 Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here today for our community conversation with Sierra Club Maine and our guest speaker Katie Cantrell. My name is Marina Bach. I'm the communications manager here at Sierra Club Maine, and I'm going to be helping to facilitate our call today. Before we begin, I just want to go through some zoom logistics. If you, if you like closed captioning, we do have live transcript transcriptions enabled. We ask that you please keep your microphone on mute just to help with any background noise. And just wanted to let you know that this is being recorded for folks who aren't able to join us so you're welcome to stay on or off video at your choosing. And then lastly we ask that you put any questions in the chat, and I'll be monitoring the chat as we go and as Katie presents, and we'll have some time at the end for some Q&A. And I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the indigenous land that we're on here in Maine. We're in the homeland of the Wabanaki the people of the dawn, we extend our respect and gratitude to the many indigenous people, and their ancestors, who's rich histories and different communities include the Abbenaki, Malisi, Micmac, Pasamaquoddy and Penobscot nations, and the native communities who have lived here for thousands of generations in what is known today as Maine, New England, and the Canadian Maritimes. Sierra Club Maine is honored to collaborate with the Wabanaki as they share their stories, and we thank the Abbi Museum for their efforts in decolonization efforts, and their work to create effective land acknowledgments. So without further ado I'd like to introduce our guest speaker Katie Fort with to you all. Katie is the director of corporate outreach for the Better Food Foundation, and the founder of the factory farming awareness coalition. For more than a decade Katie has led workshops on the social and ecological hazards of industrial animal agriculture and consulted on food policy at universities, government agencies, and Fortune 500 corporations. These workshops have been used as a resource by food justice advocates around the world. So welcome Katie we're so excited to have you here today and I will pass it over to you to get started. Fantastic thank you so much I will just go ahead and start sharing my screen. All right, can you all see that. Okay perfect things. All right, so thanks for having me I'm excited to be here today. Again, my name is Katie Cantrell, and I've been in the plant based and sustainable food space for over a decade. And just to tell you a little bit more about my background. What actually got me excited about the job I'm doing now is not that history but my. I studied in undergrad I got a bachelor's in psychology from UC Berkeley and it's more the psychology of behavior change that got me excited about the job that I'm doing now you know I spent about a decade, talking to people about the food system trying to change their attitudes in order to change their behavior which is really difficult work it's a it's a hard topic. And that's hard for people to make change, and then with the job I'm doing now it just really flip the paradigm so we're trying to change people's behavior in order to change their attitude. And that's the beauty of defaults so that's just kind of a little teaser of the solution that I'll be getting to. First I will talk a little bit about why food is such as a potent sustainability initiative. And then what we can do about it, both in our own individual lives and also as members of any institutions. If you have any questions and please feel free to drop them in the chat throughout the presentation and then we'll have time at the end to get to them. Dr Jonathan fully explained a national geographic when we think about threats to the environment we tend to picture cars and smokestacks not dinner, but the truth is our need for food poses one of the biggest dangers to the planet. And within the food system there's one sector that has an outsized impact animal agriculture. The animal agriculture uses 77% of all farmland and produces 57% of all food associated greenhouse gas emissions, but produces only 18% of the protein. So it's footprint is really outsized and it's disproportionate compared to the amount of food that's actually produced by animal agriculture. And the reason for that is you as you can see here, animal products have a huge carbon footprint so the foods with the three largest footprints are beef, lamb and cheese. Now oftentimes people will encourage people to switch from beef to chicken, because chicken has a much lower greenhouse gas footprint than beef which is certainly true. But even chicken still has a green carbon footprint, 11 times greater than lentils and peas and beans. So plant based proteins really give you the most bang for your buck and globally they produce most of the world's protein with a tiny fraction of the carbon footprint. So let me try. Sorry, let me just read this. So, when we think about our food we tend to picture what's above the waterline and this iceberg infographic slash metal for here so we think of our individual food and water consumption and our individual food waste. But there's so much going on beneath the waterline that we don't see. And all of this happens before those products hit the grocery store shelves or hit the restaurant. And that includes, you know, all of the feed that the animals are given all the maneuvers that they produce the resulting methane and nitrous oxide that water pollution environmental racism this I you know I could and have spoken for several hours just about the environmental devastation that's caused by animal agriculture but you know I just want to give you a really brief snapshot today. So that we can start to understand why changing our food choices is such a such a powerful action to take. So, one of the issues with animal agriculture is it's an extremely inefficient use of feed and of land. So here this is an amazing infographic from Bloomberg, showing the different uses of land in the United States and you can see by far the single largest use of land is cow pasture and graze land. So this is a much larger area than the amount of prairie that's left in the United States so there is some land that is more has naturally evolved with grazing animals namely buffalo in the United States. But cattle are now being grazed on land that's been deforested on land that should be Marsh and does and has enforced and has now essentially become deserts because of over grazing. So if you look to the right of the square you see one of the other large uses of land is for livestock feed. So this is all of the corn and soy that's grown to feed to animals that are being raised on factory farms. And then above that you can see all of the land to raise the rest of the food that we eat is less than half of the land that's used to grow feed for animals on factory farms. So this little square here. That's all of the veggies and legumes and grains and fruits, everything else that we are eating. It's much less land than is used to grow feed for livestock. So, studies have found that if ever in the US ate a plant based diet, because it's such a more efficient ease of land, we could feed over. We could feed basically twice as many people as they are in the United States we could feed everyone in the US right now, plus an extra 300 million people. And we could basically reforest all of this pasture land. So there's this rewilding movement and a huge part of that is using our land more efficiently and restoring this land that's being used for monoculture corn and soy to feed to animals on factory farms, and land that's currently being overgrazed that could be returned to natural habitat that becomes a huge carbon sink. So this is a huge is a huge problem globally meat production is the leading cause of the Amazon rainforest being cut down to make grazing land for beef cattle and land to grow corn and soy that are fed to animals on factory farms. So sometimes people here that the Amazon is being cut down for soy and they think, Oh, it's all those vegetarians in vegans drinking soy milk and eating soy yogurt, but actually the vast majority of that soy is going to feed animals on factory farms. That's part of the meat industry. Animals also use a disproportionate amount of water so this infographic that you see here is from the New York Times and it compares the emissions, land use and water use of cow milk versus plant based milks. And you can see that by every measure cow milk is by far the most resource intensive. Now what surprises a lot of people is that almond milk here in the bottom right uses considerably less water than cow milk does. A few years ago, during the drought in California, there was a lot of bad press around almonds and how water intensive they are. And it's true they are more water intensive than other plant based products but they still use less water to produce and Calmark does so even switching from Calmark to almond milk is still having a net positive impact. But the most efficient product if you really want to do the best you possibly can is probably oat milk, oat and soy milk, both have very, very low environmental footprints. And actually, this huge difference that you see here in water. If you skip a gallon of milk, you save as much water as you would, but not showering for an entire month. And the same is true of meat so switching from a hamburger to a veggie burger, just once saves as much water as if you did not shower for an entire month. So, you know, again, if you think back to that iceberg info graphic, when we think about saving water we think of our direct water usage, but by far the biggest contributor to our water footprint on a daily basis is actually our feed traces. I think matters worse. Animal agriculture not only uses a disproportionate amount of water, but it also pollutes the water that's remaining so manure runoff from factory farms is a leading cause of water pollution in the United States and also the leading cause of the dead zone. Excuse me in the Gulf of Mexico. The final issue, of course, is climate change. Together the world's top five meat and dairy corporations are actually responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and eggs on mobile shell or BP. Unfortunately, that's not all that they have in common. Just like big oil, big meat also spends millions of dollars crushing climate policy, and so in confusion about whether or not meat is actually contributing to climate change. They sponsor blog posts, they sponsor articles, and they keep scientific studies from being published, they lobby the government to keep climate action from being taken. And actually, this is great investigative reporting that found that big meat actually spends a larger percentage of its budget on crushing climate policy than even big oil does. Because they, they know that they're in the crosshairs next meat is such a large contributor to climate change. The focus has to come around to them at some point and they're trying to put that off as long as possible to keep consumers in the dark. There's been a lot of talk about methane this is one of the big focuses of COP 26 one of the main agreements that governments have have taken as agreeing to cut methane by 30% by 2030. Animal agriculture is responsible for about 40% of all method methane emissions globally. And in the short term it's 80 times more potent than CO2 so that's why it's one of the big focuses lately is because cutting methane has really immediate effects whereas cutting carbon is is very important, but it's more of a long term effect so by cutting methane we can help really curb climate change in the short term while we get our act together to also stop it in the long term. The focus on methane has led to a lot of greenwashing and I wanted is a little bit wonky but you know since you're an environmental organization I wanted to take just a couple of minutes to talk about this. So in California, where they have basically cap and trade that you know they have a carbon market and potentially federally we are possibly on the cusp of this you know if it's when I can get their act together. So in California companies are getting carbon credits for recapturing methane. And a lot of these credits are going to dairy factory farms, and the government is actually paying for these factory farms to build methane digesters using taxpayer money. And then the factory farms get the money from those credits. So taxpayers are further subsidizing factory farming. And digesters are a great technology for recapturing methane making sure it doesn't go into the air and generating energy, but they're not necessarily a green solution and they're certainly not an equitable solution, because digesters actually emit other air pollutants that disproportionately harm communities of color when they are built on factory farms because factory farms are almost always located near communities of color. So they're actually perpetuating environmental racism. And then the big problem is that big ag is using these carbon credits to further invest in expanding factory farms and so you know this is a really pressing issue as we're getting more and more money for methane digesters methane recapture to make sure that it's done in a way that's not just entrenching factory farming so now they're saying, you know it could be that dairy farms and especially dairy factory farms and large factory farms are primarily producing methane and milk is a byproduct of it rather than, you know, vice versa so that's really important with that we make sure that, you know as consumer preferences are changing that factory farms don't continue business as usual, thanks to this subsidized money from methane recapture so this is kind of the the latest frontier in the fight against factory farming. And then another issue that comes up a lot is grass fed and this idea that beef can actually be a climate solution because grazing creates carbon sinks. This idea has not been verified an independent scientific study so the largest study that's been conducted at Oxford University grazed and confused, looked at all the different types of grazing systems and found that even in the best systems grass fed livestock are net contributors to the climate problem it's still a net net contributor of carbon. So grazing livestock, you know are not a climate solution their climate problem as our all livestock. And the same report said that, you know eating less meat is really the only way to help with us. So, more and more scientific studies are showing that we simply cannot continue businesses usual when it comes to our food system it is quite literally unsustainable. The World Resources Institute and several other scientific papers have found that without changing diets agriculture alone could produce enough emissions to surpass one and a half degrees of warming. So basically what this means is that if every other sector. So energy transportation's buildings became completely carbon neutral by 2050, but we leave the food system to continue on its current trajectory, we will still fail to meet the Paris climate Accord. So food is a critical piece of the climate solution. Now the good news is that there is an easy way to change this so, namely, eating more plant based foods greenhouse gas emissions of plant based meals are an average 63% lower than the emissions of animal based meals. So this is one of the most effective sustainability interventions that we can take. So this, sorry, I know this is kind of locking your view. But basically, what you can see here is that So this, this infographic, they compared sustainability interventions done at different events so like its schools or community events. So these are different interventions and that their car for their climate impact. They found the single most effective intervention is switching from hamburgers to veggie burgers. After that is reducing the portion size of beef by 25%. Whereas other things that we tend to think of as being sustainability interventions like using 100% recycled plastic, or even eliminating single use plastic altogether. Now they're great for other reasons reducing plastic pollution is certainly an important environmental issue. But in terms of the climate impact, it's pretty much nil by far the most effective thing that we can do is to reduce the amount of meat, especially beef that's been served. Another news is that this has the plant based movement is exploding so in the last few years there's just been this unprecedented growth of plant based foods. The CEO of Starbucks said it's the most dominant shift in consumer behavior that you've seen plant based many items have increased over 800% in the last four years, over half of all households are now buying plant based foods, and a quarter of Americans have recently reduced their meat consumption including a third of non white Americans so this is a really hot and growing trend. Now who's driving this trend, it's mostly young people and omnivores. So the vast majority of Gen Z years and millennials are already eating plant based foods at least a couple of times a week, and want to be eating plant based foods even more often. What's more interesting is that almost half of households that buy plant based milks also buy cow milk, and almost all consumers who are buying plant based meats also buy animal based meats. And this is actually great news because it means that the solution is not getting everyone to go vegan. It's encouraging this trend of so called flexitarianism. So, getting omnivores to realize that we don't need a giant hunk of meat in the middle of our plate at every meal. So getting omnivores to eat more plant based foods, more often is how we can make the biggest change the most quickly. So that's really what motivates our work, and we are influenced by behavioral economics specifically the book Nudge by Nobel laureate Richard Taylor, and Harvard professor Cass Sunstein, which looks at the impacts of defaults and nudges on human behavior. So we have the option that people end up with if they don't make an active choice. So a classic example of this is ringtones. Most of us, myself included, probably still have the default ringtone that our phone came with because we never actively made a choice to change it. Now for many different reasons people have a really strong tendency to stick with the status quo or the default option. Because it's easier, it's one less choice to make for already over text brains, and partly because it's seen as a more normal option the thing that most people are doing. You know we're social creatures we don't like to stand out. We like to fit in and sticking with the default is the surest way to fit in if you, if you don't stick with the default you're kind of going against the grain and standing out and that can be uncomfortable for people. So, one of the most talked about examples of the power of defaults is organ donations. So countries where people are by default not organ donors and they have to actively opt into it, have much lower participation rates than countries where people by default are organ donors, and have to actively opt out of it. And this change has really life saving consequences of course, because the more people who donate their organs the more lives you can save. And you can affect that just by having to check a box to not be an organ donor versus checking a box to be an organ donor. To give you an example that is drawn more from the assisting ability world. This study looked at energy defaults that are being used by companies to power their factories and their stores. So in the control conventional energy is the default and businesses have a choice to opt into renewable energy. And you can see here that one conventional is a default basically 100% of businesses are sticking with that conventional energy default. So then for the experiment they flipped it, they made renewable energy the default and gave businesses the choice to opt out into conventional energy. And they found that you can see, you know this has a huge increase in the number of businesses that are using renewable energy, about 70 70% of businesses stick with that renewable energy default, and it's consistent over time that it's not just that they weren't paying attention to their energy bill in year one and they got tricked into it, but they're content to stick with the default whether that's conventional energy, or more sustainable renewable energy. So when you combine these two ideas plant based foods in defaults you get greener by default. So the idea is really simple, we're looking to flip the norm. So right now, basically everywhere meat is the default people have to specially opt in to plant based options. We just want to make plant based the default and give people the choice to opt into meat and dairy. So nothing is taken off the menu people still have complete freedom of choice, but we're making the more sustainable option the default. So we have strategies to implement this in any type of food environment, and it's cost neutral and can even save money. It's also more inclusive serving plant based foods that meet the needs of those more specific diets, while giving people the option to add meat and dairy includes everyone by default. So if you have a meat and dairy default that excludes the 30 to 15 million Americans who are lactose intolerant the majority from our people of color. It excludes the many different religions that encourage vegetarianism, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Rastafarianism, Seventh Day Adventism, and those that restrict certain animal products like Judaism, and Islam. It also includes the younger people who as we've talked about are more likely to be eating to want to eat more plant based foods, and the communities of color who are more likely to be reducing their meat consumption, and actually black Americans are twice as likely to be vegan as white Americans so it's more inclusive of all of these different types of people, while still also be inclusive of people who want to eat me with every meal. And this is effective. So there was a study done at the Harvard Kennedy School at an event and in the control, just like pretty much every event meet with the default and you can check a box to special request a vegetarian option. They had actually 25 about 25% of people did request a veg option which is a lot more than we would expect in the general public. 75% of people still stuck with that meat default, and they flipped it so they made vegetarian the default and gave people the choice to opt into meat. And when they did that they found that about two thirds of people stuck with that veg default and a third opted back into me. So this is a 43% increase in the number of people eating veg meals. In Denmark found even more dramatic results. So same same experimental design in the default, or in the control condition meet was the default, only 2% of people requested a vegetarian option. And then they flipped it so they made vegetarian the default and let people request me. And when they did that 87% of people stuck with that veg option about 13% requested me. So this is an 80% increase in the number of people eating veg meals, just by making veg the default. So when we take these results and extrapolate them a company with 1000 employees that's serving lunch every day. During the week, over the course of a year would save 9 million gallons of water and 350,000 kilograms of carbon equivalence so these are much bigger impacts than other infrastructure investments that we think of like installing local toilets, or solar arrays, and it's cost neutral or cost savings whereas those infrastructure investments have a large upfront cost. So how does this work exactly. I'm going to talk briefly about what this looks like in different environments. So the core idea is to make your base plant based you know serve plant based with the option to opt into meat and dairy. So for buffets and family style this can mean offering plant based entrees and then having meat and dairy available at the end of the line. Ideally in small containers with small serving utensils you know there's so many subtle cues that affect how much food we take. So if food is is placed last with smaller containers were likely to take less of it so then it becomes more of a garnish rather than the center of our plate. If people are SVP for meals you can state that the food will be plant based by default and offer a box to check if guests would like to opt into meet the same way that right now they check a box to indicate they need a vegetarian or gluten free option. So the restaurants and advice them to offer meat and dairy as add ons. So make the base meal plant based and have meat and dairy for an additional cost and we're already used to this for things like salads or bowls. If it's not possible to make the entree entirely plant based we recommend offering a minimum ratio of two to one plant based to animal based options, and this helps create the perception that plant based is the default. This is a study that was done in Cambridge that found that increasing the ratio of veg to meet from one to three to two to two increase the take rate of edge options by 60%. And the reason for this is that when there's one veg option on divorce see that as being just for vegetarians. So they think oh that's not for me. In some workplaces. I talked to a lot of vegetarians and vegans who say that they have to fight off their coworkers from taking the veg option because if they do, there won't be enough food for vegetarians and begins to eat. But you know if it's a delicious option if it's colorful and it's healthy a lot of people want to try it so when it's more plentiful. It's a vegetarian option to go around. And also the focus doesn't become on the fact that it's a vegetarian option, but just the fact of you know, do I feel like pasta or risotto or salad or lasagna today. Suddenly it's not about oh that's the vegetarian option. Another great strategy is subtle substitutions. So serving plant based condiments milks desserts and breads by default. Again this is more inclusive because it meets the needs of people with allergies and dietary restrictions and products are so good that people won't even notice the difference so we work with UCLA and their dining hall was actually they were doing a vegan brownie and they did taste tests and found that everyone preferred the taste of the vegan brownie in blind taste tests. And so it tasted better. More people could eat it it's cheaper for them to make and it has a lower carbon and water footprint so it's really a win win and now they only serve those vegan brownies that's their default brownie recipe. So this is something that you can do in your daily life you know even if you're not vegan, if you're going to a potluck or hosting a dinner party. You can make the dessert vegan you can make sides vegan by using vegan butter vegan milks, you know Thanksgiving is coming up something like mashed potatoes super easy to make vegan. Even if you're not being in your family is not it still has a much lower carbon and water footprint, and really people can't notice the difference in taste. So this is a super easy intervention. And then if there's going to be a printed menu. It's important to incorporate the vegetarian dishes into the main menu so there was an experiment that was done. They had on the right you can see there's a separate vegetarian menu they're kind of segregated in their own section down at the bottom. And people when that's the case people are 56% less likely to order the vegetarian option versus when they're just incorporated into the main menu and listed first. And again because when omnivores look at this main menu they just the first thing that's that hits their eyes risotto primavera and they think that sounds delicious. I'm going to order that versus when they look at this menu and omnivore would think oh I'm not vegetarian I'm not even going to look at that vegetarian section. They think again it's not for me that's just for vegetarians. Another important thing that contributes to omnivores, you know, feeling excited about ordering plant based foods is how they're labeled. So if they're labeled when names that are focused on the taste the texture and the provenance where the flavors are from, rather than really advertising a food as vegetarian vegan and meatless or as healthy low fat really increases the take rate. So the Institute of Resources Institutes Better Buying Lab did a study in the UK, and they found that renaming meat free sausages, sausages and mash to Cumberland spice veggie sausages and mash increase sales by 76%. And this picture that we see here on the right you know we can imagine I mean this is a beautiful cake, but a lot of people are probably deterred by the fact that it's labeled as a decadent vegan chocolate cake. So if it has, you know omnivores think oh that's just for vegans it's not for me, or there is still a stigma around vegan food and so they think, oh that's not going to taste good. So imagine how many more people would order it if it were just labeled as decadent chocolate cake, and you know people care about whether it tastes good or not. Most people don't go into a restaurant thinking I want a cake that has eggs in it. You know that's not our main priority is not that it has animal products in it but that it tastes delicious. And that it's indulgent. And so, if something is just labeled with taste descriptors rather than prominently labeled as vegan, people are more likely to choose it. So that's the core idea. We work with businesses with universities with organizations and nonprofits conferences and restaurants to put these strategies into action. And we actually do everything we can to make it as easy as possible, completely free of charge we are a nonprofit, we are mission driven just trying to make plant based the defaults in as many places as possible so. That is the conclusion of the presentation so this is our website greenerbydefault.org, and you can go there and sign up we have an email list. This is my email address. I would love to hear from you. I'm sorry, please ignore the bottom section I just spoke to the primary reality project so that was for them. But you know I'll stop now so that we can get to q amp a, but I would really love to work with you. You know it's implement a greener by default policy, both for Sierra Club, the main chapter and also for any institutions that you might be a part of so other groups, faith communities, universities, workplaces, we, you know we're working to implement this in as many places as possible. So I will stop sharing and check out the chat. Thanks so much Katie, lots of interesting information and ideas in there. We do have one question so far from Noel she's wondering, have you been able to move into school cafeterias. Yeah, so we are working with universities we're not working with K 12. You know it's really important and it's really admirable and we partner with other organs that work with K 12, but there's a lot of limitations when it comes to school meals, you know, namely, the federal funding for school meals is so minimal that it's just like a dollar per meal and so they're working with the cheapest possible foods they can get and because meat and dairy are subsidized the government actually buys up extra meat and dairy that consumers don't buy and they put it into the school lunch program at a really discounted cost so plant based foods, even just fruits and vegetables and beans are often prohibitively expensive for schools to serve. And also a lot of the times like there's just one central kitchen they're they're buying a lot of pre packaged foods a lot of processed foods, whereas plant based foods to get them to taste good you have to cook them from scratch. Usually, they don't work well with the heat and serve models that schools are using. So, you know, also for public schools that the decisions are made at the district level and so there's a lot of bureaucracy so, you know, there's a number of different reasons that we've decided with our limited, you know, time and funds we're focusing on universities where students have a lot more power to influence what dining is doing so if there's demand for plant based foods. So university dining services are better equipped and have more budget to meet that demand. So we have had a lot of success with universities and actually we're doing a study with UCLA and with Stanford. Excuse me and Harvard on plant based defaults at student events. But yeah we don't work with schools directly on front of the earth is a really fantastic organization that works with school districts and actually they're introducing legislation at a better level to increase the funding for school meals. If they're serving plant based options so that's, there's kind of some key policies that need to change in order to make it more feasible to serve plant based foods and that schools but what that said, if you are if you know of any private schools or charter schools, they likely have more freedom and more capacity. Great thanks Katie, and Becky is wondering, are you promoting the gates model of reconstituted protein. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that there's so there's plant based proteins and there's cultivated meats. I think the Gates Foundation has invested in both. So, you know we, we don't promote any particular foods or brands or anything like that you know we're promoting plant based protein so you know some like corporations that we work with, want to switch from hamburgers to veggie burgers and some want to switch to more plant based meals, or, you know, so called whole foods plant based meals which is less processed foods but you know what I tell people because I know there's a lot of controversy, especially within the environmental movement around the more process plant based proteins. I like certainly it's better for people's health and for the health of the planet to eat less processed foods, the closer you can get to food in its original form, the better but you know the reality is the average American eats a fast food hamburger three times per week. So asking someone who's going to McDonald's or Burger King three times a week to switch to lentil and kale salad is just not going to happen, you know, people don't have the taste for it they don't know how to cook it. That can cause indigestion to switch to really high fiber diet sorry my cat's having fun here. You know if you used to really low fiber diet that's full of fat and salt and sugar, just switching overnight to a really low process diet is not really a feasible ask and so I think of it like harm reduction it's kind of like a bridge food to get someone eating fast food factory farm meat to eating more plant based foods and you know I mean there have been independent LCA is done. The carbon footprint of the beyond burger for instance is miniscule compared to the carbon footprint of a hamburger and we just don't have time like yes in an ideal world everyone would be, you know, eating unprocessed diets they're cooking themselves from farms but we have you know probably less than 10 years at this point to end factory farming and meat consumption is actually continuing to grow globally factory farming is expanding globally. So I to me whatever solutions we can muster to switch people away from factory farm meat as quickly as possible. We need all hands on deck we need all possible solutions so you know I think I do think that plant based meats are an important part like people who don't have access to farmers markets or places where they can buy food, you can now get a plant based burger at Burger King or Carl's junior now at McDonald's. So it's also an equity issue to because you know pasture based meats are very expensive and they're hard to access. And even you know unfortunately, a lot of unprocessed plant based foods can also be hard to access and for people who don't have time to cook them. It's not necessarily a realistic solution so you know I do think that plant based proteins, like beyond an impossible are a key part of the solution but we certainly as an organization are not advocating for them, just saying that you know for people who feel like they can't go from burgers to lentils, that is a possible solution. Cultivated meat. You know there's been a lot of controversy especially lately over how feasible that technology is. So it's basically growing. It's using like medical technology to grow animal protein in a medium. So the same way that we like grow human skin cells to graft onto burn victims, growing animal muscle tissue to eat as meat. It is much more efficient because you're just growing the animal that you, the part of the animal that will be eating versus having to sustain and feed an animal throughout its whole life cycle. So it does have a much lower carbon and water and land footprint. Right now it's still very expensive and they're only producing it on a small scale so you know if it does scale up to the point that it could replace factory farmed meat like in fast food. That's not going to be for probably at least another 10 years maybe more like another 20 years so it doesn't look like that's a feasible solution in the time frame that we need. Although some people have said you know if people really refuse to stop eating burgers three times a week. Maybe they could at least come from cultivated meat rather than from factory farmed meat but that's you know it's kind of a gamble. At this point it's unclear if it can scale to the level that would be necessary. Alright, thank you for that. One question that I had is, I know we kind of touched a little bit on the fake meat substitutes so I'm thinking you know beyond burgers impossible, even the corn brand. Are these healthy substitutes in relation to an actual meat burger or should we focus more obviously on the plant based you know beans and lentils and the foods as they come so is it a healthy option. Yeah, so again it's it's healthier, but it's not healthy so you know like no burger, no one should be eating burgers every day for dinner be that a meat burger or a vegan burger, like donuts are not healthy whether they're vegan or not. So, you know, Mioko who makes like some of the best vegan butter and cheeses like she'll tell you you know it's still butter it's still not a health food. So being said, they it doesn't have any cholesterol it has. Most of them don't have saturated fat, much less fat in general. So it is still healthier, especially for people with heart issues, high blood pressure. But you know, they do still have quite a bit of fat that most of them have a lot of sodium. So the same way that you wouldn't consider it healthy to eat a burger every day for dinner. Same thing, you know, I mean, some like veggie burgers you know you can make your own like black bean and sweet potato burger. That is actually healthy, but the process ones that you're buying in the store. You know, it's not a health food but it is still healthier so from that, like harm reduction perspective. It's better for people to eat veggie burgers rather than hamburgers but even better for them to like make their own lentil burger. But again, you know it's just about meeting people where they are and figuring out what's realistic for them we don't want to let perfect be the enemy of the good. So something that I see so often is people get really overwhelmed by either health or sustainability, you know every food has a downside, the harder you look and so it's easy for people to just throw out their hands and say you know what this is all too complicated it's too difficult. I'm just going to go back to eating what I know, which is fast food hamburgers. So, you know that's why I really encourage people to do what you can as often as you can, wherever you can start. So, that's yeah, that's, that's our approach. Awesome thank you Katie and makes makes total sense. Becky has a comment about. She's a small factor family farmer who raises animals and she has seen a significant advantage in the compositing of waste to incorporate into her garden. She says that she has an operation to remove invasives. She has an operation to remove invasives using animals rather than chemical herbicides that are normally used to restrict that product. She's questioning the assumptions made that say all animals in rotational grazing scenarios are significant GHD producers. Yeah, so it's not an assumption their scientific studies I can send you the links. They conducted, you know, life cycle analysis of animals and different rotational grazing systems but you know I mean small farmers like certainly are not the problem it's just an issue of scale. So if you're looking at producing enough meat to meet anywhere near the current demand. There's actually just a study done that found that only 30% of the current demand for beef could be met with the amount of pasture land that we have in the United States. So you know if everyone reduce their beef consumption by 70% then yes like we could sustainably meet the demand for beef with pasture based systems but even then, you know the to have a true closed loop, those animals can't be removed from the system. So if you look at like prairies and natural grazing systems, those animals die on the land and their bodies decompose and go back into the soil, and that nourishes the soil. And so when you have, you know if you're trying to graze for for profit, and to do it more at scale you just end up compromising that closed loop system so absolutely small farmers if you're doing it at a very small scale can be done very sustainably but when you look at scaling that up to meet even a small fraction of the current demand for meat, then you start to compromise the system so. Yes, like certainly not saying it can't be done sustainably at a small scale but that's not a, it's not a feasible solution. Absolutely. Unless we're going to be forced the rest of the land that's remaining remaining and turn it all into into range land. Yes, absolutely big I would like to get rid of small farming and they make it really hard for small farmers to make a profit. Absolutely. Thanks Katie. Just to know if you wanted to share any of those those scientific links that you shared I'm going to be sending a follow up email it's all of the registrants so if you want to send it to me I can. I'm happy to forward it on to those people. Okay great thanks yeah I'll do that. Any other questions for Katie. Any other closing comments or questions for the audience that you would like to share Katie. Well I guess just you know to give it some thought and if you can think of any institutions that might be a good fit for this. We'd love to work with you so you know my specialty is is workplaces so working with businesses. But again also if you know any students at universities we do a lot of work there and we are really trying to we actually have a kind of a campaign to get environmental organizations to implement food policies, a lot of environmental groups. There's no any kind of food policy on the book so they buy, you know, some environmental groups by factory farm food to serve at their events talking about how we need to stop climate change so we're trying to get environmental groups to really walk the walk. And even if food is not a focus of the work. Still, like, you know it's kind of the least that we can do when we are buying food for events to make sure that it's food that was sustainably raised and grown. So, you know we think greener by default is a nice way to do that because again, you know it's not taking me entirely up the menu but it's establishing plant based as the default. So, you know, if, if Sierra Club is interested in implementing that as an internal policy we would love to work with you. And again, if you are part of any other. Any other institutions. Yeah, you know I mean, unfortunately the school food is just too big of a fight for us at the moment, but universities, private institutions, we will work with. So, yeah, please feel free to reach out and also if you have any questions about any of the studies or if you want nutritional info or recipes anything like that I love to talk with folks so please feel free to reach out. Awesome thanks so much. And I really I really do appreciate the thought of by default so we're meeting people where they're at and still giving everyone the option that they want and need. That's really great. So if there are no other questions I'm going to share my screen one more time just for a couple of closing slides. I want to thank everyone so much for joining us today and for being open minded to all of this and adapting what we've been taught or know to kind of go with the ways of the world and how things are changing what we need to do. And a special thank you to Katie so much. It's been really interesting we've loved having you. And definitely thinking about taking all of these practices into play and how we can incorporate them into our own lives and kind of help our family and friends, see something like that as well. So we invite everyone to stay updated on our work you can follow us on social media, or subscribe to our newsletter on our website, I will also like I said be sending up, sending a follow up email with some links if Katie would like to share those, and thank you everyone so much. I did before we go I just want to put a plug for our next community conversation which is next Tuesday, November 16 at noon will be joined by Trevor Cohen, who is the author of bright green free bright green future excuse me. Trevor is a glimpse into a fully sustainable future through the inspiring stories of innovators and activists. So I hope you can join us I'll actually put a link to register for that in the chat. And then also think Katie, thank you for sharing your email address if anyone wants to contact Katie with questions. You can also chat Katie at better food foundation.org, or you can sign up at greener by default.com. So that concludes the presentation thank you all so much for joining us, and I hope to see you all soon. Have a good rest of your day. Thanks for having me.