Episode 31: Lee Wells | Our Food and the Truth

On today's episode of The Ranch and Table we explore the future of cattle ranching, food control, and protein sources, addressing the impact of regulations, the rise of plant-based diets, and the dominance of processed foods. Delve into alternatives like crickets, the challenges faced by local agriculture, and the necessity of supporting sustainable, local farming practices for health and industry control concerns.

Transcript

  Welcome to the ranch and table podcast,  where we discuss all things related to our Texas ranch and  our ranch to table restaurant located in downtown Rockwall.  I'm your host, Lee Wells.  Hello and welcome to another episode of the ranch and table. I'm Lee Wells, and I'm so glad you joined me today. I want to do something a little different than I normally do.

First of all, let me tell you, I've been pretty busy. We are filming documentary on the wildfires and the people involved in the wildfires out there. And so I'm flying in and out of town a lot. So if you've noticed, I haven't had a guest in a while, and that's why I have I've got plenty of folks that want to, Come on and be part of it, but I've not, it's on me, it's my fault.

Just been too busy to get it coordinated and to be here at a time where everyone else could join. We'll get back into that just real quick as soon as we can, but I didn't want to go a week without saying something and bringing you something of value. Now we'll say today's going to be a little different.

But let me thank my sponsor and we'll get right into it. Of course, Sterling T is our number one sponsor and they are. Just great folks, great products, great people to work with. Go out to sterlingtea. com and use wells 20 to get 20 percent off your whole order and encourage you to do that.

I didn't, even if you're not a big tea drinker, or maybe you just drink tea at home and you're using Lipton or one of those in the box, great value or whatever equate, I don't know, whatever. I don't do a lot of grocery shopping in my house, but. Go out and get some the black tea from them and try it at your house and see what you think about it.

It makes great sweet tea, great unsweet tea, just great tea. Wells 20 sterling tea.com.  Now, let me get into this deal. This is going to be one of the most Glenn Beck style podcast I've ever done. So get your tinfoil hat get your conspiracy glasses. I'm going to tell you something though.

I'm not going to tell you anything that I don't have proof of. And I think if you've listened to me long enough to be on this podcast and be part of what I do here I just deal in facts. I don't deal in a lot of gray areas. I'm just real straightforward and I'm that way in life.

And so anything I say today, Google it. Check it, make sure you check it. I'm going to read you an article right now from the USDA, and then we're going to get into some beef talk. We're going to get into a food chain, food supply. We're going to get into some things today that I feel like we need to know.

I feel like it's very important and the general public you may not know anything that I talk about today. You general public may not have a clue about any of the topics that I'm going to cover today, and you're eating it, it's your food, it's what you eat for lunch, it's what you're going to eat for dinner tonight it's part of your breakfast in the morning, and you don't know.

So I'm going to, I'm going to tell you some things that are going to probably not be real fun to listen to, but I need your help. America needs your help and we need to make a difference. We need to start making a difference right now. We need to, I'm going to ask you at the end of this to call your congressman and call your state reps and make sure and ask them to stop.

All some of these bills that are coming through, but I want to be educational and I want to be optimistic. I'm not a negative guy but I'm a realist. And so  the USDA released on Friday, the final traceability rule requirements for the animal identification. In the cattle sector. So that's I'm quoting you a, an article right now.

They released this this week. This is, I got this today, which is what prompted me to talk about this today. The USDA animal and plant health inspection services. The APHIS group is putting into place tools for better trace disease outbreaks. Thanks. To better trace disease outbreaks through information and technology in the use of electronic ID tags for certain groups of cattle.

So what they're saying is we're going to start tracing and tracking. Remember during COVID they threatened to do this to us because of our safety and to make us safe from other people who are not safe or not vaccinated or whatever. They threatened to use our phones to let us in to events and buildings and not remember that's not been that long ago.

I hope you don't ever forget that. They're doing that with cattle because it's easier to implement something. On cattle, non intelligent, non verbal beings than it is thinking intelligent human beings. Here's what it goes on to say. Rapid traceability in disease outbreak will not only limit how long farms are quarantined,  keep more animals from getting sick, And help ranchers and farmers get back selling their products more quickly.

So they're tying  this chip which is an ear tag and an RFID ear tag that's going to be required on animals. That you have to have that in order to ship and sell your animals.  It will also keep markets open.  Michael Watson, APHIS administrator said in a news release. I want you to understand that when. 

Animals are tracked, then  it is not a disease issue. It is always a control issue. And there's one thing that I've learned that our government loves, and that is control. And so for good or bad purposes, they love control. They love red tape. They love bureaucratic process. They love committees. They love. 

Talking about things more than doing things. That's not a criticism. If it is don't mean it as a criticism. It's just a fact it is what it is. And when we look at some of these things that I'm going to talk about today we have to, we need to get involved. We need to make it a priority.

We need to make it a priority as to not allowing these things to happen on our watch because I'll tell you why.  These rules are going to be implemented,  they say for our safety,  but it's really about the control.  And  when you start controlling.  Where animals go and where they can be sold and where they can be processed.

Now, it doesn't matter who owns the cattle. What matters is whether or not they're  a commodity, whether or not they're a usable, valuable commodity. And  it's almost like when we say, let's go to a digital currency, it'll keep everyone safe. A digital currency will keep everyone from stealing your ID and stealing your credit card and spending your money.

Banks are for that, the government's for that, and a lot of people could be for that. But if we go to a digital currency, where everything's online, and everything's controllable, then it's just a flip of a switch. It's just we don't, you're behind on your payments. So until you make that we're going to shut this card down.

And we already see things like that happening right now. The same is true for animals and it's a control issue. Let me tell you some of the fallout. Let me explain what they're going to do. They're going to make you ear tag, your cattle, sheep, goats swine, everything. They're going to make you ear tag it.

They're going to be able to inventory from space. They're going to be able to inventory with a drone. They'll be able to inventory with a helicopter.  I don't need permission to get on your property to inventory what you have. I don't necessarily care about that, but it's creepy. Then you have highway scanners that can.

Stations like toll tags are red when you drive underneath those lights on the freeway or on the toll road, and it knows that toll tag is there, or get your license. If you don't at 75, 85, a hundred miles an hour, it doesn't matter. They'll be able to track your cattle on the freeways.

And then also at auctions before. You're able to unload your animals to sell them. Then you have to check out that your ID tags are in order and that everything's fine. And then also, and maybe even most important. Is you won't be able to process your animals. If you don't have a certain criteria met or a certain type of whatever later, see whatever they want to put in there, they can put in there.

Once they make this the rule, then they can amend that rule, however they want. And I'll prove that to you. They already have visual ID tags required for interstate travel. So if I take cattle from Oklahoma, I buy them there and I drive them across state lines into Texas. They have to visually ID every animal and make sure they check out. 

There's already interstate line rules about transport. They got that in pretty easy because, some states aren't as strict as other States. Thanks, California. Thanks, New York. Thanks. Crazy folks appreciate that. Because you don't raise cattle the way I do, we have to check you out.

They already have that. Now they're going to amend it to say it has to be electronic. So it's easier on everyone scanning everything. You just drive through a scanning tunnel or. A piece of equipment and it tells how many head are in there, what they are, how old they are whether or not they've been vaccinated whether or not everything is where they want it to be. 

And then they'll approve you to pass on state line. They can amend that later to say you're either approved or not approved to sell this animal here, or you're either approved or not approved to process your animal in this facility.  And before you say that won't happen.  Let me tell you something  right now  I await Today as I record this my ranch manager Is waiting on our state inspector to come by and do his  Monthly  inspection  Our bullpen.

Now, some of you think that's a baseball term, it's not. A bullpen is a in, it's an enclosed field or pens. They have to be pipe.  It has to be steel welded pipe. No barbed wire, no electric fences, no woven wire fences. None of that's going to work. A high fence, a game fence won't work. Has to be pipe. 

So in order for me to house bulls on my property that do not have a trick test, which is an STD test that bulls carry and can spread to cows. Because trick is a thing because this disease is a thing, any bull that is bought or sold has to have an active.  Trick test. It has to be negative. You cannot have trick.

Okay, so  Why does all this matter?  Because they actually employ a boy  To drive out here once a month and look at my bulls and see what we've bought see what we've sold See what we've got in the pens and make sure and log it down now if I bought a bull from the sale  And I brought it here and it didn't have a trick test, which by the way, only people who have bull pens and have a bull facility can do that.

They can't sell a bull. With no test and just let someone take it home because it's too big of a risk, for the safety of everyone else, you can't do that because if you do that, and that bull gets out and it gets into some cows and it spreads that disease and man, it's a bad deal. And I'm not saying it's not a bad deal.

I'm just saying for the safety of others, we have to have these rules and that's where everything starts.  We didn't have these rules growing up. We didn't have, we've never had this kind of legal rules. We've never had this kind of This kind of situation in our country and now we do so For those who say you're just overreaching you think that tracking stuff is going to end up being More than it is.

No, I know exactly what it's for I know exactly what they're doing and i'm going to prove that to you in just a second by telling you that I already see it I already see it. In the rules that they have now, there's other rules. There's certain things you cannot do. They will not let you do it.

They're restricting what you can buy and sell. So if I send a bull to the auction and it's not tested, the only place it can go is a bullpen, a bull facility  that's approved and state inspected monthly. They had to come out and approve us first, approve our facility, make sure we had enough pipe fence and, tell us where we can keep them and all that, but then they have to be able to come check on that.

The only place you can sell a bull that hasn't had a trick test in the United States Texas for sure, is  a bullpen or a processor that's going to go kill that bull and it's never going to see a pasture. It's going to go straight onto a truck. And then it's going to go straight to a processing plant.

It's going to be put into  Hamburger meat or bologna or whatever and so those are the two options you have or you pay them 125 and they'll test your bull and you have to quarantine that bull for 14 days or until you get that test back and Then you're allowed to let it out. So they're already doing things like this.

You just don't know about it They already have their thumb on the rancher and you don't even know about it. So when they're putting this law into place that we have to be able to have RFID chips on every cow's ear, every bull's ear, they're making it mandatory within six months of this bill passing  that dairies do it now, what they give you six months according to the article for  the USDA says you got six months to get them ear tagged and registered. 

Anything that's going to move across state lines, anything that's on a dairy, anything that's in a show cow  exhibit type of a situation because they travel, all of those, which that totals 11 percent of all cattle will have to be ear tagged with an electronic ear tag and in the database that they can see from space. 

Now, 11 percent significant.  That's a lot of cattle, but that's also just a real good spot to start. That's just a real good place to begin, right? So we're going to start this up and we're going to start it here where it makes sense. It's logical Everyone get used to it like the visual id tags that have been going on for a couple years few years now for interstate movement of cattle, you know We're getting used to that and then we're going to give them this step and eventually we're going to put some rules in that say Autonomous ranchers can't be trusted to Have the right vaccinations Now I'm, am I reaching for this one?

I don't know. We'll see if I'm right or not. This is where, like the crazy tinfoil hat comes in. I've told you everything fact by now, this to this point,  this is all fact, but now let's reach a little bit. Let's reach out five years.  And let's say that somehow they pass a law that says only cattle that have  certain types of vaccinations  and a record of that by a veterinarian.

Who signs on your paperwork  and puts it into the national database can be bought and sold  or processed or transported.  I don't think I'm too far off. I don't think that's too far away.  And what that's going to do is that's going to take all of the autonomy  and basically make every farm, a government farm, because every farm is going to be beholden to the government.

To be able to buy and sell and process  their animals. And now let's get into it.  The MRNA vaccines that they  told us four years ago,  that we were being bad citizens, we were being evil people. We were being selfish.  We were destroying society. If we didn't get that.  Now, if you got the vaccine, you did. If you didn't, that's not my point.

My point's not pointing fingers at somebody who did or didn't get a vaccine. I don't really care what you did with your life. That's you.  So don't misrepresent what I'm saying. No, I'm not saying one way or another, but I'm saying, I don't want to eat that. I don't think we should have to be forced to give our animals  a vaccine that may or may not be proven out to be  a good thing. 

And  again, before you say that won't happen, they're already testing MRNA vaccines on cattle and swine in Australia and Europe as we speak. Before you argue with me, go figure out that I know what I'm talking about, and then we can argue. I see us going down a path  where we're losing control of our food. 

I spoke with governor Abbott.  Several weeks ago, I've, I mentioned that, that was a cool deal. I got in touch with his office. I had conversations with the governor's office about our efforts in the pan handle and then our, and then beef in general. And one of his main guys told me with his own mouth, there is a war on beef in the governor's office. 

He told me, the man that works in the governor's office told me, I agree, there's a war on beef. And it's not just natural disasters. They want us to eat plants, was his direct quote to me. They want us to eat plants.  And they do. How are they going to make us eat plants? I don't want to eat plants. You don't want to eat plants.

I'll show you how. First of all, you control the food source. You make it hard on anybody that doesn't agree with the way you want things done or mandate things done. You make it impossible for them to make it. You make it impossible for them to buy and sell. You make it impossible for them to process their beef. 

At a, you just shut down the processors that aren't complying because they're not in, they're not complying with state, local, federal laws, simple,  lock the door. What about guys who don't agree with that kind of vaccination? What about guys who don't agree with? feeding them GMO corn. What about people who don't agree that you want to feed them other animal by products to make them grow faster?

I don't want to do that. I don't want to feed my animals a daily ration of anti bacterial. Antibiotics. I don't want to do that. I don't like that type of a process. Tough man. And by the way, why don't you put all your cattle in a feedlot and put them on concrete and that way you can wash all their their dung and manure out into a certain place and handle that the way we want to, because there's too much greenhouse gas,  you see what I'm saying?

There's a line of thought here that if you continue it out, it's sinister.  It's a loss of freedom.  And I don't talk like this all the time. I don't talk like this all the time.  I think it's time we had this conversation. You remember when you were young and your mom and dad set you down and said, it's time for us to talk about. 

X, Y, or Z. You're like, mom, dad, why? I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to sit on this couch right here in the living room and have this conversation with you, about taking the car out or what time to be home or the birds and the bees or whatever it is when you had to sit down and had that conversation, but we have to sit down and have this conversation.

That's where we are in this world.  And if we don't do something, if we don't say something, if we don't educate each other, if we don't educate our law makers,  they're gonna hear a couple of real good points and a sales pitch. And they're going to sign, they're going to vote. They're going to say, yeah, cool.

I think we need to monitor interstate traffic of animals. I think we need to monitor what animal comes from what country. I thought those are good points. I'll sign that bill,  but then that bill gets amended and those rules get amended and they get changed once they're in place and ignorant lawmakers.

And I mean that as in they don't understand the issues. They just get told from their staffers what the top three points are on that bill. And if it's a, if it's a red or a blue bill, and that's kinda as stupid as our system is today, pardon me for being so blunt, but that's about how ignorant our laws get put into place.

I would bet that most of our lawmakers don't read all of that 300, 600 page document. One after another. They have staffers, they have, they use, I know they use AI to summarize that junk. I know they do. If I use AI to summarize my podcast and put a summary on my description,  what's stopping them from using AI, of summarizing a bill that's 300 pages long.

Let's just be honest.  There's an ignorance underlying these issues. They're not ranchers. They're there. They've never been outside the city. They've gone to school. They've worked their job. They got elected and now they're making decisions on things. They don't have a clue about.  And they don't even know to ask these things.

They don't even, it's not that they're being evil. It's just, they don't have any idea what's going on.  And so we have to be educational. We have to help them. And this is my business. And I think it affects all of us at the table. It affects all of us at the drive through it, it affects all of us in our bodies and and our choices.

And these things that are coming up this first of all, The digital ear tag is probably going to end up being a real bad deal. And if they're checking bulls the way that they do on a monthly basis, they won't let them be bought. They won't let them be sold. They'll only Oh, by the way, at that sale barn at the auction, there is another state inspector who is there the entire time  monitoring the bull sale. 

And I bought a few bulls last year, and  this is when we got certified. I bought some bulls. I was going to put some weight on them send them back through. And we do that. We buy cattle. We buy cattle  almost every month of the year. We're buying something and some we buy from ranches.

We grow ourselves. We send to the restaurant. Some we never send to the restaurant. They don't qualify. And so we buy.  Calves and grow them up, get them fat and sell them back. It's a cattle company. It's what we do. So I bought some bulls and they're like, Hey, you can't take those bulls home with you today.

I said,  why not?  They said, they're not trick tested. I said, okay. They said, you want to get them tested? The first batch of bulls, I said, yeah, get them tested. There was three bulls. I think it was 350 to get them tested.  All three of them. The second set of bulls, I think about four and they were low weight.

They just needed some doctrine. They needed some feed. They needed some love. And then I'm going to send them back in there and there'll be good packer bulls and they'll make more money.  Second batch. I said, nah, I don't want to test them. I'm just going to hold them, feed them up and send them back.

I'm not going to turn them out on cows. Don't want to test them.  And it wasn't 15 minutes. I got a phone call from the state inspector on site. Hey, Wells, you just bought these four bulls. I said, yes, sir. He said, you can't take them home today unless you're a certified bull facility  or unless you get tested before they leave.

And then you've got to quarantine them.  I said I've never heard of that. He said, it's the rules. It's law,  state law. You have to do that.  And so if they'll do that with bulls for an STD, that  may or may not be as bad as they say it is, I don't know.  It may or may not be as rampant. I don't know. That's not my point, but they're doing that and they've got that thumb right there  and here in a minute, I'll have a guy pull on here from the state.

He'll look around, he'll make notes,  he'll inspect us  and he'll be back in 30 days. So if they'll do that now for that, then when this other vaccination protocol comes out.  They're going to require that. Let me tell you another little thing this last year, they changed the rules that I can't go to a feed store or like the co op.

I can't go into a vet type store and buy vet supplies. I can't buy antibiotics anymore.  This is unheard of, right? I used to could go buy my own antibiotics and administer my antibiotics. It wasn't a prescription. Nowadays you can't buy 300. You can't buy any of the  basic  natural occurring. You can't even buy, I don't even think you can buy I can't remember the name of it going blank right now.

I don't have it in my notes, but you can't buy any of that anymore. It all has to be prescription. All has to be vet administered.  And growing up my whole life, you could go buy that yourself and administer it yourself because it wasn't prescription. They made all that prescription so that now. The vets involved, there's paper trail involved in all that.

You see where I'm going with all this? They want to know full control. What's where, when, and they're going to start denying people at the different places of commerce because of it. If they're saying they care, they say they care about where our beef is and where it comes from. I don't believe that though, because just last year they took off the requirement from labeling and packaging that  tells the country of origin. 

So if you care about my beef or my pork, or you care about my chicken, or you care about these proteins.  And care what I'm eating, then you should be up front with what country they came from, but they don't. And here's what I have learned. The majority of our prime beef in America, we never see on our plate. 

Most all the prime beef is exported to other countries.  When you get prime at a restaurant, first of all, it's a good chance. It's not quite prime.  It's like an adjusted grading of prime. And if it is prime, it is just barely over the line  prime. Just barely prime anything that's really prime.

They're selling to the highest bidder.  country. And so the majority of what we eat in this country,  I would say is probably imported beef. And you don't know that you can't know that because they don't have to disclose it to you. And what follows on the heels of that is. And they don't have to tell you if it's lab grown. 

So  you, you don't have to know those things. If I don't have to know those things, whenever I eat it, then all these other things are suspect.  You follow my logic here. If you really, if you don't care what country I'm eating my meat from.  Then how can you say I need all these regulations in place for my safety when you're going to turn around and ship most of that to another country anyway?

So it doesn't really add up. Two and two aren't equaling four here when you look at those things. And when you get on the discussions of the mRNA vaccines, that's a whole rabbit hole. I'm not going to go deep into today. But it's untested. It's it's untested in humans. We're testing it now in real life, real time but then it's also not tested in animals, and it's not it's not  highly proven yet.

And While that's not a requirement in the United States right now, it is coming down because they are doing testing in other countries and the chances of you eating pork, especially from another country that has MRNA is pretty high. So when you buy things at the store, you don't ever know, you won't know.

And they've made it very vague on purpose so that it doesn't stand out as some kind of a.  Sign on your,  a sticker on your package or  written in your label. And it's a very vague, it's very vague. So if it was really about caring about what we ate, then they would show all of the information that we need to know to make good decisions and not implement new rules.

While removing other really good existing rules. So I hope that makes sense. I hope you understand what I'm saying there. So it could be very possible in the future that you're eating MRNA digesting that from other countries because of the amount of protein that is imported. I'm going to move on to another little thought here and I'll wrap up. 

You need to buy local is what I'm saying You really need to buy I don't care where you buy it from. You don't have to buy it from me I can only supply so much  This is not a commercial. This is not a reason to buy Wells beef I promise you we're selling a lot of beef But you need to find out where your locally grown meat is and buy From people that you can shake their hand and you can look them in the eyes and you can talk to them about their program And you can find out how they're doing they're rearing of those animals so that when you eat them you're feeding your family good stuff.

I wanted, I'll say one more thing.  When people say they're not really into controlling us. You're just going overboard with this. Do you know who the number one governing most restricting body in the United States is  the number one  restricting governmental body in our nation,  restricting farming and agriculture. 

It's not the USDA.  It's not the EPA. It's not the FDA. You know who it is? It's the  HOAs.  Now I know I sound, I know who I sound like right here. But I'm telling you the truth. That most everyone in our nation  lives in an HOA.  And it's growing every day. All new neighborhoods are going HOA.  It's for their property values.

It's for, the regulation of making sure your trash cans are off the curb the day after trash pickup, making sure your lawn is not more than six inches high because we can't have that, but you also can't have chickens and you also can't have a garden and you also can almost not have a storage shed. 

And you certainly can't have anything in your front yard that resembles anything other than the house next door.  Now, call me jaded if you want, call me wrong but I'm not.  It's a fact the number one governing restricting body that is keeping farming and even on a local household level, it's HOAs. 

And they're saying things like, green, the greenwashing of America. Those guys are saying things like, ranchers and battle ranchers and cattle are endangering others. And, through greenhouse gas and, it's going to be bad for the planet. That's a whole other thing that I could disprove.

You know what? I will disprove it right now.  Can I tell you one simple fact that keeps us  from being able to prove  that  this is happening that the environment is failing us that global warming is true.  I might as well just tell you, because  I'm already neck deep in this and you're either loving this episode or turned it off already.

I don't know which,  but I could tell you the reason. That  the number one thing I could tell you to disprove the whole myth of global warming.  They said that oceans were going to rise,  that ocean levels would rise because of the melting of the ice caps.  I can prove that's never going to happen  because the number one entity in the world who looks at the future is the ocean. 

It has tables and charts and graphs and specialty specialist and. Doctors and in geniuses working on the future is insurance companies. Insurance companies are the number one, most forward looking people. They've got a table for every single scenario that's going to happen in the next 20, 30, 50 years, a hundred years. 

They know.  And they're still writing insurance policies on every beach home in the world  So until you can tell me that the insurance companies are starting to nullify Their insurance policies on these beachfront homes that will be washed out  In an apocalyptic way when the oceans rise, then, maybe we could talk about something, but until they quit writing those policies and looking forward 30 years and 50 years and 100 years, we don't really have anything to talk about.

So  I will also say that ranchers are the number one steward of the land. You're not going to find anyone that cares for this land more than ranchers. We care about the way we fertilize. We care about the way we load the grazing amounts. We really do pay attention to water supplies and erosion.

And we are watching everything closer than anybody. I promise you, we watch this planet closer than anybody living in town. You got a guy mowing your yard, you pay him 50 bucks a week and he fertilizes whenever he says he's going to, and you hit the program on your water sprinkler and you don't know anything about what's going on in that grass and that turf and you don't care because it looks good and you are, rather be watching TV or going playing golf or sitting home and eating dinner with your family.

So that's fine. But what I worry about every day is I look at the weather every day. I look at the grass growth every day. I look at my grazing load on pastures every day. We look at it every day. We are always watching upon levels. We're always watching all of this every day. It's what we do. I know what kind of fertilizers to use because of what best treats our soil and grows organic material and matter and microbes in our soil.

I know that better than you do because that's what I do for a living. So to say that ranchers are endangering the environment is completely stupid. It's just completely off base. We care more about the environment than anybody. I promise you, we care more about it than Washington DC in the representation there.

I promise you we care more. I care more about our environment than AOC. I promise you that.  So let me throw this at you, Tyson.  I'll call their name. I'm going to just, I'm going to just say the facts. I'm not slandering anybody. I'm just going to tell you the facts.  Tyson.  They used to be  a chicken company and they still are.

But they've shifted their goals around and They are doing things differently these days. They're changing with the times and it may be because of the parent companies and who owns them and all of that stuff. I have no idea. I'm just going to say some facts. Okay. Tyson used to be all about chicken.

Nowadays  they are  more about packaged box meals.  They are more about the the microwave meal, the oven meal, the pre packaged meal,  and  over twice the tonnage of daily or weekly production at Tyson incorporated is processed foods boxes.  They do more processed food in boxes than all the chicken, beef and pork combined. 

And it's almost.  Twice the amount of all of that combined they do in box foods. So they have shifted their production from just doing chicken to doing processed food. And so why does that matter? If you're in the processed food business and chicken is expensive and beef is outrageously expensive and you need to fill your box with some kind of protein.

So you can slap a sticker on the outside and your label says 15 grams of protein.  Hey, mom's like that.  Hey that's healthy. Low carb, high protein no added sugar, man. Those buzzwords are like, yeah, I'm eating healthy. I don't know about that. Because Tyson introduced a cheetah powder, which is cricket powder in their processed foods.

That powder, if you go out and you Google or go to Amazon, it's a C H a, a C H E T a, a C H E T a. Yeah, it's how you spell it. You go Google it. You can go buy about a  bag of cricket powder right now. Cricket protein powder right now. You can buy it, you can have it in,  they'll deliver it tomorrow.

The next day.  So I'm not making any of this up.  It's already in baking powders. It's already in our baking flours. It's already in chips. It's already in protein bars. It's already in our food system, crickets. Crickets are a lot cheaper than cows. I promise you, you can grow a big bunch of crickets.

And within just a week, you've got something there to pressure cook and dehydrate and grind up. And it takes 18 months to 24 months to get. Maybe 30 months to get up a good cow, ready to go  a good steer, fattened up and ready to process. I found out last week I was talking to a guy and he said, Bill Gates has been working on a pork infused soybean  that tastes like bacon.

Once they get that perfected, then it's a whole lot cheaper to do a three month crop.  In the ground that it is a three year animal that you have to take care of  and so the question is if you're going to put something in that box and slap a protein sticker And a nutrition label and you're going to call crickets a cheetah and you're going to do all these kinds of things Then why would you care?

If someone's going to buy it and eat it brings your cost down it helps you. Make money You  And if people don't know and they, you make it taste edible somehow, then, hey, it sounds like a good business plan, but it has to be in a, at the expense  of your beef production. It has to be at the expense of your chicken production.

It has to, we have to get that out of the way so that it becomes the option, the only option that we have to eat. That's some things to think about. I know I've dumped a lot on you today that you might not have been expecting whenever you clicked on this episode, because this is such a a departure from my normal.

I try to be encouraging. I try to be educational. I try to be. I try to help in, and I'm trying to help today. It's just in a different way, but I want to ask you to do something for me. I want to for you to get in touch with me. I'm going to start putting some information out on this.

I'm going to put some information In the next week or so out about what we need to be watching for on these bills and what we need to be asking our congressman for. I think that number one we ask our congressman to, to stop the tracing and traceability rules and requirements for animal identification.

I think number one, And in animals and cattle with the USDA, we asked them to stop the traceability rules requirements going to electronic, because that's going to lead us down a road that's going to be way too controlling and way too powerful against individual producers. And then I think that we buy our protein locally.

It's going to cost you more money. It costs more money to buy local beef. I'll tell you why because we're not subsidized like the big packers  Those big packers are subsidized with government funds so that they can drop their price down they buy Animals at the sale barn more expensive than I would ever buy them for any reason to turn around and rebuild resell I would I can't afford what they're buying them for But I also don't have the government backing me.

And so they can also sell kind of price fixed beef and protein at the store because the government's infusing them with subsidies. And I don't have any government help. Actually the government's against me about five times taxed about five times before I put anything in my pocket. It's almost impossible to, to ranch anymore.

It's almost impossible to make any money. In this business, it's just, the margins are so thin. So it's going to cost you more money to eat right. And to eat local grown and local beef and protein. But I'm going to ask you to think about that. It's a very, it's very important to your health that you do that.

You don't know what you're eating otherwise. And think on those couple of things. I've talked a lot about some things here today, but I hope it's helped open your eyes. I hope that you have come around to some thinking, and if you have questions for me, hit me up on On any, you can get ahold of me any way you want.

If you go to leewellsofficial. com, you can, there's a group there's a message form there at the bottom. That was the word I was looking for. There's a form there. You can ask anything you want. I'll email you right back. If you have questions about what I'm talking about or what to do.

We're going to have to do some things. We can't just sit idly by and everything work out there. There's a war going on against our individual producers against our ranchers, against our chicken farmers, against our dairies. There's just weird things that are happening. Dairies, huge dairies blowing up, huge chicken houses catching on fire.

Tens of thousands of animals, cattle dying off and for no real reason. Then killing birds for avian flu that. How they even get that I don't even know and just all these rules lead up to control and then it's  It's thinning down our numbers to the place where they're gonna have to do something else and then Someone like Bill Gates will step up and be the Savior, someone  Will be able to say hey, I got cricket powder.

Let's use that let's do these other things and let's make soybeans. It tastes like bacon And we don't have to have pigs anymore. And so these are not far reaching and they're, I don't believe they're far away. Please don't call me Alex Jones please don't don't throw me in that category because I'm not screaming and yelling and spitting, I'm just trying to have a conversation about some of the things that I've been dealing with and researching and thinking about.

So thank you to our wonderful sponsors Sterling tea. They are amazing people, amazing tea just rock stars in the tea business. And you can do Wells 20 for 20 percent off on checkout. And then of course, I always want to mention our friends at It's Fake Creamery. They are an amazing people as well.

The best ice cream you'll ever eat, all natural, completely clean ice cream. Just the way you're 20 percent off. Your order, if you mentioned the ranch and table when you're there. So I appreciate your time. I appreciate you doing this with me today and being part of this conversation is I hope you've, I hope you've enjoyed it.

I hope it's something that has maybe enlightened you just a little bit. I don't know. I hope shoot me any questions you have. This is Lee Wells on the ranch and table podcast until next time.  We say adios, farewell, goodbye, luck, so long.