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.