# Ep. 3: Lies in the Meat Industry with Farmer Paul from Pasturebird

An episode of [Grounded Wellness by Primally Pure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1768354655), 25 Sep 2024, 1 h 00 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/11070acb8/podcast/play/117237529/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-20%2F420446335-44100-2-42a7b8bdcab42.mp3

In this episode, Paul Greive, co-founder of Pasturebird and Bethany’s brother-in-law, flips the entire notion of ethical meat on its head. With hardly any regulations in the meat industry, you might be shocked to learn why there’s a good chance many of these “ethically-raised” livestock have actually never set foot outside.Almost every label in the meat aisle at the grocery is plastered with claims like: Cage-free, Organic, Grass-fed + more. They sound great, but do they actually mean anything? Tune in to empower yourself to shop smart + learn why regenerative farming and truly ethical meat can be BENEFICIAL for the environment. This conversation will show you how cleaner farming methods cultivate better food for us and a cleaner, more vibrant earth for all. Episode Resources: Pasturebird: https://www.pasturebird.com/Farmer Paul: https://www.instagram.com/farmerpaulg/Explore more from Primally Pure:Shop: https://bit.ly/4e1HzVvBlog: https://bit.ly/4gAeIsY

## Transcript

[0:01] Welcome to Grounded Wellness, your go to podcast for
[0:04] simplified and trusted information on how to live a
[0:07] more non-toxic and holistic life.
[0:10] We're your hosts. I'm Bethany McDaniel, founder of
[0:13] Primarily Pure, biohacking enthusiast and mom of three.
[0:16] And I'm Courtney O'Connor, holistic esthetician with over
[0:19] 15 years experience in the healing power of touch and
[0:23] holistic skin care rituals. In today's episode, Farmer Paul
[0:27] from the pasture raised chicken brand Pasture Bird helps bring
[0:30] clarity around many of the most confusing topics and marketing
[0:34] tactics that you need to be aware of in the meat industry.
[0:37] There's animals that are living in a feed lot, eating corn and
[0:40] soybeans up to their ankles and manure that are sold as grass
[0:43] fed. And if you're someone who has
[0:44] struggled with feeling guilty for eating meat because you were
[0:47] told that meat is bad for the environment, we're going to turn
[0:50] that notion on its head today and give you the real facts and
[0:53] how to eat the most clean and pure food of your life.
[0:57] Let's dig in. Paul, thank you so much for
[1:04] joining us here today. We thought you would be such a
[1:07] fitting guest because the Primarily pure story is so
[1:10] interconnected with the farm. And you were actually one of my
[1:14] biggest supporters in the beginning when I started
[1:16] Primarily Pure. I'm so proud of you.
[1:17] Yeah, it's going to be fun. How do you like this movie?
[1:20] Have you tried it yet? Very ready to try it?
[1:22] Let's dig in. Try it all right.
[1:23] Have you ever tried a liver smoothie?
[1:25] Of course I tried a liver smoothie.
[1:26] Not your liver smoothie though. Cheers.
[1:29] See you. Thanks.
[1:30] To a successful podcast? Yep, all right.
[1:36] This is one of my better ones. Oh, just joking.
[1:39] It's really, really good. So good.
[1:41] It's good, right? Really good.
[1:43] This is Primal Pastures. Robbie Flivver Raw grass fed
[1:48] milk, raw honey from Primal pastures, berries and mint from
[1:55] the Primal lead gear farm right over there.
[1:58] No, I'm not just saying this is genuinely so good.
[2:00] I don't taste the liver and that's really hard to do with
[2:02] beef. Yeah, it's strong.
[2:04] It does not taste good by itself.
[2:06] People always think I'm crazy when I post about this on social
[2:09] media, but I think it's the best way to get liver into your diet.
[2:12] Liver has so many vitamins and nutrients that you can't find
[2:15] anywhere else. It's like Oz for oz.
[2:17] When you stack it up against any other food, it just blows it out
[2:20] of the water. And so this I found to be the
[2:23] best way to get those nutrients into your body.
[2:26] Like I've tried cooking it by itself.
[2:29] I feel like that is way worse than making it into a smoothie.
[2:32] But people always I get so upset when I talk about it and just
[2:36] think it's the most disgusting thing ever.
[2:38] Well, you've got three kids, I've got 4.
[2:40] I feel like this would be so palatable for kids too.
[2:42] It's like. No, I make it for my kids every
[2:44] morning. They have absolutely no idea.
[2:46] That's awesome. Yeah, that's delicious.
[2:48] So tell us, how did you initially get into regenerative
[2:54] farming and starting Primal Pastures and then Pasture Bird?
[2:59] Yeah, I mean, is a weird route for me because most people grow
[3:02] up either on a farm or they're like second, third generation or
[3:05] whatever. But you know, for us, like, our
[3:07] story is not that I grew up in downtown Seattle.
[3:11] As you know, we're both from Seattle.
[3:13] Inside joke Bethany claims to be from Seattle.
[3:16] I'm born in. Seattle.
[3:18] I went there for a few months, so Seattle is my hometown.
[3:21] Hometown. Whatever.
[3:24] So as you know, coming from Seattle, not a lot of farms up
[3:27] there, not a lot of interest in food or farming or anything like
[3:29] that. I definitely grew up like
[3:31] McDonald's kid in the 80s and 90s, no real interest in it.
[3:34] But then as an athlete, finished college, went into the Marine
[3:38] Corps and started needing better performance out of my body.
[3:42] And I got hit with Lyme disease during sniper school and like
[3:46] started getting brain fog, fatigue, just like arthritis in
[3:50] my knees and joints. And I started feeling really
[3:52] weird as a 22 year old to be like not feeling well at all.
[3:56] And thank God, like there was some guys in the Marine Corps at
[3:58] that time that were like, dude, you should talk.
[4:00] You should look at paleo. It's this anti-inflammatory way
[4:03] of eating. And you'll feel so much better
[4:04] if you try it. And I was like, I feel terrible.
[4:07] Like I'll try whatever. And two weeks in, I could
[4:10] breathe through my nose again. I was like, man, my back feels
[4:13] better. And I just had a lot more
[4:15] clarity of thought. It was like the start of it was
[4:18] the start of a journey. In only two weeks.
[4:20] Two weeks is all it took to start feeling like serious
[4:22] effects because I was eating the normal, like, SAD diet, you
[4:26] know, the standard American diet, and just super inflamed
[4:29] and feeling terrible. Yeah.
[4:31] So like, Lindsay, my wife and I started eating Paleo.
[4:35] I went off to Iraq. I came back and we were all
[4:37] sitting around. It was like 2012.
[4:39] We'd all been eating organic and trying to find grass fed.
[4:43] And we were joking about like, oh, wouldn't it be funny to get
[4:46] some chickens for our backyard, you know, for Tom and Debbie's,
[4:49] which is your in laws and my in laws backyard.
[4:52] And we all, it was Easter, just like having a family
[4:55] conversation, like joking around about it.
[4:57] And then Robbie, our brother-in-law disappears.
[5:01] He comes back like 10 minutes later and he's like, hey, I just
[5:04] ordered those like 50 chickens that you guys wanted.
[5:06] They'll be here in two weeks. And we're just like, dude, what
[5:09] are you doing? Like we've never raised a dog
[5:11] before. Like, we don't know what we're
[5:12] doing, but that's that's how we got into it, you know?
[5:15] Yeah. And why?
[5:17] So I know the answer to this question, but talk about why
[5:20] chicken? Because you guys could have done
[5:23] beef, pork. I mean, why?
[5:25] Why was chicken the thing that that everyone felt was important
[5:29] to start with? Two reasons.
[5:30] One we were broke. Chickens are cheap and they're
[5:33] like easier to get into. We didn't have very much land.
[5:35] We just had like our in laws, whatever quarter acre backyard
[5:39] out in Temecula and I think you guys were living in Arizona.
[5:42] We were living in Newport at the time.
[5:44] So it was like we got to figure out something small and easy to
[5:47] take care of. But then the other thing was it
[5:49] was just hard to find good chicken.
[5:51] Like we felt like we could find organic produce, fruits and
[5:53] vegetables. We could find like grass fed
[5:55] beef, but find a pasture raised chicken even in the farmers
[5:59] market, like nobody was really doing it at that time and
[6:01] definitely not doing it with organic or soy free diet or
[6:04] anything like that without doing vaccines.
[6:06] So we're like, be a fun one to try to start with.
[6:10] And it was not meant to be a business.
[6:11] It was just like every bit of a backyard family hobby.
[6:15] Robbie was living at the House of the time.
[6:17] And so he started taking care of the animals.
[6:18] And then that first harvest was like, the chicken is here, like
[6:23] YouTube on an iPad is here. And like, well, I guess we're
[6:26] going to figure out how to harvest chicken, you know?
[6:28] And then I remember they all sold out before they were even
[6:31] processed or like actually ready to be purchased, right?
[6:35] Yeah, I got in trouble for that because there was supposed to be
[6:37] 50 chickens for our family like 2A week for half a year.
[6:40] And and I just put some stuff up on Facebook, you know, like
[6:43] Facebook was a thing. This is 2012, 2013.
[6:46] And I was like, hey, if there's any friends or family that want
[6:49] this really good pasture raised chicken, like hit us up and
[6:52] we'll reserve them for you. And all 50 sold out and you were
[6:55] there on that first day, like on the processing line.
[6:58] We're like figured it out. It probably took us 10 hours for
[7:02] like 10 of us to process fifty birds.
[7:04] We converted a washing machine or a dryer into like the D
[7:09] feather part of the processing line.
[7:12] I remember you guys were just watching YouTube videos trying
[7:14] to figure out like each step in the processing of a chicken.
[7:18] And we did that what, couple times a month?
[7:20] Yeah, for a while I think we did our first like 10,000 chickens
[7:24] like that. That's insane.
[7:25] And we eventually started recruiting friends and people
[7:28] that like didn't know better to come help because that that job
[7:30] is hard it. Was depressing.
[7:32] I remember we would always get into arguments like there was
[7:34] someone was not talking to someone at the end of a
[7:37] processing day. Well, your husband Jeff is like
[7:39] the ultimate efficiency man. So if you were doing something
[7:42] wrong, he was going to let you know.
[7:44] And that value ended up helping us a lot like later on.
[7:47] But yeah, it wasn't depressing. And the fact of like, we're all
[7:52] proud of what we're doing. People were so stoked on what
[7:54] they were getting. I felt like we were taking the
[7:56] animals lives in the most humane way we could, like right there
[7:59] on the farm in this awesome outdoor environment.
[8:02] But it was depressing. Like it was just a lot of work.
[8:04] It was hard work. You'd go like at the end of a 10
[8:06] hour day and you'd look down and you're like 50 chickens.
[8:09] All right, here we go. Like not a lot of like juice for
[8:12] the squeeze on that, but. Not like those conveyor belts
[8:15] and you know the factories where one area that the head is sliced
[8:19] and maybe it doesn't get all the way sliced and the chickens like
[8:21] in pain and then the next step, it's like all machines.
[8:25] We were doing it all by hand. All by hand, illegally, you
[8:28] know, it was like a lot of legal things happening back in those
[8:32] days. But I was really proud of the
[8:33] product and people loved it. And like, we got so much
[8:36] confirmation when we got to feed families with kids that are like
[8:39] going through leukemia or different, like serious health
[8:42] complications. They would come seek us out.
[8:44] And it was like, whoa, there's a weight to what we're doing that
[8:47] I didn't really realize. It's not just feeding us and our
[8:51] families, like this stuff are really important to people.
[8:53] And that meant a lot to us early on.
[8:55] Yeah, yeah. And speaking to what you just
[8:56] said, I mean, conventionally raised chicken is probably like
[9:00] one of the most unhealthy meat products that you can get,
[9:05] right? Like would you say even more so
[9:06] than conventionally raised beef that conventional chicken is
[9:10] just? The hard thing on chicken?
[9:12] Like 99.999% of chicken is raised in a stationary
[9:16] environment. For better, for worse.
[9:18] Indoors it's. Going to be indoors isn't a huge
[9:20] warehouse. Crammed together.
[9:22] Yeah. And it's like, there's a lot of
[9:23] marketing jargon to kind of elicit certain emotions.
[9:26] So they'll say like, oh, it's cage free.
[9:29] It's like, well, cage free. It doesn't actually mean that
[9:31] much. Like that means that the birds
[9:32] are still raised in this giant warehouse.
[9:35] Think of a 600 foot long building, 24,000 birds inside of
[9:39] their living, eating, sleeping, pooping, all in the same place.
[9:43] There's varying degrees of like outdoor access, but by and
[9:46] large, the birds are like living, eating, sleeping and
[9:48] pooping all in the same place. Like that's tough.
[9:51] It's tough to produce it. Right, because or else they
[9:53] would Peck each other to death. Yeah, especially in egg layers.
[9:56] They'll cut the beaks. Chickens are, like, naturally
[10:00] curious. They're natural hunters.
[10:01] They're omnivores. They're not beef cattle are like
[10:04] herbivores. So they're very peaceful.
[10:06] They're low key, they're fun to be around.
[10:07] Chickens are like little T rexes, you know?
[10:09] So if you raise them all in this really cramped environment,
[10:12] especially the egg layers, you have to cut the beaks otherwise
[10:15] they start pecking at each other because there's like nothing
[10:17] else formed to Peck at, you know?
[10:19] So it's hard to produce a nutrient dense product in that
[10:22] kind of environment. There's limited access to
[10:25] forages and bugs and worms and grasses and seeds.
[10:27] And there's even this huge mega trend of like, vegetarian fed
[10:31] being a good thing for chicken. And I'm like, chickens are not
[10:35] vegetarian. So I don't know how that became
[10:37] a marketing asset when we want them eating as many bugs and
[10:41] worms. And like, on the farm in
[10:43] Georgia, we have these videos. I'm eating like scorpions and
[10:45] like remnants of squirrels and Gophers that they find.
[10:47] It's like, that's what chicken should be eating, you know?
[10:50] Yeah, I just remember in the beginning seeing how they went
[10:53] berserk when we would, like, feed them worms.
[10:56] You know, whenever they had like a bunch of bugs that they all of
[10:58] a sudden were given, they were like fighting over them.
[11:01] Like they, they love that. And so while we're on the topic
[11:04] of labels, let's do like a quick rapid fire on certain labels
[11:09] that people may associate with being healthy and better for
[11:12] them, but may not actually mean what people think they mean.
[11:15] Yeah, it's a depressing conversation, but it's one that
[11:18] has to be had. Yeah.
[11:19] It's one where I feel like even really well-intentioned people
[11:22] that are trying to do the best that they can for their family
[11:25] will fall into these, like, marketing buzzwords.
[11:28] And so much of it is like these marketing departments coming up
[11:32] with labels and claims and trying to get you to believe
[11:36] that one thing's happening when on the ground, something very
[11:38] different is happening. Yeah.
[11:39] It's taking advantage for people's good intentions.
[11:42] That being said, like I don't want it to be depressing for
[11:44] people. I'll expose some of the lies
[11:46] that are going on at the labels, but at the end of the day, like,
[11:48] everybody's just trying to do their best.
[11:50] And so I don't want people to leave this conversation being
[11:53] like, oh, bummed I can't buy anything now.
[11:55] It's like, look, we're all just going to do our best.
[11:57] Like even our, you know, farms and our programs are, we're not
[12:01] perfect. Like there's still room for
[12:02] improvement. So I don't want anybody to leave
[12:04] this being depressed. But the first step is like
[12:07] education and knowing what these labels actually mean sometimes.
[12:09] So yeah, let's go. For sure.
[12:11] OK, You touched on cage free. Yeah, Cage free and free range,
[12:18] pretty similar, right? What do they actually mean?
[12:20] So for a long time, the 80s and 90s birds were literally raised
[12:23] in these like battery cages. So there would be a shoebox
[12:26] size, maybe two shoebox size cage, wire cage.
[12:29] They would put 6 chickens inside of each one of those.
[12:32] That would reduce movement. It would increase like feed
[12:34] conversion, which is really important because they're not
[12:36] moving. All the corn and soybeans that
[12:38] you're feeding them are getting turned into eggs as opposed to
[12:40] like when birds are exercising, they're going to have a lower
[12:43] feed conversion because they're moving more.
[12:45] They need more calories to like sustain, but they opened up the
[12:49] cages and then they kept the birds inside of these big
[12:51] houses. And it's like, I mean, that's
[12:53] maybe it's a step up, but. They can't even think anyway,
[12:56] right? Because they're so crammed
[12:57] together. Cage free doesn't really mean
[12:59] what people think it means like that you hear cage free and you
[13:01] think a bunch of animals out running around in a big open
[13:03] field. Like, not even close to what
[13:05] that means, you know? OK, free range.
[13:08] Free range, a tricky one. I've actually come full circle
[13:11] on free range to be like what it what people think it means isn't
[13:15] what it means, but let me tell you what it really does mean.
[13:17] So I explained that 600 foot long kind of warehouse style
[13:22] production facility, 24,000 birds is what's typical.
[13:25] Those birds are pooping every single day.
[13:27] They're eating, they're sleeping in that same environment.
[13:29] So to make that farm free range, what you have to do is you have
[13:31] to open up at least one opening outside of that house where the
[13:36] birds could access to the outdoors if they so desired.
[13:39] Here's what you have to understand about chickens.
[13:41] They're prey animals. They don't really want to just
[13:44] run out into a big open field. When I take you on the farm
[13:46] tour, like, you'll see the birds aren't just running around like
[13:50] a big open field in nature. They're chased by Hawks, eagles,
[13:54] owls, dogs, coyotes, predators. Like they're generally staying
[13:58] in the shade. They want to be close to their
[13:59] food and water every day. So you can open up a slot and
[14:03] maybe you'll get, you know, 1% or 2% of the birds to go out and
[14:07] use that outdoor area. But by and large, the birds are
[14:10] still like staying inside of the warehouse.
[14:12] So free range, while it sounds really good, what it really
[14:15] means is the birds were free to range outside.
[14:17] It doesn't actually mean they ever went outside.
[14:19] So you may have 95% of birds in a free range environment that
[14:23] have never stepped foot outside. And if they have, they're
[14:26] stepping foot on that same place.
[14:28] So they're not getting, you know, life on pasture or
[14:30] anything like that. It's like, to me that's it
[14:34] leaves some room to be desired. But if companies are being
[14:37] transparent about this is what they mean by free range, I've
[14:40] actually become, like, OK with it.
[14:41] You know? To me, it's more about
[14:43] transparency and, like, being honest about what your claims
[14:47] mean, you know? Yeah.
[14:48] For sure organic. Organic Schmorganic, we used to
[14:52] have this blog called like Organic Schmorganic.
[14:55] Take that same farm that I just described, 24,000 birds inside
[14:58] of a warehouse. The little door that opens to
[15:01] the outside once a day. The birds don't necessarily go
[15:03] out all that much or or at all. And then you got to think like a
[15:06] lot of these farms are in the north too.
[15:09] It's -20 outside, there's no food or water or shade.
[15:12] There's no real reason for him to go out.
[15:13] So, OK, you pop the door open for two hours, you close it.
[15:17] That's still free range to be organic.
[15:19] You just have to take that free range warehouse and you have to
[15:22] switch out the feed to be certified organic.
[15:25] Is that an improvement? Yeah.
[15:26] Is free range an improvement too?
[15:28] Yeah. Like, is outdoor access better
[15:29] than not having outdoor access? Sure, I'll, I'll give you that.
[15:33] You switch out to the feed to be certified organic.
[15:35] What that means is a USDA or the US, duh, like they put their
[15:39] stamp on it that says, OK, you haven't used any of the, you
[15:42] know, prohibited pesticides, chemicals.
[15:46] But a lot of things are coming from overseas.
[15:48] There's like questionable, very like sketchy rules on importing
[15:52] organics. So is it the gold standard
[15:55] anymore? I think the people that set up
[15:57] organic, like the founding fathers back in the 90s or the
[16:00] 80s, what they intended for organic, like it's a far cry
[16:04] from what it is today. So it was set up with the right
[16:07] intentions, but it's largely industrialized now.
[16:10] And it doesn't mean like what people think necessarily.
[16:13] Yeah, there's companies doing a much better job than others.
[16:17] So we could go through that too. But like it's there's a lot of
[16:20] loopholes within organic too. Yeah, I think a lot of people,
[16:24] they see organic or free range and they automatically just
[16:27] think this. And that's the bottom line is
[16:29] like that is just not the case whatsoever.
[16:31] It'd be interesting you guys should do this.
[16:34] You should fly like a drone over like a free range operation for
[16:38] like days and just see if they ever even go outside.
[16:41] We may have done it, but it's a confidential, so we can't talk
[16:45] about it. I.
[16:45] Have to talk about that offline. OK, moving into beef, grass fed,
[16:53] grass finish, 100% grass fed. Let's break those claims down.
[16:59] Can we talk about pastures? Are we going to do that later?
[17:01] That's that's. Last nice.
[17:03] It's not the gold standard, by the way, so little teaser.
[17:06] There's big loopholes on pasture rays too, but OK.
[17:08] Go into it if you want to. No, it's OK Beef grass fed
[17:11] sounds great. Like what that what you'd think
[17:13] that means is like what you see behind us, which is animals
[17:16] outside eating grass. It's not like all cows are grass
[17:20] fed at some point in their life. The exclusion for grass fed says
[17:24] that like all right, well, for grass fed, they have to be grass
[17:26] fed and then for the last 90 days of their life, you can
[17:28] raise them any way you want. Well, the feed lot industry,
[17:31] like they only live in the feed lot for for 90 days anyways, for
[17:34] three months. So it actually means literally
[17:37] nothing. Grass fed can it can mean
[17:39] literally nothing. The the animals are born on
[17:42] pasture. They're raised on pasture,
[17:44] usually in the Midwest. Because it's more lucrative
[17:45] anyway. It wouldn't make sense to not do
[17:47] that because that's free food for the animals, right?
[17:51] And that goes into subsidies and everything else too.
[17:53] Like why is grass fed even more expensive in the 1st place?
[17:56] It's because we've subsidized, like the government subsidizes
[17:58] taxpayer money, subsidizes corn and soybeans that artificially
[18:02] makes grain finished beef less expensive than grass fed beef.
[18:06] Like in a free economy, grass fed beef would actually be
[18:09] cheaper. And then like I don't think that
[18:11] many people would prefer grain fed if it was more expensive.
[18:14] So that's a whole nother tangent, like actually a really
[18:16] depressing part of our economy that we're subsidizing so many
[18:21] grains that are like really bad for the environment and really
[18:23] bad for cattle too. Chickens tolerate grains a lot
[18:26] better. They're a monogastric animal.
[18:28] They have a gizzard, They have a crop like they can handle corn
[18:31] and soybeans, Millet, peas, like all these other grains.
[18:33] Cattle are really not ever supposed to have grains at all.
[18:36] They have a room in stomach. They're meant to just digest
[18:38] grass. But grass fed, you would think
[18:40] it means, you know, idyllic pastoral setting.
[18:43] Like there's animals that are living in a feed lot eating corn
[18:46] and soybeans up to their ankles and manure that are sold as
[18:50] grass fed. And like the well-intentioned
[18:52] conscious consumers, like I'm buying grass fed for my family
[18:55] because it's better for my health.
[18:56] It's better for all these other things.
[18:57] And it's like, that's not what you're getting.
[18:58] You know it's not what you're getting.
[19:00] Grass finished is another term. I don't know if you're going to
[19:02] just ask that. Grass finished or 100% grass
[19:04] fed? Yeah, you would think that
[19:06] that's like really, really great.
[19:07] Same thing. Like you would think that that
[19:09] means these animals are outside living like that.
[19:10] You could have an animal that lives in a feed lot for 90 days
[19:13] and still be grass finished or 100% grass fed.
[19:16] It's like, well, how's that? Well, you could still feed
[19:18] animals grass pellets. You can industrial mono crop
[19:22] alfalfa fields and feed them like inside of a feed lot
[19:25] setting. It could be more, you know, more
[19:27] efficient or whatever. And it's like, that's not what
[19:30] people think they're getting. When you hear grass finished
[19:32] like you think they're raised on pasture like this, it's not
[19:35] necessarily the case. And on top of that, the USDA,
[19:38] like are they even checking these claims like any of them?
[19:43] Are they not their job? It's not like they're very
[19:46] clear. Like that's not what our role is
[19:47] to do. We set up definitions for
[19:50] labels, but it comes back to third parties and the brands
[19:52] themselves. So like on pasture raise and we
[19:55] say we want to put pasture raise on our label, we sent A1
[19:58] paragraph affidavit to the USDA that says we promise that we'll
[20:01] do this. Nobody ever checks, nobody ever
[20:04] comes out like it's purely on us and on our little one page
[20:08] affidavit. And like, that's the same for
[20:09] every brand that wants to do it, you know?
[20:11] OK, so pasture raised, that is becoming like the gold standard.
[20:15] Now everyone wants pasture raised and that can be pasture
[20:18] raised chicken, pasture raised eggs, pasture raised beef,
[20:21] right? Like, but so talk about that
[20:24] term and I also want to hear about like what you're doing to
[20:29] create better standards around that term.
[20:31] Well, first, like, let's do what's pasture is supposed to
[20:33] mean. Yeah.
[20:35] So it was meant to combat these things like grass fed and grass
[20:37] finished and free range that are like not what people think that
[20:40] they mean always. Then they said, all right,
[20:42] pasture is should mean that the animals are raised on pasture.
[20:46] Like, put simply, there's no feed lot, there's no finishing.
[20:49] There's no like the animals are living, living on the grass
[20:53] eating plants and bugs and seeds and worms, species appropriate
[20:56] diet. So for beef cattle, that would
[20:57] mean they're only eating grass 100% of their life on pasture.
[21:01] For chickens and pigs, those mono gastric animals, they're
[21:04] supplemented with some kind of a grain based diet because they
[21:07] need that to get up to size and weight.
[21:09] But they're living on the pasture.
[21:10] So they're foraging for grasses, bugs, seeds, worms, flowers,
[21:14] weeds. They don't need the antibiotics
[21:16] and vaccines because they're living this like, healthy fresh
[21:19] life. That's what it's supposed to
[21:21] mean. But like, big corporate
[21:24] interests, like they get involved.
[21:25] And that's become the most greenwash term in the industry
[21:28] now. Because pasture raise has no
[21:30] like, codified definition at all.
[21:32] So you could have a free range. So the USDA says like, free
[21:35] range and pasture raise are just synonyms.
[21:38] So you could have a farm that has 24,000 birds living on top
[21:41] of each other, limited access to the outdoors.
[21:45] Maybe they pop their head out seasonally, maybe they don't.
[21:48] You could have a bird that's sold as a pasture raised chicken
[21:50] or pasture raised eggs. That chicken's never been
[21:53] outside once in its life. It's lived inside of this
[21:56] industrial warehouse its entire life.
[21:58] And I would actually say that's the rule rather than exception.
[22:01] Like 99% of pasture raised eggs in the store are free range
[22:05] marketed as pasture raised, which means they're not actually
[22:08] going outside. They're not actually like
[22:10] spending any meaningful time foraging or doing any other
[22:13] thing, yet they're selling at a pasture raised price point.
[22:15] They're getting the $910.00 a dozen, you know, and there's
[22:18] brands that very well know what they're doing that are like,
[22:21] this is what kills me. They're taking advantage of
[22:23] well-intentioned consumers that are trying to do right by their
[22:26] family, trying to do right by the environment, and they know
[22:29] exactly what they're doing. Where I've actually come to
[22:31] respect the farms that are like, no, we're not going to call this
[22:34] pasture raise because it's not like we know we're doing indoor
[22:37] free range or, or, you know, no antibiotic kind of production
[22:40] systems, but we're going to be honest about what we're doing.
[22:43] I actually think that's way more integrity than the one that
[22:47] slaps like the fake label on it and does the greenwashing
[22:50] program. You know, yeah, it's true.
[22:51] The reality is like, not everybody can afford pasture
[22:54] raise. Like, there's a lot of families
[22:55] out there on tight budget that are just trying to do their
[22:58] best. And like, as long as the
[22:59] companies are being honest about it, I'm fine.
[23:02] Like even factory farming, I've come full circle, be like, I'm
[23:05] actually fine raising birds inside of warehouses, trying to
[23:08] do the best you can with animal welfare and stuff.
[23:10] But if they're being honest about it and being transparent,
[23:13] all the more power to you. Like not everybody can do
[23:16] pasture raise. There's a lot of people,
[23:17] especially with inflation now, they can't afford it.
[23:20] So it's like, just be honest about it and I'm totally fine.
[23:23] I think there's a place for it, you know?
[23:25] So you mentioned that the standards around pasture raised
[23:28] are, I mean there, there there aren't any really.
[23:31] Yeah. So I know you're doing some work
[23:34] with the USDA to change that. Yeah.
[23:36] Talk to us about that. Well, we just think too many,
[23:38] too many people are getting taken advantage of and it's just
[23:41] not fair to the 900 small local family farms that are doing
[23:46] authentic pasture raised and getting beat in the market by
[23:49] these these like handful of farms that are faking it.
[23:52] I can't even call them farms. They're like marketing companies
[23:54] that are faking it. You know, some of which are
[23:56] publicly traded like billion dollar companies trading on this
[24:01] myth of like fake pasture raised if you're.
[24:02] Wondering about names probably won't get into that, but if you
[24:07] what you are wondering about, it probably is fake.
[24:11] Go to the grocery store if they have national distribute,
[24:13] national distribution and they're saying pasture raised,
[24:16] it's fake. Like I'm not going to say names.
[24:18] It's not a good look for me as a brand selling pasture raised
[24:21] chicken to go throw other brands under the bus.
[24:23] But like, do a little bit of homework and you'll.
[24:25] Find or not doing it like past Roberta is, and we'll talk more
[24:28] about that. But for sure, yeah.
[24:29] Tell us about what you're doing with the USDA.
[24:31] Yeah. So we engaged USDA like four
[24:33] years ago. We're like, you guys, this is a
[24:35] big problem. There's consumers that are being
[24:37] misled and they said, OK, that's fine, but show us the data.
[24:39] And that's a fairpoint from the USDA.
[24:41] They're like, show us a consumer survey that says that these
[24:45] consumers really do believe they're getting an animal that's
[24:47] raised on pasture when it's sold as pasture raised.
[24:49] And I'm like, are you guys serious?
[24:51] Like of course they think that that animals raised on pasture,
[24:54] but we'd spent all the money, we did all the surveys and it turns
[24:57] out 98% of people who pay for pasture raised think that that
[25:01] animal spent some time on pasture.
[25:03] Not surprising, but they needed the like validated court
[25:06] approved kind of survey to prove that.
[25:08] And so we sent that in. We had all these like we sent in
[25:11] all the petition. We had a bunch of other brands
[25:14] chime in and say like, yeah, we agree or we disagree.
[25:16] Surprisingly enough, some of the fake pasture raised brands chime
[25:19] in. They're like, oh, well, we don't
[25:20] agree. Like, we think that this
[25:22] shouldn't be approved and animals shouldn't have to be
[25:24] raised on pasture to be called pasture raised.
[25:27] Shocking, right? I mean, of course that they're
[25:29] going to say that. But yeah, we're hoping for a
[25:31] decision really soon. And what that would do is it
[25:33] would say, all right, if you're going to put pasture raise on
[25:35] your label, that animal has to, like, live on pasture.
[25:39] It's not allowed to be in a warehouse.
[25:41] It's not allowed to like, be in a barn its whole life.
[25:43] If you want to do that, it's fine.
[25:45] But that needs to be called pasture or that needs to be
[25:47] called free range, not pasture raise.
[25:49] And to me at least, that draws like a line in the sand that
[25:52] when people pay for pasture raise, they're getting an animal
[25:54] that's raised on pasture. And I think that that's like,
[25:57] fair enough to ask. That's not that big of an ask.
[25:59] You know, it's sad that the government has to step in and do
[26:02] something like that, but it's just like a profit motive.
[26:06] And these brands are so willing, like so willing to throw
[26:09] whatever they have to do onto a pack to make an extra buck.
[26:12] And it's like, pretty depressing.
[26:13] It's just like in skin care, the green washing and skin care
[26:16] people see the company, see a trend, they see what the
[26:18] consumers want and they just cater to that regardless of
[26:20] whether or not it's true. So depressing.
[26:23] Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[26:25] I don't know how to get around it other than like brands need
[26:27] to have more integrity. I don't really know how to
[26:30] enforce that. Our thing has been like, well,
[26:32] let's just live stream every single week.
[26:35] We live stream from the farm. It's not always pretty.
[26:38] Sometimes it's rainy, sometimes it's really hot, but we're like
[26:41] screw it. We bought an iPhone.
[26:43] We put it inside of the coop and every single week you can hit a
[26:45] QR code on our package for Passion Bird and it'll take you
[26:48] to a live stream of the farm. You can see it for yourself.
[26:51] If you don't like what you see, it's all good.
[26:53] Just don't buy our product like it's cool.
[26:55] It's like it's totally fine. But in the military we would say
[26:57] inspect what you expect. So not everybody's going to be
[27:00] able to come out like tour the farm in Georgia and do all this
[27:02] stuff or come out to this farm in Murrieta.
[27:05] So for those people, it's like you could go on to the QR code,
[27:07] you could see it for yourself. You could decide if that's the
[27:10] kind of program that you want to buy.
[27:11] And like, that's the best what we can do.
[27:13] That's pretty cool. I didn't know you guys did that.
[27:15] Yeah, yeah, we're the 1st to ever do it.
[27:17] We've challenged a bunch of other brands.
[27:18] We're like, I'll buy the iPhone, I'll buy everything for you.
[27:21] Like just I dare you to live stream from inside of your coop.
[27:23] So far nobody's taking us up on it, but we'll see if anybody
[27:26] decides to. Do it, then you would know
[27:27] exactly what you're buying. I think it's going to be the
[27:30] next big trend in meat production is like transparency.
[27:34] Nowadays there's so many labels, the side of like a, it looks
[27:38] like the side of a NASCAR truck. Have you ever seen that?
[27:40] And it's like label, label, label, label.
[27:42] Like nobody knows what any of them being anymore.
[27:44] That, you know, I remember back in the day, it was just like the
[27:47] leaping Bunny, the organic sign, maybe like one or two others.
[27:50] Now you look at labels and even, you know, healthy quote packaged
[27:54] foods. There's like 16 different
[27:57] symbols with different certifications.
[27:58] It's like, how do we keep track of all of these?
[28:01] So it's like the power of the brand now.
[28:03] So like Prime late pure, what is that stand for?
[28:05] Like what are you doing behind the scenes?
[28:07] How can you be transparent? Like to me, that's the future of
[28:10] food. And I don't even know.
[28:11] But probably skin care too, is like brands that aren't just
[28:14] going to do the bare minimum for what the certification says.
[28:16] Like certification, like I'm going way beyond what anybody
[28:19] would require me to do for a certification because I want to
[28:22] produce like these great products for people, you know,
[28:23] it's not just trying to hit the bare minimum.
[28:26] Certification. Schmertification.
[28:28] Doesn't work as good, but I like it.
[28:29] Like where you're going with? That OK, let's talk about the
[28:34] ethics of vegetarianism, veganism versus eating meat
[28:40] because there are a lot of conflicting opinions on this and
[28:45] I'm curious to know your stance and and why like the argument of
[28:50] why consuming ethical food doesn't have to mean cutting
[28:54] meat or animal products out of your diet.
[28:56] Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I just hate all
[28:58] vegetarians. No, I'll always start with this.
[29:04] So vegetarians and vegans are some of the most conscious
[29:08] consumers on the planet in that for that reason, I have a lot of
[29:11] respect for the people that have gone down that road.
[29:14] Like, a lot of times the people in meat are like diametrically
[29:18] opposed to the people that are in the vegetarian or vegan or
[29:20] flexitarian or pescetarian movement.
[29:22] I'm like, no, no, no, those are our people.
[29:24] Like what? Is flexitarian.
[29:25] Where you're like trying to reduce meat consumption, eat
[29:28] more plant based or whatever. I'm like, no, those are our
[29:31] people. Like the people that are trying
[29:32] to do right by animal welfare, try to do right by the
[29:34] environment. Like that's who I identify with.
[29:36] Like I see probably more in common with them than I see with
[29:39] the gnarly people that are just like, screw animal welfare, I
[29:43] want to eat as much meat as possible.
[29:44] Like I'd probably identify more with the plant based movement,
[29:47] but there's a lot of like misunderstandings in that
[29:51] movement. You know, the whole idea of
[29:53] veganism is to try to do the least amount of harm.
[29:56] And if that means that you're growing all your own produce,
[29:59] you're only eating organic, you're like, there's a way to do
[30:02] that. But that's not the reality for
[30:04] most people. Like most plant based foods are
[30:07] so highly processed, they're growing on massive industrial
[30:10] like mono crop farms that are horrible for the environment.
[30:14] And I'm against factory farming and I'm against large scale
[30:17] factory farming for plants or animals, you know, runoff, like
[30:21] environmental issues, like so many bad animal welfare outcomes
[30:26] on corn fields, soybean fields, kale fields, carrot fields.
[30:30] Like we could go into just think about what pesticides do.
[30:35] Pesticide alone is like a way to kill billions of animals on A50
[30:39] acre, 100 acre field. What a pesticide does is it
[30:42] kills animals, you know? Aside means to kill.
[30:45] I didn't know that genocide. That makes sense.
[30:48] So and the way it kills animals is gnarly too.
[30:52] Like a lot of people don't realize what a pesticide does is
[30:54] it paralyzes small animals like so to me, a Caterpillar and a
[30:59] cow. That was pesticides were
[31:01] originally created for chemical warfare.
[31:05] Yeah, that that does make sense. It freezes the animal and then
[31:09] starves them. So that's the way that they're
[31:11] killed. So like I always say, like a
[31:13] Caterpillar and a cow are equally important, right?
[31:16] I don't think that just because one is bigger and it's like
[31:18] cuter, it's more important, especially not like in the in
[31:22] the image of creation. Like I think they're all just as
[31:24] important. So when you spray that
[31:26] pesticide, it paralyzes that animal and then it just sits
[31:29] there and starves in a field or bakes in a field.
[31:31] Like that's super depressing, you know, snarling The goal
[31:35] can't be like, well, let's just reduce our animal intake and eat
[31:39] more industrial farm like vegetables or highly processed
[31:43] food. Like that can't be the goal of
[31:45] all these conscious well intentions consumers.
[31:47] Unfortunately, I think is what a lot of people end up doing it
[31:50] is, you know, if you think about these imitation meat products,
[31:53] Beyond Meat and others, it's like they're full of corn and
[31:57] soy, which are huge GMO mono crops.
[32:00] Or worse, like isolated pre protein, like all these even
[32:04] more highly processed. It's hard to call them
[32:08] vegetables. It's like these are made in a
[32:10] lab, got like doctors and lab coats producing these plant
[32:13] based food alternatives. And the thing that kills me is
[32:16] it's a lot of well attentioned people trying to do right by the
[32:18] environment, right by animal welfare and they're being
[32:21] tricked because of hundreds of millions of dollars of like
[32:23] really solid marketing. You know, they're like, oh, I'm
[32:26] going to eat plant based for my health.
[32:28] And it's like, no dude, like the most vegan food in the world is
[32:32] grass fed beef, wild game and wild harvested plants.
[32:35] Like you can't get more vegan than that.
[32:36] Wait, break that the most vegan food?
[32:39] Because the goal of vegan is to do the least harm, right?
[32:42] One cow that's lived its entire life on pasture.
[32:45] You take that animal down in the field in the most humane way
[32:48] possible. That's 400 lbs of meat.
[32:51] That's like 1000 meals for one life.
[32:54] Think about what industrial kale or industrial carrots or like
[32:57] industrial vegetables. Billions of deaths to go into
[33:00] like a few bites, like one salad could have a billion deaths if
[33:04] you're counting a Caterpillar as important as a cow, like
[33:06] billions of deaths in those industrial mono crop kind of
[33:09] facilities. And it's like, I think the
[33:11] reason I say the most vegan food in the world is like wild game
[33:15] would be the best because that animal has truly had no inputs.
[33:18] Like they're eating all wild diet.
[33:21] So if you could go venison, haunted game, elk, wild seafood,
[33:24] A, it's the most nutrient dense. B, it's like going to be the
[33:27] least death possible for the most amount of food possible.
[33:30] I always say like we're in the chicken business because we have
[33:32] to be in here. There was a gap there, not
[33:34] because I think they're the most nutrient dancer, the most, you
[33:37] know, like humane animal that we can raise.
[33:39] I just feel like there's a big gap in the market.
[33:41] But the best food that you can eat is that large game, that
[33:44] large red meat that's only been eating like wild forages and
[33:48] pasture. It's the least amount of death
[33:50] for the most amount of food, and it's the most nutrients per
[33:53] pound by far. So we get a lot of former vegans
[33:56] or vegetarians or people that are still eating that way.
[33:59] But people in their house really need the vitamin B12, the other
[34:03] things that come from like animal based protein, it's
[34:06] fertility issues or it's like childhood things.
[34:09] And it's like you need that, that animal based protein.
[34:12] So we get a lot of those people that switch from veganism or
[34:15] vegetarianism over to our kind of programs.
[34:18] And like, I totally respect it. There's no judgment.
[34:21] I think a lot of times it's a misunderstanding or a true like
[34:23] nutrient deficiency kind of situation and it's like, you're
[34:27] welcome here, like I'm all for it, you know?
[34:29] Yeah, yeah. They're people that want to make
[34:31] conscious choices about their diet.
[34:33] I was a vegetarian for a year in college.
[34:36] I was working at Trader Joe's and just kind of like, bought
[34:38] into the trend, basically, and did never feel good on it.
[34:43] But I kind of, like, pushed through, just like waiting for
[34:46] that moment where everything's could change and I would feel
[34:48] really good. And I vividly remember I was at
[34:51] a barbecue and I was with my cousin and she was eating more
[34:56] like Paleo and I was a vegetarian.
[34:58] So I literally just, they were like burgers or burgers with
[35:02] beans or something. Sloppy joes.
[35:04] I don't know. I just ate.
[35:06] Don't tell me Sloppy Joe is your first.
[35:07] Really. No, but I had the pad, I had the
[35:11] bun, right. So I had the bun with like
[35:13] lettuce and tomato. And I just remember eating it
[35:15] like thinking like this is just this feels so wrong.
[35:19] And she was eating like just the Patty.
[35:22] And it was those opposites. But I remember looking at her
[35:24] like she was a, you know, college volleyball player, like
[35:26] super fit, super healthy. And I was like, wanted to be,
[35:29] wanted to be all of that, you know, and I'm trying.
[35:32] But it was just like, in that moment, something clicked like,
[35:35] I think I'm doing this wrong. I think I have this whole thing.
[35:38] You're like, I'm just, I'm only going to eat the bun.
[35:40] Like you have your grass or beef that's disgusting and unhealthy.
[35:43] I'm just going to have this highly processed bun.
[35:45] Yeah, the only one for me too, is like growing up in Seattle, I
[35:49] camped a lot and it was like, I love the outdoors.
[35:51] I love, like being in nature. And I, I only heard that if you
[35:55] care about nature, the best thing you could do would be to
[35:58] reduce animal, you know, like you reduce your animal because
[36:01] they're, they're inherently bad for the environment.
[36:03] And then when we started to learn about Joel Soliton, the
[36:05] farmer in Virginia, and he had this whole like, paradigm shift
[36:08] for me, it was like, no, no, no. Like in nature and creation,
[36:12] like animals are amazing for the environment if they're raised
[36:15] the right way. They're bad for the environment
[36:17] if they're raised in these factory settings, in these feed
[36:20] lot settings. But think about that manure.
[36:22] So thousands of generations have understood that like animals,
[36:25] that manure is the best thing for the environment ever.
[36:27] Like that's the best fertilizer in the world.
[36:29] It's still better than anything Monsanto can come up with.
[36:33] But we have to raise the animals in the right way.
[36:35] And for me, it was like, Oh my gosh, I've never thought about
[36:37] that. I never realized that.
[36:38] Like if we raise these animals on pasture, if we're moving them
[36:42] to a new spot, constantly letting that manure become
[36:45] fertilizer, like giving the ground actual time to rest and
[36:49] recover and incorporate the nutrients from the manure, that
[36:51] can be really like beneficial, ecologically beneficial.
[36:56] And that's the whole idea of like regenerative egg is using
[36:58] animals and plants like in symbiosis to make the land
[37:02] better and better every single year.
[37:04] Not a new concept. Like indigenous people have
[37:06] understood that for a long, long time.
[37:08] This is not like a new idea. We just forgot it for the last
[37:11] 60 years or 70 years and we're like remembering it again that
[37:15] this is how plants and animals have been actually raised
[37:18] together for a long time. Like animals feed plants, plants
[37:23] feed animals. We've separated the two in a
[37:25] crazy way. And like all for first world
[37:28] countries, but in 3rd world countries, they like inherently
[37:31] understand you need animals to grow plants and you, you need
[37:34] plants to grow animals. And it's a beautiful creation
[37:37] like Symbiosis that I think that we're going to get back to, you
[37:40] know? Yeah, I know You guys always say
[37:42] like there's all these terms nowadays for what you're doing,
[37:45] regenerative agriculture, pasture raised meats, but
[37:48] hundred years ago would have just been called farming.
[37:50] Yeah, good farming, standard farming.
[37:53] Before the invention of antibiotics, you couldn't keep
[37:55] 25,000 birds inside of a warehouse for 12 weeks or 15
[37:59] weeks at a time. Like they couldn't literally
[38:01] live for that long because they would get sick.
[38:04] Before the invention of chemical fertilizer in the industrial war
[38:07] machine, like you didn't have synthetic industrial fertilizer,
[38:10] so you needed the animals like you needed those inputs.
[38:13] So it's really like only in the last probably 70 years that
[38:16] we've had the ability to grow food in this weird, historically
[38:21] very weird industrial way. And that's why it's kind of
[38:24] funny that we're viewed as like the weird ones when historically
[38:27] what we're doing is like really, really normal.
[38:30] These hardcore, you know, CAFO style, like confined animal
[38:34] feeding operations. That's actually what's weird.
[38:37] You know what we're doing is normal.
[38:39] Yeah, yeah. And talk a little bit about soil
[38:42] health and whiles why soil health matters and what we can
[38:48] do to improve it and what that does for sequestering carbon
[38:51] from the atmosphere. That's kind of contrary to what
[38:53] a lot of people think about about raising animals and and
[38:57] all that. There's a really gnarly study
[38:59] that came out like 10 years ago about oranges and, and they
[39:02] studied the nutrient density, the nutritional content of an
[39:06] orange in the 1950s to one in the 2015 or 2016.
[39:11] Whenever that study came out, 90% less vitamin A in the 2015
[39:16] compared to the 1950. That was conventional to
[39:18] conventional wasn't like organic or regenerative anything that
[39:21] was your normal orange. And that's all about like the
[39:24] depletion of nutrients in the soil that feeds the nutrient
[39:27] density of the foods that we're eating.
[39:28] So like the food that we're eating today, like it looks like
[39:32] food, those beautiful shiny apples that you'd find in the
[39:35] grocery store, Like it looks just like an apple should, but
[39:38] it doesn't contain the nutrient content that it did 50 years
[39:41] ago. You look at stuff like potatoes,
[39:44] I mean, every food group, chicken, beef, everything, like
[39:47] you go across it, it does not have the nutrient content.
[39:50] And then you look at the chronic illness and all the stuff that
[39:52] we have going on. I'm not saying that's the only
[39:54] thing contributing, but it's a huge factor.
[39:56] Like we're just not getting the nutrition from food that we used
[40:00] to or water, you know, and then we're getting all these
[40:03] environmental toxins that we have to battle now that we
[40:05] didn't have to before too. And it's like it comes back to
[40:07] soil health, you know, like the, the, the, the health of our soil
[40:11] directly impacts the health of our food.
[40:14] What directly impacts the health of our body.
[40:16] And that's why it's like, I have a hard time getting people to
[40:20] care about my soil and carbon sequestration and like
[40:23] biodiversity, all these cool things.
[40:25] They're they're cool. Really cool for me is it like an
[40:27] ecologist and a landowner, but where the rubber hits the road
[40:31] for the working mom that's just trying to do right by her
[40:33] family. It's like you want to give your
[40:35] kids, you want to give yourself like the best food that you can
[40:38] that's always going to come from healthy soil.
[40:41] Again, like back to Indigenous, Like that was the inheritance.
[40:44] There wasn't, they didn't care about like giving a bunch of
[40:47] money and wealth and all this stuff.
[40:48] It was like this health of your soil is the inheritance that you
[40:52] give to the next generation because that's going to like
[40:54] give your your offspring the ability to thrive.
[40:57] Yeah. Yeah, totally.
[40:58] And even this farm that we're at now, I mean, how long ago did
[41:03] did we start working on this farm?
[41:06] So this was in like industrial conventional tillage twice a
[41:10] year for like the last 20 years. And then we bought it in 2020.
[41:14] We really like started kind of getting it healing itself again
[41:18] in about 2021. And so now it's 2024 and it's
[41:22] like coming back to life. It's not fully regenerated at
[41:25] all, but it's starting to come back to life and you're seeing
[41:28] all these really cool, beautiful.
[41:31] Yeah, no. It's I mean 30 plus different
[41:33] species of like grasses and wildflowers and you see all
[41:37] these, I mean, I'm looking at it like butterflies and all these
[41:40] different like wildlife. We see Hawks flying around, we
[41:42] see bees all over the place. But come back in five years and
[41:45] you're going to see way more rich grass.
[41:48] You're going to see like so much more going on.
[41:50] And that's, that's what I say. Like that's what's just fun
[41:54] about doing regenerative AG. It's like it's not a job, it's
[41:57] not a chore. Like you come out here and you
[41:59] see life and you see the farm getting better and better like
[42:01] every single year. It's just like a really fun
[42:04] environment to be in. You know, I've had people ask
[42:07] like, why do you do regenerative instead of doing conventional or
[42:10] whatever? And like I've never even thought
[42:12] about doing convention. I would have no interest.
[42:14] Like this is so fun. It's so pretty.
[42:17] It's such a nice environment to be in.
[42:18] It smells good. Like it looks good.
[42:20] We have pigs, like walking onto the podcast set, you know, it's
[42:24] a good environment to raise kids in.
[42:26] Like I've never even thought about doing conventional
[42:28] production. Yeah, yeah.
[42:30] You mentioned earlier the expense of pasture raised meats.
[42:35] What is pasture bird doing to make pasture raised chicken
[42:40] competitive with conventional chicken and how like how are you
[42:43] guys how? Just talk to us about the
[42:45] farming process, about how your birds are raised and how you're
[42:49] able to make that price point competitive and affordable for a
[42:53] lot of families. Yeah, I told you like I told you
[42:55] how we started in 2012. I felt like you were on this
[42:59] journey with us too. We were like 2013, 2014, we've
[43:02] all moved onto the farm. We're like doing our thing.
[43:05] And then we hit this thing in 2014 ish where we're starting to
[43:08] get some traction and we're doing the ultra gold standard of
[43:13] everything, Primal pastures we're doing, certainly it still
[43:16] does certified organic, corn free, soy free, all pasture
[43:20] raised, no antibiotics, no vaccines.
[43:24] The only downside was like limited distribution, super high
[43:27] price point. And I think we all hit this
[43:29] point where like none of us came up with money.
[43:31] You know, we all came up like square in the middle class,
[43:33] maybe a little under. And it was starting to feel
[43:36] weird that we're producing food for kind of like food for rich
[43:39] people a little bit, you know, or at least food for people that
[43:42] a lot of people could never afford.
[43:44] We're selling the $40 whole chicken, the 20 plus dollar
[43:47] pound boneless breast. And that's kind.
[43:48] Of funny, when we were so we all lived in the same house.
[43:51] We were all, you know, Paul and his wife and their son and my
[43:55] husband, Jeff and I and our sister-in-law Jamie and Tom and
[44:00] Debbie the the in laws and. 1700 square feet by the.
[44:03] Way tiny house, but we would drive to do deliveries to these
[44:07] rich neighborhoods in Newport and San Diego, and it's like
[44:11] just such a contrast. The contrast and none of us grew
[44:14] up that way. No.
[44:15] But I will say it also surprised me because we go into these rich
[44:18] neighborhoods, but then sometimes you pull up to
[44:19] apartment. Yeah.
[44:21] And you're like, it is a prioritization at some point
[44:24] too, where people would be like, I don't have a nice car, I don't
[44:27] have a sick house because I want to eat really good food.
[44:29] So like, I do respect the fact that it's not, I say, food for
[44:33] rich people. That's not exactly what it was.
[44:35] But it was out of touch for a lot of normal people.
[44:38] Like even if they wanted to eat this way, I always felt like my
[44:41] mom and dad growing up would not have been able to afford it.
[44:45] And they also just, we're doing practices all the time and
[44:47] sports all the time. Like they wouldn't have been
[44:49] able to drive to the farm and pick up or, you know, go to a
[44:52] pickup site or a farmers market. Like there are regular busy
[44:55] people on a budget. And it's like we started to feel
[44:58] a little bit conflicted in 2014, 2015.
[45:01] Super proud of Primal. They still hold the gold
[45:04] standard in my book of like doing the best the gold
[45:07] standard. But it was like, well, what
[45:10] would it look like? Because I believe in
[45:12] regenerative, I believe in pasture rays.
[45:13] Like what would it look like to make these products more
[45:15] accessible and more affordable to the average person?
[45:19] I'm not saying we're going to make the cheapest product, but
[45:21] like, would there be a way to bring down costs to the point
[45:24] where it's affordable for more people?
[45:26] And then you put it into the grocery store where like a
[45:28] regular people shop to, you know, to try to like spread this
[45:32] thing more far and wide and not put us on this whole path of
[45:35] Pasture Bird. So 2015, we lost pat.
[45:38] We launched Pasture Bird with the goal of being a national
[45:40] chicken brand, accessible and affordable, bringing in like a
[45:45] large scale production techniques and then combining
[45:48] that with like the true pasture daily move.
[45:51] So we invented this thing called the automated range coupe 6000
[45:55] bird system that uses solar power to like drive a floorless
[45:59] mobile coupe to a fresh spot every single day that had never
[46:02] been done like in the history of the world.
[46:04] We spent three years we worked with engineers from like a NASA.
[46:07] Your husband Jeff and me were like, I mean, every single day
[46:10] working on essentially, how would one raise a million
[46:14] chickens a week on pasture and have an accessible and
[46:17] affordable price point so people can actually like do pasture
[46:20] raised meat. And I'm super proud.
[46:22] Like we, we partnered with Purdue Foods, which is the
[46:25] largest organic chicken company in the country.
[46:28] They came to us in 2018. We needed hatcheries, we needed
[46:32] feed mills, we needed like slaughter houses all at scale.
[46:35] And they were really interested in trying to do authentic
[46:38] pasture raised and authentic regenerative egg.
[46:40] And we partnered with them and, and we've been working with them
[46:43] and I'm really stoked. Like you can go into Sprouts in
[46:46] about half of their stores in the country.
[46:48] You can buy a whole chicken for like $14.00.
[46:51] You can feed a family of 6 with this ultra nutrient dense, like
[46:54] a really good for, you know, the land.
[46:58] And for like the bird and high animal welfare, you can get
[47:00] something that will feed a family of 6 for like 15 bucks.
[47:03] And to me, it's not taking anything away from like what
[47:06] Primal Pastures does and like small, local, more expensive AG.
[47:10] But I think we need both desperately.
[47:12] Like we need accessible, affordable in grocery.
[47:15] We need like the farm that we're on right now, which is small
[47:18] scale, local, hyper regenerative.
[47:20] Like I think they're both really important missions, but they're
[47:23] different. Like they're inherently
[47:25] different. And I'm, I'm pumped for both of
[47:27] them, you know? For sure.
[47:29] Yeah, that's been huge. And there's the first thing like
[47:31] it. There's nothing else like
[47:33] pasture birds, something that you can just a chicken product
[47:36] that you can go to the grocery store and get.
[47:39] You can't really do that with pasture raised.
[47:41] Chicken, no, I mean, to have it fresh, to have it accessible,
[47:44] affordable like that. Like it's definitely the first
[47:46] time it's been done for real. I mean, you'll find the label
[47:50] greenwashed from at least two brands like right now in
[47:53] national retail. And that's unfortunate because a
[47:56] lot of people will be like, how do I know what I'm getting?
[47:59] You know, like how do I know if it's real or fake or whatever?
[48:01] Them for the live stream of their farm and then that's your
[48:04] answer. Sadly, that's the best way to do
[48:06] it. Exactly.
[48:08] OK, let's transition a little bit because so you have 4 kids,
[48:13] a demanding career, married, obviously a passion for health.
[48:18] How do you give each of these aspects of your life the time
[48:22] and space and attention that they deserve?
[48:25] I mean, you have 3, so, you know, it's not that easy.
[48:29] Yeah. I'm like learning that work life
[48:34] balance like isn't actually a goal.
[48:36] I don't really even like that term that much.
[48:38] I'm feeling like life is much more like wholly integrated now.
[48:43] So big part of this project, the farm that we're sitting on was
[48:47] about like having the gig where I can have my kids here a lot
[48:51] and like we can combine things more.
[48:53] You know, like I love the idea that my 11 year old is now old
[48:56] enough to know, like Noah's old enough to know what's going on,
[48:59] actually help a lot on this farm and participate and be part of
[49:03] it. And I'm exposing the more the
[49:04] business lens. I mean, my wife is like
[49:08] obviously super involved in everything that we do.
[49:12] You guys are super involved. I mean, our kids are like
[49:14] together probably five days a week, you know the.
[49:17] Farm is maybe favorite place to be.
[49:18] Days a week, it's great to have a space for that, but it's about
[49:21] like trying to cultivate not a work life balance, but like an
[49:25] integrated life where I feel like these things can actually
[49:28] live in tandem. And it's not like I heard a cool
[49:31] thing the other day, like, you know, you're starting to do
[49:33] better just in life in general, when work doesn't feel like
[49:37] work, like it starts to feel like life and something that
[49:39] you'd want to do and that you can integrate your family into.
[49:41] Not always possible. I travel quite a bit for work.
[49:46] I feel like I love what I do. Like that really helps a lot.
[49:48] Like genuinely enjoying what you do and feeling passionate about
[49:51] the mission feels like it helps a lot.
[49:53] But it's a double edged sword because like I could work 1218
[49:57] hours a day and like be stoked on this.
[50:01] So thankfully my wife is like really keen on preventing
[50:04] burnout and being like, dude, we need to take time off.
[50:07] Like, let's put work down, let's go on a vacation.
[50:10] Both. Of our spouses do that for us,
[50:12] yeah. And I'm, I'm annoyed by it
[50:14] often. And in the long term, I'm so
[50:16] grateful for it because I've had so many friends that have burned
[50:19] out and like, I guarantee I would have burned out if left to
[50:22] my own devices. I think Lance and Jeff are both
[50:25] like really good about none and all.
[50:27] Let's take a week. Let's just drop work.
[50:30] Let's go take some time off and I'm long term grateful for it,
[50:34] short term annoyed by it, but it's.
[50:36] Definitely a balance because it could go too far in the other
[50:38] direction too, especially with Jeff.
[50:40] Those people like their time off.
[50:41] Pull him back. Yeah, they like their time off.
[50:43] Absolutely. You just did a 75 hard.
[50:48] How was that? How did you accomplish that?
[50:51] I know we've talked about it a little bit, but I still, I'm
[50:54] curious, how did you fit that into your life?
[50:56] Did it add value to your life? Was it a burden?
[51:00] How was that for you? I mean, I'm not like one for
[51:01] challenges. You love a good challenge.
[51:03] I. Love challenges.
[51:04] I'm not really one for challenges.
[51:06] I got to the start of the year and I was feeling undisciplined.
[51:10] It's not a normal feeling for me.
[51:11] Like I usually feel like I'm on point and like if I want to do
[51:14] something, I put my mind to it, I'll do it.
[51:16] I don't know. I just started to feel like I
[51:18] didn't have good control over my thought life and just like
[51:21] physically undisciplined. I was working, doing all the
[51:25] construction stuff for this farm and skipping workouts.
[51:28] And just like, I don't know, I just felt like I needed like a
[51:32] kick in the pants, you know? And I heard about this 75 hard
[51:35] thing, which is I forget exactly what it is, 2 workouts a day,
[51:39] one has to be outside. You have to drink like a gallon
[51:42] of water every day. You have to read 10 pages a day.
[51:44] Hard for me, I'm not a reader. What?
[51:47] Did you read? I mostly just read the Bible.
[51:50] OK, I wanted to be reading the Bible every day anyways.
[51:54] It like kind of forced me to sit down and do it.
[51:56] I read this. This book's gnarly.
[52:00] It's called the toxic war on masculinity.
[52:03] You could kind of like get the whole book from just the title,
[52:05] but that was super interesting. Just like the so anti healthy
[52:11] masculinity, which healthy masculinity is just like
[52:13] protecting women and children and like servant leadership kind
[52:17] of stuff. So that was a cool book, but not
[52:18] mostly the Bible to work out today.
[52:21] I feel like the 10 pages could take a long time or it could
[52:24] take not that long depending on the size.
[52:25] I admit that I cheated a little bit.
[52:27] I was like, if you have the wrong Bible, that could take
[52:30] like an hour to read 10 pages of the Bible.
[52:32] So I just read 4 chapters a day. That felt like a good amount.
[52:36] You know, it was a good amount. 2 workouts a day is hard.
[52:39] Yeah, I have 4 kids, plenty of like full time work and then
[52:44] trying to like have a good family life and all that stuff
[52:46] too. Just so to squeeze into 45
[52:48] minute workouts. Definitely not like getting to
[52:50] bed early, waking up really early, like knocking one out
[52:53] early before everybody was up. And then a lot of like try to
[52:57] work out with the family or stretch or do something midday
[53:00] or whatever. But it was really challenging.
[53:03] I got it on the first try, but it was hard.
[53:06] Like I really stuck to it and I traveled a lot for work.
[53:09] I was on the East Coast a lot, which you lose so much time when
[53:12] you have to travel to the East Coast.
[53:13] So it would be like 2:00 in the morning and it's like, I guess
[53:17] I'm just walking around the hotel because you have to be
[53:19] outside or whatever. Yeah.
[53:21] But it's all about, like, discipline, you know?
[53:24] And I felt so disciplined coming out of it and just like I could
[53:27] do whatever. I was back to feeling like I
[53:30] could do whatever I felt like I wanted to.
[53:32] So I liked it a lot. Highly recommend.
[53:34] Not for the faint of hard. Like it was hard.
[53:36] Yeah. That's.
[53:36] Why they call it that? Yeah.
[53:39] What about before you like quote knew better?
[53:44] What were some what was your most cringe worthy habit or
[53:49] something you would eat? Just something that you did that
[53:52] you look back now and you're like, Oh my gosh, I can't
[53:54] believe I used to do that. Like picking buns over patties.
[53:57] You like that exactly? I have a worse 1 so it's like am
[54:01] I embarrassing? Starting out farming story We
[54:04] first started with chicken but then we started doing beef
[54:07] cattle too. We like didn't have the land, so
[54:10] we were like, well, let's like buy beef cattle from another guy
[54:13] and we'll start selling it. Pigs are getting after their mud
[54:17] bath over there. And we would send them to the
[54:20] butcher and we'd have to like select the different things that
[54:23] we wanted back to the butcher. So it's like, all right, well,
[54:25] do you want rib eyes or do you want T-bone steaks?
[54:28] Like how do you want the beef basically cut up and all?
[54:30] It's all about the organ meats and all that stuff.
[54:33] I was like, I want the tongue, I want the heart and the kidneys
[54:36] and like all that, you know, And these were steers.
[54:39] I don't know if you know what steers was.
[54:40] I obviously didn't steer means it's a castrated bowl.
[54:44] So they don't have their like testicles intact anymore and not
[54:47] so that they don't breed and reproduce and all that stuff.
[54:49] So it's pretty common. So we harvest the steer.
[54:51] I call it the butcher. And I'm giving my whole cut
[54:53] sheet and I'm like, so I'm, I make a big deal.
[54:56] So I'm like, what I really want to make sure I get back is the
[54:59] Rocky Mountain oysters, which is like the testicles, you know,
[55:02] and I want to eat them. And I'm like, Oh, I'm telling
[55:03] them I'm all about like Paleo and like organ meats and all
[55:06] this stuff. And the guys like you idiot,
[55:09] he's like butchers are so gnarly.
[55:11] He's like, dude, you are an idiot.
[55:12] He's like steers. You don't you don't know what a
[55:14] steer is, do you? And I was like, maybe I don't.
[55:17] It's like that means they don't have testicles.
[55:19] So I was just like forever. I get made fun of for that from
[55:22] this butcher. And it was kind of a cringe.
[55:25] But you know, you learn things. I was from Seattle.
[55:27] Like, how would I know any different?
[55:29] What's yours? I want to hear your cringe
[55:31] worthy moment. I have several I always think
[55:35] of. I think the worst thing that I
[55:37] used to do though, was I think I've told you this, in college
[55:41] for breakfast, I went through a long season of eating peanut
[55:46] butter and chocolate every morning for breakfast.
[55:48] Oh, yeah. So I had like Skippy peanut
[55:50] butter and the Dove, you know, those like Dove dark chocolate
[55:53] hearts, I would just like buy them by the bag and I would just
[55:57] scoop like tons of peanut butter onto it.
[56:00] And that was my breakfast every morning for, I don't know,
[56:03] probably about a year. Are we going to admit how you
[56:06] made those little treats? What?
[56:08] Do you mean? Well, there's a family.
[56:09] There's an inside joke that you would roll all your food for a
[56:12] couple years, No? That's not a thing.
[56:14] So Bethany would take whatever she was eating, it didn't
[56:16] matter. She would take it and she would
[56:18] always roll it into like these balls and she would eat it every
[56:21] time. It was the weirdest.
[56:23] Thing not not like this. Maybe OK it.
[56:25] Could be beef, it could be chicken, it could be peanut
[56:27] butter. It was all rolled into a perfect
[56:28] ball. They.
[56:29] Used to eat a lot of like bars and treats and I think that this
[56:33] got very convoluted because and blown out of proportion because
[56:37] I do like to break things into small pieces, I'll admit that.
[56:40] Preferably Spears, but. Rolling them, that's a myth.
[56:43] I don't do that. I don't know.
[56:44] It's a lot of spherical culinary creations for me back in the
[56:48] day. I think it's a myth I'll.
[56:50] Stand there, I feel like we should almost tell them what the
[56:52] story of when I stole your forks too.
[56:57] Go for it. Was it intervention that had to
[56:59] happen one time? So OK, let's get some
[57:03] background. So we, after the whole family
[57:07] lived on the farm, that first farm, we got this second farm
[57:13] property and got access to the second farm.
[57:15] And on this farm there was a small little farmhouse that was
[57:18] built by like the farmhand that used to be there from like the
[57:23] 60s, I think. And so Jeff and I moved into
[57:25] that and you guys. Were troopers on that too?
[57:28] We were troopers living on the farm.
[57:30] Yeah, not easy. And we're the only.
[57:31] One June on that farm too. Had June in that house, Yeah,
[57:34] gave birth to her in that house. That's and lots of fond memories
[57:38] of it, but it was not again like went from 1 crowded not nice
[57:41] house to another not nice house that was.
[57:45] And when I say not nice, I mean like very bad.
[57:49] Like very. It was rough, yeah.
[57:51] And at one point, like stacked the ceiling with chapsticks and
[57:55] deodorants and then the farm, it was like a lot going on.
[57:57] Primarily pure newborn newborn also like we were the ones on
[58:02] site at the farm. So there was that element.
[58:05] So Paul would kind of come in because Paul was always there on
[58:08] the property working. So he would kind of come in and
[58:10] out all the time. All of a sudden we started
[58:12] noticing like, OK, all of like all of our forks are
[58:15] disappearing, but so our minds just went straight to Paul.
[58:21] But there's a reason for that. And it wasn't just wasn't like
[58:25] unmerited blame. I found I would find our
[58:29] silverware and our like mugs and coffee cups and plates at
[58:32] different places around the farm all the time.
[58:35] And there's only one person that could have done that.
[58:38] But. It was like this show, I forget
[58:40] what that show is, but it's when somebody has like a drug problem
[58:42] and the whole family like comes around and they're like, we need
[58:45] to talk. So you and Jeff, you're like,
[58:48] can we have a meeting with you? And I'm like, I guess like I'm
[58:52] busy. And then you guys both sit down
[58:54] and you're like this. No, we didn't.
[58:57] And you're like, we need to talk about something.
[59:00] They're like our forks have gone missing and we think it's you.
[59:05] I'm like, I know you guys are stressed.
[59:06] Like I know you got a lot going on.
[59:08] Like, I'm not in the business of like stealing your forks.
[59:12] Intentional. Intentional.
[59:14] Intervention moment. Also a little bit exaggerated.
[59:18] I think you just texted me a few days ago.
[59:20] You're like, do you have our? You're like, no, I did you take
[59:23] the forks or something? Because I think I had some of
[59:25] your forks. Well, unfortunately, I think we
[59:29] are about out of time. But thanks for making time to be
[59:32] here. I know you have a lot going on
[59:34] and it's fun catching up and getting to talk to you and
[59:39] reminisce about the past. And hopefully people will get a
[59:41] lot of value from this conversation.
[59:43] So thank you so much. I know I feel like it's rare for
[59:46] us to actually sit down and talk.
[59:48] We always have like, at least eight children running around.
[59:50] So it was actually fun to sit down and talk.
[59:52] And I just want to say I don't really get a chance to tell you
[59:54] this, but I'm really proud of you.
[59:56] Like you've done such a great job building.
[59:58] It's been a really fun to like build alongside of you, but
[1:00:01] you've done such an awesome job. Your integrity is like always
[1:00:04] been on point. I'm just like really proud.
[1:00:06] Been fun to be able to sit here and watch.
[1:00:08] So thanks for having me on. Thank you so much.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.