#1478 - Joel Salatin

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Good to see you again, sir.

Joel Salatin (0:02)

Good to be here, thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:04)

Thanks for coming back, man. I really appreciate it. This is a perfect time to talk to someone like you about our food.

We're in a very strange crisis now, and you just keep hearing time and time again in the news, how much ranchers and farmers and people are really suffering right now, and how much folks who don't have anything to do with that are now forcing, they're being forced to understand the importance of the food supply chain and ranchers and farmers, and all the stuff that we've taken for granted for quite a long time now.

Joel Salatin (0:35)

Well, they sure have. And what's interesting about it is the juxtaposition between the, I'll just call it the industrial, the more commercial industrial food sector versus the sector that I'm in, which is a local centric, direct sale branded product directly from the farm.

The pandemic is the best marketing strategy we've ever seen. We're having the best season we've ever had. And the same thing was with farmers around the country as I talked to them. Everyone that's like us, that did not go into the supermarket system basically, that's selling in their community, in their region, regionally, directly off the farm, having the best year we've ever had. It's the industrial mega system that's cracking. And so for the first time, we're hearing talk of, well, maybe we need to add resiliency to efficiency.

And so yeah, the system that's cracking, there's plenty of food on farms being produced. But of course, as you know, milk is being dumped, pigs are being euthanized. The problem is not at the farm level. The problem is in the chain of custody between the farmer and the consumer and primarily in the large-scale processing situation.

Joe Rogan (2:10)

Yeah, these large meat processing places, they've been hit hard by the coronavirus.

Joel Salatin (2:16)

They have been. I mean, if you think about it right now, Joe, probably in the United States, the only places right now where every day thousands of people come together in crowded conditions are these big meat processing plants. I mean, the offices are closed, the theaters are closed, the convention centers are closed.

And so the only place where people are coming shoulder to shoulder, thousands every day are in these mega processing facilities. Trace and I, my wife, actually co-own a very small abattoir, slaughterhouse, community slaughterhouse. We have 20 employees. And the difference in the vulnerability, in the exposure and risk factor between our little 20-person facility where we do maybe 50 to 70 beaves a week, a hundred hogs versus these mega plants that have...

Joe Rogan (3:18)

When you say beaves?

Joel Salatin (3:19)

Beaves.

Beef. Oh, beefs. Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:23)

I thought you said beaves.

Joel Salatin (3:24)

Well, there's no such word as beefs. It's beeves. B-E-E-V-E-S.

Joe Rogan (3:29)

Oh, okay. That is what you're saying.

Joel Salatin (3:32)

Beaves. Beaves.

Joe Rogan (3:33)

Have you heard that before, Jamie? No, okay.

Joel Salatin (3:35)

So the plural of beef is not beefs. It's beeves.

Joe Rogan (3:39)

Oh, interesting. I always thought that beef was just the meat.

I never thought, I would have assumed you would say cows.

Joel Salatin (3:47)

Well, as a farmer, cows are females who have had calves. So it's a very, as opposed to steers, who would be, or bulls, which would be intact males, steers, non-intact. So as a farmer, all this nomenclature is real, you know, it's normal for you. It's real, like a theologian teases out, you know, Presbyterians and Methodists, and.

So we do, we do. It's a small facility. And you know, it's been in business for, I don't know what, 60 years or so. We've only co-owned it now for a little bit less than 10 years. But the difference, because we do stuff by hand, workstations, you know, these stainless steel work tables are, what, you know, six, seven, eight feet wide, three feet to four feet deep, and each one is a workstation. And you've got three guys out on the kill floor, you got two guys out in the, you know, the cryovac room, you've got four guys in the boning room, you got a guy over here running the sausage stuffer or the, you know, the grinder.

It's inherently small scale, spread out, completely different environment than when you're having, you know, 3,000 people in a cool, damp environment from, and I don't want to get into a rabbit trail discussion, but frankly, in these great, great big plants, most of the workers are generally not Americans, they're coming from other countries looking for the American dream, and so they're living in crowded conditions because they're trying to save every penny to send home to get, you know, uncle and aunt and other family members here from Ethiopia, Somalia, you know, wherever it is. And so they're living in a house that we would live for in a house, they're living, you know, 20, and they're eating poorly, they're in a stressful, they're often separated from their family. There's just a lot of stress in their lives. And so then you throw these big processing facilities, they're not eating well. And it's just an incubator. I mean, if you wanted to create an incubator for a virus, there wouldn't be a better place. Whereas small facilities are inherently, the workers are spread out. They tend to come from the community. They tend to be career craft people rather than just, you know, make this cut, Mack.