Welcome to another episode of the Nonprofits. You know. It seems like the
governor down in Florida, mister DeSantis has always got some problem or another,
and apparently he has another one that Jimmy Junior is going to tell us all
about. Yes, that is right, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a beef
with the cultivated meat industry, one that is misdirected and disingenuous as he attempts
to appeal to his far right base by creating this boogeyman out of a nearly
non existent and fledgling industry. DeSantis insists that the global elite have a world
domination plan to force feed lab grown beef to people in order to achieve their
goals, while he also chides liberals for their environmental concerns. This disjointed and
completely unnecessary argument ignores the actual causes for the decline in beef production, such
as drought, production costs, and of course, the long term impacts of
COVID. Is DeSantis really ignoring facts and instead creating a conspiracy theory as a
catalyst for his politics. You don't say. This story is from USA Today
by Anna Gonyi Lesson Dan Roarba and Mike Snyder on May fifth, twenty twenty
four. Now, Cynthia, do you think DeSantis' motivations, what do you
think is motivations are in doing this? Well, I don't necessarily think that
he is very much so concerned about Floridians or protecting the beef industry. I
think that he's more so just trying to basically utilize this as a narrative that
he wants to push. You know, the thing about it is, like
Jimmy Appley pointed out, is that, you know, the meat industry in
himself is a fledging industry for various reasons, right COVID. There's also other
concerns about you know, methane. As far as I beat this concerned,
there's also like issues like with you know, environmental protection and also protection of
the animals themselves. So, you know, introducing this as an alternative to
people who are using it and want to actually indulge in it or what have
you is something that he's one to use is basically another way for him to
virtual signal for his marriage. And unfortunately, this is what desantists does.
He always picks apart some type of issue blows it up. That's non secuitor
and makes it, you know, part of his particular ideology to push on
other people in order to say like, look at me, Mike is right,
and I'm going to push this on here. And here's another thing that
you should be concerned about that you really should be concerned about. I mean,
when you're talking about anything that's growing in the lab, there's always going
to be concerns, right, There's always going to be concerns about, you
know, the methodologies that are being used, if the product itself is going
to be safe for human consumption, et cetera, et cetera. But we
have a lot of different agencies, including the FDA, that are supposed to
evaluate those particular things, not Ron Desanti. That's time I checked. I
know that he's Harvard and Yale educated, but he was law, and he
was educated in law, not in science. And he needs to go ahead
and lead us alone to the people who are actually educated in this manner because
it's mad. Jimmy. In your introduction you mentioned a conspiracy like the Santa's
Building a conspiracy theory. Can you elaborate on that for me? Well?
Sure, you know, I think he's straw manning the arguments against this cultivated
meat and really kind of creating this false narrative. You know, that is
attractive to people because it's easy to understand, and it makes a boogeyman.
It points the finger and blames somebody that stand and start contrast to their ideologies.
And he's doing that to the working class people of Florida, the people
who make up a large percentage of the beef industry, not just in that
state, but in the country. And you know, it's kind of easy
to just present other people as the problem, especially if they're threatening your own
livelihood. It's a lot harder to educate people on, you know, the
pros and cons of meat, cultivation of meat substitutes, or the science that
is supported by or excuse me, the climate change issues that are supported by
science, and why it's important to maybe alter our behaviors in order to improve
that situation. So, yeah, creating the conspiracy theory. I give him
credit for it because I've never heard it before, but you know, it's
all the same. He's taking it and he's using it as a talking point
rather than doing what doing the real work, rather than getting smart on the
issue and coming up with a real solution. Yeah, Eli, human feeding
habits of change over time? Is that true? Yeah? So I looked
at that this is a really really innovative way for us to harvest food.
And if you look back through the human timeline the hominid timeline to be more,
one of the stronger hypotheses is that what allowed earliest humans to develop the
larger brains that then led to more learning and more tools and more developments is
the use of fire to cook meat, and then the way that the energy
that we needed to use to digest that meat we no longer needed, so
that energy could go to building a bigger brain or using that brand to do
things. And then we started to innovate, and then we started agriculture,
and then we started that's when we got society and civilization. So when you
look back innovations and harvesting food and basically gathering energy from the world right the
energy that we need in our lives, those events, I almost want to
say precipitate massive changes and massive advances and human ability. Is that to say
that lab grown meat, you know, from stem cells, is going to
change the world. Probably not, But I think if there is a person
that would oppose the utilization of an invention that would change the world. It's
the meatball, the lab grown meatball himself, Ronda Santis. So you just
see this as just another step in human food evolution basically, it absolutely I
mean, this is insane. You know five well, okay, five years
ago, ten years ago, we could have seen this coming, right,
But like I think when I was born thirty years ago, thirty two years
ago, I don't think this would have been thought of. Nobody would have
seen this coming. And now these industries, as we've said, are still
working toward that goal. But we're going to be able to produce food way
more efficiently than we already can. That can only be good. Yeah,
Cynthia, you mentioned to me before the show that you thought this debate over
lab grown meat was more about ideology and identity. Can you expand on that
for us? Yeah? I think that, you know, Rhonda Santis specifically
took this particular issue and he is virtually signaling so that he can appeal to
his political bait. You know, he's in Florida, and in most areas
like Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, you have a large areas of
agricul right, and so he is looking at basically, oh, well,
you know, farmers are going to be my political bait. Right. So
since he's looking at farmers being his political base, I'm going to go ahead
and choose this particular issue of labgiral meat to say this is bad because it's
going to target you and put you out of business because instead of you cultivating
animals and plant and plant life from your farms, they're going to be going
to science instead. And what he's missing is that we have over seven billion
people in this world and one of the largest issues around the world is hunger.
I mean, we can point to several countries right now in twenty twenty
four that are facing fam and having multiple food sources in order to feed people
I think is a good thing, right. And the more that we have
more people being born into the world, the more that you're going to have
to be able to feed them. And even one of the things that the
articles pointed out is that even people who are considered vegan, even though that
they're using animal cell so it's not necessarily labor, is not considered vegan per
se, they're still open to try it. Right, So I think that
you know, being able to actually put resources into this research is a good
thing. But again, it just always seems like that Ron the meathead.
I mean, I'm sorry. Ron DeSantis is always quintine or to some type
of issues in order to make sure that his base feels good, but it
doesn't always pan out to be a good thing itself. Yeah, I agree,
I agree. I think he's taken a lot of stances on a lot
of different things that are really kind of holding us back in a lot of
ways. I don't want to say too much against him or in favor of
him, but I do kind of question some of his ideas. Now,
Jimmy, do you have you talked about a little bit, what are your
viable concerns about the CO two build up? Well, I mean, an
excess of carbon dioxide we know is not good. I'm no expert on that
kind of thing, but I do defer to the experts, and you know,
many of them agree that while we need CO two, we don't need
an excess amount of it. It's a greenhouse gas that is bad. You
know, the agriculture industry makes up thirty five percent of greenhouse gases, and
seventeen percent of that that's worldwide. Seventeen percent of that comes from the raising
of livestock and using a fertilizers to create certain plants that these livestock eat.
You know, if there were a way to reduce that, I don't see
how that could be a bad thing. I mean, he Ron DeSantis is
claiming that they need to invest in local farmers and ranchers and save our beef.
Save your beef from what I mean, your beef is not a jeopardy.
In fact, the industry is in decline since COVID, and the reason
why it's not restoring is that we are suffering massive droughts in certain parts of
the country, certainly around the world. And you know, the beef production,
the beef industry has not not been restored. It might be improving,
but it has not been restored. And it's not because there's some kind of
alternative meat out there. It's because climate change is affecting the way the predictable
weather patterns that these farmers rely on to be able to maintain their livelihood and
to raise their stock. You know, fixing that would actually be a better
investment for farmers and ranchers. But you know, I think anybody that has
any concern for the planet and for our ecosystem should be concerned about the levels
of greenhouse gases and should want to find ways to reduce them. I mean,
I'm probably driving my last non hybrid car. I mean, I drive
a gas a gas vehicle that's probably gonna be the last one I ever drive.
I'll be moving on. I you know, I would move on for
other ways to make this planet a better place. And so for Ron DeSantis
to claim something that is just false just goes to show that he is trying
to panther to a base that just doesn't get it, and he doesn't want
them to get it because that would be bad for him. Yeah, I
agree, Eli, do you think you know? I don't want to say
that, I don't want to question his motives, But do you think there's
a rational reason for DeSantis to make this move? I mean, if all
you're thinking of it is from his perspective of, oh, what are the
farmers going to do? They're gonna lose so much money, then sure,
But I think not, Like, I really don't think there is. Just
like Jimmy was saying earlier, like this whole conspiracy to make people eat meat
grown in a Petri dish. Bugs is something I've never heard of before.
And he's talking about fighting back against the global elite. Ron de Santis is
the global elat He thinks that if he keeps like pushing this US versus Them
narrative, then enough of his constituents are going to buy it. And he's
right. So many of them have forgotten that he is them that they are
need to be dealing with. And I was actually thinking while you were making
your points, Jimmy, is that I have a solution, Like I thought
of a solution while reading this. The land that farmers no longer need to
use for their livestock, they can rent out to these facilities that are using
their are that are growing this meat. And from the article you know this
or no, sorry, the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment predicts that within
but that over time will the lab grown meat will reduce carbon footprint by ninety
two percent, reduce land use by ninety percent, which means farmers can get
more benefit. We can get more meat per unit of land than we already
are, and reduce water use by sixty six percent. There's so many good
reasons to not oppose this, and it doesn't have to affect the farmers that
way, because now they have that land that they can use to they can
still use that, they can still benefit from that land. They're not losing
and some farmers can even still raise animal, you know, animals because they
still needed to lab grow the beef. They still need the stem cells from
the animals, So there's it's not going to wipe out all farm jobs.
I think maybe we just need to make the transition from being a rancher to
a farmer right, and I think that that's probably the big move there.
Cynthia, I, you mentioned some concerns that you had about lab grown meat
just in passing earlier. Do you have Can you tell us more about that
and what your concerns are. Well, not necessarily me per se having concerns
about lab grown meat, but you know, there are like some concern from
people who are actually looking at this. That's saying that there's some uncertainty about
the long term implications. And also, you know, even though it's actually
talting to be environmentally friendly and also ethically alternative to traditional meat production, the
issue is that you know, it's being sourced from you know, animal self,
and and it's also and also like when it comes to like some of
the conclusions on what type of implications that has, we still don't have all
the data to actually port it. So it's still very much so a science
that's being developed right now. But what science is not right? So,
you know, I think that when we're talking about any of these particular issues
that have to deal with you know, you know, scientific type of methods
in order for them to produce certain products, there's always going to be in
uncertainty when you may not necessarily have all the information at hand, but you
know, those things happen to develop over time. The only way that you're
actually going to be able to get that information is if you devote resources in
order to develop the technology to do it. You know, he Desantists himself
wants to stop that completely because he says, this is not viable, it's
uncertain, it's going to put people out of it's going to put farmers out
of business, et cetera, et cetera. We want we don't want it,
right, But again it's a it's against and it's against and also balking
against technology, balking against anything that you don't necessarily know a lot about.
So it's at this biguer point in time, like we can address uncertainty with
information, and the only way that you can actually get information is let the
scientists do their jobs. Thank you for saying that. As a scientist,
Thank you for freaking saying that. I appreciate that. Jimmy, we no
problem. Jimmy, we came into that. You brought us into this segment.
I want to hear some more from you on and give us some more
thoughts. Yeah, well, Ron DeSantis can't actually appear on the side of
science and research, can he. I mean, that would be akin to
switching parties. You know, there are other benefits that come from the stem
cell rese search that transcend the meat industry, transcend the beef for the cultivated
meat industry, and go into the medical field, perhaps, uh, you
know, helping people in a you know, a variety of capacities. But
that is a long standing opposition that that members on the Christian right, uh
or or conservative right typically have, you know, they they take a position
where people shouldn't play God, people shouldn't you know, experiment with animals.
I guess I don't know, probably not, probably not so much the latter.
But but but the former. You know, for DeSantis to appear as
supporting research, supporting science, he would almost be you know, supporting education,
which is something that many of his constituents quite frankly, just don't have.
And I don't mean that to be, you know, to be so
harsh or or I'm not trying to be facetious, but you know, let's
face it. You know, there is a certain demographic, uh that that
fall into the around the Santis category, and you know, America the world
needs those kind of people. But we also need to be honest with ourselves
and talk about the benefits to science, to research, and to maybe alternating
the way or altering the way that we operate in some of these industries that
are actually causing harm to our planet. But you know, there is another
very very popular conservative who once said, boy do we love the uneducated?
And it appears that DeSantis may also, Yeah, I agree with that,
that you'd have to be uneducated to really follow for this, in my opinion,
what do you think about that? Eli, Do you think that this
is appealing to the uneducated? Oh? Yeah, I mean yeah, absolutely,
anytime anytime you have a candidate or not a candidate necessarily, but a
person who is just outright publicly like saying like the science is lying, the
science is wrong, and that's Jimmy made a great point that they're always talking
about, you know, we're playing God, and I think that thought is
dangerous toward advancement because if you start to put limits on what you're allowed to
do, then you stop doing certain things like you can. I've been telling
people like there's no rules to life, like just leave other people alone and
then basically do whatever you want. So once we start putting limits on that,
we limit our advancement. I can't really have that was well thought out.
I appreciate that, and I really appreciate Cynthia's shout out to leaving it
to the scientists, because I think it's really important that a lot of scientists
are really trying to build a better future. And when you start creating this
anti science movement that we're seeing in our country to the USA today, it's
really affecting the possibility of making a better future. And I think that's probably
the worst thing I see happening with this in my eyes anyway, that we're
actually stopping advancement. So I really appreciate the panel today. I think we
had a great talk about this, and I think if you'd like to,
our viewers would like to have to talk about a little bit more. You
can leave a comment below or drop an email to nonprofits at Atheist Typhoncommunity dot org.