Speaker 1: Welcome back to point of Origin. On today's episode, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the morality of meat, what it means to
Speaker 1: consume it, to abstain from it, and as always, how
Speaker 1: matters of morality are murky and impossible to entangle from culture, society,
Speaker 1: and privilege. Today's episode is a banger. We begin with
Speaker 1: writer Alicia Kennedy, one of the clearest and most compelling
Speaker 1: voices in food media today, on among other things, veganism,
Speaker 1: but more broadly, the politics of eating. We then travel
Speaker 1: to India where Dr Yameni n Ryan and discusses the
Speaker 1: politicization of beef in India and in particular what happens
Speaker 1: when cal protection laws and dietary regulations are codified as
Speaker 1: a means of marginalizing lower caste and Muslims. And finally
Speaker 1: we go to the Dominican Republic with East and Batista
Speaker 1: activists and owner of Woke Foods, who discusses her ongoing
Speaker 1: activism through plant based recipes as a means of healing
Speaker 1: and restoration, the politics of meat and diet, diet and
Speaker 1: identity today on point of Origin, it's the morality of meat.
Speaker 1: I've officially not eaten meat since that is Alicia Kennedy,
Speaker 1: And it was something I had always been interested in,
Speaker 1: something I'd always been attracted to as an idea. Alicia
Speaker 1: is a writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, whose
Speaker 1: writing explorers not only the politics of food, but also
Speaker 1: the interconnected elements of culture, climate, and access. There was
Speaker 1: something about it that always made sense to me, But
Speaker 1: lifestyle wise, it was too difficult when I was a
Speaker 1: younger person who wasn't in control of of what she ate,
Speaker 1: wasn't in control of, you know, all her money, um
Speaker 1: to make that decision for myself. And also there was
Speaker 1: the fact that for a long time, vegan and vegetarian
Speaker 1: food had a terrible reputation, and it earned that reputation.
Speaker 1: The food was a bit bland, it was um, it
Speaker 1: was a white gaze turned towards global cuisine and and
Speaker 1: done improperly without the correct um, you know, either cooking
Speaker 1: methods or without the correct spices and what have you.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't something I was interested in because I've
Speaker 1: always been a person who, first and foremost, even while
Speaker 1: I believe food is you know, utterly entrenched in all
Speaker 1: the systems of that both oppress and exalt us as
Speaker 1: human beings. It is also, you know, first and foremost
Speaker 1: something that we have to enjoy every day of our lives.
Speaker 1: And Alicia, how did you feel about the prevailing mainstream
Speaker 1: notions around veganism at that time? I mean, I hated them,
Speaker 1: but at the same time I understood them because I
Speaker 1: understood that they were rooted in the same things that
Speaker 1: kept me from not embracing veganism until I was able
Speaker 1: to ensure that it wouldn't taste bad, you know, like
Speaker 1: so um. And I still understand even you know Anthony
Speaker 1: Bourdain's kind of grandma rule, which is, you know, if
Speaker 1: someone invites you to dinner, you eat what they serve you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: David Chang, it's funny. That's a funny aspect of it,
Speaker 1: because he was so anti vegetarian that he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm never serving anything vegetarian at Mamafuku, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: then he became the first spokesperson basically for Impossible Burghers
Speaker 1: and was like, oh, finally, the veggie burger is delicious,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you never really tried to make
Speaker 1: it delicious otherwise, and also probably haven't had that many
Speaker 1: veggie burgers. And then one comes along that's taken you know,
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to develop and bleeds slightly and you know,
Speaker 1: looks exactly like meat, and finally, you know, it's accepted
Speaker 1: into the pantheon of the fine dining restaurants, and so
Speaker 1: you know, it's all just very predictable. The emphasis on
Speaker 1: it needing to bleed. It's something that really stuck with
Speaker 1: me after the conversation because obviously, in the US, not
Speaker 1: only eating but cooking meat is seen as a gendered act.
Speaker 1: So it's funny but also not surprising that in order
Speaker 1: for a plant based meat to be considered acceptable, it
Speaker 1: needed not only to bleed but also a masculine champion.
Speaker 1: A lot of me, stream media is super interested in
Speaker 1: the new fake meat um what I usually call tech
Speaker 1: burgers or tech meat um. It's fascinated by them and
Speaker 1: by lab made meat and and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And for me, the whole thing is like, why aren't
Speaker 1: you as fascinated by tofu and tempe, which are ancient
Speaker 1: proteins that are delicious and also, you know, don't centralize production,
Speaker 1: don't come from you necessarily corporate producers and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But in terms of meat, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: funny because we've had so many conversations culturally and within
Speaker 1: food media about how unsustainable our consumption of meat is,
Speaker 1: especially in the United States, especially around beef, even though
Speaker 1: poultry I think at this point um out out runs
Speaker 1: beef in terms of consumption, but which is insane because
Speaker 1: people consume I think two and twenty pounds a year
Speaker 1: in the United States of between beef and poultry. And
Speaker 1: the conversation, yeah, it's people eat so much meat. And
Speaker 1: so even though it seems like we're having all these
Speaker 1: conversations around sustainability and you know, cattle production at this
Speaker 1: scale in factory farming, and so I've seen the conversation
Speaker 1: move lately toward sustainable grass fed, you know, regenerative regenerative
Speaker 1: agriculture in beef, and you know, I understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: I've talked to a lot of experts in this, butchers
Speaker 1: or or even farmers themselves, and it makes sense, you know,
Speaker 1: like we have a ton of grass on the planet
Speaker 1: and we can't eat the grass and make it into anything,
Speaker 1: but cows can. And then so it makes sense that
Speaker 1: they're part of our you know, human landscape, part of
Speaker 1: our human relationship to the to the planet. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, when you've trained a population to consume
Speaker 1: meat at such a rate and in such volume and
Speaker 1: then ask them to change, it would require so much
Speaker 1: change to people's diets. And we are not capable of
Speaker 1: um changing the the agriculture of cattle on such a
Speaker 1: large scale to provide this volume of meat to everybody,
Speaker 1: um to make it be more sustainable. You can tell
Speaker 1: people until you're you're blue in the face that they
Speaker 1: have to consume less meat. But you know, how do
Speaker 1: you really change people's diets. How do you convince them
Speaker 1: that they need to spend more If they're going to
Speaker 1: eat meat, they need to spend more money, They need
Speaker 1: to have a relationship with their butcher. You know, these
Speaker 1: are things that were systemically destroyed by the cattle industry,
Speaker 1: by the meat packers in the United States. It was
Speaker 1: it was a plot to centralize meat production and to
Speaker 1: get people away from their local butchers. And that's that
Speaker 1: was successful. And so you know, that's that's what America
Speaker 1: is built onto. So that's what that's the foundation of
Speaker 1: the food system. Alicia raises an excellent point here. Not
Speaker 1: only do we consume enormously high volumes of meat. But,
Speaker 1: as we discussed in episode twenty seven Beyond the Wheat,
Speaker 1: in the period of less than a century, we've become
Speaker 1: so disconnected from the tears of our food system that
Speaker 1: we have no sense of what's required to bring the
Speaker 1: food onto our plates. We don't understand concepts like seasonality, regionality,
Speaker 1: mono cropping, and certainly not migrant labor. We can't really
Speaker 1: appreciate the specialized knowledge of what it takes to harvest
Speaker 1: an unfathomably high volume of produce, and what it takes
Speaker 1: to process it, to store it, to transport it, to
Speaker 1: wholesale it, to retail it. We are a long way
Speaker 1: away from the days of local millers and bakers, from
Speaker 1: local butchers processors, and even further away still from the
Speaker 1: image of meat itself. And it's important to note that
Speaker 1: the creation of this void has been intentional, and the
Speaker 1: same forces that created it, i e. Multinational food corporations
Speaker 1: have also filled it with themselves with their own enterprises.
Speaker 1: We happily purchase slices of meat or ground beef, but
Speaker 1: in the Western world, when we see an animal head
Speaker 1: or carcass, it feels challenging or gross even all right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about tech burgers, as you call them
Speaker 1: a apt and hilarious name. I've been calling them tech
Speaker 1: burgers because they've mostly been burgers. But now I've noticed
Speaker 1: that the ground meat, yeah, the ground meat from Impossible
Speaker 1: and Beyond meat is used now as just simply an
Speaker 1: ingredient in in even New York Times cooking recipes, which
Speaker 1: is fascinating. UM. I don't think anyone would ever recommend
Speaker 1: a specific kind of cow meat UM in a in
Speaker 1: a New York Times recipe, it would just be ground beef.
Speaker 1: But now there's trademarked products UM in the in the recipes,
Speaker 1: which for me, that's that's the big problem with it
Speaker 1: is that it it's corporate, it's centralized, it's extractive in
Speaker 1: terms of ecology. Even though it's it's maybe less impactful
Speaker 1: than than beef production on the factory farmed scale, it's
Speaker 1: still about encouraging monocultures UM. Impossible beef burgers, which are
Speaker 1: sold at Burger King and many other places, UM used
Speaker 1: genetically modified soy, which is also happily subsidized by the government,
Speaker 1: same as beef UM production, and you know, they just
Speaker 1: kind of create UM a lot of the same problems
Speaker 1: again because we're still at once again focusing on single
Speaker 1: ingredients created by a single source, and um, that doesn't
Speaker 1: bring us any closer to really changing how we relate
Speaker 1: to food. You know, like there's there's veggie burgers that
Speaker 1: people make at a vegetarian restaurant that will get super
Speaker 1: made fun of, but you know they you know, they
Speaker 1: combine like a whole host of grains and legumes and
Speaker 1: vegetables and flavors in order to produce something that, yes,
Speaker 1: is more like a vegetable croquette than a burger, but
Speaker 1: it's also you know, it's it's bespoke. It's something that
Speaker 1: like that person that chef has developed. It's an act
Speaker 1: of creativity, which is what we are supposed to I
Speaker 1: thought expect from recipe writers and from and from chefs
Speaker 1: and cook everything. It's a good point we don't actually
Speaker 1: just talk about the fact that it's kind of weak
Speaker 1: that chefs haven't been more enthusiastic about creating something that
Speaker 1: doesn't even necessarily need to approximate it. I mean, even
Speaker 1: a really delicious singular iteration of a vegetable croquette that
Speaker 1: made me think harder about what my ideas of burder
Speaker 1: work would be appreciated. So um, good point there. I mean,
Speaker 1: people who've been in food you know full stop, like
Speaker 1: you know how how most of the sausage is made um,
Speaker 1: so to speak in the United States. You know that.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're going to a big supermarket, you're
Speaker 1: getting a commodity product, and you know that that that
Speaker 1: worker may have repetitive motion and injuries from the kind
Speaker 1: of work that they're doing, from the kind of pace
Speaker 1: that they're expected to take. You probably know that they're
Speaker 1: in cramped quarters. You probably know that many of these
Speaker 1: people are undocumented and are subject to harassment and arrest,
Speaker 1: and you know, deportation by ice. You know these things
Speaker 1: if you're a person who pays attention to how the
Speaker 1: food gets to the plate, so to watch people still
Speaker 1: ignore this in food media when you have a huge,
Speaker 1: willing audience of people who are going to the grocery
Speaker 1: store who are cooking, and you don't let you don't
Speaker 1: let it change anything about how you talk about food.
Speaker 1: You don't chain, you don't mention that you know, meat
Speaker 1: processing centers have been hotspots of the spread of the virus,
Speaker 1: that people have died, that children have died of COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen from being exposed from their parents working at meat
Speaker 1: processing plants. And it doesn't bother these people that it's
Speaker 1: President Trump who has decided that meat processing, of all things,
Speaker 1: is extremely essential, whereas production of PPE for the healthcare
Speaker 1: industry hasn't been essential, that um, that testing and contact
Speaker 1: tracing hasn't been essential. That these things are actually seen
Speaker 1: as some sort of detriment to you know, his his
Speaker 1: reign of power. But meat process thing is essential to it,
Speaker 1: even though it's it's putting people's lives in danger. Like
Speaker 1: that should tell everyone everything they need to know about
Speaker 1: what meat means in the United States. You know, it
Speaker 1: means authority, it means um, you know, unpaid, poorly treated
Speaker 1: immigrant labor. It means animal cruelty. I think this situation
Speaker 1: has in so many ways laid bare so many problems
Speaker 1: in the United States. And so to watch food editors
Speaker 1: at you know, the biggest the biggest outlets in the
Speaker 1: country completely ignore this in favor of telling people that
Speaker 1: they should comfort themselves with cheeseburgers at this time or
Speaker 1: with a chicken and pork patte um. While most knowing
Speaker 1: that most people are going to go to the supermarket
Speaker 1: and get the commodity meat. They're not going to go
Speaker 1: to the butcher. They're not gonna you know, they're not
Speaker 1: having a close relationship with their farmer and making sure
Speaker 1: that everything is above board. You know, that's so irresponsible,
Speaker 1: that's so negligent, and like I mean to me that
Speaker 1: you know, these editors and these writers have a hand
Speaker 1: in these people going to work under unsafe conditions because
Speaker 1: they continue to encourage people to consume something that is
Speaker 1: leading to sickness and death. And that's just inexcusable to me. Yeah, wow, wow.
Speaker 1: And the inability of editors to to bring that kind
Speaker 1: of analysis into the way that they do their jobs
Speaker 1: has resulted in a kind of complicitness that I don't
Speaker 1: really think that they're ready to hear or absorb yet,
Speaker 1: But that is very deep. And um, I hope that
Speaker 1: we can get through a point in the and the
Speaker 1: discourse in the same way that we have around the
Speaker 1: reconciliation of you know, sexual predation um or or racial discrimination,
Speaker 1: about the harm that is being perpetuated you know, in
Speaker 1: in media. So Alicia, we are in what some people
Speaker 1: are calling a moment of reckoning. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that many people are reconciling is their relationship to meet.
Speaker 1: But mind you, and you know this well that people
Speaker 1: eat meat for a variety of reasons, but not the
Speaker 1: least of which is their socio economic condition. And that
Speaker 1: condition can be multifaceted, but in no small part is
Speaker 1: due to the fact that meat is often the cheapest
Speaker 1: part of their diet, and the fact that it is
Speaker 1: the cheapest part of their diet has to do with
Speaker 1: really aggressive lobbying and heavy subsidies paid by taxpayers. So
Speaker 1: my question for myself and for my people is often
Speaker 1: how can we amplify and support this important message of
Speaker 1: needing to eat less meat, but without condemnation, with empathy,
Speaker 1: and frankly, without sounding to paternalistic. I think in age first,
Speaker 1: on this level with people you have knowledge of deeply
Speaker 1: and are intimate enough with to have that conversation, to
Speaker 1: have hard conversations, and you know, come with deliciousness, like
Speaker 1: you know, if you want someone to stop centering meat
Speaker 1: in their diet, like show them how they can eat
Speaker 1: something else that is also delicious, that is also cheat
Speaker 1: you know, that is also you know, well sourced if possible,
Speaker 1: and you know, make that the focal point you know,
Speaker 1: I think I've in my in my almost ten years
Speaker 1: of not eating me and I've changed a lot of
Speaker 1: people's maybe not their whole life, maybe not their diet completely,
Speaker 1: but I've changed their mind about what veganism means and
Speaker 1: what it is by simply making a really good cake
Speaker 1: or a really good cookie, or like a cashew mac
Speaker 1: and cheese that someone really enjoyed and didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: screw at them that it had no no dairy in it,
Speaker 1: you know, And don't think you have to change everyone's
Speaker 1: mind all at once, because you won't, you know. Like,
Speaker 1: and I think also encouraging people to simply consume less
Speaker 1: meat and thus better maybe more expensive meat than you know,
Speaker 1: show people how they can get their protein in another
Speaker 1: way that works, But never come at people who are
Speaker 1: not um already open to it, because it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna alienate people. I think, in terms of
Speaker 1: vegetarianism and veganism, like talking food first is way better
Speaker 1: than trying to change someone's heart and mind. Um, that's
Speaker 1: that's a lot more difficult than changing their stomachs. I
Speaker 1: was actually born vegetarian my cost, so I I belong
Speaker 1: to a cost which was always vegetarian, and I sort
Speaker 1: of inherited vegetarianism just because of my my upbringing and background.
Speaker 1: I've never thought once about animals at all until about
Speaker 1: five years ago. Beyond the personal or morals. Sometimes these
Speaker 1: questions of whether or not to eat meat are superseded
Speaker 1: by one's culture or religion, and in order to talk
Speaker 1: about the morality of meat, we also need to consider
Speaker 1: these factors. And to do so, we go to India
Speaker 1: with researcher Dr Yamini no Ryan in where the convergence
Speaker 1: of cultural, political, religious, and social pressure to abstain from
Speaker 1: eating meat all come to a head. So I never
Speaker 1: thought about the ethics of my diet because I assume
Speaker 1: that if I don't like thought about it, I assume
Speaker 1: that I was okay, because I would have vegetarianism in
Speaker 1: my mind, and I think in the minds of most
Speaker 1: Indians but also most people in general, does not necessarily
Speaker 1: involve slaughter, does not necessarily involve and on suffering. I
Speaker 1: was a where that there's a raging conversation, of course,
Speaker 1: politically around this question in India, because you have a
Speaker 1: very strong Hindu ultra nationalist right wing government in India.
Speaker 1: Dr Na ryan And is a senior lecturer in International
Speaker 1: and Community Development at Deacon University in Australia. Her work
Speaker 1: focuses on the nexus between animals and urban planning in
Speaker 1: India and the intersections of species ism, cast is um
Speaker 1: and racism and the ways in which animals are enrolled
Speaker 1: in nation building projects. As Dr Na ryan And tells us,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is that although India is not a
Speaker 1: nation associated with beef, they are one of the world's
Speaker 1: largest producers and exporters. Here she expounds on that relationship
Speaker 1: and how this contradiction came to be at the moment
Speaker 1: we've been having them for the last five years, where
Speaker 1: they have really taken on the cause of cow protection
Speaker 1: in a very political, very violent sort of way. In
Speaker 1: there in their vision and cow protection means protecting the
Speaker 1: cow from slaughter. Implicitly, this means protecting the cow from
Speaker 1: um Muslims and also who they see as low cost
Speaker 1: Hindus who are consumers of beef. Right where consumers of
Speaker 1: meat so special and there's a cow is seen as
Speaker 1: a sacred animal in Hinduism. Um they see this as
Speaker 1: a way of marginalizing Muslims and and low cost Hindus
Speaker 1: who they who they see as low cost Hindus. Som
Speaker 1: me dating is extremely political and volatile in terms of
Speaker 1: resistance to these sorts of um world views as well.
Speaker 1: So meat eating in fact is seen as a political activity,
Speaker 1: and vegetarianism therefore, because the Hindu writering is is honestly
Speaker 1: so violent about it, Vegetarianism in India is seen as
Speaker 1: some sort of a fastest activity, which is really interesting
Speaker 1: because a lot of cultures might disagree with vegetarianism, but
Speaker 1: in India it actually becomes the fastest activity. Right. So
Speaker 1: it was in this context that I started my research
Speaker 1: on card protection five years ago. And so when you're
Speaker 1: talking about vegetarian being perceived as a method of fascism,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating, is it because it's used as an
Speaker 1: instrument to oppress and already oppressed or marginalized class And
Speaker 1: is that being done specifically by preventing access to foods
Speaker 1: that would otherwise be part of their traditional and cultural diet. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. So vegetarianism is being mobilized specifically against bee fetus,
Speaker 1: so not necessarily against consumers about meat. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you're eating chicken or or lamb, or other meat.
Speaker 1: That's that's okay. It's specifically as a way of marginalizing
Speaker 1: bee fetus because in the in the world, in the
Speaker 1: political sort of narrative, Muslims and low cast Hindus are
Speaker 1: the only be fatus, which is not true. If you
Speaker 1: actually do a demographic story of India, everybody is everybody
Speaker 1: is consuming base, including the supersede themselves as high cast,
Speaker 1: so it's across the board. But the political narrative is
Speaker 1: that it's only these sorts of minorities who don't belong
Speaker 1: to the Hindu nation, to the Hindu Indian nation, and
Speaker 1: therefore they either need to tow the line or they
Speaker 1: just need to, you know, not be part of this nation.
Speaker 1: So so therefore vegetarianism becomes um becomes seenus as very
Speaker 1: fastest activity because it's kind of used as part of
Speaker 1: nation building. In their view, they want this ultra right wing,
Speaker 1: pure Hindu Indian nation, and vegetarianism is part of this
Speaker 1: pure Hindu nation. Because it is seen as part of
Speaker 1: nation building, it is tied up so politically it goes
Speaker 1: well beyond the ethics of diet itself. It's kind of
Speaker 1: almost like a nationalist ultra nationalist narrative right. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: for a high beef producing country, India does not actually
Speaker 1: have any beef cows. So if you look at other
Speaker 1: leading beef producers in the world United States, Brazil, Australia
Speaker 1: and New Zealand, they all real cows that are explicitly
Speaker 1: for the beef sector. Like anger scouse. India does not
Speaker 1: have any breed of cattle that's actually for for for
Speaker 1: beef purposes. The only actually a real dairy house because
Speaker 1: we're not supposed we're supposed to We're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be slaughtering house. You can raise dairy cows. We are
Speaker 1: the world's largest producer of dairy and we have been
Speaker 1: since nineteen seven, so over twenty years you'll be the
Speaker 1: largest producer of dairy. Um. But but but the fact
Speaker 1: that dairy is also linked to cow slaughter is fully obscured.
Speaker 1: What actually happens in India is that we have an
Speaker 1: industrial scale of cow slaughter that simply goes underground. So
Speaker 1: it's not that we do not slaughter house. They simply
Speaker 1: go underground. So we have the largest year of the
Speaker 1: one of the largest war and slaughtery countries in the world.
Speaker 1: We think of industrial slaughtering in the West as something
Speaker 1: that happens in these giant industrial slaughterhouses, right, But in
Speaker 1: developing countries, and certainly in India, industrial industrial slaughtering happens informally.
Speaker 1: It happens underground. It happens in people's that yards, and
Speaker 1: this happens usually in the homes of highly racialized minorities,
Speaker 1: highly vulnerable minorities. And this is across the board in
Speaker 1: almost all countries, right, So the ones that are performing
Speaker 1: this sort of really risky labor, and in India it
Speaker 1: is extremely risky because it's also illegal, right. It's actually
Speaker 1: they're not just having to perform labor, which is not
Speaker 1: very nice, but it's also outright illegal. And there is
Speaker 1: there is like really high penalties in many states in India,
Speaker 1: especially those that have um a Hindu nationalist political party
Speaker 1: ruling the state. Right, the penalties tend to be very high.
Speaker 1: In the state of Buddad, for example, it's life imprisonment.
Speaker 1: When cows are sold for slaughter in the in the
Speaker 1: in the market, they don't necessarily get sold as sluck
Speaker 1: as as as slaughter cows, you know, they get sold
Speaker 1: as dairy cows. They get sold repeatedly over many, many,
Speaker 1: many different park markets. It's almost impossible to trace the
Speaker 1: point of origin at the point of sort of destination.
Speaker 1: And they go through so many markets across so many states.
Speaker 1: Because there's only about two states in India where cow
Speaker 1: slaughtering is actually legal, so a lot of cows from
Speaker 1: throughout India, that is the states of Kerala and Western
Speaker 1: Goal they go through many, many, many markets sold as
Speaker 1: dairy cows the point of purpose because it's not per
Speaker 1: se illegal to sell a cow. You can sell a cow,
Speaker 1: but you can obscure the purpose of the sale, and
Speaker 1: that just keeps going through market after market after market. Right.
Speaker 1: And so when you're talking about vegetarian being perceived as
Speaker 1: a method of fascism, which is fascinating, is it because
Speaker 1: it's used as an instrument to oppress and already oppressed
Speaker 1: or marginalized class And is that being done specifically by
Speaker 1: preventing access to foods that would otherwise be part of
Speaker 1: their traditional and cultural diet. Yeah, that's such an such
Speaker 1: an interesting and such a complex question. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: so urban urban spaces in India are major cornduits for
Speaker 1: facilitating the entire informal economy of dairy and waif. They're
Speaker 1: very much part of this continuum. Um, it's not just
Speaker 1: the cities, it's also the regions. So for example, you
Speaker 1: have entire villages, entire regions that are dedicated purely and
Speaker 1: solely to how slaughter, for example, or to sheep slaughter,
Speaker 1: or to pick slaughter. So there's entire regions dedicated that's
Speaker 1: all they do. Right. I have been through regions in
Speaker 1: India where there is skin hanging off fences, people's um
Speaker 1: outside people's homes, the skins of cows or buffaloes, they're
Speaker 1: literally hanging off the drying, you know. So there's entire
Speaker 1: regions dedicated to this activity. And that also contributed, even
Speaker 1: though it might just be family units of that region,
Speaker 1: but it kind of contributes to this um to this
Speaker 1: informal economy within cities. What happens is that in India,
Speaker 1: and I think as much of the global South, our cities,
Speaker 1: all parts of our cities are not formally planned. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of our urban spaces which are
Speaker 1: not really within the purview of formal urban planning. Even
Speaker 1: things like it's a problem because things like sanitation, um
Speaker 1: water supply that doesn't reach everybody. So even even aside
Speaker 1: from um from these illegal activities or informal activities, people
Speaker 1: sometimes often often have to you know, make their own
Speaker 1: water supplies, often have to sort of sort out their
Speaker 1: own sanitation supplies. So the formal planning doesn't actually formal
Speaker 1: governance doesn't reach all parts of the city. It doesn't
Speaker 1: reach all parts of the people. For all people in
Speaker 1: the city, right there's a large informal population that are
Speaker 1: outside of it and that have to that have always
Speaker 1: had to make do and sort out their own lives
Speaker 1: outside of the benefits of formal governance. But in some
Speaker 1: senses it also provides an opportunity. What's the people, but
Speaker 1: also for the government when it comes to activities like houselaughtering,
Speaker 1: because we as a daily country, we need to start
Speaker 1: a house, right, but we can't formally allow it. So
Speaker 1: it's easy for the for the state to just turblind eye.
Speaker 1: It's happening in informal locations in the city. That's that's
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with us anyway, And you will
Speaker 1: find entire suburbs and areas of these cities that are
Speaker 1: absolutely filled with slaughterhouses, back head boucheries, UM meet shops, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But in India there's also this extraordinarily sentimental relationship with
Speaker 1: the cow. For a lot of Hindus, and about eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the population are Hindu, cow milk is seen
Speaker 1: as a very secret commodity. It's not just that you
Speaker 1: have a health relationship or a consumer relationship, but it's
Speaker 1: also almost a spiritual relationship with cow milk. So it
Speaker 1: has symbolic capital. It's not just profitable capital, but it's
Speaker 1: also symbolic capital. Either way. Of course, for the cow,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any difference. The cows continue to be
Speaker 1: used for dairying and they continue to sort of India
Speaker 1: and suffer all the processes that they are in involved.
Speaker 1: We thought about what what could be our different like
Speaker 1: UM allies, you know, our allies could be planned, Our
Speaker 1: allies could be nourishment, or allies could be getting clear
Speaker 1: and having a share language about UM racism and system
Speaker 1: of oppression UM. But the reality is that the more
Speaker 1: you awaken to the truth UM, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: hold that in your body and it's hard to hold
Speaker 1: that in your mind. That's insane. Batistasna is a black
Speaker 1: Dominican born in Harlem and In two thousand seventeen created
Speaker 1: the culinary arts and food justice worker coop Woke Foods,
Speaker 1: where she and her team offer Dominican plant based foods
Speaker 1: to organizing movements across New York and among other things,
Speaker 1: food justice workshops e sn that is also co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast for Need the Bag. I didn't take
Speaker 1: cooking seriously until after I got into community organizing work
Speaker 1: and saw that as an organizer, who was you know,
Speaker 1: in in meetings, protests, just like organizing work, UM, how
Speaker 1: much it was affecting my physical and mental health and UM.
Speaker 1: Through a mentor and through and through just a group
Speaker 1: of folks that were also organizing, we just collectively decided
Speaker 1: to undergo UM a month of plant based lifestyle to
Speaker 1: allow us UM, just to so for us with with
Speaker 1: our health, so that we could continue the work that
Speaker 1: we were doing, kind of realizing that all of it
Speaker 1: is connected and how much systems of oppression UM are
Speaker 1: connected to food and lands. Woke Foods was born from
Speaker 1: a revelation, a revelation that summons healing culinary traditions as
Speaker 1: a means of community activism, from workshops, interactive cooking classes
Speaker 1: to creating meals with the North Bronx collective to multi
Speaker 1: month long intensive programs. Woke Foods is about healing and
Speaker 1: more specifically dedicated to deepening a healing relationship with the earth.
Speaker 1: Ethernet has created an organization in her own brilliant likeness,
Speaker 1: and in doing so has given us new ways of
Speaker 1: understanding how white supremacy and racism have and continue to
Speaker 1: undermine our collective survival. We've done a few UM experimental
Speaker 1: projects because we don't I don't have it all figured out.
Speaker 1: My team doesn't ALMOHOL figured out. But we try different
Speaker 1: things to see, like what can we give to our
Speaker 1: people so that they can they can UM see the
Speaker 1: importance of taking care of them, of themselves and to
Speaker 1: see their their m to see their relationship to Mother
Speaker 1: Earth just as important as we see our relationship to
Speaker 1: each other, and to just this work. And so last
Speaker 1: year we did UM the last year REVERE. A year
Speaker 1: and a half ago we did Resistance Kitchen, which was
Speaker 1: a series of free cooking classes and Harlem and the
Speaker 1: Bronx for community organizers and or people that lived in
Speaker 1: affordable housing units UM. And so those were like one
Speaker 1: off UM cooking classes UM, and they had like different
Speaker 1: themes UM for the whole summer UM and they were free,
Speaker 1: so that was you know, one experiment and that was cool.
Speaker 1: Then UM. We also UM provide you know, free recipes
Speaker 1: on our website. UM. Most of our catering is for
Speaker 1: grassroots or nonprofit work or found a san work, so
Speaker 1: those are pretty much are our consistent clients UM. And
Speaker 1: then we've also have done UM cooking for like organizing
Speaker 1: retreats UM. And recently we launched earth Lap which is
Speaker 1: an eight week UM a virtual course for for bipoc
Speaker 1: who want to be in right relationship to Earth while
Speaker 1: being clear and understanding the ways that like racism shows
Speaker 1: up in our in our in our attempts to be
Speaker 1: in right relationship with Earth. And so those are the
Speaker 1: typroup of twenty folks. UM. We're down. We're in our
Speaker 1: seventh week right now. We started with UM political education,
Speaker 1: moved into UM into cooking plant based meals, how to,
Speaker 1: how to work with plants, and herbal medicine last week.
Speaker 1: I think an issue that I see a lot in
Speaker 1: the world of veganism and the world of also environmental
Speaker 1: UM stewardship is there is no lens of why we're
Speaker 1: in this situation in the first place, and we are
Speaker 1: in the situation in the first place because white people
Speaker 1: imagine these like racial hierarchies to justify the extraction of
Speaker 1: labor from our bodies and from the land, and so
Speaker 1: that our work has always been explicit with that. So
Speaker 1: a lot of what you're doing right now is based
Speaker 1: on what I would consider building future leaders UM and
Speaker 1: building UM leaders within this food justice, equity sovereignty space.
Speaker 1: So UM, one thing that I know is required for
Speaker 1: for leaders who trained leaders like yourself is to have
Speaker 1: a vision for the future, right kind of imagine vision
Speaker 1: that you can share with other leaders to inspire them
Speaker 1: and to give them a way forward. So UM, do
Speaker 1: you think you could share with us some of your
Speaker 1: visions for a more equitable food system in the future
Speaker 1: and maybe how we might get there. Sure, I think
Speaker 1: the first thing that comes to my mind is for
Speaker 1: for black people, UM, and brown people and indigenous people
Speaker 1: too to rest. I really want us to like stop
Speaker 1: explaining like racism and having to put that labor on us.
Speaker 1: I would love for for there for white people to
Speaker 1: step up and return lands back to back to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of this nation and back to black people.
Speaker 1: Um who you know who helped build so much of
Speaker 1: our food system. And I would love for are there
Speaker 1: to be more green spaces and urban environments um and
Speaker 1: if we would have the time, we would have have
Speaker 1: the time to engage um in growing their own food
Speaker 1: and cooking their own food. Um. And so yeah, my
Speaker 1: vision is a little bit all over the place, but
Speaker 1: I think it starts with time, um and for and
Speaker 1: for white people to stop the obsession with like over working,
Speaker 1: and and for us as you know, as black as
Speaker 1: black ground and didn't people to interrupt the ways that
Speaker 1: whiteness has also creeps up in our lives um And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think at this point I'm not going a little
Speaker 1: bit all over the place. But if I could prioritize it,
Speaker 1: it would be time to rest, time to grow food
Speaker 1: and and access to land so that we can figure
Speaker 1: out what we want to do, who we want to be.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'd believe it. I'd believe it at that
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful vision for the future. That's the future
Speaker 1: that I want to live into. Well, I thank you,
Speaker 1: and I actually think those things are very much in
Speaker 1: relationship and I appreciate youth centering, rest and this new
Speaker 1: imagined kind of utopia because it is something that we
Speaker 1: need to deeply decolonize in our mind, the notion of
Speaker 1: productivity and our value being tied to our our economic
Speaker 1: usefulness or utility. So much good could come from a
Speaker 1: society where rest, especially for for black and bipop people
Speaker 1: who are prioritized. I like that a lot. You heard
Speaker 1: it right there, eastnet Baptiste with stirring wisdom, which is
Speaker 1: also a perfect segue into our last episode of the
Speaker 1: season entitled Food Apartheid, in which we discuss the politics
Speaker 1: of space and landscape and how they facilitate food oppression.
Speaker 1: You will not want to miss that conversation. But in
Speaker 1: service of today's conversation, I would like to thank our
Speaker 1: extraordinary guests, which I feel is a hallmark of our
Speaker 1: little podcast. But today the heat from my friend Alicia
Speaker 1: Kennedy from eastnet Baptiste, a leader and a woman of
Speaker 1: great vision who I deeply admire. And Dr Yamini Na
Speaker 1: ryan In of Deacon University in Melbourne, whose scholarship at
Speaker 1: the intersection of animals and urban planning is specific and
Speaker 1: exemplary and frankly just enlightening. So I want to thank
Speaker 1: them all and I would like to extend my thanks
Speaker 1: for you all for gifting me and everyone who tuned
Speaker 1: in with your insight and giving us so much to
Speaker 1: think about. This is a good time to inform you
Speaker 1: of what I'm sure many of our listeners are already
Speaker 1: privy too, which is that Alicia Kennedy has a newsletter
Speaker 1: UH and if you've enjoyed her interview, I'm sure the
Speaker 1: newsletter will blow you away. It's tidy and thoughtful and
Speaker 1: weekly offering on the food system. It's maladies and Brokenness
Speaker 1: with interviews and musing. So we highly recommend that you
Speaker 1: sign up for that in encourage Asnet's work via Woke Foods,
Speaker 1: And probably the easiest way to do that is through
Speaker 1: their site UH or at Woke Foods, which is their
Speaker 1: i G handle. But we will be writing all about
Speaker 1: them on our website wet Stone Magazine dot com, w
Speaker 1: H E T S t O n E Magazine dot com.
Speaker 1: And this is the part of the show where I
Speaker 1: will usually add some additional context or commentary to wrap
Speaker 1: up the episode, But honestly, our guests did so much
Speaker 1: of that lift today that I will just their words
Speaker 1: speak for themselves. But what I will say is that
Speaker 1: if you've listened to this podcast, you've likely observed, as
Speaker 1: we have, that the many problems in our food systems
Speaker 1: that continue to reveal itself is that the businesses at
Speaker 1: the end of the supply chains, and not the ones
Speaker 1: at the point of origin, are the ones capturing all
Speaker 1: of the value, and to whatever degree possible, we as
Speaker 1: consumers can up end this. That is more important than
Speaker 1: any endorsement found on the label, and that criteria alone
Speaker 1: will do more to further a truly transformative food system
Speaker 1: than just about anything that we could ever do. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week for our aforementioned final episode of
Speaker 1: season three. I'm your host Steven Saderfield, what Stone co
Speaker 1: founder will see you then. Thanks for tuning in peace.
Speaker 1: We'd also like to thank our incredible podcast producer Selene Glazier. Selene,
Speaker 1: you are the best. To our editor and wet Stone
Speaker 1: partner into Rector of Video David Alexander in London. Appreciate you, Dave.
Speaker 1: Thanks to our wet Stone production intern Quentin le Beau,
Speaker 1: and last but not least, my business partner Mel She
Speaker 1: who makes all things at Whetstone possible. Thank you Mel.
Speaker 1: We'd also like to thank our partners and production at
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer and
Speaker 1: executive producer Christopher Hasiotis. We'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: more from the world of food worldwide Point of Origin listeners,
Speaker 1: As you know, rating and reviewing our podcast is the
Speaker 1: very best way for more people to find out about
Speaker 1: our very important work at wet Stone, So please, if
Speaker 1: you're able, we would really appreciate a positive review in
Speaker 1: rating on Apple podcast that will help others like your
Speaker 1: self find out about Point of Origin.