 Thank you, Nicole. Thank you for coming. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. So let's just get right into it. How many people here are involved in agriculture? Show of hands. Okay? You that didn't raise your hands, you are involved in agriculture. The fact that we have the agricultural system that we do allows us to come to things like this rather than working in the field and trying to put up the harvest for the coming winter and the spring following, right? We're not dependent on so much going right for us to avoid starvation. So maybe just a little mind shift is in order and I hope I can accomplish or at least initiate that while I'm here. Because the reality is that in America today, the average adult American is more likely to have direct personal experience with the criminal justice system than with production agriculture. And there's so very much wrong with that and there's so much we could talk about. But the point is it's a remarkably small number of people that are supporting everything else. And as an agriculturalist coming into this community, I would ask us to kind of maybe reconsider a little bit because part of my role act between my tribes. Here's my nutrition tribe, you, my brothers and sisters. I work in agriculture, they're my brothers. I'm trying to get us together, okay? And there's some things that are gonna be in the way of that. And I think that's to our detriment. So I'm just gonna offer some contradictory observations and people can do what they want as we go along. But one, for example, is there are two theories about why agriculture developed that I find kind of compelling. One is as a natural outcome of our nature as trading primates. How can I get something from this environment that I can trade with AUG over there for something from AUGs? Okay, the other thing that's interesting is that it was only about 8,000 years ago as we that CO2 levels rose following the increase in temperature to a point that allowed sufficient plant growth to support agriculture. It's an interesting theory and again, it's a little different than many of the narratives that we hear. So again, my formal training is in agronomy and ruminant nutrition, so I am trained in those sciences to do with healthy soils and healthy plants and healthy animals. And like many, I've had my own personal experience that's led me to do a good bit of study on healthy humans or more precisely, how to improve my own health. And I find myself in a position where now all these things are very well related and I can communicate to my agricultural tribe about the health message and then I hope I can communicate to this tribe the agricultural message. And I'm an advocate for ruminants. Modern humans exist because there were ruminants. We didn't evolve to eat meat, we evolved because we ate meat. So I am promoting an organization that I call the Ruminati and I'm recruiting new members all the time. People that want to learn more about ruminant animals and their contribution as well as be able to effectively communicate the message about the role of animal products in the human diet, specifically ruminant animal products. And the fact is that we can't feed today's world without ruminant animal agriculture, let alone the world that we're gonna have in 33 years. We must improve the efficiency and the productivity of ruminant animal agriculture worldwide. And again, this conflicts with many narratives and I'll try to get some information to you today to maybe justify that position. So another thing that I'm arguing for is that we need a ruminant revolution just as we had a green revolution. We need to make that investment in private and we certainly need to get policy shifted to emphasize ruminant animal agriculture again to achieve the goal of feeding the world of 2050. It's hard for people functioning in the, you know, functioning sciences, sorry. To realize just what a load of male bovine fecal matter has been the realm of human nutrition, okay? These are two quotes that I'd like to put up to just kind of bookend things. 1963, every woman knows that carbohydrates are fattening. This is a piece of common knowledge which few nutritionists would dispute. And then by 1994, obesity has become a carbohydrate deficiency syndrome. Isn't that remarkable? And was there science that justified that shift in outlook? And I would, and again, this audience probably is well aware of that. And so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at the observational data of this decrease, this decline in human health since then. There are other reasons that we could postulate, but let's just say this is where we are. So as one friend said, here we have a picture of a bunch of rapacious butchers and also some nice people from the meat trade. So again, as we're thinking about priorities and policy and investment and things, maybe it's time for us to look for other places to put money when we talk about health than just in the disease care industry. And so a personal confession here, I agree with Dean Ornish. Yeah, I may be the only person to do that here. I agree that what's good for you is good for the planet. I suspect that we're going to differ on the details, however. Because I believe that butter, meat and cheese, the products of ruminant animal agriculture are good for us and I believe that ruminant animal agriculture is the only truly sustainable source that we've got going for us. So I have a personal dream, my dream of the day when the public understands that their consumption of the products in the background lessens their need for the products in the foreground. And I do believe that day is approaching. Frankly, it can't get much worse. But again, my concern is that we may have some conventional wisdom within our various tribes that prevents us from effectively communicating between those communities that could then affect the kind of change. If we're going to have a conversation about sustainability, and too often it's what I call sustain a babble. It's a marketing label. It's not a real conversation about sustainability. We're only considering one factor when in fact we have to consider multiple factors like societal factors, like economic factors, ecological factors. All of those have to be considered because there's costs and benefits to every decision that we get to make. So what's the burden of chronic disease on individual human beings, on their families, on their communities? It's massive. Is that considered in the conventional understanding of sustainability? If it is, it's from this plant-based narrative. Not what I would suggest is a more informed one. What is the cost of chronic disease? Well, we know overt diabetes care is approaching a billion dollars a day. That's diabetes and pre-diabetes. That's not considering the other metabolic syndromes. And ecological, is it even possible to farm without livestock? Is that in fact possible? And if you recognize the name of Sir Albert Howard, you might understand him and his role in organic agriculture and we'll come back to that subject in a little bit. The great enemy of truth is very often by deliberate, contrived, and dishonest. But the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebearers. We subject to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. And yes, I think that happens within this tribe as well. Just use both legs. Thank you. Yep. It's been said before, but it's not widely recognized the roots of our dietary guidelines. And these roots do extend back a long, long way, but we should at least acknowledge that the 60s and 70s environmental movement was a factor. We should acknowledge that the 19th century faith-based vegetarian movement played a factor and still plays a factor today. And if all we look at is some policy document without considering these others, we probably won't make very much progress. So before I go any further, I want to make it really clear that I respect Gary Taub's, his books have been very impactful in my personal life. I'm going to use this paragraph from why we get fat and what to do about it to make a specific point. Okay, bear with me. Carbohydrate restricted diets, typically, if not perhaps ideally, replace the carbohydrates in the diet with large or at least larger portions of animal products. Beginning with eggs for breakfast, moving to meat, fish, or foul for lunch and dinner. The implications of that are proper to debate. Isn't our dependence on animal products already bad for the environment? Well, first problem, humanity's diet today is plant-based and no. And won't it just get worse? No. Isn't livestock production a major country contributor to global warming? No. Water shortages? No. And pollution? No. When thinking about a healthy diet, shouldn't we think about what's good for the planet as well as what's good for us? Well, it does matter, doesn't it? If we do in fact know what's good for the planet, do we have the right to kill animals for our food or put them to work for us in producing it while we're heterotrophs? And already I'm using terms, I'll define them quickly, but stay with me if you don't know what that one means. Is it the only morally and ethically defensible lifestyle of vegetarian one or even a vegan one? I really don't want to get into this, but I would just point out that if in fact I'm right in all these assertions, then any claim to morality based on so many flaws is tenuous. And people are welcome to their personal decisions, obviously, but I don't think they should be the basis for public policy, especially one that has such far-reaching consequences. So there is this reality of being a heterotroph. Human beings cannot produce organic compounds from inorganic sources. We have to eat other organisms to get proteins and energy. It's just the way we are. Deal with it. We've got these friends called ruminants. And ruminant animals perform absolutely essential ecological functions. And this is my list. And I'll go through it quickly. Converts structural and non-structural carbohydrate into fat. It converts plant protein and non-protein nitrogen into high quality animal protein. It reduces the poly unstable fatty acids to mono unstable and stable saturated fatty acids through a process called biohydrogenation. It produces B vitamin B12 and other vitamins, increases bioavailability of essential minerals, degrades anti quality plant components like phytates and phytonutrients, maintains health of grassland ecosystems, which in fact are the largest biome on terrestrial earth. Recycle nutrients, build soil health, provide services, muscle power like draft, byproducts like leather, just to name a few, generates new wealth. Significant source of new wealth generation around the world is ruminant animal agriculture. Ruminant animals are those animals that have the specialized digestive anatomy that allows for fermentation, pre-gastric. Before our stomachs, essentially, you've got this massive structure, three separate bodies, two, sorry, but one is really two regions. What this permits is the digestion of cellulose. Cellulose is the most abundant carbohydrate in the biosphere. No vertebrate animal makes cellulase, the enzyme necessary, to break the bonds between glucose units. If it were not for the microorganisms that live in the rumin, or those that live out in the environment, and photosynthesis continued unabated in about 25 years, life on earth would stagnate due to a lack of CO2. Now it's interesting this match evolutionarily between human beings and ruminants. Humans have essential amino acids in their diet. Ruminants do not. Humans have essential fatty acids in their diet, and apparently ruminants do not. Humans do not have essential carbohydrates in their diet. Ruminants have two forms that are essential. They have to have structural carbohydrates, fiber, and they have to have nonstructural carbohydrates, sugars, and starches. And this is just a simplified representation of, again, monogastric animals like us, where we have the macronutrients, carbohydrate, protein, fat coming in, being subjected to stomach acid and enzymes, and then we have sugars, amino acids, and fatty acids being absorbed from the small intestine. With ruminants, it's a little bit different. We have, again, this pre-gastric fermentation process. Their diet is primarily carbohydrate and proteins, and you could put quotes around protein because a significant amount of that is non-protein nitrogen. From the microbial activity within their rumin, they produce methane, volatile fatty acids, and ammonia. Then, once that material is sufficiently broken down, it can flow into the lower part of the abomasum and then into the omasum, and the omasum is essentially like our stomach. By the time we get that ingesta flowing down into the small intestine, there's almost no sugar left to be absorbed. It's all been fermented. And virtually all of the protein, the amino acids that are being absorbed, were microbial protein in origin. So the ruminant animal is sheltering, raising these microbial populations, and then harvesting the byproducts of their activity as well as they themselves. So one of my campaigns is to raise awareness that, in fact, red meat is a fermented plant product. And given all the buzz about fermented products, I think we might be able to make some traction here. There's a difference between ingestion and digestion. We are not what we eat. We are what our bodies do with what we eat. And so the fat content of a ruminant's diet is less than 6% fat. By the time our micro population within the room and get done, 70% to 80% of that animal's caloric needs ends up coming from the short chain, volatile fatty acids that are produced. So a low fiber diet, a low fat diet goes in. The animal harvests, digests a high fat diet. And then there's this interesting thing that I mentioned briefly before, biohydrogenation. About 80% of the polyunsaturated fatty acids that are in the diet of a ruminant end up being unsaturated to some degree. And so as a result of this, the flesh of ruminant animals is going to be far less influenced by diet than any other animal. And this is another evolutionary neat trick. And this is the practical outcome of that. Let me explain this just a little bit. What we're showing is in blue, the omega-3 content. In red, the omega-6 content. These first two pairs are from a feeding study that were done by Dr. Duck at Clemson University. So this is a feeding trial looking at these two. And you see the difference there. And then they went shopping. And they bought some chicken breast, skinless pork chop, rib eye steak. And then they bought some chicken thigh. And then my friend Adele Hyde plugged in some soybean oil. And then another friend plugged in the components that are within the box. The point here is that B for any other ruminant flesh is not a particularly rich source of either omega-6 or omega-3, regardless of how it's produced. If you're interested in getting more omega-3, eat fish. If you're interested in getting less omega-6, then by all means, please stop eating tofu or walnuts or soybean oil. And then you could start looking at some other products as well. OK? That may be a little different than some of our narratives, but that's the data. So I mentioned before that ruminant animals, there's very little sugar that remains to be absorbed from the intestinal system. And so these animals are entirely dependent on gluconeogenic pathways for the glucose that they need. Find that interesting. Ruminant's rule. I'm not sure how important it is, but apparently, ruminant muscle contains much less glycogen than does the flesh of other species. So the point would be that it would be inaccurate to call a ruminant a vegetarian. It would be, if anything, more correct to call them microbivores or microbians. They're raising these teeming hosts of animals, bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and they're harvesting them. They're harnessing them to produce byproducts, which they absorb, and then they eat the animals themselves. And in fact, ruminant animals increase the human edible food supply, regardless of what you've heard. At least half and perhaps as much as 100% of the diet of ruminants worldwide on a lifecycle basis is feedstuffs that humans can't utilize directly. And in fact, in California, we can produce more human food, energy, and protein of a higher quality per acre by growing alfalfa, feeding it to a dairy cow, than we can by growing wheat and eating it. Again, a little different than the narrative. I said before that the human diet is already plant-based. And if the researchers and clinicians that I respect are right, that's got to change. That itself has consequences. But you can see developing world, developed worldwide on average. And then if we look at protein in the developed world and in the world as a whole, our brothers and sisters are subsisting on a diet where the majority of their protein is already coming from plants. I can think of no logical reason why we should follow that model, but that's the rhetoric in the narrative. Malnourishment looks a little different today than it did a few decades ago. Today, we've got about 800,000 human beings, our brothers and sisters worldwide, that are suffering from chronic undernourishment, famine. We've got 2.2 billion that are overweight or obese. I would suggest that this is just another form of malnutrition. So we've got 3 billion brothers and sisters that are malnourished. What are we going to do about that? Oh, by the way, we've got 2 billion more coming. In the next 33 years, 2050, the UN is projecting a world population in excess of 9 billion people. UN is calling for 100% increase in food production, and FAO is predicting a 66% increase in the demand for animal protein by 2050. And they're saying that that has to come from virtually the same land area as today. The problem with that, of course, is we're losing farmland at a rapid rate for a number of reasons which we could talk about. On a global, sorry, where intakes of animal products are low, increases in meat in particular, milk and eggs in the diets of toddlers and school children have resulted in marked improvements in growth, cognitive development, and health. What we, as any kind of concerned and logical human beings, I think, ought to be about is what can we do to increase the flourishing of our brothers and sisters around the world? But in America, 40% of Americans aren't getting enough protein. And there's problems with these, but this is data from US dietary guidelines and NHANES data. And most females over the age of 8 aren't getting enough protein. Now, the two problems that I see with this right away are what is their target? We could argue about that. What is their intake target? It might well be too low. Number two is they're considering plant protein and animal protein to be equivalent, and they are not. So the number is undoubtedly worse. Again, nutritional value of animal protein is superior to that from plants. But that's really inconvenient if your narrative is we need to be on a plant-based diet, right? We have to find a way to ignore that. On a global basis, oh my goodness, animals produce about a pound or a kilogram of human food protein for every 1.4. This is all animal agriculture, and this is worldwide. But the exchange is that every pound of animal protein is worth 1.4 pounds of plant protein. So it's a wash at the end. The quote is, thus diverting grains from animal production to direct human consumption would, in the long run, result in little increase in total food protein and would decrease average dietary quality and diversity, and I would add, degrade the environment. So ruminants rule, remember that last slide was all animal agriculture. Ruminants are far more efficient. They actually increase the human-utilizable protein supply. You get more than a pound out for every pound you feed in. Again, the wonder of a ruminant animal. Today, the meat supply worldwide, about a quarter of the meat is coming from ruminants. I would suggest that's the component that we need to increase for a number of reasons. And it isn't that hard if you look at, we have less than 10% of the world's beef cattle in the United States, and we're producing about 20% of the beef. If we could leverage that technology appropriately around the world, we could produce more beef from fewer animals, which would lower environmental impact. Here's what we got to play with. The Earth's surface, 2 thirds of that is ocean. Only 4% of the Earth's total surface is cultivatable. That's where people are telling us we're going to grow our plant-based diet on. And that's the land we're losing rapidly. Meanwhile, we've got 14% of the world being range land, land that can produce grass, cellulose, that we can then run ruminant animals on to produce high-quality animal protein and animal fat. We've got an additional 10% that's forest, and we can run animals in forest. We can have silvo pastoral systems. And so we could increase the resource available for us to produce the food that we need. These are the crops that are currently being grown on that 4% of the Earth's surface, and already more than 3 quarters are going to human consumption and use. So where's the rest of this going to come from that we're supposed to get by not feeding it to animals? And in fact, if you look at just the cereal crops, already 2 thirds of that is going to humans directly. Again, our diet is already plant-based, and that needs to change. Greenhouse gas emissions, you'll hear all kinds of numbers thrown around. Here's one set that shows that agriculture worldwide is the third segment. But there's a couple of things that you could say about that. One is if the societies were more prosperous, you'd see industry get bigger, for example. Also, if we look at what's going on in the United States, you see a very different number, where the total from agriculture is 9%. All of animal agriculture was listed at 7%. This is per EPA. I've actually seen a little more recent data that says the beef industry is responsible for under 4%. Again, this is a little different than the propaganda that we hear. And we should remember that our cattle are not alchemists. They're not creating carbon or nitrogen. They're cycling it out of the food that they ingested. The food got it from the atmosphere and from the soil. It's a cycling of these nutrients. But this is an actual study. This is not model projections. This is an actual study where we're measuring the increase in soil carbon in crop ground that's been converted into dairy pasture, irrigated dairy pasture in Georgia. And what they're seeing is a third of a percent increase per year in soil carbon. That's organic matter. Every 1% more organic matter in soil means that you can hold an additional acre inch of water. That's 27,000 gallons per acre. OK, so there's about 22 million acres of degraded row crop ground. This is the ground that we abused with pre-modern agriculture. And now, what are we going to do with it? OK, 22 million. We take 10% of that. What kind of impact could we make? Thank you. So that would be this kind of a sequestering of carbon equivalent. Well, I got trouble with those numbers, so let me give you some equivalents. Three and a half billion car equivalents. Well, we've only got one billion worldwide. 38.4 billion barrels of oil. The US used 7.2. 4,300 coal-fired power plants. We've got less than 430 in the United States. What this is telling me is this is not an honest conversation about the contribution of livestock to anthropogenic global or greenhouse gas emissions. They're not considering where the input side, they're only considering the emission side. So I don't think we've been having an honest conversation. Now that's before we get even deeper into any of the weeds around that subject, which I'm happy to do. But I think that we would be better served to be focusing on the water cycle instead of the carbon cycle. Unfortunately, the carbon cycle is what's giving us a lot of funding these days. And so we chase the money and whatever. So here's just a very interesting test showing water stable soil structure. These are two same soil types. This one is under long-term grassland. This one is under continuous conventional corn production. And 25 minutes later, the one from the cornfield is broken down completely while the other one remains virtually intact. That means that soil will be more productive. That soil will accept more water and hold it without runoff. And here's a demonstration of runoff difference where you have four different surface types. And the pasture is having all of the water coming from this rainfall simulator into not off of. And so in the time it took to collect this gallon of sediment-laden water, there's none from the pasture. This means less erosion, less surface water pollution, less resource degradation. Nothing is better for soil health than long-term grass cover. OK. Sorry. Again, narratives. When you start to see things like this, whatever organic agriculture was at one point, let us at least accept that it is no longer that. And here, this idea, you can eat as healthy as you want, but if it's not organic, it's unhealthy. Well, we're dealing with faith system. There's no objective evidence to support that. Remember, it's a pay-to-play label claim, not proof of superior health, safety, nutrition, or environmental impact. Really, organic Gatorade? The risks that kill people and the risks that concern people are completely different. OK. If you're starving, you have one problem. And apparently, if we're well-fed, we've got many. OK. And notice the cigarettes themselves are not organic. It's just the tobacco that they use to make the cigarettes is organic. But we can go further. We can look at organic mac and cheese, made with cheese from grass-fed cows. Or we can look at organic Pop-Tarts. Or we can look at gummy bears. Or we can get really bizarre. I can't believe they're serious. If your reason for going organic is to lower your exposure to pesticides, please consider this quote, 99.99% by weight of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves. Only 52 natural pesticides have been tested in high-dose animal cancer tests. And about half 27, in fact, are rodent carcinogens. But because they're natural, we don't test them. So if you want to truly lower your burden of pesticide exposure in a meaningful way, feed these to a ruminant, eat the ruminant. So you can tell when idols are being worshiped, because human beings are being sacrificed. And I think we all need to take a look at some of these narratives that we're carrying along unexamined with us, OK? Again, I think what we ought to be about is maximizing human flourishing worldwide. I think that's truly a worthwhile effort. And we also need to ask ourselves, as Dechral said, how are we going to expand this beyond our little bubble? So if an honest man is wrong after demonstrating that he's wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest. I've just dropped a bunch of little facts on you. I share my sources. I'm open to the fact that as an agriculturalist, I'm coming with my perspective. And I hope I'm living by this myself, OK? So I want to have the conversation. But I also want us all to kind of take a look at what we're doing and what we're saying. And I'm happy to help. Again, I'm all about advocating for ruminant animal agriculture and I'm advocating for animal products in the human diet. This is how you can contact me. Just Google the name. You'll find me. I'm sorry for going long. Thank you for your patience. Thanks for sticking it out. Thank you, Peter. We have time for just a few questions. And we'll take them over here. What other ruminant animals besides cows are healthy for us to eat? And in Africa, for example, antelopes and stuff like that, how could we cultivate those animals or should we create a movement to eat more wild ruminant animals? Great question. And I'm sorry I neglected. So some other animals that we would recognize, sheep, goats, bison, but deer, moose, antelope, there's a whole long list, hundreds, some odd. And most of our domesticated animals have in fact ruminant animals as a percentage basis. On the other hand, there are people that are farming wildlife in Africa as well as in other parts of the world, in part for hunting, but also as a resource. So I think both are things that we ought to be doing. We need to be looking for animals that best fit the environment that we're trying to raise them in. And then there are reasons for going one over the other. Reminding me. Hello. I only recently learned that there's an entire science and study on how to properly feed cows and their macronutrients. And I was not aware of that. So I don't know if you're in that realm. The reason I learned about it, because there was an uproar that a huge shipment of skittles tipped over. And this shipment of skittles was meant to go as feed to cows so that they could get the proper amount of sugar in their diet. And I am wondering, you've demonstrated that cows can handle things we can't, and they can convert and such. But I was not aware that this was a common practice until recently. So any thoughts? Less than optimal. And whether that's a common practice, I would argue with. But it's absolutely true that, especially into the dairy cow realm, you have to have a sufficient amount of soluble carbohydrate, non-structural carbohydrate, sugar, and starch in the diet in order to feed the microorganisms so that they can then break down the fiber fast enough to get enough energy in to support the production. So, but, again, we might use something like vegetable processing waste, which is a byproduct of human food production, unusable by us, that can be fed to an animal. So potato peelings, citrus pulp, those kinds of things are frequently used.