The Moos Room™

Emily: All right, everybody. Welcome to our next episode of The Moos Room. It is my pleasure to welcome back one of our OG3, Dr. Joe Armstrong. Joe, you have some pretty exciting news.
Joe: Yes, absolutely. We had our first kid last week on Thursday. Little guy is here. He's healthy. Mom's healthy, so everything's going well.
Bradley: You're talking about a human, not a goat, right?
Joe: No, not an animal. An actual baby person. His name is Lochlan, L-O-C-H-L-A-N. Everything's going great like I said. No complaints here. He's sleeping well, and as well as you can expect, I'm still short on sleep, but everything's going well.
Emily: Good. Well, we are so excited to welcome Lochlan into The Moos Room family. Once we get that merch going, we'll get him a onesie. Don't worry.
Joe: Oh, perfect. That would be great.
Emily: We have the full OG3 here today, plus one. Plus, a friend of The Moos Room, I would say. We have a couple of people that get that distinct title of being a friend of The Moos Room. We are joined today by Ashley Kohls. Hey, Ashley.
Ashley: Well, hello. I am so excited to finally be part of this. I hear about it, I listen to it, and I'm excited to finally got an invite.
Emily: Yes. Well, we are so excited to have you. Ashley, why don't you fill us in a little bit on what you do maybe what you've done in the past slightly, and then we can get going?
Ashley: Sure. I guess currently I am the Director of Government Affairs for the Nebraska Cattlemen's Association. Previous to this, I worked as the Executive Director for the Cattlemen's Association in the State of Minnesota. I do a lot of the same things in regards to politics and policy and things that circle around the beef industry both within the state, but also on the federal level as well.
Emily: Well, that must be a big job there. There's a couple of cattlemen in Nebraska, right?
Ashley: Oh, there's just a few but the I guess independent spirit of the cattlemen is pretty much the same no matter what state you're in.
Emily: Before we really dive into it, we have two incredibly important questions for you. I don't think we pre-warned you, so we'll see how you do on the fly with these.
Ashley: Yikes.
Emily: Question one, what is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Ashley: Favorite breed of dairy cattle? That's a question I have not had for some time. I think you guys know in a previous, I was a dairy princess, so I also feel like I fit in this group because of that. Man, I would have to say Brown Swiss because I've owned Brown Swiss Cattle Show as you know. Yes, Brown Swiss.
Emily: I believe this is our first Brown Swiss, isn't it, Joe?
Joe: Yes, that is the first vote for Brown Swiss. Did you guys ask Mike last week?
Emily: We did. His favorite dairy breed was Dutch Belted.
Joe: Who would've guessed that he just decided that it would have to be Dutch Belted and agree with them?
Emily: I don't know.
Joe: Oh, yes, that's the first vote for Brown Swiss.
Emily: I'm surprised it took this long.
Joe: I know. Despite what everyone thinks, they do not actually produce chocolate milk but that is my favorite thing to try to convince people who have not been around dairy cattle and sometimes it works. It's pretty funny.
Emily: Well, Joe, you're just mean like that, aren't you?
Joe: I know, but that brings a total to two for Jersey, two for Holstein, two for Dutch Belted somehow, one for Normande, and one for Brown Swiss.
Ashley: Two for Dutch Belted. That's surprising.
Emily: That's amazing.
Joe: Super surprising.
Emily: That's a comeback I'm smelling. The next important question. Favorite breed of beef cattle?
Ashley: Oh, definitely Black Angus. Our family has Black Angus cattle. They are the business breed with their maternal traits and the meat quality.
Bradley: Seems a little biased to me. Figured you'd give a shout-out to the other ones.
Emily: What's our tally at now, Joe?
Joe: The tally for the beef side is, that's three for Black Angus, including myself. One for Hereford and one for Chianina.
Emily: I can't remember what Mike's was last week, Brad, what was it?
Bradley: I can't remember either.
Emily: It was something really weird.
Joe: Weirder than Chianina.
Emily: I thought he was going to agree with me again and he didn't so I was-- [crosstalk].
Bradley: It was not Chianina.
Joe: Emily will text him now. Hopefully, we get an update by the end of the show. That's very important information because the tally needs to be up to date.
Ashley: Those were easy questions. I'm nervous. I thought they were going to be more difficult than that.
Joe: Oh, no way.
Bradley: That is a difficult question because you didn't answer the way you should have.
Ashley: Oh, sorry, Brad.
Joe: Brad is a Hereford guy if you didn't know.
Ashley: Well, I would say if I had to pick a close second, maybe not close, but a second, it would probably be Hereford.
Emily: Maybe not close. It wouldn't be Chis. I'm hurt.
Bradley: We support all breeds.
Joe: We like money. However, you can make money, that's the way to go.
Ashley: It's typically with Black Angus cattle so we're good.
Emily: I just like the ones that are pretty. We have Ashley on. We're going to talk about a very exciting topic, a somewhat polarizing topic, I think, and that is sustainability and beef cattle. Before I get to that, I just heard back from Mike, and duh, remember, Brad? Brahman.
Bradley: Oh, yes. Brahman.
Joe: Brahman.
Bradley: That's right.
Joe: What is he doing?
Emily: He really is going for the fences on that one.
Ashley: Really?
Joe: He's living in Minnesota and he likes a Brahman. I'll write it down.
Emily: Yes, whatever. I guess. Anyways, circling back. Today, we're talking about beef sustainability. Can be a tricky topic, a controversial topic. First question about sustainability. I had to write a one-page essay about this, my first day of sustainability class in college. What is sustainability? I think that's a buzzword we hear a lot and everybody thinks of something totally different when they hear it. I pose that question to all of you to start, and let's try to keep answers short, 30 seconds if we can. Since he just gave the biggest eye roll, we're going to have Bradley go first.
Bradley: Sustainability, to me, it means many different things. It's being resilient and producing a product in the most environmentally capable manner.
Emily: All right, very good. Dr. Armstrong.
Joe: I don't have much different to add to that. It's very much about efficiency and using your resources as efficient as possible, and like Brad said, with a focus on the environment and that's really where it's gone. Now, I think there's a sustainability piece of that that has to do with the economy. It has to be sustainable for the producer as well to be able to make a living. That's the other only thing I'd add to it.
Emily: Ashley, what about you? What is sustainability?
Ashley: I think I can take a little bit of what they both said. I guess when you first think of sustainability, you do think of the environment and they produce a product in a way that allows future generations to continue to produce that product but you have to expand upon it a little bit more. As Joe said, there's the economic component to it as well. You can produce a product every day, but if you can't make money to sustain your farm going forward, you're not necessarily sustainable. I guess the less talked about component of sustainability is the social aspect of it.
You have the environmental piece, again, producing something that allows you to continue onto the next generation, the monetary piece that allows you to do that as well. Also, somewhat the social part of it's the social acceptance of it. Making sure that you're producing a product that people actually want to consume and how that also ties into sustainability. Again, very important.
Emily: Great answer. I suppose I have to get my--
Joe: What about you? That's right.
Emily: You guys all really hit on the main points. To me, when you think about sustainability and sustaining something, it's something that's going to last. Something that has longevity and how do you get to that point of longevity? For me, I think of yes, all those aspects. Economically, what can you do? Environmentally, what can you do? Ashley made a great point with socially, what can you do? I think that we hear about a lot of organizations and I think farms are included in this, the social responsibility piece that farmers have.
I think that ties in really closely with sustainability in that we are doing things that are good for the consumers, but also for the producers, for the land. I like Ashley is also a dairy princess, and so we talked a lot about environmental stewardship and sustainability in that way. Just talking about, we have to be good stewards of our land because this is where the farmers also live and work and play. Sustainability is a really complicated topic. Like I said, I think you ask anybody and everybody has a little bit different idea, a different first word that comes to mind, whatever it might be. Sounds like we're all pretty much in agreement here. I'm interested to see if we can take that through for the rest of this episode and I'll be in agreement.
Joe: I was gone last week when you guys were planning this episode. Why are we talking about sustainability today? What's the main reason that it came up?
Emily: Well, I'm going to slightly break our fourth wall of podcasting here. We do record on a little bit of a delay. Last week, when we were recording, the Burger King ad campaign had just come out, which really confronted the topic of sustainability and beef production and talking about ways that that organization and just in general, we need to be doing more work to be more sustainable. Specifically, they went down the avenue of greenhouse gas emissions. We all had a lot of thoughts and opinions.
I know, pretty shocking for The Moos Room here, so we thought it would be great to bring Ashley on to talk a little bit about that. Also, again, just largely be sustainability, what we think about what we need to do as far as greenhouse gas emissions, yes, but other topics related to that as well.
Joe: I think it's good to break that fourth wall of podcast. Again, we do record on a delay or there's a lag time between when we record and when the episodes come out. That's important to know. Things change pretty quickly with these kind of things. Even just in the last couple days, things have changed a little bit, but Burger King's been backpedaling just a little bit and I think we can probably start there.
I would say, Ashley, if you could describe it from your perspective on the shock value of that campaign coming out and maybe what the producers thought about, I'm sure you heard from a few people as soon as that ad came out.
Ashley: There's a lot to digest with the whole Burger King campaign, and I somewhat use that as a joke. You guys are supposed to laugh.
[laughter]
Anyway, you know what, in their shift was it last week when it came up, when they were going to basically shift from focusing on their menu to cow's menus is the avenue that they went and how they proposed or justified this campaign that they came out with. The thing I think that was the most offensive in regards to their campaign for cattlemen and for folks in agriculture, is the way that they made light of cow farts. It's they took a page from what AOC and her dialogue with the Green New Deal and made a video out of it.
The frustrating part for those of us in the beef industry or agriculture is that it's scientifically incorrect. Do cattle contribute to greenhouse gases? They do. If you look at the schema things, according to the EPA, it's less than 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions within the United States. When you look at the cow's biology, and I'm not the doctor here, I know we have Mr. Bradley J Heins who is that doctor. Oh, you too, Joe.
Emily: I'm not a doctor.
Ashley: Me neither.
Joe: Even me out. It's okay.
Ashley: Oh, sorry. When we look at the greenhouse gas emissions and where they come from, it's more from bovine belching. Not bovine flatulence. Making light of that whole thing and the scientific inaccuracies behind it with the big frustration. When they touch on how they plan to fix that with this lemongrass addition to cow's diets, there's a lot of things to unpack with that too as well. We started off talking about sustainability and part of that is, A, it's the environment but also the economics behind it.
Lemon grass is [inaudible 00:13:52] so maybe, maybe in the southern parts of Florida, can it be grown? Not anywhere near where our cattle are actually grown and finished through the upper Midwest primarily. If you look at sustainability, that is a big detract from I think their end goal when it comes to sustainability that we have to either ship the product in or grow the product in greenhouses, which takes a lot of fossil fuels, which there's flawed logic.
I think as Joe has said since we originally decided to talk about this, they have backpedaled significantly actually have issued an apology letter to the round table for sustainable beef in the name of apologizing to those in the cattle industry. They fully admitted that they took some creative liberties in filming and putting together this campaign. They also--
Emily: Including using Holstein spotted cattle in the ad. I don't petty, but like, ugh.
Ashley: You went there. I wasn't going to go there.
Emily: Oh, I will always go there.
Ashley: Okay. Because I thought about it's stable and it's not a beef issue, it's a dairy issue obviously because it was Holsteins
Emily: Dairy beef. Hello? Have you heard of it?
Ashley: Yes, but they--
Emily: We have several-- [crosstalk]
Joe: All calf taste good. You can't forget that. They all taste good.
Ashley: Yes, that's right. That's right. They do. They took creative liberties and how it could potentially have been misleading to some of their guests and they have adjusted some of their marketing materials accordingly to downplay parts and have a more serious tone according to their apology letter, but the damage is done.
Bradley: One thing that you would think of from a scientific standpoint--
Emily: I know where he's going with this.
Bradley: If you look at the research, there's an inconclusive study in Davis that determined that lemongrass maybe, maybe didn't work, and then the other Mexican study that they used was not published. You're possibly basing your whole marketing campaign off of something that may or may not work which sort of--
Emily: What do we call that? Speculation?
Bradley: Speculation conjecture. It inflamed a lot of the research group in the United States and other places because you're basing marketing off of something that may or may not work, which can be for any product, but that's really what got some people going to.
Emily: Let me just slide in and say that's why we at The Moos Room took issue with it because as University of Minnesota Extension, we're really focused on research-based information.
Joe: I know we did an episode on beef environment sustainability back in episode 4, so you can go back and listen to that to get a lot of the numbers we're talking about. That's one of the main things that we've talked about in the past is the first way you can tell if a source is even credible to start with is though they're talking about farts or are they talking about eructation or belching? If they're talking about cow farts, you automatically know that they're probably not credible because, like Ashley said, it's not where most of the methane comes from.
I just was absolutely astounded that they took that liberty without even looking at it any further than that. We want to give a shout-out to Frank Mitloehner at the University of California Davis. He is an air quality extension specialist there in the Department of Animal Science. Big shout out to him, he really came at this hard and got in touch with Burger King, really was on the front lines and is now working with them to help fix the things that were incorrect with their advertising campaign. Just a big shout-out from The Moos Room to Frank.
Ashley: I don't know if you guys all know or anybody listening knows, but I'm a habitually cup-half-full person and try to feel like, hey, what's the good that comes out of this? That you hit it right on the head. It started dialogue and conversation amongst folks about what is actually fact and it's allowed the really good work that they're doing there to be more socialized with folks within agriculture, but also outside of agriculture. There's a silver lining, right?
Bradley: I think maybe you might not agree with me, but I think the good things that come about this as well is for each farmer or producer to actually look at their operation and see how they can improve that because there's always room for improvement in the beef sector, dairy sector, whatever from a sustainability standpoint. Maybe the idea is to do that as well.
Ashley: Yes, I won't disagree with you, Brad. I actually think that the attitude of continuous improvement, at least amongst those in the beef industry is already there and we've been talking about beef sustainability for quite some time, and there's been some folks that come and talk to all of our various industry groups about it. For the most part, they do embrace components of base sustainability. There's always the folks who are like, we've always done it this way and we're going to keep doing it this way.
I think our biggest challenge is, and maybe it's a call to those people that it's okay to maybe deviate from the way it's always done if in the name of being able to sustainably produce beef in the future, and not just the environmental side of things, but the economic side of things.
Joe: I want to see your take on this, Ashley. I've been really pushing hard whenever I talk to any of our producers in Minnesota here. This is not a time to point fingers at other industries or to try to point out the things that are wrong or the bigger contributions from everybody else. I think that's all important information, but it's really a time to highlight how good a job the beef industry does, especially in the United States, and how efficient we are and how little we contribute. I want to avoid any negativity towards other industries. Is that the right way to go?
Ashley: Yes, I absolutely agree. I think the attitude of having continuous improvement and then being able to demonstrate that continuous improvement to utilize that as incentive for others to also want to kind of get on that bandwagon. We all want to be here for the next generation. We'll be able to pass off not just our farm, but our legacy to the next generation in doing things today to allow that to happen, I think, are important and people need to think about it. I do think that sustainability does get pigeonholed in just being environmental but making sure that they also understand that the economic side of it's important.
Then as Emily and I talked about the social aspect, if people don't want to buy your product, then it doesn't matter how efficiently you can produce it, you're not going to be here in the future. Making sure that we understand all those things that I realize, in some circles, that's fluff. You're just talking fluff and you're just trying to tell me what to do and that's absolutely not the case. It's just making sure we have the conversation that people understand that we need to acknowledge that our consumers want to make sure that we're doing the right thing and we want to do the right thing for them.
Emily: I think that's a great point, Ashley, and tying a little bit more into that social piece too and what Joe was saying about, yes, I think it's pretty natural human behavior to get defensive or try to go, "Well, we only contribute this much. Look at how much they contribute." Versus, like you said right off the bat, Ashley, you go, is there greenhouse gas production from cattle production? Yes, there is. I think that that's what people would rather hear, is us going, "Yes, this is happening and we know that, and here's what we are doing to address it."
Instead of going, "Well, the cars, they're so much worse than us." Because you know what? Then that's automobile makers, that's their issue. We got to deal with our own crap I think before we can worry about what others are doing. I think that that ties to those other parts of sustainability.
Joe: Ashley, like Emily gave us an introduction, has been a friend of The Moos Room, has been a personal friend of the three of us for a while. One of the reasons we wanted to have her on is we wanted to have an excuse to get a behind-the-scenes look at what happens from someone in Ashley's position or someone who's in a similar position when something like this happens. Just take us through the 24 to 48 hours after something like this happens. When do you just turn your phone off because it doesn't stop ringing, that kind of thing?
Ashley: I was sitting in the office and when initially, Burger King first tweeted out this video and what they were intending to do with this inconclusive research and that's when your phone starts dinging because people are either tagging you in a tweet or sending you a text message that they're like, "Hey, this is happening and we need to address this and head it off in the past."
The first thing I did is I had to watch the video and did some reading on Burger King's website to really see what they were trying to accomplish and talking to members who want to be able to address some folks who they either may be friends or family that say, "Hey, this isn't all necessarily factual." That's when within an hour or two media starts to call and say, "Hey, what's the beef industry going to do about this or how are you guys going to address this or how are you going to contact Burger King and tell them that what they're saying is not factually correct and they're throwing people under the bus unnecessarily?"
Talking to folks in media and telling them the story of what we basically started this off with absolutely, we fully acknowledge that 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US do come from the beef industry and we have groups working at addressing that. We have an attitude of continuous improvement with folks in the beef industry already making sure that number doesn't go up at all.
These are the things we're doing and use the talking points that cattle are the original up cyclers, how we can utilize grains and grasses that humans can't utilize to produce a high-quality protein that you should be proud to feed to your family, those types of things. Our national organization has a team of folks who are continually watching the media and have connections with folks like Burger King and reaching out to them and saying, "Hey, guys, what you did was inappropriate because it's not factual and you're making light of something that's a pretty serious thing. Greenhouse gases are a serious thing and you're making light of it in the way that isn't making you look the best."
I think that's been what generated this apology letter that we got from Burger King or all those secrets of events happening and having those connections to media to Burger King itself but also, more importantly, is connection to the cattleman who had the massive outcry saying, "This is not okay. Throwing us under the bus in this way is inappropriate." That's what happened. I would say that was about a 48-hour ordeal for that to all happen. Then the letter from Burger King came.
Joe: I think just like a lot of the producers, my biggest thing that made me so angry with all of this was, and I think Colin Woodall, he responded. He's the NCBA CEO, and he responded. I think he hit it right on the head when he said that Burger King chose to really ignore some of the facts, trying to score easy points with consumers by launching a misleading public relations campaign. I think that's what made me so angry. If they wanted to highlight a lot of things that were true and really didn't misrepresent anything and it was trying to score points with consumers by doing that, that's fine.
If you're going to misrepresent it and be completely off, ignore the science just to try to perpetuate an image that everyone in the beef industry and the dairy industry is trying to fix and is working hard on to fix, it definitely seemed belittling to all of our efforts.
Bradley: One thing that I think we always talk about greenhouse gases from that standpoint, and the biggest one is methane and carbon dioxide. We also have to remember there are many other greenhouse gases that contribute that can be far nastier than carbon dioxide or methane.
Joe: That's a good point. That's a really good point.
Bradley: Just to throw that in there. You think about it, because I work in pasture-based production, and nitrous oxide in a pasture-based system is probably worse than methane or carbon dioxide. I think we gloss over a lot of these things and it always gets blamed on methane. There are some other ones that we need to be more cognizant of as well.
Joe: If somebody wants to learn more and maybe none of us have this answer at hand right now, but if someone wants to learn more, where can they go? What can they do?
Emily: Not Burger King's website.
Joe: Not yet. Hopefully, they'll come around. Where can they go, Ashley?
Ashley: There's a few different places. There is two different groups. One of them is called the US Round Table for Sustainable Beef. They have a lot of information on their website about some of the efforts, research efforts I guess, that have gone into place to help identify where the beef industry can be more sustainable, whether that's environment, economic, or socially. There's a US Round Table for Sustainable Beef where they can do the same thing. You could go to those organizations' website to find information.
I will say this with a caveat, there are a lot of industry members who may not agree with everything they have on there. When you talk about those two organizations, it can be polarizing. If you choose not to go there, I would say you could look at university research as well as beef sustainability or you could go to the industry organizations, like USFRA, US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance website. They have a lot of really interesting content there as well where they talk to actually farmers and ranchers across the country to talk about what they're doing in regards to sustainability for their specific industries.
Emily: Extension just hired somebody to work in climate change outreach and education. We can maybe have her on an episode in the future. That would be fun.
Joe: Yes, if she's willing to be on, that would be a great person to talk to. Hopefully, we can reach out and get some collaboration going. This is a perfect excuse to do that.
Bradley: I think talk about environmental sustainability, social sustainability, it's not going to go away. It's going to be here for many years to come and we have to dive in and figure out how to challenge it and work out some solutions to do that.
Joe: That's the next question, I guess. We've got information on the general problem and what is happening on a big-picture scale to fix some of these things. Ashley gave us an overview of her role in all of this trying to lobby for change and make sure that the correct facts are stated. Where can producers go? Where can they go to figure out how they can improve their operation? Ashley, do you have somewhere for producers to go?
Ashley: I guess a lot of the same websites that I noted earlier, like the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef or the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, and I think Emily or Brad, I don't remember who it was, mentioned that you have a seriously awesome resource and extension and I'm not trying to-- Yes, in case they ask, can I say that, I'm not trying to suck up to you guys, but in the University of Minnesota, but also from the Nebraska perspective, University of Nebraska too, the beef extension folks and the dairy extension folks are also really good resources.
Joe: I don't think we have time to really go into what producers can actually do. That seems like a big topic that we don't really have time to touch on, right?
Emily: That's an episode for another day.
Joe: We'll just have to have Ashley back, I guess.
Ashley: Yes. You can delete this too, but if you guys ever do go to the USFRA website, their sustainability stories are really awesome.
Joe: Cool.
Emily: All right, that sounds like it is a wrap on this episode of The Moos Room. Thank you so much, Ashley Kohls, once again for joining us. We were glad to have you on this week. Joe, welcome back and welcome again to Lochlan to The Moos Room family.
Joe: Thank you.
Emily: If you have questions, concerns, scathing rebuttals, you think everything Ashley said is crap, you can send those to themooseroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time.
Bradley: Bye. It's always my fault, it's always my fault, it's always my fault.

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