Carrie Balkcom: Beyond the Label— What Grass-Fed Really Means

Join Matt Maier, host of Regenerative Renegades for a sit-down interview with Carrie Balkcom, Executive Director of American Grassfed Association. Carrie shares her journey into agriculture and the pivotal role she's played in establishing trusted grass-fed standards. Together, they dive into the fight for honest food labeling, the importance of consumer awareness, and why not all "grass-fed" claims are created equal. This episode pulls back the curtain on what transparency in food really means— for farmers, consumers and the future of our planet. 

Transcript

UNKNOWN 0:02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome back to the Regenerative Renegade podcast. This is a podcast for people that are involved in the regenerative movement in some way, shape, or form and sharing their story, their challenges, and their hope for the future. Today, I have an old friend. Carrie Bulcombe with us. Carrie is a tireless worker in this space. She amazes me with her energy, her persistence, her resiliency, and her pleasant attitude along the way. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Carrie. Thank you. I'll share Carrie's bio. Carrie is the Executive Director of the American Grass-Fed Association. AGA, it's called, is the national multi-species entity organized to protect and promote grass-fed, amen, and pasture-based farmers and ranchers. AGA is the leader in pasture-based production and the oldest. Does that mean the first two, Carrie? Are you the oldest and first grass-fed certification? The first grass-fed certification. So she is a pioneer and a renegade in the United States. AGA certified is ruminants, pork, and dairy. Carrie grew up on a Florida cattle ranch and has stayed connected to the agriculture and livestock industry. She has spoken often, presented often, coordinated numerous regional and national conferences, and is well-known in agriculture, culinary and sustainable, and I would say policy, agricultural circles. AGA and Kerry has been advocating for a change to the policy of allowing a change to this policy that allows offshore beef to be labeled product of the USA. And through the hard work of a lot of folks, including AGA, this egregious mislabeling was added to an executive order signed by President Biden on July 9th, 2021. She is a force and a friend in the industry. Welcome, Kerry. Hey.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Thanks, Matt. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. And it's always nice to hear kind words about what I do, but it's all because of people like you that allow me to do what I do. So

SPEAKER_01 2:39

kudos to you. O-I-N-T. We do this together, Carrie.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

We do this together.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

And I still will be as humble as you want to be. I still will be amazed by your work, whether you like it or not.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Okay. All right. Well, we'll move on. So

SPEAKER_01 2:54

can you share some of the journey? that took you from growing up on a Florida cattle ranch to the work that you're doing today and why this has been so important to you. But I'd love to hear the journey.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Well, the journey was that I was of the generation that told their children, I think you were part of that too, to move away from the farm. There would never be a future for us. So I moved as far away from the farm as I could. And that was for about 20 years or so. And then I found my way back. It was different times in the economy and United States and stuff. And through an interesting, secure I found myself because of my interest in food and agriculture and working with slow food, the consumer side of things, at a meeting in 2003, the first meeting of the grass-fed movement. And it was when the United States government was going to allow grass-fed to be called grass-fed and put a label on it when you could feed 20% grain, administer antibiotics and hormones and confine them. and use that label. So I showed up at that meeting and it was not the way that I was taught to raise animals. And from generations of families in my family who had raised cattle without those things, without confinement, and all of a sudden realizing that the government was going to allow that label to be put on products piqued my interest. And I stayed from that meeting and I've been here ever since. So that was the route.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

2003. 2003, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

There was a meeting. They're going to allow 20% of the diet to be grain and still be called grass-fed beef. So 20% of the lifetime diet of that animal.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yep. And confined.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

And confined and fed. And it'll still be called grass-fed. That's interesting. That was the same year Thousand Hills was founded. So you're at that meeting. It didn't seem to make sense to you. So then what

SPEAKER_00 5:09

happened? We started working with USDA with AMS and FSIS and going to a lot of meetings in Washington and the president then of AGA a producer in Missouri and some other people we spent a lot of time with those folks and they were not going to give us everything we asked for which is what we have now in our own standards so USDA said we're going to only say what the animal has eaten not where it's eaten or how it's been raised or anything else. It's just going to be, that's what we're going to use as a grass-fed label. So this small working group said, can we start our own standards? And they said, well, of course, if they meet or exceed ours, that's easy. So we started in 2007. We had written our standards, which are followed to this day. And we started certifying in 2007 after the USDA said that there was still a And the other thing that they said in the AMS standards, the USDA standards, was if the animal has been fed grain, just make a note of it. He did tell them to take them out of the program. So HEA started a third-party certified program in 2007 for beef. That was our beef bison. And then we added lamb and goat. And since that time, we've added grass-fed dairy. We've added pastured pork and pastured poultry. And so it's been a of busy 20-some years of getting these things done. We're recognized by the USDA. We're recognized as a gold standard in some situations because of the way our standards are written. One of the things we did want to do with our standards is make them something that producers could do and make it accessible for all producers, whether they're small, large, whatever, rather than just having a bunch of scientists or lay people or legal people write the standards. Producers actually wrote our standards. So that's where we are today.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

So just to go back on what was going to– so did you say that they were going to allow antibiotics and hormones and fed in a feedlot and certain percentage of diet could be grain and that was all going to be allowed?

UNKNOWN 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah, they took out the feeding of grain, but they left the caveat in the standard that said, if you do feed grain, keep a record of it. But it didn't tell you to take them out of the program.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

So that's when we started our own third-party certified program. And we've been certifying ranches and farmers since then and adding the other standards in.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

You know, our brand is certified AGA, and I tell the customers that I talk to when I'm pitching them or talking to them, it's like, I have yet to find a third-party standard that is more rigorous or strict than the AGA protocol, American Grass-Fed Association protocol.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

The other thing that separates us, because there are other grass-fed certifications out there, We're USA only. We don't allow any certification outside the United States. And it sets us apart because those animals have to be from American family farms and farmers and from birth to harvest. So that really sets us apart in the consumer's mind is that we want to support local. We want to support USA only. And so it's been a long journey, but we're still hanging in there and we're growing daily and consumer... acceptance and retail acceptance. So that's where we are now.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

So the reason why, I'm going to guess here, but I think we're on the same page. The reason why those standards exist and they're so rigorous within AGA is based on the basic premise that ruminants and or animals on the land managed properly. is the best way to rebuild our soil and the food system. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah. From your

SPEAKER_01 9:40

perspective?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

From my perspective and from a lot of people's perspective and soil scientist perspective and nutritionist perspective on how the animal is raised and it's not fed anything. It's not supposed to be eating. It's fed a diet of forages, which is what ruminants were. designed to eat and so it's it's a better way to raise the animals is a better way for to maintain your soils and soil health so we're going to stick with that one forever so keep going going on

SPEAKER_01 10:15

and it makes sense because we're we're mimicking nature and we're just really the rules are in place the protocols in place to most accurately mimic nature on what we know happened for thousands of years and how do we recapture that in light of what we've learned through conventional agriculture, monoculture, pesticides, herbicides, neonicotinoids, and all the ways of killing things, that if we can step away from that and figure out how we can grow things and help things live and have a diverse grassland that there's so many benefits. I mean, the first thing is, you know, we're rebuilding the food system together. But then all those other benefits that come along with it, you know, by mimicking nature, you get nutrient density, you get wildlife habitat, you get improved water cycle, you've got photosynthesis happening more green days in a year, not tilling, pulling carbon out of the air. And that's, to me, that's why That protocol of AGA is so important because the benefits are many. And honestly, I mean, you can say that it's accessible to anybody, small, medium, large rancher, and that is true. Anybody can live by these rules if they want to, if they choose to. But in the world of beef, where so much of the beef in this country is trading boxes, boxes of beef in transit, where nobody really knows where that animal was raised in that environment, in the conventional beef market, the commodity beef market. And to me, we want to know, you want to know, how the practices of actually raising that animal and then following it all the way through the supply chain Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you and I both know. And boxes are put on a truck and we really don't know how that was raised. And I guess, I don't know if it's too big of a leap to say that you don't really know that about imported beef either. Well,

SPEAKER_00 12:57

you don't know. And that's one of the reasons we fought with some wonderful other organizations to get Product of the USA. It's not a mandatory country of origin labeling, but Product of the USA, because there was a huge loophole that if being brought into this country was repackaged in any way, that means taking out one plastic bag and putting in another, and then you could say it was Product of the USA. And we fought that one tooth and nail. And in one of President Biden's executive orders, that was added in. It had to be born, raised, harvested, and processed here. And that was the loophole before.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So that's being enforced now that it's not being enforced. Because that, I just want to make sure everyone understands that, that you can see a product on the shelf that says product of the USA and the only part of that USA that it participated in or that it landed in was that that box of beef came across the ocean, went to a U.S. processing plant, was probably put in a different box and then shipped back out. And I've witnessed this with my own eyes in processing facilities. I've seen the product coming in from whatever country, let's call Australia out. Okay, here's an Australian box of beef and it goes out the loading dock as a product of USA after they've changed the box.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Well, the USDA gave everybody until the end of 2025 to start implementing this. So we're sitting on pins and needles to say that it will be implemented at the end of 2025. As you know, things change, but we're going to try and hold everybody's feet to the fire and say you've got to stop this, especially with this buy local, be local, America first, all that stuff right now that we think that this is really important to keep in place. And these American Family Farms Yeah, you

SPEAKER_01 15:03

know, and I'm a free market guy. I'll compete, you know, with anybody, but let's not be misleading and mislabeling the product, you know, like let the consumer decide. It's like, do you want to buy Australian grass fed beef? God bless you. Hopefully, hopefully there's no thumb on the scale any which way. way that favors that. But let's not mislead. Let's just say what it is. Here's what's in the package. Here's where it was raised. Here's where it was grazed. Here's where it was processed. Here's where it was shipped. And just leave it at that. And then we probably should have a level playing field on tariffs. If there's going to be a tariff of beef exporting to a country, then that same tariff, I believe, should be on that same country's beef coming into our country. Personally, I don't believe in walls of stopping product from flowing. But I do think it's terrible to mislead consumers. And I'm not sure how that does look out after American farmers and ranchers by misleading consumers about what country the product came from.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Well, I said something probably 10 years ago or maybe eight years ago now. And I said, it's like the Beyonce song says, if you like it, put a ring on it. So just proper labeling, honest labeling. And that's what we've been finding. It seems like it should. Yeah, it seems like it should. Yeah. So that

SPEAKER_01 16:55

gives us a current state of the affairs. We're going to have to check in again after the end of 2025 and see where we're at.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

But now, can you share a little bit about what fuels your energy to stay involved in this space and why you feel it's so important just from a broader societal or food system perspective?

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Oh, Matt, it would take three days and a pot of coffee to tell you all the reasons that I, from the time that my great, great, grandfather, our great-great-great-grandfather came to the United States on a cattle boat from Spain. We call people like me an imprinted farmer, even though we don't sometimes live on the farm. But that runs deep in my blood and in my bones. And seeing these farmers that we now work with working as hard as they can and following the rules, following the guidelines Following all the regulations that you have to follow to put beef on the shelf in the United States and helping farmers reach that point to see operations. And I'll give you a thousand hills of plug. When I walked your pastures and saw how you were bringing teeming life and the microbes and the birds and all the other species that are living there. The Audubon guys were there one day that I was there and watching the birds and everything. And that's what we want America to look like. Rural America needs to look like that. And that makes me wake up every day and say, we can make a difference about this. We can take the American soils and the American farms and the American land and the areas that can't do arable crops or are not built on and turn them into productive food systems and not have to rely on other countries to feed us.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

That's

SPEAKER_00 19:03

a little deep, but we need to be able to feed ourselves. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Feeding ourselves, that whole, what do we want our land to look like? You know, that's so huge. It's what does it look like? Are we preserving it? Are we killing it? Are we regenerating it? You know, I just drove the other day from Oklahoma to Minnesota and And I was pretty encouraged in Oklahoma. You know, there was, I could see animals on the land. I could see managed grazing. I didn't see a lot of monoculture cropping. I didn't see irrigating. I just saw grasslands. It was so refreshing. And then as you drive closer to the Corn Belt, it changes pretty dramatically to you. Well, you don't see animals, you see large equipment, tilling, dust in the air, carbon in the air, irrigation, and you know what's coming. You know, it's spring, it's early spring now, and you know what's coming and what's going to be planted and how's that helping our food system? How's it hurting our food system? And so for, I don't know, 500 miles, I was witnessing a pretty monoculture landslide escape. And that's what it looked like. Brown, tilled up dirt.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Well, the one thing that we do focus on and we work closely as we can with other organizations who are helping us make markets and access to markets rather than just having a system that takes all the animals off the land, sends them to feed yards. And, you know, that's your only market. So we work with other organizations that are really good at this and working with the government to develop different food systems. So it's not a one size fits all type thing. like the things that you all are doing and other producers in the United States are doing is having an additional market so you don't have to send those animals to a feed yard. And you can work with your local communities and as far as, you know, online and that kind of things and the retail and the honesty around what you do. You know, in Canada, I see people in our generation whose kids are coming back to the farms And it's completely different from what I was told to do, was leave the farm. And it's to see young people who really want to farm and then see farmers who are what I call non-imprinted farmers who want to farm. They don't have any skin in the game. They just want to come back to the land. And every time I run into one of those, I want to give them a gold star and say, good for you. How can I help you?

UNKNOWN 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

For sure. I mean, we have such a parallel in our generation, but you and I personally, I mean, no one had to tell me to leave the farm. I just knew that I didn't want to argue about what bills were going to get paid that week around the dinner table and have no money and work 16 hours a day. And we ate good. We had a good, we had a good meal three times a day, but I knew I wanted something else that I couldn't, I didn't want to, I didn't want to replicate that. And, and so, yeah, you know, our whole job generation basically left the farm and fortunately we're two people that 20 years later the light bulb went off and we were like no we need to go back to the farm it's that important and there's that many benefits if we can do this right to our whole society and our whole food system but I agree the hope is in these people that the younger generation that I would say is much more enlightened than I ever was at that age for sure and kind of Coming back, I know it fills my heart that my kids are interested in, well, they're interested in food and where does it come from and what is good food and what is good practices. And they're asking those questions. That fills my heart. And I know it's not just my family, but going to conferences and seeing young people, like you say, that didn't grow up on a farm, we're like asking questions. How can I get involved? What can I do? What can I do with five acres and stuff like that? or stack those enterprises on those five acres and figure out what it is, what their skill level, what their interest is. That's our hope for the future, right? I mean, that's it. We need that type of person back on the land and wanting that lifestyle. And it isn't, you know, it's not a great financial rewarding undertaking, but the impact is so huge. big so huge for every person that's deciding to do that it's just giant and i just had a recent conversation where we were talking about how do we how do we collectively elevate food and agriculture to a level in our society where it's more valued

SPEAKER_00 24:26

You know, we talk about getting rich farming and it's the richness in your soul and in what you're doing and in your integrity and how you're relating to your family and your community and knowing each other. That's a richness that you can't get. And I don't discredit anybody for making a lot of money if they want to. But let's not discount the fact that that piece of your being that needs a connection with the land. And that's what I see in these young farmers. And like I say, people who have had different careers and all of a sudden go, there's something lacking here. And I want to find out what it is. And they come to our conferences and they call us on the phone and say, how do I do this? And so we also have resources that we, you know, and the return of women to the farm. Of course, my family was matriarchal. My mother's father died when she was three. So my grandmother and her sisters and kept up with things. Oh, I

SPEAKER_01 25:31

didn't

SPEAKER_00 25:31

know that. Yeah. She went back to school in the 20s and 30s and got a PhD in education. So it shows you how hard-headed we can be, Matt.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Well, there's no question about that. I didn't have doubts about

SPEAKER_00 25:46

that. Well, anyway, like I say, enough about me. But again, like I say, when I see these kids and, you know, I just, when I'm out on the ranch or, you know, in Arlington place I'm the one in a pair of cutoffs blue jeans and a pair of sketchers and these guys have silk scarves and boots and stuff and I'm going okay but you know it's just a different generation and I'm so pleased that they're adopting not only the lifestyle but the heritage and all of the things that go along with it and they're learning about their ecosystems and they're learning how they fit in with it instead of just driving around it and it's okay to get your hands dirty Yeah, it's so

SPEAKER_01 26:28

great to be connected to the land. It's hard to describe. If you haven't been, it's hard to describe that. But for those of us that have been, and the drawback is immense. It's in your blood, and it's hard to move. So let's quantify this movement a little bit. Okay. Off the top of your head, I'm going to ask for numbers. Given where you started in 2003 and then the first certifications in 2007, What's happened on a number of farms or however you want to quantify it, acreage, animals, is there a trend towards regenerative or what are you

SPEAKER_00 27:08

seeing? Yeah, we want it to be a slow-moving trend. We don't want rapid growth because that's not the way the animals grow and that's not the way this movement should grow. There's a lot of interest right now in regenerative. making sure that the soils and the land is included in the raising of these animals, not just, I want to raise cattle. Well, you have to make sure that your soils are healthy enough. And we get calls all the time where people say, what kind of cattle should I put on my land? Well, tell me about your land. And then we'll talk about types of cattle or number of cattle and those kind of things. And there's a lot of resources out there in agriculture. And people like you, we have people call you and other farmers to say, here are the resources that you can do. Right now we have, and I'm not on the day-to-day basis of handling that, but I think we have about 800 producers in the program and they're coming in every day. And it's not just cattle, it's bison, goat is growing, lamb is growing, grass-fed dairy is is growing. We've got two major labels that are using our seal on their dairies and that's really important because a lot of these small dairies are either Amish or other religious sects and some of them are still hand milking but we're keeping them getting a premium for their milk. We've just added poultry and that's another thing where people say I'm not going to eat meat anymore I'm going to eat chicken. Well Pastured chicken is– and we have standards for that now because the mislabeling on that is egregious as well. So we're working with the government on that one.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

So roughly 800 farms– multi-species and you're seeing interest in carrying on beyond beef and other species and the trend is, is it picking up steam? Is it a steady line? How are the inquiries coming in?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Well, we like to have it be a steady, slow, not slow, but steady progression. Because when you get those fluctuations of bandwagons, you see people fall by the wayside. And we want to make sure that anybody that is interested in doing this can succeed. And we know some people aren't going to be able to succeed. But rather than saying you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to, you know, make it work. Now, it's a journey, not a destination. And then helping these folks find markets and understanding that's one of the barriers to finding markets is processing. And we got some help from the government a few years ago on helping build some processing plants. But that's going to be something that's going to be critical moving forward is more ability to process those animals.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

species, you know, like lamb and hogs, and the processing for that has really gone away, at least in our region. You have to go hundreds and hundreds of miles to get to a processing facility for some of the non-beef species.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

So yeah,

SPEAKER_01 30:44

that infrastructure. And then, you know, the consolidation that's happened within beef and within protein in general, that consolidation into bigger and bigger plants and further and further away from from rural communities or affecting fewer rural communities. I think that's part of that landscape that you talked about earlier, like how do we reinvigorate through smaller multi-species farms and communities where you know where your food came from and you know the people and their practices. I mean, to me, that's core to AGA because you're really not for the very very big because they can't they don't even know the producers that are raising the animals they can't certify them and that's what I love about it is like that there's that level of boots on the ground where you do know and there's there's a difference there and I want people to know that that there is a difference when you're certified with any number of credible certifications but of course I love American Grass Fed Association And I love the protocol. I still haven't found one that's more rigorous that really takes into consideration the non-confinement and non-GMO and diverse grasslands and all of that. So all of that, I mean, I guess, you know, it's like diversity is good no matter what. Diversity is good on a farm. Diversity is good on the grassland. Diversity is good in the community. Diversity is good in our food system. So that, you know, in our diet, we're getting what we need. And I think that's just

SPEAKER_00 32:32

core to, that's core to AGA. consolidating it to send it somewhere else so they can sell it cheaper doesn't make sense to me I mean I don't cheap food who likes that I mean we all look for quality and we should look for quality not quantity and if you look at the prices if you look at the prices in the grocery store if you see I don't know I'm one of those people that I'll spend more for food you know because it's in Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you can't believe

SPEAKER_01 33:43

the pictures always. Yeah. That's for sure. Well, yeah, just the whole idea of cheap food. If all you did was discount the environmental benefits, the animal welfare benefits, the rural economy, just discount all that and say nutrition, there's easily, it's being quantified now, the level of nutrition that's in, let's say, any species that has access to a diverse grassland or or pasture versus fed in confinement there's a real difference in nutrition and hence your health so even if that was it right there to me that's enough and the cheapest food is not going to give you those benefits

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Well, and the nutritional analysis. I mean, a very dear friend of mine who's a professor at the University of Kentucky said, you know, you hear all the different conflicting studies and support. And he said, you know, the figures tortured long enough will admit to anything. But if you look at the real science behind what's going on and you know deep in your soul that things that are raised correctly are going to be better for the whole ecosystem and the animals and the farmers and everybody else. then I think that informed consumers and people who are learning, and it warms my heart to walk in the grocery store and see people reading labels. It really does.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Yep. Pay attention. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Yeah. There's one grocer that I swear they have a picture of me in the back of their meat mark. I said, don't talk to her because I ask so many questions.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

You know, I normally wrap up by talking about hope for the future, but you've already identified that through the and people coming back to the land, the younger generation. So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit and I'm gonna ask you to share with us What is it that you believe is consumers that consumers can do? So on that whole idea about reading the nutrition labels or whatever it is. So as we talk to consumers, what can they do when they walk into a store or they're buying from their farmer? What role can a consumer play in regenerating our food system?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Well, the first thing they can do is reading labels. And if you're not familiar with reading labels, They say talk to the meat manager or the guy behind the meat counter. Well, that's a first start, but you have to understand that they're only parroting what they've been told. And the other thing is, too, if you go to the farmer's market and you ask whoever's standing at the stand, did you raise this animal? Where is this coming from? You know, there's farmer's markets that now require certification for selling those products in the farmer's market. And then if everything else fails, call us. You know, like I say, if we don't know the answer, at least we'll be honest and say, I don't know the answer. But that's important. And there are some larger commodity growers who now have showcase farms where they have petting zoo farms and that kind of thing where they showcase these wonderful animals. And then it's kind of like the wizard behind the curtain in Wizard of Oz. That's not exactly what they're doing. And consumers a lot of times don't know what they're looking for. And so when they go to a farm, they say, no, this looks good, but learn what you need to be looking for. when you go to that farm.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

What was the diet of that animal? You know, like, okay, how it was raised, all that, you know, from a welfare standpoint. But I think point

SPEAKER_00 37:45

blank,

SPEAKER_01 37:46

what was the lifetime diet of that animal? Was it pastured? Was it grasses? Was there grains? Was there GMO grains? Like, I want to know the diet. I want to know, you know, we are what our food eats. So what did my food eat? Right? I mean, because you can tell a lot if someone just tells you the diet of that animal or chicken or whatever it is. Is that not correct?

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Absolutely. The other thing right now that is something that we find is that the term grass-finished does not have a legal definition. And what we're seeing, and not in all cases, but we're seeing where animals are being taken out of confinement and finished on grass, and that's being allowed on the label. So it's either grass-fed or it's not, like it's sugar-free or it's not, or it's real or it's not. And people say grass-fed. grass-fed and grass-finished because they've been told that all animals are grass-fed, but they forget the caveat until it's not. So look for the, and I'm going to plug myself, my organization, look for the seal because those farms have been inspected. They've had somebody on the ground. If there's any question, we follow up. Those farms are inspected at least every 15 months. And the reason we do it every 15 months instead of every year is you can see the farms at different cycles, different times of the year. and that kind of thing so it's important

SPEAKER_01 39:10

it is important and yeah I don't think you should be shy about saying look for the seal I mean it could be your seal could be another one but just know what that seal stands for and then look for it because the label itself there's not a lot of regulation around or at least tight regulation around what is claimed on the label itself but if it's certified now there's practices that have been certified so you know those there's a reason why you see some packages that have seals on them that look like a NASCAR and then there's other ones that don't well there's the purveyor of the brand that looks like a NASCAR is trying to communicate something to you about what their practices are and what's important to them so see if those values align with yours by you know it's going to take a little research but not everything is right face value on that label there's only so much real estate there's only so much you can say and some of that is misleading and you just got to know that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Well, and I agree with you totally. I mean, if you went through all the certifications that are out there, put it all on your label, your label would be about an eight by 10 piece of paper just for the label without any nutritional analysis type thing. But it's important for the consumer to know your farmer, know your food, but you got to know what you're looking for when you go to your farmer. And I hearken back to the little red barn that's on a lot of packages now. And, you know... And endorsements and that kind of things are important because it helps get your product sold. But I'd rather talk to the farmer.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

I like the shots of the chicken that's sitting in grass and is scared to death because it's never seen grass before and it doesn't want to move. But there's a barn in the background and there's a chicken plopped in the grass and you're like, whoa, that thing is nervous. It has no idea what it should do next.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Yeah. Yeah. But it's a journey and, you know the consumer is waking up with everything that's going on right now with the world and all of this stuff right now we want to be important to you and we want you to understand that this is important for us as a nation to keep our farmers because a nation that can't feed itself you know it's hard and that's something that we can do and we just have to to make sure that everybody works together to make sure that continues to happen.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

That's a perfect summary. Couldn't have said it better myself. This nation is fully capable of feeding itself. We do need to rebuild our food system so we can continue to feed ourselves and feed ourselves better, more nutritious food. But that's also a very enjoyable journey to be able to learn and understand and produce food that nourishes us, nourishes our soul, nourishes our bodies, nourishes our communities. Carrie, thank you for being such an advocate for all those very important facets of life. You should be very proud of your accomplishments and your work. And I'll always hold you in high esteem because you work on things that I never could. And I appreciate that you do.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

Well, you make my journey worthwhile. How's that?

SPEAKER_01 42:53

It was good. Great to win

SPEAKER_00 42:55

with. Okay. Win-win. Thanks, Matt.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Yeah, thank you, Carrie. Thanks for joining us. Look forward to seeing you soon.