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Welcome back to Point of Origin.
On today's episode, we're talking about the morality of meat, what it means to consume it, to abstain from it, and as always, how matters of morality are murky and impossible to detangle from culture, society, and privilege.
Today's episode is a banger.
We begin with writer Alicia Kennedy, one of the clearest and most compelling voices in food media today on, among other things, veganism, but more broadly, the politics of eating.
We then travel to India where Dr. Yamini Narayanan discusses the politicization of beef in India and in particular, what happens when cow protection laws and dietary regulations are codified as a means of marginalizing lower caste and Muslims. And finally, we go to the Dominican Republic with Izanet Batista, activist and owner of Woke Foods, who discusses her ongoing activism through plant based recipes as a means of healing and restoration.
The politics of meat and diet, diet and identity today on Point of Origin, it's the morality of meat.
I've officially not eaten meat since 2011.
That is Alicia Kennedy.
And it was something I had always been interested in, something I'd always been attracted to as an idea.
Alicia is a writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, whose writing explores not only the politics of food, but also the interconnected elements of culture, climate, and access.
There was something about it that always made sense to me.
But lifestyle wise, it was too difficult when I was a younger person who wasn't in control of what she ate, wasn't in control of, you know, all her money to make that decision for myself.
And also, there was the fact that for a long time, vegan and vegetarian food had a terrible reputation and it earned that reputation.
The food was a bit bland.
It was a white gaze turned toward global cuisine and done improperly without the correct, you know, either cooking methods or without the correct spices and what have you.
And that wasn't something I was interested in because I've always been a person who first and foremost, even while I believe food is, you know, utterly entrenched in all the systems of that both oppress and exalt us as human beings, it is also, you know, first and foremost, something that we have to enjoy every day of our lives.
And Alicia, how did you feel about the prevailing mainstream notions around veganism at that time?
I mean, I hated them, but at the same time, I understood them because I understood that they were rooted in the same things that kept me from not embracing veganism until I was able to ensure that it wouldn't taste bad.
you know like so um and i i still understand even you know anthony bourdain's kind of grandma rule which is you know if someone invites you to dinner you eat what they serve you yeah david chang it's funny that's a funny aspect of it because he was so anti -vegetarian that he was like i'm never serving anything vegetarian at momofuku etc etc and then he became the first spokesperson basically for impossible burgers and was like oh finally the veggie burger is is delicious and it's like well you never really tried to make it delicious otherwise and also probably haven't had that many veggie burgers
and then one comes along that's taken you know millions of dollars to develop and bleeds slightly and you know looks exactly like meat and finally you know it's accepted into the the pantheon of the fine dining restaurants and so you know it's It's all just very predictable.
The emphasis on it needing to bleed.
It's something that really stuck with me after the conversation, because obviously in the U .S., not only eating, but cooking meat is seen as a gendered act.
So it's funny, but also not surprising that in order for a plant based meat to be considered acceptable, it needed not only to bleed, but also.
a masculine champion a lot of mainstream media is super interested in the new fake meat um what i usually call tech burgers or tech meat um it's fascinated by them and by lab -made meat and and that sort of thing and for me the whole thing is like why aren't you as fascinated by tofu and tempeh which are ancient proteins that are delicious and also you know don't centralize production, don't come from necessarily corporate producers and that sort of thing.
But in terms of meat, I mean, it's funny because we've had so many conversations culturally and within food media about how unsustainable our consumption of meat is, especially in the United States, especially around beef, even though poultry, I think, at this point um out outruns beef in terms of consumption but which is insane because people consume i think 220 pounds a year in the united states of between beef and poultry and the the conversation yeah it's people eat so much meat and so even though it seems like we're having all these conversations around sustainability and you know cattle
production at this scale in factory farming and so i've seen the conversation move lately toward sustainable grass -fed you know regenerative regenerative agriculture in beef and you know i understand that you know i've talked to a lot of experts in this butchers or or even farmers themselves and it makes sense you know like we have a ton of grass on the planet and we can't eat the grass and make it into anything but but cows can.
And then, so it, it makes sense that they're part of our, you know, human landscape, part of our human relationship to the, to the planet.
But at the same time, when you've trained a population to consume meat at such a rate and in such volume, and then ask them to change, it would require so much change to people's diets.
And we are not capable of changing the agriculture of cattle on such a large scale to provide this volume of meat to everybody, to make it be more sustainable.
You can tell people until you're blue in the face that they have to consume less meat.
But how do you really change people's diets?
How do you convince them that they need to spend more?
If they're going to eat meat, they need to spend more money.
They need to have a relationship with their butcher.
These are things that were systemically destroyed by the cattle industry, by the meat packers in the United States.
It was a plot to centralize meat production and to get people away from their local butchers.
And that was successful.
And so, you know, that's what America is built on.
So that's the foundation of the food system.
them. Alicia raises an excellent point here.
Not only do we consume enormously high volumes of meat, but as we discussed in episode 27, Beyond the Wheat, in the period of less than a century, we've become so disconnected from the tiers of our food system that we have no sense of what's required to bring the food onto our plates.
We don't understand concepts like seasonality, regionality, monocropping, and certainly not migrant labor.
We can't really appreciate the specialized knowledge of what it takes to harvest an unfathomably high volume of produce and what it takes to process it, to store it, to transport it, to wholesale it, to retail it.
We are a long way away from the days of local millers and bakers, from local butchers and processors, processors, and even further away still from the image of meat itself.
And it's important to note that the creation of this void has been intentional, and the same forces that created it i .e. multinational food corporations have also filled it with themselves, with their own enterprises.
We happily purchase slices of meat or ground beef, but in the Western world, when we see an animal head or carcass, it feels challenging or gross even.
All right, so let's talk about tech burgers, as you call them, a apt and hilarious name.
I've been calling them tech burgers because they've mostly been burgers, but now I've noticed that the ground meat, yeah, the ground meat from Impossible possible and beyond meat is being used now as just simply an ingredient in in even new york times cooking recipes which is fascinating um i don't think anyone would ever recommend a specific kind of cow meat um in a in a new york times recipe it would just be ground beef but now there's trademarked products um in the in the recipes which for me that's that's the the big problem with it is that it it's corporate it's centralized it's extractive in in terms
of ecology even though it's it's maybe less impactful than than beef production in on the factory farm scale it's still about encouraging monocultures um impossible beef burgers uh which are sold at burger king and many other places um use genetically modified soy which is also also heavily subsidized by the government, same as beef production.
And, you know, they just kind of create a lot of the same problems again, because we're still once again focusing on single ingredients created by a single source.
And that doesn't bring us any closer to really changing how we relate to food.
You know, like there's veggie burgers that people make at a a vegetarian restaurant that'll get super made fun of but you know they you know they combine like a whole host of grains and legumes and vegetables and flavors in order to produce something that yes is more like a vegetable croquette than a burger but it's also you know it's it's bespoke it's something that like that person that chef has developed it's an act of creativity which is what we are supposed to, I thought, expect from recipe writers and from and from chefs and cooks.
I really think it's a good point.
We don't actually just talk about the fact that it's kind of weak, that chefs haven't been more enthusiastic about creating something that doesn't even necessarily need to approximate it.
I mean, even a really delicious singular iteration of a vegetable croquette that made me think harder about what my ideas of a burger were would be appreciated.
So good point there.
I mean, people who've been in food, you know, full stop, like, you know, how how most of the sausage is made, so to speak, in the United States, you know, that, you know, if you're going to a big supermarket, you're getting a commodity product.
And you know that that worker may have repetitive motion injuries from the kind of work that they're doing, from the kind of pace that they're expected to take.
You probably know that they're in cramped quarters.
You probably know that many of these people are undocumented and are subject to harassment and arrest and deportation by ICE.
You know these things if you're a person who pays attention to how the food gets to the plate.
So to watch people still ignore this in food media when you have a huge willing audience of people who are going to the grocery store who are cooking, and you don't let it change anything about how you talk about food.
You don't mention that meat processing centers have been hotspots of the spread of the virus, that people have died, that children have died of COVID -19 from being exposed from their parents working at meat processing plants.
And it doesn't bother these people that it's President Trump who has decided that meat processing of all things is extremely essential, whereas production of PPE for the healthcare industry hasn't been essential, that testing and contact tracing hasn't been essential, that these things are actually seen as some sort of detriment to his reign of power.
But meat processing is essential to it, even though it's putting people's lives in danger.
Like that should tell everyone everything they need to know about what meat means in the United States.
You know, it means authority.
It means, you know, unpaid, poorly treated immigrant labor.
It means animal cruelty.
I think this situation has, in so many ways, laid bare so many problems in the United States.
And so to watch food editors at the biggest outlets in the country completely ignore this in favor of telling people that they should comfort themselves with cheeseburgers at this time or with a chicken and pork pate.
latte, while most, knowing that most people are going to go to the supermarket and get the commodity meat, they're not going to go to the butcher, they're not going to, you know, they're not having a close relationship with their farmer and making sure that everything is above board. You know, that's so irresponsible, that's so negligent.
And like, I mean, to me that, you know, these editors and these writers have a hand in these people going to work under unsafe safe conditions because they continue to encourage people to consume something that is leading to sickness and death.
And that's just inexcusable to me.
Yeah. Wow. Wow. And the inability of editors to bring that kind of analysis into the way that they do their jobs has resulted in a kind of complicitness that I don't really think that they're ready to hear or absorb yet, but that is very deep.
And I hope that we can get to a point in the discourse in the same way that we have around the reconciliation of, you know, sexual predation or racial discrimination about the harm that is being perpetuated, you know, in media.
So, Alicia, we are in what some people are calling a moment of reckoning, and one of the things that many people are reconciling is their relationship to meat.
But mind you, and you know this well, that people eat meat for a variety of reasons, but not the least of which is their socioeconomic condition.
And that condition can be multifaceted, but in no small part is due to the fact that meat is often the cheapest part of their diet.
And the fact that it is the cheapest part of their diet has to do with really aggressive lobbying and heavy subsidies paid by taxpayers.
So my question for myself and for my people is often how can we amplify and support this important message of needing to eat less meat, but without condemnation, with empathy and frankly, without sounding too paternalistic?
I think engage first on this level with people you have knowledge of deeply and are intimate enough with to have that conversation, to have hard conversations.
And, you know, come with deliciousness.
Deliciousness. If you want someone to stop centering meat in their diet, show them how they can eat something else that is also delicious, that is also cheap, that is also well -sourced if possible, and make that the focal point.
I think in my almost 10 years of not eating meat, I've changed a lot of people's, maybe not their whole life, maybe not their diet completely, but I've changed their mind about what veganism means and what it is by simply making a really good cake or a really good cookie or a cashew mac and cheese that someone really enjoyed and didn't scream at them that it had no dairy in it.
you know and don't think you have to change everyone's mind all at once because you won't you know like and i think also encouraging people to simply consume less meat and thus better maybe more expensive meat then you know show people how they can get their protein in another other way that works, but never come at people who are not already open to it because it's not going to work.
You're just going to alienate people.
I think in terms of vegetarianism and veganism, like talking food first is way better than trying to change someone's heart and mind.
That's a lot more difficult than changing their stomach. Hi, this is Gary Saddlemyer.
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I was actually born vegetarian by caste.
So I belong to a caste which was always vegetarian.
And I sort of inherited vegetarianism just because of my upbringing and background.
I never thought twice about animals at all until about five years ago.
Beyond the personal or moral, sometimes these questions of whether or not to eat meat are superseded by one's culture or religion.
religion and in order to talk about the morality of meat we also need to consider these factors and to do so we go to India with researcher Dr. Yamini Narayanan where the convergence of cultural political religious and social pressure to abstain from eating meat all come to a head so I never thought about the ethics of my diet because I assumed that if at all I thought about And I assume that I was okay because I would have vegetarianism in my mind.
And I think in the minds of most Indians, but also most people in general, does not necessarily involve slaughter, does not necessarily involve animal suffering.
I was aware that there's a raging conversation, of course, politically around this question in India, because you have a very strong Hindu ultra -nationalist right -wing government in India.
Dr. Narayanan is a senior lecturer in international and community development.
at Deakin University in Australia.
Her work focuses on the nexus between animals and urban planning in India and the intersections of speciesism, casteism, and racism, and the ways in which animals are enrolled in nation -building projects.
As Dr. Narayanan tells us, the interesting thing is that although India is not a nation associated with beef, they are one of the world's largest producers and exporters.
Here she expounds on that relationship and how this contradiction came to be.
At the moment, we have been having them for the last five years, where they have really taken on the cause of cow protection in a very political, very violent sort of way.
In their vision, cow protection means protecting the cow from slaughter.
Implicitly, this means protecting the cow from Muslims and also who they see as low caste Hindus who are consumers of beef or consumers of meat.
So the cow is seen as a sacred animal in Hinduism they see this as a way of marginalising Muslims and low caste Hindus who they see as low caste Hindus so meat eating is extremely political and volatile in terms of resistance to these sorts of worldviews as well.
So meat eating, in fact, is seen as a political activity and vegetarianism, therefore, because the Hindu right wing is honestly so violent about it.
Vegetarianism in India is seen as some sort of a fascist activity, which is really interesting because a lot of cultures might disagree with vegetarianism, but in India, it actually becomes a fascist activity, right?
So it was in this context that I started my research on cow protection five years ago.
So and so when you're talking about vegetarian being perceived as a method of fascism, which is fascinating, is it because it's used as an instrument to oppress an already oppressed or marginalized class?
And is that being done specifically by preventing access to foods that would otherwise be part of their traditional and cultural diet?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So vegetarianism is being mobilized specifically against beef eaters.
So not necessarily against consumers of other meats.
So, you know, if you're eating chicken or lamb or other meat, that's OK.
It's specifically as a way of marginalizing beef eaters because in the political sort of narrative, Muslims and low caste Hindus are the only beef eaters, which is not true.
If you actually do a demographic survey of India, everybody is everybody's consuming base, including those who perceive themselves as high caste.
So it's across the board. But the political narrative is that it's only these sorts of minorities who don't belong to the Hindu nation, to the Hindu Indian nation.
And therefore, they either need to toe the line or they just need to, you know, not be part of this nation.
So therefore vegetarianism becomes seen as this very fascist activity because it's kind of used as part of nation building.
In their view, they want this ultra -right -wing, pure Hindu Indian nation, and vegetarianism is part of this pure Hindu nation.
Because it is seen as part of nation building, it is tied up so politically, it goes well beyond the ethics of diet itself.
It's kind of almost like an ultra -nationalist narrative, right?
Interestingly enough, for a high beef producing country, India does not actually have any beef cows.
So if you look at other leading beef producers in the world, like United States, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, they all rear cows that are explicitly for the beef sector, like Angus cows.
India does not have any breed of cattle that's actually for beef purposes.
We only actually rear dairy cows.
because we're not supposed to be slaughtering cows.
You can raise dairy cows.
We are the world's largest producer of dairy and we have been since 1997.
So over 20 years, we have been the largest producer of dairy.
But the fact that dairy is also linked to cow slaughter is fully obscured.
What actually happens in India is that we have an industrial scale of cow slaughter that simply goes underground.
So it's not that we do not slaughter cows, they simply go underground.
So we have the largest war and slaughtering countries in the world.
We think of industrial slaughtering in the West as something that happens in these giant industrial slaughterhouses right but in developing countries and certainly in India industrial slaughtering happens informally, it happens underground.
It happens in people's backyards and this happens usually in the homes of highly highly racialized minorities, highly vulnerable minorities.
And this is across the board in almost all countries, right?
So the ones that are performing this sort of really risky labor, and in India, it is extremely risky because it's also illegal, right?
It's actually, they are not just having to perform labor, which is not very nice, but it's also outright illegal.
And there is like really high penalties in many states in India, especially those that have a Hindu nationalist political party.
ruling the state right the penalties tend to be very high in the state of gujarat for example it's life imprisonment when cows are sold for slaughter in in the in the market they don't necessarily get sold as slaughter cows you know they get sold as dairy cows they get sold repeatedly over many many many different markets it's almost impossible to trace the point of origin and the point of sort of destination and they go through so many markets across so many many states, because there is only about two states in India where cow slaughtering is actually legal.
So a lot of cows from throughout India, that is the states of Kerala and West Bengal, they go through many, many, many markets sold as dairy cows, the point of purpose, because it's not per se illegal to sell a cow.
You can sell a cow, but you can obscure the purpose of the sale.
And that just keeps going through market after market after market, right?
And so when you're talking about vegetarian being perceived as a method of fascism, which is fascinating.
Is it because it's used as an instrument to oppress an already oppressed or marginalized class?
And is that being done specifically by preventing access to foods that would otherwise be part of their traditional and cultural diet?
Yeah, that's such an interesting and such a complex question.
Urban spaces in India are major conduits for facilitating the entire informal economy of dairy and beef.
They are very much part of this continuum.
It's not just the cities, it's also the region.
So for example, you have entire villages, entire regions that are dedicated purely and solely to cow slaughter, for example, or to sheep slaughter or to pig slaughter.
So there's entire regions dedicated.
That's all they do, right?
I have been through regions in India where there is skin hanging off fences.
people's outside people's homes the skins of cows or buffaloes they're literally hanging off to dry you know so there's entire regions dedicated to this activity and that also contribute even though it might just be family units of that region but it kind of contributes to this informal economy within cities what happens is that in India and I think as much of the global south our cities all all parts of our cities are not formally planned, okay?
So there's a lot of our urban spaces which are not really within the purview of formal urban planning.
Even things like, and it's a problem because things like sanitation, water supply, that doesn't reach everybody.
So even aside from these illegal activities or informal activities, people sometimes often have to make their own water supplies, often have to sort of sort out their own sanitation supplies.
So the formal planning doesn't actually, formal governance doesn't reach all parts of the city.
It doesn't reach all parts of the people or all people in the city, right?
There's a large informal population that are outside of it and that have to, that have always had to make do and sort out their own lives outside of the benefits of formal governance.
But in some senses, it also provides an opportunity, both for the people, but also for the government when it comes to activities like house slaughtering.
right because we as a dairy country we need to slaughter cows right but we can't formally allow it so it's easy for the for the state to just turn a blind eye it's happening in informal locations in the city that that's got nothing to do with us anyway and you'll find entire suburbs and areas of these cities that are absolutely filled with slaughterhouses, backyard butchery, meat shops shops, etc. But in India, there's also this extraordinarily sentimental relationship with the cow for a lot of Hindus and about 80 % of the population are Hindu.
Cow milk is seen as a very sacred commodity.
It's not just that you have a health relationship or a consumer relationship, but it's also almost a spiritual relationship with cow milk.
So it has symbolic capital.
It's not just profitable capital, but it's also symbolic capital.
Either way, of course, for the cow, it doesn't make any difference.
The cows continue to be used for dairying and they continue to sort of endure and suffer all the processes that daily involves we've thought about what what could be our different like um allies you know our allies could be plants our allies could be nourishment.
Our allies could be getting clear and having a shared language about racism and systemic oppression.
But the reality is that the more you awaken to the truth, it's hard to hold that in your body and it's hard to hold that in your mind.
That's Isanet Batista.
Isanet is a The Black Dominican, born in Harlem and in 2017, created the culinary arts and food justice worker co -op Woke Foods, where she and her team offer Dominican plant -based foods to organizing movements across New York and, among other things, food justice workshops.
Isenet is also co -host of the podcast Free the Bag.
I didn't take cooking seriously until after I got into community organizing work and saw that as an organizer who was, you know, in meetings, protests, just like organizing work, how much it was affecting my physical and mental health.
And through a mentor and through just a group of folks that were also organizing, we just collectively decided to undergo a month of plant -based lifestyle to allow us, just to support us with our health so that we could continue the work that we were doing.
kind of realizing that all of it is connected and how much systems of oppression are connected to food and land.
Woke Foods was born from a revelation, a revelation that summons healing culinary traditions as a means of community activism.
From workshops, interactive cooking classes, to creating meals with the North Bronx Collective, to multi -month long intensive programs, woke foods is about healing and more specifically dedicated to deepening a healing relationship with the earth isanet has created an organization in her own brilliant likeness and in doing so has given us new ways of understanding how white supremacy and racism have and continue to undermine our collective survival we've done a few um experimental projects because we don't i I don't have it all figured out.
My team doesn't have it all figured out.
But we try different things to see like, what can we give to our people so that they can see the importance of taking care of themselves and to see their relationship to Mother Earth just as important as we see our relationship to each other and to justice work.
and so last year we did um was it last year maybe a year and a half ago we did resistance kitchen which was a series of free cooking classes in harlem and the bronx for community organizers and for people that lived in affordable housing units um and so those were like one -off um cooking classes um and they had like different themes um for the whole summer and they were free so that was you know one experiment and that was cool then um we also provide you know free recipes on our website um most of our catering is for grassroots or non -profit work or foundation work so those are pretty much our
consistent clients um and then we've also have done um cooking for like organizing retreats um and recently we launched earth lab which is an eight -week um a virtual course for for bipoc who want to be in a right relationship to earth while being clear and understanding the ways that like racism shows shows up in our attempt to be in right relationship with earth.
And so that's a group of 20 folks.
We're in our seventh week right now.
We started with political education, moved into cooking plant -based meals, how to work with plants and herbal medicine.
last week. I think an issue that I see a lot in the world of veganism and the world of also environmental stewardship is there is no lens of why we're in this situation in the first place.
And we are in the situation in the first place because white people imagined these like racial hierarchies to justify the extraction of labor from our bodies and from the land.
And so that Our work has always been explicit with that.
So a lot of what you're doing right now is based on what I would consider building future leaders and building leaders within this food justice, equity, sovereignty space.
So one thing that I know is required for leaders who train leaders like yourself is to have have a vision for the future, right?
Kind of a imagined vision that you can share with other leaders to inspire them and to give them a way forward. So do you think you could share with us some of your visions for a more equitable food system in the future and maybe how we might get there?
Sure. I think the first thing that comes to my mind is for, for black people, um, and brown people and indigenous people to, to rest. I really want us to like stop explaining like racism and, and having to put that labor on us.
I, I would love for, for their, for white people to, to step up and return lands back to back to the first peoples of this nation and back to, um, black people, um, who helped build so much of our food system.
And I would love for there to be more green spaces and urban environments.
And if we were to have the time, we would have to have the time to engage in growing their own food and cooking their own food.
And so, yeah, my vision is a little bit all over the place, but I think it starts with time and for and for white people to stop the obsession with like overworking and for us you know as black brown indigenous people to interrupt the ways that whiteness has also creeped up in our lives and yeah yeah I think at this point I'm going a little bit all over the place but if i could prioritize it would be time to rest time to grow food and and access to land so that we can figure out what we want to do who we want to be and and yeah i'd leave it i'd leave it at that that's a beautiful vision for the future
that's a future that i want to live in too well i thank you and i actually think those things are very much in relationship and i I appreciate you centering rest in this new imagined kind of utopia, because it is something that we need to deeply decolonize in our mind, the notion of productivity and our value being tied to our economic usefulness or utility.
So much good could come from a society where rest, especially for Black and BIPOC people, were prioritized i like that a lot you heard it right there isanet batiste with stirring wisdom which is also a perfect segue into our last episode of the season entitled food apartheid in which we discuss the politics of space and landscape and how they facilitate food oppression You will not want to miss that conversation, but in service of today's conversation, I would like to thank our extraordinary guests, which I feel is a hallmark of our little podcast. But today, the heat from my friend Alicia Kennedy,
from Isanet Baptiste, a leader and a woman of great vision who I deeply admire, and Dr. Yamini Narayanan of Deakin University in Melbourne, whose scholarship at the intersection of animals and urban planning is specific and exemplary and frankly, just enlightening.
So I want to thank them all.
And I would like to extend my thanks for you all for gifting me and everyone who tuned in with your insight and giving us so much to think about.
This is a good time to inform you of what I'm sure many of our listeners are already privy to, which is that Alicia Kennedy has a newsletter.
And if you've enjoyed her interview, I'm sure the newsletter will blow you away.
It's tidy and thoughtful and a weekly offering on the food system, its maladies and brokenness with interviews and musings.
So we highly recommend that you sign up for that.
And encourage Eastonette's work via Woke Foods, and probably the easiest way to do that is through their site or at Woke Foods, which is their IG handle.
But we will be writing all about them on our website, whetstonemagazine .com, W -H -E -T -S -T -O -N -E magazine .com.
And this is the part of the show where I will usually add some additional context or commentary to wrap up the episode.
But honestly, our guests did so much of that lift today that I will just let their words speak for themselves.
But what I will say is that if you've listened to this podcast, you've likely observed, as we have, that the many problems in our food systems that continue to reveal itself is that the businesses at the end of the supply chains and not the ones at the point of origin are the ones capturing all of the value.
And to whatever degree possible, we as consumers can upend this.
That is more important than any endorsement found on the label.
And that criteria alone will do more to further a truly transformative food system than just about anything that we could ever do.
We'll be back next week for our aforementioned final episode of Season 3.
I'm your host, Steven Satterfield, Whetstone co -founder.
We'll see you then.
Thanks for tuning in.
Peace. We'd also like to thank our incredible podcast producer, Celine Glager.
Celine, you are the best. To our editor and Whetstone partner and director of video, David Alexander in London.
Appreciate you, Dave. Thanks to our Whetstone production intern, Quentin LeBeau.
And last but not least, my business partner, Mel Shee, who makes all things at Whetstone possible.
Thank you, Mel. We'd also like to thank our partners in production at iHeartRadio.
to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer, and executive producer Christopher Haciotis.
We'll be back next week with more from the world of food worldwide.
Point of origin listeners, as you know, rating and reviewing our podcast is the very best way for more people to find out about our very important work at Whetstone, so please, if you're able, we would really appreciate a positive review and rating on Apple Podcasts.
That will help others like yourself find out about Point of Origin.
This is an iHeart Podcast.