SPEAKER_03 0:01

All right. Well, welcome everybody to this week's dispatch. We are so glad to be with you again. And we read an article this week that has inspired us to talk about something that really, really creates a lot of grief in us and a lot and mourning and just horror. And that was about the way they treat m um sows, pigs, that are um breeding. And uh and and in some states they've outlawed this this way of doing it, which is basically a cage, which is not even big enough for them to move.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

They just it's a it it's it was hinged on the fact that when pregnant sows are in an open space, they fight each other. Yeah, that's what they bite and stuff. So then they decide the their decision was like, you know, we have to cram them all in, but make them not be able to move at all.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

And so these sows end up spending their lives in a not being able to move and then chewing on the metal bars in their cage for their entire lives.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

So they're distressed, distressed. And and and it's also because it's industrial and it may squeeze more in together, you know. You'd have to have a big lot of space. And so several a few states have said that's they're not gonna let you do that. And um, you have to give the cell a certain number number of square feet to live in, you know, so they can actually get up and walk around and move. Uh and of course, big egg fought back against that and said, Oh, hell no, that's too expensive. We don't want to have to do that. And um, so now it's gone to Congress, which is US Congress, which is considering making a law that you can't that other states can't make those kind of laws, basically. And to say they can egg gets to do whatever they want. Um and, you know, when we start, we've all probably looked at the horror pictures of the chickens and the cows and the you know, places that they get slaughtered and the slaughterhouses and stuff, and the the horrors that go on with that. And there are videos, but now they've m there's uh something called the egg gag law that's been around for a while now that said they don't have to show us that stuff, they don't have to put it on video. They can do they can tell reporters and um researchers that they can't come in and look at that stuff. So it but it exists and we know it exists, and it really does hurt deeply to think what we're doing to these sentient creatures. So that's what we thought we would chat about today.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

That's right. And it is kind of it really and um, you know, uh we should have added started with a trigger warning for folks who are gonna be like, I can't see this, I don't want to hear it. This is not this is too much for me. Yeah. And you know, you're welcome to step away for this week because it will be a really hard conversation. I'm s I'm hoping for some of you. And you know, it it it has been my entire life. Ever since I was in junior high, I think we've talked about animals and you know, how do we raise food in an industrial setting that is ethical and safe for all of us, including animals that are we slaughtered for food. I did, it was funny that I read the same article that morning and I thought about it quite a bit, and I I considered that in my 20s, I was like, I I I really was against it, and I was against it, and this is my biblical piece. So in my 20s, I read the Bible cover to cover, and there is um a verse in the Old Testament that you know God made earth, and God said, Be good stewards of the world and take care of all the animals and trees and everything around you, right? And I really took that to heart because I thought, well, if it's about stewardship, is it right to um collect animals and force them to breed and live in poo and you know, small cages in order for me to have bacon and you know, steaks? And in my 20s, I was like, no, absolutely not. I don't believe in this system, and I'm gonna be a vegetarian. So, you know, here I am like 30 years later, thinking, wait a minute, I kind of like wobbled for 30 years. And I, and then you know, we talked about this, like, oh, I buy my my food straight from farmers and you know, we or bison, like these days it's like there's a bison farm near, and you can get bison, not cheap and not a lot, and that you know, that's where like my my goody two shoes was like, Well, I'm doing a little bit better, but am I I might be on my way to veganism these days after this article specifically. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

I mean, it's so yeah, everybody, everybody, all our audience can now take a breath.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah, it's uh it's uh as somebody who also like when possible has stopped eating beef in favor of bison. Um and I actually I've found that one of the easiest ways to um participate in a way that feels more ethical for me is to eat halal, eat meat halal because they're very strict.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Um slaughtered.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, yeah. Um the rules around it really like take a hard ethical vent on that. Um but this topic comes up often, more often in my life, maybe than I would think. And um just out that I I I have had a lot of challenging conversations, especially with militant vegans throughout my life. Um because nothing is simple in the systems that we have created in industrial systems and industrial animal farming is uh horrifying, absolutely horrifying. But an industrial food production of any kind is horrifying. The human, animal, and ecological cost of industrial plant farming is also horrible, horrible, horrible, and not without exploitation, death, oppression of of people and uh non non-human people. Yeah. So true, so true. And the other the other part that I want to speak to on that is is how often food especially gets plugged into or trapped in the in the personal choice realm and and the choice to eat directly from farms and the choice to pay more for for bison. And that is just not feasible for so many people.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yeah, it isn't. Did either one of you watch The Good Place?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Do you remember the the whole commentary on the tomato, buying a tomato? There was a piece, and I think it was TD who was uh they were trying to figure out like, you know, why was that person sent to hell? And it's like they they jacked up, they messed up, they made they made a bad decision. And so they went back to see like what decision actually tipped this person who was generally seen as a very good, ethical, moral person who spent their life doing good in the world, right? But it was this one moment when they were in a supermarket trying to consider like which tomato should I buy? Is it the industrial tomato that you know it's soulless, it's like you know, probably hydroponically grown in some big warehouse with like weird water trickling through it all day long. You know, it's mealy, it's not that good. It's it's right, it's like picked up by, you know, just like this poor person who's just like day after day picking through these tomatoes, or the organic, beautiful farm-raised tomato that costs like two or three times more than this tomato. Right. And and then they just went through, like continued with all the different aspects. So they were saying it is so hard to be a 21st century human being because every moment has choices that you have to make just like that, that can easily like you know, you make a bad choice based on I'm hungry, like today's not the day I'm gonna be, you know, I don't I can't afford it today. Whatever. So, you know, it does become, you're right, Sam, like it becomes uh we constantly have to make these choices and adjustments. And yes, of course it's not fair. All of us should have equal access to good, you know, well-made, well-grown food, but we don't, right? There's like this almost classist economics, yeah. Very much so educate educational. Like those who don't know, there are people who don't know, like and have no idea how what like bacon is from a pig. And pigs are like actually super smart critters, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:58

Yeah, or or even you know, chickens who maybe aren't so smart, but they don't indeed come from plastic under plastic, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

They're so cute.

SPEAKER_03 9:07

And there's the whole packaging thing, which is you know, all the and the transport and all this stuff that causes so much damage.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

I mean the water that they stuff into animals so it's plumper, the dye that they use of fish so it looks good, right? Like there's a lot of different choices that get made before we even go to the supermarket to get something.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

Yeah, and the drugs that they pump into them. Um, you know, I I I was at my daughter and son-in-law's farm last week or two ago, and uh we were talking about, I mean, all around them is big egg, you know. And and we met one of the guys who'd lived there his whole life, and he was like, Hey, if you guys need any big equipment, let me know. You know, it's very friendly, you know. But um, my son was saying, you know, as much as we would wish that people could eat from sustainable um permaculture farms and uh, you know, animals even that have been slaughtered in a beautiful, loving, caring way, um, that's a privilege. And and most and it's out of reach for most people, and there's no way we could feed the world like we do now. Um, and on, you know, we don't, it's not unless everybody built their own little farm, unless there were thousands of them, you know. And and uh that would be a lovely thing, but at this point that's not happening. And you're right, that for most people, the food they're gonna eat is what they can afford, and what they can afford is the stuff that's in the grocery store and is um subsidized by the way we do it.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

And so that's and even causing harm some families can't even access a supermarket, they live in, you know, our uh what is it, supermarket deserts, food deserts, right? So they're just buying the slop that we offer them at the convenience store, like for better or for worse. That is the only choice they might have, and the only understanding around what nutrition need you have. But you know, so why are we talking about this? Why is this important?

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Because it makes me sad.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

All right, so there's some there's some grief, right? There's grief in how the world has transformed our personal day-to-day lives so that the choices we make really do affect other sentient beings.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

Yeah, yeah. And those sentient beings, all of those who are being so poorly treated right now as we sit here speaking, that hurts. That hurts me inside. And just and the pl and the planet, of course. We talked about that. The planet itself is suffering because of these ways of being. And yeah, we need we need to, I don't know what we need to do. We need to find something better, but that's that's the trick.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

That yeah, well, and you know, I I think that's you know, just like we want to talk about death and dying and normalize the conversations and really expand the people's knowledge of what is available for death and dying. I think again, and this has happened over the course of my own personal life, expanding the conversations about what it means to be, you know, a sentient meat packet walking around consuming.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

And so what that means is like you also eat and where does your food come from? You know, what is this uh, you know, this bacon? What where did it come from? What is the what you know, who owns this industrial farm and what are their, you know, what are their um values and ethics about animal husbandry? You know, so I guess it's just like I wanted to be that we're talking about this to again inform listeners that deaths is happening, hard and possibly very awful deaths are happening around us, and then we consume that. You know, that is kind of uh we consume that sadness. Like I there was um uh there was a book I was just listening to. I think it was I was I'm listening to Brady's Sweet Grass again because uh I I read it like 10-15 years ago, whenever it came first came out. Yeah, and my daughter just read it and and I she had some things and I was like, Oh, I I need to read read it to remember. But I think they were talking about she might have been talking about industrial uh slaughterhouses and how people have to like cover their ears because they hear the scream so often that it's just it's too much. And you know, it's uh it is not easy to hear that. It is not easy to consume this knowledge, but it also makes me feel like the more we know and can be grate grateful for the food that we do have, you know, not eat as much sometimes because it's like this is you know, our I guess it's like our water issues are also from um feedlots, you know, making meat and you know, creating meat for us is like giving cows a ton of water and then they pee and poop all day and all that other fecal matter just kind of sits into the uh s sits into the aquifers. And so like you know, we're like doubly damaging our land and ourselves. Um what is it like if we could stop eating meat, like maybe the greenhouse gases could actually like be reduced by a bit by like a noticeable fraction too.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

So death all around us, death, it's all around, and there's no there's no getting away from it. Yeah, you have to kill to eat. What whatever it is, and and that comes up often too, is like how do we how do we delineate consciousness and sentience? You know, science is catching up to you know uh plants feel pain. We just can't hear them, and they don't have eyes. And you know, some people talk about, you know, I only eat things that you know don't have eyes, and everybody makes these like delineations on what's okay to eat. I for a long time, like I don't eat uh I won't eat cephalopods, octopus. Octopus, because they're so smart, they're so but at a certain point, at a certain point it's like, and how is that really that different? Why am I making that judgment on what level of consciousness is okay to eat and what isn't? Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Right. I kind of think that everything is conscious, and we that's why, you know, giving thanks for our food is so important, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

No matter what it is, no matter what is to love and respect what you're eating and the sacrifice that's made to keep you going.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yeah, and all the sacrifices that were made to get it to you in your house and in your mouth, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yep. Okay. Little story.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Well, I hope you know this about me, but I eat almost everything. I'm like an opal girl. I have been known to eat like the weird things that you find in markets and other countries. So uh years ago when I was a master gardener, my church was called in and said, Listen, there is a horrible snail uh problem over at the governor's house. You know, could some of those master gardeners go some morning and just help pick them off a lettuce? Because at that point they were having like a garden for like the unsho uh unsheltered families in the in in in Denver. Okay, so me and my two kids, we like show up in morning with our buckets and we start collecting them. And I actually don't know what they did with them, but that one point I was like, they're big, they're like escargot size. Yeah, and I was like, um, you can eat snail. And these all these old ladies were like, ooh, oh you know, whatever. And so I ended up just being like, I kind of feel like I want to try this. And so I I gathered like two dozen um snail. I came home and I researched it. It is indeed like uh one size smaller than the ones that you pay big bucks for in France. And I pulled out an old fish tank and I had them, and I, you know, I was of course I like like learn and my homeschooling kids had to like figure out how to take care of snails, a little water, a little lettuce. And then my chef friend was like, give them cornmeal and we'll eat them. And I'm like, okay, baby. And we did, we kept them for like I don't know, a couple weeks, and they were so happy, like eating cornmeal and they were so cute, they like escaped out of the car out of my little glass thing. And you know, um, he didn't fail to tell me that we could have given them a bunch of wine at the very end to just like be extra yummy, but they could also go on a you know on a happier note. You know, I ended up having some friends over to have escargot and pasta, and my friend created this amazing meal. And, you know, um, I'm not above eating all kinds of crazy stuff. And I think that that is also an issue we have in this country is that we created this very narrow notion of what uh we should eat, right? Like this is all we can eat. It's like, you know, the stuff that you find at grocery stores. And you know, the world over we're eats all kinds of critters and all kinds, I mean, grasshoppers, yum, have eaten them. Ants, yum, you know, like I have eaten my share of bugs in this lifetime. And um, I you know, I hope you hear this somewhere out there and be like, maybe that's what I'll do too.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Yeah, yeah. It's worth checking into. Yeah, maybe we could encourage some of our farmer friends to start bringing, you know, raising other things. I mean, worms are actually really good for food, actually. You can make a really big worm brand. And I had a friend who made, you know, worm burgers, which were were yummy, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Well, actually, um Survivor New Zealand, because I watch, well, not Survivor, it's like Alone New Zealand or uh Tasmania. There was a woman, because do you know about those alone shows? They like put you on some random place and you have to like use your wits to stay alive for a million bucks. Um, there was this one lady, and she would have been my pal because she was kooky, immediately took off her shoes and was walking around barefoot. And you know, all these guys are like, I need to go and kill like you know, a wombat and fish and everything. My girl, she was digging up worms and making little worm patties as well, and she won. She was able to sustain herself like very well for a long time without having to like find the big kill, right? So please eat worms.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Well, you know, and we were talking about how it's hard, it would be hard in our world right now to actually be sustained and sustain the world. But part of that is yeah, you're you're right. We're so we have such a narrow definition of what we could actually eat. If we open that up, maybe we could sustain the world in a permaculture way.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah. Well, I have a friend who just recently said, Hey, the zombie apocalypse heads, I need to make sure that I get you into my space or I'll come to you. He's like, Because you actually know plants and how to like because when I'm hiking, I'm always like chewing on things, like, oh, look at that, yummy, and eat that as eat that. And he's like, Yeah, like you will survive. You know what to eat.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, it's always surprising the like the percentage of like wild native plants that are edible. Yeah. Or medicinal. Yeah. Or medicinal.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Don't even think about it. Yeah. It's pretty much everything out there has a has a reason for being there.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Somebody pointed out the other day, and this is true here in the Northwest, that quite often a plant that will poison you is growing right next to the plant that will save you if you get poisoned, you know. Yeah, and the thing is. And if you get stung by nettles and you pick a fern, the kind uh I think it's a sword fern. Uh yeah, and you rub your rub the nettles with it, it takes away the pain. It's like, well, and or slugs. The other one, the other one that I love that somebody told me once is slugs. You take the slug goo and rub it on nettles, it takes pain away. Like, yeah, well, that's why slugs hang out. That is so cool. I did not know about slugs.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Yeah, well, and I keep nettles because when I have a lot of like pain in my back or like for a while that my knees really hurt, I go outside and grab nettles and like just like like brush them on me. And uh, and what happens is blood immediately goes flows to that, so you get a lot more blood flow and warmth. And it's actually beneficial. So, you know, rheumatoid arthritis is like one of the things that nettles is actually good for.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Oh, wow. Who knew?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

I love my nettles. I know my everybody who comes in my house is like, oh my god, you're nettles. I'm like, yeah, but we it's for teas, it's for you know medicine.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Yeah. At our retreat, that's so you you you ran into a whole big field of nettles, didn't you, Sam? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Well, they they they blocked the trail at a certain point. I went I went exploring and then there was a nettle forest, and I went, okay, that's as far as I'm going. It's the nettles have reclaimed this area for themselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Yeah. And you know, we we probably could have sent a group out there to harvest them and make a big soup or something, you know. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Cheese or soups or yeah. I have no Actually, actually, you can't have nettles after a certain point 'cause then they have a little bit of a toxin. You can't eat them. But if you cut you harvest them early on and you dry them, it's really great for teas and it's really great, like they can be steamed like spinach.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Yeah. Yeah, I've done that.

unknown 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:10

They're really yummy. Yeah. There we go. A good example.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah. So I guess to to bring it back around, we were talking about oh, Ana Luisa, you mentioned like when we eat these things that are thrown in an industrial system, we are eating the we're eating the sadness. We're eating the suffering. And since there's no real escape from industrial food systems for most of us, whether you can make, you know, make the choice to eat less industrially sometimes, but not always. Sometimes you're on the road and a gas station corn dog is all you can get.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

And and sometimes you can taste it. That's sort of an aside. Like sometimes I eat something and I'm like, yeah, I can I can taste the quality of life that this being had. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

But to like in those moments to have conversations with that and to do like active grieving about the systems that we really don't have much control over right now. Oh, I love that. And and the unanswerable questions, or not unanswerable, but unanswered questions of like, can we feed everybody sustainably? Yeah. And and how much does it take to like shift the momentum of this? Yeah. And and just increasing that that mindfulness and consciousness about what you are eating. And that I think that that sense of metabolism can go a long way in maybe you know starting to change things materially if we let it uh lead into our actions. Right. And collective actions just from awareness and collective action, especially.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Because individual choices, I want to bring it back to like individual buying choices. Yeah. We can't fix this. Right. Right. We can't consume our way out of unethical consumption. We have to shift things on a much larger scale, including, you know, farmers who have done this this way forever and are good natured and really want to feed the world and don't, you know, either have the resources, education, or understanding to do it in a different way. But but yeah, the like the gratitude and the understanding and and then like paying attention. Like if you can I spend a lot of time in Portland. Every food cart pod in Portland has a uh has a halal cart.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

And so, you know, uh I eat much more vegetarian when I'm in a city. Um, I grew up in in Montana where it's the land of free range everything. And so it's a different, it's a different um relationship to the animals around me. But, you know, to feel the difference when you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah. When you can make those choices.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Yeah. And have those conversations and do those rituals of prayer and thankfulness and gratitude. Um and and I think another way of being aware of that is like what Annalise was speaking to earlier, is paying attention to the other foods that are available. I was I went over to um Hawthorne Farm, uh, where one of our good friends has a farm and uh and walked in to buy some uh yogurt, goat yogurt from them. And uh and when I walked in, they were in it around the back and they were harvesting uh deer that had just been killed on the road. And uh and I was like, you know, they they just people around them know that you don't just let a roadkill rot on the roadside. You call you call Daniel, you know, and and Alexia, and they'll they'll take care of it and they'll they'll feed people with it, you know. So um I think that's again, and they also are very ethical about the way the animals are killed on their farm, and um, and they don't leave any piece of it left, you know. Anything if there is any lit little bit left that they don't can't use in some way, they put it out in the forest for the forest animals. And so it's uh that kind of consciousness, and and on our parts as the audiences as as consumers to be aware of that kind of consciousness and find the people who are doing that. Um doesn't have to be more expensive. Sometimes they're glad to share their stuff and even give it away, you know. So um, so anyway, that's again something we can encourage people to be aware of and think about. So thank you guys. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, conversation.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yeah, as always, as always. Yeah. So I guess that's it for us for today. Um, thank you all for joining us. Do all that that good stuff, the liking, the subscribing, come hang out with us on Substack, um, where we've got chats at Bruin. And stay tuned for the next one.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Stay tuned soon.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

I hope everybody else conversations at the end of the line.