody's going to admit that first until, basically, they run out of gas and they're not planning on running out of gas anytime soon. But what we're going to try to do is we've got a better business model, you know, and we can go out there and attack, attack, attack, right, saying they're nefarious and everything that they've done and they, they should. You know, we'll talk about this. Jbs should have the department of justice all over their ass. I'll be the first one to say that our government's not going to be the savior here.

09:22
I'll be the first one to say that Our government's not going to be the savior here. And the associations which do a lot for the cattle industry they're not the saviors. The saviors are the guys like me, the guys like you and the people that are listening to this, and this is what we. It's a very gradual, grassroots approach. Very few people have the grit and basically the know-how to do what we've done, but it's come at a time where I think the world is waking up now, especially in the United States.

09:56
I've been around the world. I see what's going on from a macro level, and so everything that I wrote in the Harvest of Deception, you know I went out there. And so everything that I wrote in the Harvest of Deception, you know I went out there. I didn't just trust. You know that it was basically an idea that this was happening. It's verified. We have a train wreck coming.

10:13
You know food supplies are changing. There's a global industrial food shift going on right now and it's been going on longer than most of the general public understands. Most of our producers don't understand. They don't have time to do the type of research and analysis that I can bring to the table, and so, with everything that we all kind of joined together through the harvest of deception, it's been about three years we'll just guesstimate, but everything that we've written about has pretty much transpired. So where are we today? Well, you guys went off and you created a good foundation of who you are, your why, what and how, and the Beef Initiative did the same, and so that's what we're here to talk about, and it's a lot of clarity. But I like to talk now these days, on what we're about to do next, Because we've got proof of work. We've got it's not guesswork right now, and this is why it's exciting for me. All you know, I I was siloed myself off back in October, so this is the first podcast I've done in that many months.

11:17 - Speaker 1
Yeah, we feel honored to be able to to be the first podcast and, for anyone that doesn't know, the work that you've been doing and we're going to get into it I mean, you really have been on a three-year rite of passage where it's not just talking about ranching or what we need to do for ranchers. It's like you and the team have literally been putting your hands in the dirt, traveling thousands and thousands of miles to really learn about what the hell is going on, but then also figuring out tactical solutions of what can we do about it to really fix the beef industry and build an entirely new model, which we're going to get into. But, Slim, one of the things I wanted to ask you so you know you're a tech guy, that's your background. You were in the startup space in Austin. Did you kind of have a light bulb moment of thinking to yourself damn, the food system really is broken, the beef industry is broken and I need to do something about it.

12:06 - Speaker 3
Yeah, and I was thinking about that this morning, you know, because I always kind of like to, you know, try to storyboard a little bit about what I want to talk about. But the light bulb moment for me came. You know a lot of people that come into your space and they come into my space is through suffering, you know, health, financial. Something has gone on in their lives where they take a pause and they go, oh shit, wow, I didn't realize this, and it's a good thing. Those are usually the people. I think it was Joe Rogan who said that you know, some of the most fascinating, you know, intelligent people that he has come across in his life are people that have gone through some massive suffering and overcome that suffering. So a lot of people don't know me. I mean, I was like have y'all ever been kicked by a freaking horse?

12:51 - Speaker 4
I have not yeah. My sister grew up riding horses and she has Right, not fun.

12:56 - Speaker 3
Well, I've been thrown up against a barn a couple of times.

13:01 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I kind of laugh about it.

13:05 - Speaker 3
But I was in a shop and know just real quick. You know I came through to the beef initiative through suffering and I'm a metal smith. I've been doing metal uh for a long time, most of my life, and that's how I was raised. But I got the shit knocked out of by by a piece of springy metal and it threw me up against a damn wall, like you would being kicked by a horse, broke some ribs, did all kinds of stuff, and what happened is I a damn near died through a portal.

13:32
Vein had collapsed whenever I got you know, that blunt force to me, and so whenever I was basically, they drained 29 liters of fluid out of my system. Uh, nobody could figure out what was going on because I didn't complain about it. I just went on with my broken ribs and say, hey, I just broke my ribs. About six weeks later is whenever everything started happening. But whenever I knew they thought I was going to die and they said you got about six weeks we. You know, I weighed about 120 pounds, believe it or not. I got pictures, man, I look like a Holocaust. You know 120 pounds, believe it or not. I got pictures, man, I look like a Holocaust. You know it was starvation, my body was starving, and so I went through a form of starvation that was forced upon me, right.

14:13
And whenever I got clear and I knew that I wasn't going to die, and I looked and I started using my research analysis skills set from, you know, being in Austin for my professional career. And you know there was a time that I looked, you know, when I was doing the research, and it was before I went on harvest and embedded myself in a harvest company and I was sitting there and I was compiling. You know what had happened in my lifetime, with the food systems, with commodity, with where I was raised, with the health of my family, with my immediate family, my cousins, my metabolical family. That should be the same as far as health. I looked at my family as I'm sick my cousins, my aunts and my uncles. We all have the same biomes, we all have the same genetic. All this stuff, stuff, and everybody basically is sick.

15:06
And I was sick in a different way and I knew that something was up with our metabolical health in the united states and I remember the clarity and then I I started doing, you know, different cross-reference searches, you know sequel calls, you know using python, doing a lot of different things a lot of people don't know how to do. But what I found out is that there was a big correlation to our money system, our basically commodity food system, our health of as a nation and basically what they've done in the digital world. And so that's when I went yep, we're, we're coming up on a train wreck. Because there, you know, I found, because I found out the mass consolidations of food industries back in 2016, 17, 18, same time it was mass consolidation on chemical and grain, monsanto, bayer, all that stuff played out. So this stuff has been. They had their marching orders back there in 2017, and here we are in 2024, and they got a headstart on us. Yeah.

16:05 - Speaker 4
Yeah, what? What compelled you to write that first piece? Like what took you from somebody who's seeing all this stuff happen, this metabolic crisis happening within your family, to actually want to start being like hey, this isn't going to fly.

16:18 - Speaker 3
One thing that I did and you know, the beef initiative was not my plan. I was, uh, I was training to go do deep water diving. No shit, that's what I was going to get into next.

16:29 - Speaker 1
I didn't know that, yeah.

16:30 - Speaker 3
I haven't told that many people I was doing breath you know, breath work.

16:34
I was doing all kinds of stuff and you know the beef initiative was not my intentions, but what I did as far as your question question is, there's never been a scripture. What I chose to do is that I made a promise to, basically, my son that I was going to do whatever it took for him to basically have a different future than I see coming down the path for that generation. And so I said, okay, honor what's in front of you and basically pioneer something. That's where I come from.

17:07
I come from the Texas panhandle, it's pioneering country, it's Kamacharia. I mean we could have a podcast just on the Texas panhandle, the history, cattle industry, the Comanches, the longest standing war in United States history. You know, I know everything about cattle. I know everything about the state of Texas. We you know, I know everything about cattle. I know everything about the state of Texas, and what I wanted to do is just bring storytelling to something, to where we could actually get people's attention. And it started with the Harvest of Deception. I just started compiling a lot of research and then I put my own tongue to it.

17:37 - Speaker 1
Yeah, Slim, can you pull that mic a little bit closer to you? I just want to make sure that we because this stuff- is good, we got to capture this little bit closer to.

17:43 - Speaker 4
I just want to make sure that we because this stuff is good, we got to capture right, so we don't want anyone so it sounds like you.

17:48 - Speaker 1
You had this kind of intuitive sense that our metabolic health was broken, our food system is broken, our currency is broken and I know a huge thing, a very something that's synonymous with the beef initiative is this concept of going out, meeting your rancher and shaking their hand. That's where we learned it from is from you, so you're starting to do more research. Are you going out to ranches and farms and just kind of meeting these guys to see what the hell's going on.

18:11 - Speaker 3
Yeah, what happened before I was, I embedded myself into a harvest company because I needed to go see and I needed to kind of, you know, see where the harvest was taken, what was going on with the commodities. You know harvest was taken, what was going on with the commodities? You know crops, you know so much of them had changed from where I grew up doing harvest. You know out in, you know agriculture and ranching in the panhandle. So I really wanted to get up close and kind of see who the guys were and you know all of that. So, as far as you know getting into, you know, as far as the harvest of deception, it's really, you know, I guess it's, you know, looking at what we did and how we did it. It was like I say, kind of rephrase your question just a little bit for me.

19:02 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I was, I was. I was thinking about um how everyone associates you with right being the guy of like go out and shake a rancher's hand, sure? So what were like when you were kind of doing your research and figuring? Out what the hell is going on? Were you kind of, were you going out to ranches just to see firsthand what has actually happened with the beef industry?

19:20 - Speaker 3
Yeah, that's why I kind of brain farted there. But what the reason I brain farted is because that's what I've been doing my whole life.

19:27 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so it's not just like the last couple of years, yeah. You've been doing it for a while're here in. You know the Walmart story that I tell.

19:39 - Speaker 3
And you know we went out there and you get a credit card and you got 30 guys on the crew and everybody gets to eat everything that they want. And so I was like bullshit, man, we're not eating freaking pizza pockets and chicken tendies, you know, for the next several months. And so I went out there and I found 40 acres I believe it's 40 acres outside of Mott, north Dakota, and so that was really the first uh, and that was during COVID and they were almost getting shut down their USDA and I found out all their pain points and I ended that harvest a little early. And the one that really is definitive is my local producer, justin Trammell, and his father, donnie Trammell.

20:18
And the second person was a Cobolton, yeah, and the third, kind of not physically but without been uh, jason Rick Got it. So within several, probably 10 days, I had a core team of guys, that ball all said the same thing in different situations, different times, and every one of them, basically Justin thought I was a Fed, he thought I was CIA and Cole he was just welcoming his. All get out, he's just Cole Bolton.

20:49
And then of course Jason was like hell, yeah, I'll get this crazy ass hippie punk cowboy from West Texas, let's get going. And so that's kind of how, in the beginning, it played out. But you know, as far as shakers, that's what I was taught as a young boy. He's like I'd have to go up and you know, shake a rancher's hand and talk to him, and I'd have to look him in the eye and I know the value of that. And I think that we really have lost that. We have the division of interpersonal communication going across this world right now because the digital apparatuses in which we carry with us at all times yeah.

21:24
We don't know how to have conversations anymore.

21:27
We don't, and you know wwwshakerranchershandcom, shakeyourranchershandcom, ranchershandcom, shakeyourranchershandcom. You know all of those things are it was a lead-in to. It's about establishing and building and maintaining relationships with those in which people that lived and died to feed you. We've lost that connection, and so how do you overcome that? You know, this is not Amazon. This is not Whole Foods. This is not shopping online. This is about personal development through relationships from people that you've never had in your life before. A lot of people are scared to do that. The first person that you need to be doing that with is somebody that's willing to feed you forever. Yeah, that's it. It's as simple as that.

22:16 - Speaker 4
What's been the biggest realization that you've had since you started going onto these farms? And starting to be more intentional. Like you said, you grew up shaking a rancher's hand, but going out to Jason Rick's farm, going out to Cole Bolton's farm, what are the things that you're actually taking away from those conversations that people need to hear about? What do most people not really understand about the American rancher.

22:38 - Speaker 3
Well, what's the number one TV show right in America?

22:42 - Speaker 4
Yellowstone, yellowstone, okay.

22:44 - Speaker 3
Well, that's a good little gangster movie.

22:46
Yep, you know and it's fun, and I grew up there was Dallas. That was the whatever movie, north 40 or whatever. What people don't understand and this is hidden very well is that we're losing basically connection to our resources, and this has been done over the last 50 years. We have a group, we have an industry right now in the United States of America that's under attack.

23:15
What I find out from each individual that you just referred to is they're not going to complain about it, they don't have time to complain about it. They're not going to get up here on a podcast and go y'all, come on. Would you please buy your beef for me? That's just not what's going to happen here. So what I find from them is a lot of truth and a lot of integrity, but what the general public doesn't understand is once you basically develop and create and engineer your own market access, then your life changes in a way that you can't explain. You have to go through the process and these are the stewards. They're servant leaders and we're not paying enough attention to them the general public.

24:00
We've gotten a yearning and a desire for way too much convenience here. Food is not convenient, it shouldn't be convenient, it's based on survival. It's something that is a foundation for our nutritional, basically, core systems. And you know, one thing that we've lost is touch with food. You guys, know this.

24:19
I mean, you talk about it all the time, but what we also, you know, I also discover, because each one of uh, from Justin Trammell to Cole Bolton to Jason Rick man, they're totally different type of ranchers. Everybody's trying to generalize what ranching is. It is so freaking diverse that man. It's a rabbit hole of discovery for the general public that I'm willing to bet that most people are going to really get interested in here moving forward, especially where we've come with the Beef Initiative.

24:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and that's why the work that you're doing is so important to really give these guys a voice and give them the ability to connect with them. And I think I think back to what you said about, um, like us, really we we've normalized a lot of things in our food system that shouldn't be normalized at all. I think back to probably when you were a boy in Texas. You know you had rancher, you had rancher, processor, customer. It was like kind of this awesome triangle and it's from what I've learned from you. It seems like there was really like one processor per county or per town.

25:18
And now, you know, with us growing up, I remember going carnivore and just picking up steaks from the grocery store in New York City and never even thought about shaking my rancher's hand that thought process didn't even exist and not even realizing that there could have been 30 to 50 touch points from that feedlot in Brazil to the time that steak hit my plate. And it's like we've just kind of lost this heart and soul and connection. And I think you know it's not carnivore versus vegan, it's not grass finish versus grain finish, it's really just going out and shaking your farmer, your rancher's hand and just understanding where that food comes from, and if you can do that, you're supporting the right system and your health is going to be in the best place it could possibly be too.

25:57 - Speaker 3
Yeah, and I think I'm a generational X guy. You know I was born in the late sixties, early seventies. I'm kind of like Sean Baker and stuff like that, but really I'm a very good spokesperson to be able to speak to the work where we came from and a lot of people. It's very foreign to them and I have to remember that a lot. And you know the triangle like you talk about, the state of Texas has 254 counties. We used to have 254 microprocessing centers. That gave a lot of diversity to be able to use that cow in ways that we do not use anymore.

26:33
That's what they stole from us. This is what the general public doesn't understand is how we took the cow and we leveraged that cow within our communities instead of across the world. Now you know where does all the tallow go from, all the cows that get processed in Hereford, texas? Nobody knows. I do. It's used for biodiesel, another subsidized industry. So you have a subsidized industry, commoditized and subsidized cattle industry by the big four packers. They get to take that byproduct and then they get to leverage it into another subsidized industry. How many times they profiteering off of that cow? Well, the profit of that cow used to be within the community itself, and the number one profit of that cow was the nutrition that it gave to, you know, everybody that was consuming that cow. So there's a lot of things that people don't understand that we truly, truly lost, as far as communities, as far as small towns, as far as regional, you know, delivery of food systems.

27:33
You know we've gone global, and that was in the 70s when old Eric Butts said you know, go big or go home. It's happened in the cattle industry too, in just different ways. And right now what we're under attack is there's a train wreck coming in the cattle industry and you know a lot of people don't understand the why. Well, you know you have countries that can't feed their people.

28:04
We have a global industry now, global beef industry, and we've, you know it's been leveraged against us now and we don't understand how, and a lot of producers don't see it really happening, like right now, beefs at the auction house, highest prices ever. We'll go and talk about that here in a little bit. But a lot has changed and so we have to get back to where we came from, because history does not, you know, repeat, but it's rhyming, and you know there's been some countries already affected with this global industrial food shift that's going on, and so that's what I've been following going around the world what is really happening on the macro level and so we have to look back at history. We have to look at now, and so we understand what's going on and it doesn't look pretty, but I'm not a doomsday dude. This is the best opportunity in my lifetime to basically do what we're all sitting here to do what we're trying to accomplish collectively.

29:00 - Speaker 4
And just for the listener. I mean, we all talk about it a good amount, but what is actually happening? Like if you had to explain that in the simplest way possible, like what's actually happening, Right.

29:11 - Speaker 3
Well, you think about that. Let's just think about 254 counties. You know state of Texas. That meant that our beef stayed home right. And you guys have talked about the Brazilian cattle drive. You know the North Hemisphere in cattle is becoming the South Hemisphere. The South Hemisphere is becoming the North Hemisphere. What does that mean? You've got basically new ranches that have been built across the globe and we have an old, historical ranch in the United States called the Midwest of America, in the state of Texas.

29:45
Okay, we used to feed our families, we used to feed our communities, we used to feed our nation. We've lost that. We don't feed our nation, we don't feed our children anymore with our local beef, with our local biomes. We're feeding everybody around the world to the highest bidders, and so by saying that we've surrendered over control to our food systems. And you talk to Dr Brooke Miller, you know, ex -president of the US Cattlemen's Association, he was the first one to brought it up with me and I agreed with him without hesitation.

30:20
This is a national security issue at this point in time. Just because the TV doesn't tell you, because they're not going to tell you this, just because of the centralized media, doesn't say anything about it doesn't mean it's not happening. We're under attack. Our food systems are under attack. I am now dealing with some global aggregators, and you know that's global distribution of animal proteins, of energy and everything. Folks, we're going to have 400 million refugees over the next seven years, six years now, and this is happening. We look at Texas right now we have 8 million people that have crossed the border in three years.

31:01
This is a mass migration. With that comes famine. With that comes changes of food supply lines. It changes distribution, and so we've lost distribution. Not only do we surrender over to the packers, who controls the distribution from the packers? Well, it's the same people, and so we've lost control of our distribution.

31:24
You've got BRICS now Brazil, russia, india, china and South Africa. It's kind of an interesting little dynamic there. Well, look at the map, look at supply chain lines. Interesting little dynamic there. We'll look at the map, look at supply chain lines, and so by saying that you know, in the United States of America we're our food supply is not welcome in 27, 28 countries, something like that, you guys probably know better than me, but what this means is that Americans will eat a lot. I say we eat dog shit because it tastes good? Yeah, and we have. You know, we got Taco Bell. That's dog shit, folks, and it's not a judgment, but it eat dog shit because it tastes good. Yeah, and we have, we've got Taco Bell. That's dog shit, folks, and it's not a judgment, but it's dog shit. Might be worse than dog shit. Yeah, exactly.

32:04
Well, it's the same thing, yeah, yeah, I mean really, it's just got a different label on it.

32:07
You know, it's filler, right, yes, and so by saying that is, we don't scrutinize our food systems too much, but when we do scrutinize our food systems, we're looking at the wrong things. We're looking at labeling, organic, grass-fed those, basically. Apparatuses have been captured too, and so how do you circumvent around that? Well, you understand the macro picture. You understand that labeling laws, fda 2022 allowed 2,000 new chemicals to come in. It's not GMO anymore, it's bioengineered.

32:42
So there's there's a war going on as far as labeling and in lobbying and legislation to hide the fact that we're surrendering over our food systems to multinational corporations that are feeding different continents systems to multinational corporations that are feeding different continents. That's what's going on at the high level, at the, at the governmental level. You know right now. You know our beef that we eat a lot of times in supermarkets today was a government contract that was signed four years ago. Okay, that can't be changed, and so a lot of people don't know that either. And so you look at the global distribution of animal proteins. Why is it that tyson is closing down eight plants in the united states for pork right now, but we're increasing our export of pork in the united states, so we're closing off domestic, but now we're shipping in pork from tyson.

33:33
Who owns tyson? I should smithville interesting. Who owns smithville? Ccp? China okay, our basically hog industry right now in the united states of america is controlled majority by china on a big government contract level. Think about that. So why would we be closing down hog plants? I know somebody that represented 50 hog farmers just two years ago. They got shut down overnight. Fifty families, 50 sets of children, they're done, they're liquidated. The general public doesn't see that. They see the nice shiny objects in the supermarket that have all the pretty writing on them that say you know heart, healthy grass fed organic, holistic.

34:20
It never ends. Those days are over with. Yeah, there might be right, it might be organic, it might be grass fed. It's a crapshoot. There's a lot of people out there like the Warrens. They do everything they can to do organic. There's a lot of great people with integrity that stand by what organic is, but there a lot of great people with integrity that stand by what organic is. But there's twice as many people out there that do the opposite. They circumvent around it and they get away with it.

34:46 - Speaker 1
When 85% of all meat in the grocery store is controlled by four companies? What does that actually do for like the small American rancher? How does that affect them?

34:54 - Speaker 3
Puts them out of business, Right now I'm telling everybody and let's back up so people can understand, kind of how I operate. I want everybody to understand where I'm speaking of is not judgment, and a lot of people take things personal these days. A lot of people out there suffering. A lot of people don't know how A lot of people are overweight. A lot of people don't know how a lot of people are overweight. A lot of people are having metabolically issues. This is not a judgment to them. We all got here together as a nation, so just know, I, I, I report everything from me witnessing and as jason rick says observational science.

35:28
That's what I do, so anything I say is not a personal attack. So don't internalize this people out there, don't internalize this people out there, don't internalize what I say. But as far as you know, whenever you now know and you go to the supermarket and we can't generalize, we have people that live in big cities, we have people who live far out in the country, we have the inner city, we have suburbs, we have so many different types of demographics logistics so let's talk about a generalization. Traffic logistics so let's talk about a generalization. Whenever you go to the supermarket right now, you're putting a nail in the coffin to the independent rancher producer in the United States of America. Simple as that. It's as simple as that. And if you, if you ignore that, you're going to be able to look back in a couple of years, we've lost 40% of our ranch lands in the. What happens whenever you lose, basically, control of your food systems as a nation? Well, you lose your nation. It's as simple. That's what's happening, and so our health reflects it. Basically what's going on as far as cattle right now. During COVID, jbs was able to manipulate the retail side of things at the supermarket for a tune of half a billion dollars in profit. What did the administration do? They fined them 56 million. They'll do that every day till the cows come home.

36:49
So what we have to get people to understand you asked the question is what happens whenever 85% of our animal proteins are controlled by multinational corporations? Well, we basically defeat ourselves. We basically help them. Our consumer demand is now supporting the multinational system that is now bankrupting the independent rancher and producers across America. Simple as that. That is definitive. It's not like scare tax that is happening right now. Like scare tax that is happening right now.

37:25
I know of four producer ranchers in the United States of America that just sold all their herds because they're getting basically highest prices ever at the auction houses. They're not coming back, their children aren't taking over, they liquidate it out. That's part of a consolidation and centralization that happened in the hog industry, and now the same people that went after the hog industry, which is Tyson, are now going after our cattle industry. And so in 18 months, within 18 months, you know you're going to see that attempt at centralization and consolidation of our cattle supplies. Right now, we're at the lowest inventories we've ever had in the United States of America as far as our cattle. That's pretty scary Used to.

38:02
We go through these cycles, right, you go through consolidations and you'll have a you know you'll have a collapse of the wholesale cattle industry. And they're like all right, we just build our herds. Well, it's like petroleum. We have our reserves right, we don't have reserves anymore. How long does it take to build a herd? It takes two years, okay, what? It takes two years, okay, what happens in two years? Well, we flood the market with what I call the summer of pork is coming, and where's that pork?

38:31
coming from china china yeah, where's our pork going? It's going to, I don't know, the highest bidder on the global market. Yeah, we're not selling our beef to the right people. We're not selling our animal protein to the right people, but we've lost control of that within the global distribution model with these aggregators. You know, if I could right now, I could fill 50 containers of animal protein and ship them across seas and I can make money off of that. But we ain't got it, nobody's got it. There's a big bidding war going right now on food supply systems, and you look at money, you look at inflation. This is an election year. There's not going to be any changes to any laws anytime soon. Things are going to happen over the next 18 months that this is going to be a monumental shift. That happened, same thing that happened in the seventies, yeah, yeah.

39:28 - Speaker 1
It's almost like there's a war on two fronts. The one war is just nutritional policy and guidelines in general in the U? S, where 63% of all calories are coming in the form of ultra processed foods, and understanding that the antidote to that is eating more red meat animal products. But then the second part of the war is actually the fact that now we're just basically losing our farmland overseas, which I think. No, I think more people are starting to come away to the fact that what we're taught about nutrition is absolutely incorrect and animal products are healthy, but I don't think people realize the fact that we're actually using losing our farmland overseas.

40:01 - Speaker 3
Yeah, and you know these. These ranches and farms are becoming playgrounds for billionaires, or Bill Gates. We all talk about that. That always catches people's eyes. Well, china has done the same thing. They bought up as much land as Bill Gates has.

40:22
And but one thing that right now that we have to understand this is this is they have the capability of doing this because we lost access to our processing centers. Everything begins and ends at the processing center and that's what the Beef Initiative has basically been able to steward forward with. And now we do have USDA processing centers, we have state-level processing centers, we now have the Beef Initiative Association Council and that's basically processing centers. We've been building a consulting agency for three years now to where we're basically going to start building out processing centers across the United States, and you haven't. You weren't able to do that before because of a lot of reasons. One reason is you didn't have the intelligence. You didn't have the basically from the inspections to the regulatory capture, because if you have a microprocessing center and you have one of these big multinational processing centers, you got 5,000 head a day or you might have five head a day right.

41:31
And it's different, you know. So our rules and our laws don't match up. But the inspectors they have to inspect this one, they have to inspect this one. They don't know how to inspect this one, and so we figured that out pretty early. And the state of Texas is really good to be able to kind of lead forward with this new consulting and this new intelligence, because we have precedents now. We have precedents as far as EPA, we have precedents as far as H you know a hasat. You know wastewater, sanitation, everything that's required to open a processing center.

42:09
It was always fragmented and compartmentalized. Well, we put all of that into a box. Now that people now can come to us and they want to open up a processing center in their community, a microprocessing center, they come to the TBIACorg is what it is. They come there, we take them from basically breaking ground all the way into your last inspection. Wow yeah, and we have proof. It's not hopium. We're doing this in real time. We're basically consulting people. Right now. I say we have three people that break ground this year on microprocessing centers. But also I need to bring up we have a lot of small processing centers in the United States of America, right now in Texas that are not being utilized enough. Why is that? Well, everybody's selling their cattle at the auction houses instead of taking them to basically the tape.