Beef & Environment: Do people really care?

Leah Beyer, Elanco Author

08/27/2021 Added

15 Plays

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Leah Beyer gives insight to the role social media plays on sustainability of livestock production at the 2021 GSL Open House.

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[00:00:01.713](inspiring instrumental music)
[00:00:07.620]All right.
[00:00:08.453]I wanna start with giving a little context
[00:00:10.290]to why I am in front of you today and why I'm at Elanco.
[00:00:14.260]So, first and foremost, I'm a mom and a farm wife.
[00:00:17.500]I grew up on a Jersey dairy farm in East Central Illinois,
[00:00:20.630]and swore to my large animal veterinary and father,
[00:00:25.120]that I would never marry a dairy farmer,
[00:00:27.930]and I married a dairy farmer.
[00:00:30.560]So we milked cows for the first 10 years of our marriage,
[00:00:34.760]and then thanks to the worlds colliding of banking
[00:00:38.580]and the environmental agency in Indiana,
[00:00:41.160]we sold our milk cows.
[00:00:42.410]And then our kids started 4-H
[00:00:44.490]and behind my husband's back,
[00:00:45.910]I started buying dairy cows back.
[00:00:48.600]So now we live off the dairy farm,
[00:00:52.350]but I have too many dairy cows
[00:00:55.300]for someone who doesn't milk full time.
[00:00:57.820]And they become entertainment and fodder
[00:01:01.520]for everyone in our community we live in
[00:01:04.370]because they're smart cows.
[00:01:06.680]When it's raining, they don't wanna stand in it.
[00:01:08.690]So they jump out of the fence and stand on our front porch.
[00:01:11.840]So I share this because this is how
[00:01:14.040]I personally give glimpses into agriculture,
[00:01:18.300]through a food and cocktail blog that I have.
[00:01:22.640]So I also have on the side a food blog
[00:01:26.050]called "Buyer Beware,"
[00:01:26.930]and a fun little play on my last name.
[00:01:28.570]And then the farmwifedrinks.com
[00:01:32.070]I reach people through food and drink
[00:01:35.630]and then I sprinkle in the cattle in my life
[00:01:38.430]because I am very dairy cattle obsessed.
[00:01:41.630]So I'm here today to really help give you guys perspective
[00:01:45.220]on what we're actually seeing consumers talk about
[00:01:48.310]versus maybe what we're seeing the media talk about.
[00:01:51.370]And then couple that with
[00:01:52.730]what are people actually Googling for?
[00:01:55.150]Because we can think that the sky is falling,
[00:01:58.920]that everyone hates beef cattle,
[00:02:00.400]'cause they're bad for the environment,
[00:02:02.110]but at the end of the day,
[00:02:04.100]beef consumption hasn't really decreased.
[00:02:06.800]Sure there's plant-based alternatives on the market,
[00:02:09.770]and there are people who bought are buying them,
[00:02:12.760]but they tend to be meaty with eaters who are curious.
[00:02:15.550]So I'm gonna get a little bit into that,
[00:02:17.170]but I'm gonna actually start with some research
[00:02:19.590]Elanco has recently done.
[00:02:21.860]About every three to five years,
[00:02:23.530]we go out and we just test consumers
[00:02:26.520]on what they actually think about modern agriculture.
[00:02:30.830]And here's what we really found out.
[00:02:33.440]Two questions really remain.
[00:02:35.310]Animal welfare is a big issue to them still,
[00:02:37.266]or at least they say it is,
[00:02:39.410]and sustainability is.
[00:02:41.490]So if we asked them, what if anything concerns you
[00:02:44.820]about agriculture today,
[00:02:47.290]they're worried about large scale animal agriculture
[00:02:49.770]and its impact on the environment.
[00:02:51.420]They've heard that somewhere.
[00:02:52.370]They know they should be worried about it.
[00:02:54.020]Poor treatments of animals
[00:02:55.550]and contributions to global warming,
[00:02:58.190]sustainability, wellbeing of animals, cruelty,
[00:03:01.300]quality of life.
[00:03:03.720]I care about the animals welfare
[00:03:05.350]about how it's affecting our environment.
[00:03:07.490]And then finally, I worry about cruelty,
[00:03:10.330]what they're feeding them,
[00:03:11.610]they're actually worried about that,
[00:03:13.320]and that the practices are done in a safe,
[00:03:18.440]humane, natural way.
[00:03:21.760]If I'm eating meat, I want it to be natural and healthy
[00:03:26.100]and knowing full well that some of the competition
[00:03:28.070]that we have for natural beef,
[00:03:31.040]actually is called synthetic beef.
[00:03:33.280]So anyways, people are really confused.
[00:03:36.850]The reason they're confused is because if you open any email
[00:03:40.810]from it doesn't matter if it's a food company,
[00:03:44.020]a marketing company, I get all sorts of daily newsletters,
[00:03:47.260]in the marketing world, digital world, agriculture world,
[00:03:51.080]foodie world, you're being bombarded
[00:03:54.430]with plant-based everything.
[00:03:56.440]So Fast Company is a daily email I get.
[00:03:58.610]It is a marketing magazine,
[00:04:01.470]but they had a paid placement in July
[00:04:04.220]about a startup that has raised $75 million
[00:04:07.630]to make more cheese, plant-based cheese,
[00:04:11.720]in a marketing magazine.
[00:04:14.580]Plant-based fish
[00:04:15.970]is rattling the multi-billion dollar seafood industry.
[00:04:18.930]As if farm-raised fish and wild-caught fish
[00:04:22.620]didn't have enough to fight about,
[00:04:24.120]now they can fight with the plant-based business.
[00:04:26.540]And this was in Bloomberg Businessweek, it's big business.
[00:04:30.470]But really the one that takes the cake,
[00:04:32.320]the one that I'll get into
[00:04:33.520]to show you that really had the most momentum
[00:04:36.890]is the one and only Bill Gates saying that rich nations,
[00:04:41.430]cough, cough, the United States,
[00:04:43.440]should shift entirely to synthetic beef.
[00:04:47.500]So here's the thing that's happening in the media.
[00:04:49.920]It's really trendy right now
[00:04:51.090]to talk about two different things,
[00:04:52.760]lifestyle food and really edgy ingredients.
[00:04:57.520]And so when it comes to lifestyle it's pantry cooking.
[00:04:59.820]We all stocked our shelves during COVID
[00:05:03.260]and now all these people have canned goods, dry goods,
[00:05:07.200]stuff in their freezer, they don't know what to do with.
[00:05:08.960]So there's this rage called pantry cooking.
[00:05:11.390]I think it's what most of us in rural America do
[00:05:13.760]every night for dinner.
[00:05:15.720]There's also vegetarianism and flexitarian diets,
[00:05:19.830]super trendy.
[00:05:20.663]Flexitarian means you sort of flex,
[00:05:22.470]you eat whatever the hell you want.
[00:05:23.820]So maybe you're gonna eat black bean burgers,
[00:05:25.700]and maybe you're gonna eat a ribeye, you're gonna flex.
[00:05:28.330]Ingredients: herbs, roots, mushrooms.
[00:05:31.300]Okay, that's not too big a deal.
[00:05:33.490]Plant-based burgers,
[00:05:35.530]plant jerky, which I didn't even know was a thing.
[00:05:38.420]And then chickpeas or garbanzo beans
[00:05:40.800]are making all the rage back as an, again, a protein source
[00:05:44.270]for those plant-based people.
[00:05:45.860]So you think, yeah, this guy's falling,
[00:05:47.560]everyone hates beef, they hate chicken, it's no good.
[00:05:51.900]But then you start digging in a little bit.
[00:05:53.500]Okay, what are they really saying about beef?
[00:05:57.010]So if we want to make the environment better,
[00:06:02.510]we really need to give it up.
[00:06:04.950]And why beef is off the menu
[00:06:06.630]in so many climate conscious foodies
[00:06:09.574]beefing over beef is a distraction from the climate change
[00:06:12.850]that we can't afford.
[00:06:13.683]There's all sorts of opposing narratives out there
[00:06:17.290]when you dig into it.
[00:06:18.860]So it's confusing for consumers, and this is why.
[00:06:23.100]We probably should assume that most consumers
[00:06:27.270]are just glazing over all of it.
[00:06:29.420]So it's cut off the screen a little bit here,
[00:06:31.400]but the highest peak there, where it says Bill Gates,
[00:06:35.750]is 50,000 posts.
[00:06:37.860]So in February, when Bill Gates posted about that,
[00:06:42.530]when I look at the meat conversation
[00:06:44.150]and overlay the sustainability climate change conversation
[00:06:47.940]and see how many people are actually talking about this,
[00:06:50.320]50,000 people on one day.
[00:06:52.890]It went up.
[00:06:54.490]They talked about it.
[00:06:55.640]The next new cycle happened.
[00:06:57.920]Epicurious, a pretty major foodie website,
[00:07:01.640]drops beef recipes.
[00:07:03.990]It got 30,000 mentions, dropped and went away.
[00:07:09.280]And I'm showing you this because then when I looked at,
[00:07:11.780]how are people looking at just beef and sustainability,
[00:07:16.540]it's even less.
[00:07:17.840]So the conversation about Bill Gates wasn't just about beef.
[00:07:22.560]A lot of people were talking about,
[00:07:23.750]maybe we should go to synthetic or alternative meat options
[00:07:27.905]away from animal protein in general.
[00:07:30.750]And even with the Epicurious recipe, beef recipe drop,
[00:07:36.060]that continued to decrease as well.
[00:07:38.580]It is not as big a deal as we think it is.
[00:07:43.040]So then I was like, okay, I'm coming to Nebraska.
[00:07:46.010]What are they talking about in Nebraska?
[00:07:48.690]So again, you're gonna see some duplicates of stories,
[00:07:51.650]but then what the notorious governor in Colorado
[00:07:57.060]did with MeatOut Day,
[00:07:59.300]started popping up and percolating,
[00:08:01.000]which wasn't a surprise because we had Meat In
[00:08:04.170]and then in return to their MeatOut Day.
[00:08:07.270]So then I thought,
[00:08:09.722]what happened with the Meat In MeatOut conversation?
[00:08:13.650]So I dug in.
[00:08:14.483]I was like let's go back to March
[00:08:16.910]and let's see what happened.
[00:08:18.270]So the good news is for agriculture,
[00:08:21.110]Meat In had more mentions than MeatOut,
[00:08:25.118]and it has lasted a little while longer.
[00:08:26.910]People continue to talk about it.
[00:08:29.530]I put the word clouds out there
[00:08:30.790]just so you could see like how people are talking about it.
[00:08:33.950]Here's the one bad news that I'm gonna give you guys
[00:08:36.940]to ponder, to think about,
[00:08:39.020]is Meat In Day is actually trending over on the MeatOut Day,
[00:08:44.030]which might mean that agriculture actually told people
[00:08:47.870]about this movement called MeatOut
[00:08:49.850]that maybe never had heard about it before.
[00:08:52.300]So sometimes when we're upset, we have to be careful,
[00:08:54.560]are we spreading the wildfire that no one's talking about,
[00:08:58.840]and now they're gonna talk about it?
[00:09:00.760]So I'm not saying Meat In was a bad thing,
[00:09:03.390]'cause I think it actually was pretty smart,
[00:09:05.070]but maybe we should have never mentioned MeatOut
[00:09:06.970]or why we're doing it,
[00:09:07.930]and more talk about why we're celebrating meat
[00:09:11.220]and all the folks that are raising it.
[00:09:14.890]All right.
[00:09:15.723]So this is where it gets real rich for us.
[00:09:18.320]And again, the numbers are a little cut off here,
[00:09:21.820]but I just went back to the first of the year and I'm like,
[00:09:23.990]I wanna know what's going on in food.
[00:09:26.620]What are people talking about
[00:09:28.670]when it comes to food conversation?
[00:09:30.700]So all winter long people are talking about comfort food,
[00:09:33.510]'cause we're all depressed because it's winter.
[00:09:35.530]So they're like give me beef and noodles,
[00:09:37.610]give me chicken and noodles,
[00:09:38.660]give me all the things that tastes good.
[00:09:42.090]And then it starts to warm up,
[00:09:43.620]people start firing up their grills,
[00:09:45.620]and on this little website called Reddit,
[00:09:47.750]where people can anonymously fight with each other,
[00:09:50.520]people start fighting about rare steaks,
[00:09:52.930]because rare steaks are superior and some people disagree.
[00:09:56.920]The rare steaks conversation on one website got more posts
[00:10:01.560]and more hits than Bill Gates did.
[00:10:05.030]That is 50,000 mentions of rare steaks on one website.
[00:10:12.680]I'm telling you this because people just want to eat beef
[00:10:16.040]and they don't wanna think about Bill Gates.
[00:10:18.130]The other thing that has happened
[00:10:20.370]that we probably just need to take note of
[00:10:23.370]is that the chicken wing industry
[00:10:25.540]is sort of struggling right now with some shortages,
[00:10:28.030]so they've done this crazy thing
[00:10:29.880]where they think they can just substitute bone
[00:10:31.690]and chicken thighs, like whole chicken thighs,
[00:10:34.720]at the restaurant, and people will like be okay with that.
[00:10:37.840]So then there was a lot of angry people
[00:10:39.510]about these chicken wing restaurants
[00:10:41.470]substituting chicken thighs.
[00:10:42.810]And I share that because scarcity drives people mad
[00:10:46.960]and also causes conversation.
[00:10:49.100]So this is all just so you guys can see that
[00:10:52.300]at the end of the day, people are just talking about food.
[00:10:56.330]They're not thinking about the environment,
[00:10:58.210]and they're just fighting about how you should cook a steak.
[00:11:02.700]Okay, so I'm like, but all right.
[00:11:05.300]So yes, people just wanna cook steaks,
[00:11:07.040]they just want comfort food,
[00:11:08.400]but how are they actually talking about
[00:11:10.900]the sustainable meat conversation?
[00:11:12.720]If we look at animal protein sources,
[00:11:15.010]beef, dairy, pork, chicken, that type of thing,
[00:11:19.150]and then how are they talking about it
[00:11:21.360]when it's plant-based, alternative meat?
[00:11:24.400]And really what happens
[00:11:26.070]is farm becomes what gets talked about,
[00:11:29.600]it's all about the farm, farm-raised, that type of thing.
[00:11:33.460]On the plant-based side,
[00:11:35.780]it's really about just promoting a vegan lifestyle.
[00:11:39.770]Sure you see climate change.
[00:11:42.240]Sure you see environment,
[00:11:44.170]but the big words are vegan, meat, animals.
[00:11:47.600]They're really more about they don't want you eating animals
[00:11:50.960]than really caring about the environment
[00:11:52.610]they're using the environment
[00:11:54.200]because they couldn't get people
[00:11:55.450]to care about not eating animals.
[00:11:58.370]So I just want to give that perspective
[00:12:00.350]in the conversation too.
[00:12:01.770]The other thing, I don't know if we have any beef,
[00:12:06.640]not beef producers, farmers,
[00:12:08.710]but people who are making the goods
[00:12:10.510]that are going to the grocery store or plastic packaging
[00:12:14.560]tends to be more of a hangup for people
[00:12:16.360]than actually how it is raised as well,
[00:12:18.260]when you dig into that conversation.
[00:12:21.170]All right, now I'm gonna be a little controversial.
[00:12:27.576](attendees laugh)
[00:12:31.400]So listen.
[00:12:34.200]I mean, I personally believe in personal rights.
[00:12:37.130]I don't really care what your stance is on being vaccinated,
[00:12:39.990]but for a lot of people, it's becoming like a status symbol.
[00:12:45.437]"I'm Vaccinated" is really becoming the new,
[00:12:48.867]"I'm a Vegan" status symbol.
[00:12:52.133]And it's just becoming something that people are proud of
[00:12:54.590]or they think that they've hit
[00:12:57.300]a certain socioeconomic echelon
[00:13:00.150]if they can say, "I eat a hundred percent vegan."
[00:13:03.130]And so I just thought this tweet
[00:13:04.530]when I found out the other day was hysterical.
[00:13:08.160]But here's what I can honestly tell you.
[00:13:10.750]So we've studied a whole lot of food social media,
[00:13:14.550]and we're like, what's really, really trending,
[00:13:17.000]especially during COVID.
[00:13:18.220]So we locked down mid-March 2020,
[00:13:21.180]everyone stocked up on toilet paper for the next century,
[00:13:25.830]and then they discovered they couldn't cook.
[00:13:28.767](attendee laugh)
[00:13:30.390]And they discovered that what was left on the shelves
[00:13:32.490]at the grocery store, they didn't even know what it was.
[00:13:34.630]So there was a lot of Googling going on,
[00:13:36.410]but when we really got into the heat
[00:13:38.820]of not going to restaurants, people wanted steak.
[00:13:45.400]And so one of the largest viewed, shared,
[00:13:50.970]liked pieces of social media during COVID
[00:13:54.630]was actually how to make fajita steaks.
[00:13:56.920]This random steak video, on Instagram, hugely popular
[00:14:01.680]because people are like,
[00:14:02.513]"Oh, I just want steak fajitas again."
[00:14:05.120]The other thing that became really popular was spicy food.
[00:14:10.680]I don't know if it's because we're all locked up
[00:14:12.700]with our teenagers,
[00:14:13.660]but they started eating super spicy Takis,
[00:14:16.210]flaming hot Cheetos, there's every kind of pepper sauce,
[00:14:21.370]and they started recording themselves,
[00:14:22.730]eating these spicy stuff on TikTok.
[00:14:26.230]And finally, the other thing that happened
[00:14:28.240]was we all stopped traveling.
[00:14:30.580]So our trip to name the exotic place didn't happen
[00:14:34.890]and people missed ethnic food
[00:14:38.420]and they started searching for that and wanting that.
[00:14:43.420]Some steak is like the big thing
[00:14:45.920]that people were really craving
[00:14:47.300]and don't know how to cook at home.
[00:14:49.680]I decided I'm gonna get into Google Trends,
[00:14:51.680]I'm gonna see what people are actually searching for
[00:14:54.960]when I just put beef in, and see if climate,
[00:14:58.590]environment, good for you, whatever came up,
[00:15:01.707]and you know what came up?
[00:15:03.980]Ground beef.
[00:15:07.040]People wanna know what to do with ground beef.
[00:15:11.000]Then around St. Patrick's Day,
[00:15:13.750]everyone thinks they would like corned beef
[00:15:15.607]and they wanna know how to make it.
[00:15:18.230]What do you do with a beef roast?
[00:15:19.440]'cause again, another affordable cut
[00:15:21.400]that they got their hands on at the grocery store
[00:15:22.820]and didn't know what to do with.
[00:15:23.910]Recipes.
[00:15:24.743]Like when you look at what people are searching for,
[00:15:27.300]when you look at beef, it is recipes.
[00:15:30.320]So then I was like, well,
[00:15:31.580]maybe people are really interested in ground beef
[00:15:34.810]beyond recipes, well, beef recipes
[00:15:38.110]obviously is what they really all want.
[00:15:40.340]They want an easy dinner, a ground beef dinner.
[00:15:43.360]That's what people are searching for.
[00:15:45.340]Never ever, like ever,
[00:15:46.980]did I see the word climate change, environment,
[00:15:49.730]in the top 100 searches for beef or ground beef on Google.
[00:15:56.460]When I looked at the overlay of beef in climate change
[00:16:00.670]in Google, this is how the trends looked.
[00:16:03.560]It was sparse.
[00:16:04.640]It was small.
[00:16:05.640]There would be peaks every now and then.
[00:16:07.630]There was some peaks around Earth Day,
[00:16:11.540]but for the most part,
[00:16:12.620]people are not searching for this information.
[00:16:14.800]So even though we're seeing it in media,
[00:16:17.020]they're not even going to Google.
[00:16:18.540]And I know you all have either read something
[00:16:20.350]or watched something on TV and you immediately go to Google
[00:16:22.550]to figure it out who it is, what they did,
[00:16:25.330]if you wanna know the end of a show,
[00:16:27.100]but these people are reading articles potentially
[00:16:29.830]about beef and climate change
[00:16:31.300]and not even Googling about it.
[00:16:35.320]All right.
[00:16:36.710]So I wanna dig a little deeper with you and beef trends
[00:16:39.890]because if you're thinking, okay, so what,
[00:16:41.650]they're not really talking about sustainability,
[00:16:43.880]they're not really talking about climate change,
[00:16:45.890]what can I do?
[00:16:47.250]Well, here's what I can tell you.
[00:16:50.340]Talk about food.
[00:16:52.280]People want ethnic flavors.
[00:16:55.600]People want date night with beef, cough, cough, steak,
[00:16:59.480]and people want easy beef recipes.
[00:17:01.330]They want quick 30-minute ground beef recipes.
[00:17:05.990]Now, I know you all want an, let me just tell you,
[00:17:08.030]I've driven across Nebraska this week,
[00:17:11.520]The Sandhills are lovely,
[00:17:12.840]but no one is searching for beef cattle in The Sandhills.
[00:17:15.710]And I know you all take beautiful pictures,
[00:17:18.010]but you're better off talking about ground beef recipes
[00:17:20.290]and then randomly posting a picture of your Sandhills,
[00:17:22.510]'cause that's what people are searching for.
[00:17:25.890]All right.
[00:17:26.723]So then I was like, what's happening with meat-free,
[00:17:29.310]meatless options.
[00:17:30.830]It's pretty boring, guys.
[00:17:31.990]Like it's out there.
[00:17:33.250]People are talking about it, no one is really sharing it.
[00:17:36.790]So Tasty is a huge website.
[00:17:39.680]It's a huge social media presence.
[00:17:41.710]I think on this last slide I had a Tasty here, video.
[00:17:45.490]This one got like thousands and thousands of shares.
[00:17:50.290]These two things are some of their top meatless recipes
[00:17:54.210]they've put out on social media.
[00:17:56.490]It had 22 shares.
[00:17:59.850]I mean, it doesn't even look bad.
[00:18:00.760]It's ravioli tomato soup, it's probably not bad.
[00:18:02.710]Put a grilled cheese with it, with some bacon on it,
[00:18:04.310]it'd be awesome.
[00:18:05.391](attendees laugh)
[00:18:06.730]And then they were promoting plant-based bacon.
[00:18:11.040]I don't even like Turkey bacon.
[00:18:12.720]I mean, like, I don't know what they're trying to do here,
[00:18:15.100]but it only got three shares, so no one liked it.
[00:18:18.560]But then these guys
[00:18:19.393]who were actually promoting Beyond Fried Chicken
[00:18:22.040]actually did get a lot of re-tweeting.
[00:18:24.770]And honestly, I don't know if they got re-tweeting
[00:18:26.660]because it's Beyond Fried Chicken
[00:18:29.210]or because it just looked stupid.
[00:18:30.950]But anyways, it did get a lot of,
[00:18:32.440]it actually got 322 retweets.
[00:18:36.890]All right.
[00:18:37.723]So I've subtly talked about TikTok a little bit.
[00:18:42.800]How many of you have teenagers at home?
[00:18:46.340]Okay, a few of you.
[00:18:47.173]Yeah, I have teenagers at home and I have a husband
[00:18:51.300]in his 40s, who's obsessed with TikTok.
[00:18:54.260]It is like what we have done to save ourselves
[00:18:58.420]or our marriages, during COVID.
[00:19:01.560]So these kids are recording themselves
[00:19:05.270]and sharing it with the world the stupidest things,
[00:19:08.800]but it has to do with what they're eating.
[00:19:10.330]So this kid, king of crunch, Tommy Winkler, is a 19-year-old
[00:19:15.450]who just records himself eating every day.
[00:19:18.380]And I'm afraid to know how much money this kid is making,
[00:19:22.040]because now I'm sure food companies are sending him food
[00:19:24.620]to eat on TikTok 'cause he has over 4 million followers.
[00:19:32.360]And he starts food trends.
[00:19:33.960]So if you ever have a child come to you
[00:19:36.890]and ask you for a really weird thing
[00:19:38.720]at a fast food restaurant or a weird combination,
[00:19:42.400]it's probably from TikTok.
[00:19:44.900]I am telling you this kid has started so many trends.
[00:19:48.020]The other thing that's happening
[00:19:49.630]is Google now is recognizing that people are putting
[00:19:52.510]how they made easy food on TikTok.
[00:19:55.920]So you literally can search TikTok chicken and rice,
[00:20:00.470]and you're gonna find a recipe
[00:20:02.160]that someone posted on TikTok,
[00:20:03.700]that then they made a YouTube video
[00:20:05.900]or they blogged a recipe for it.
[00:20:07.670]But TikTok is now what is starting the trends
[00:20:11.570]in fast food restaurants, at home cooking,
[00:20:14.610]I'm telling you, these are fast 32nd recipes.
[00:20:19.320]I don't know if any of you had the opportunity
[00:20:22.630]to have roasted tomatoes with Feta cheese served with pasta,
[00:20:27.340]if you did, it started on TikTok.
[00:20:30.930]There are European countries that ran out of Feta cheese
[00:20:33.450]because of this TikTok,
[00:20:36.210]and that's not a joke, you can Google that too.
[00:20:39.920]Do you guys remember the Californian who his car broke down
[00:20:43.530]so he would ride a skateboard while drinking cranberry juice
[00:20:48.160]on the way to work, and then Ocean Spray bought him
[00:20:51.030]a brand new truck?
[00:20:52.330]TikTok.
[00:20:54.430]The trend now, any of you eat mustard on watermelon,
[00:20:57.850]anyone? (attendees laugh)
[00:20:58.980]Right, bizarre.
[00:21:00.570]I'm telling you they're doing it on TikTok,
[00:21:03.140]it's been trending all summer.
[00:21:04.850]It's crazy.
[00:21:07.210]But here's the thing.
[00:21:08.160]We have some kind of euphoric addiction to food recipes.
[00:21:17.310]When we look at this content, it always is videos.
[00:21:20.930]People are mesmerized with those overhead shots
[00:21:23.610]of people making food,
[00:21:25.520]and we can not stop ourselves from watching it.
[00:21:28.300]It doesn't matter if they're talking,
[00:21:29.470]it doesn't matter if there's music,
[00:21:31.800]they just are enamored and love these videos.
[00:21:35.590]And so that's why platforms like TikTok are taking off
[00:21:38.380]and really starting trends.
[00:21:39.960]And I'm not telling you all to download TikTok
[00:21:42.220]and start making videos, but I think you need to understand
[00:21:44.750]what's really pushing the conversation,
[00:21:47.160]and when you're thinking about what's trending
[00:21:49.180]or what's happening,
[00:21:51.010]go search TikTok and see what's happening.
[00:21:53.600]So I also wanna share with you
[00:21:55.300]that you have some pretty big name advocates
[00:21:59.860]for your industry.
[00:22:01.690]So I'm gonna try to play this video.
[00:22:06.002](indistinct singing)
[00:22:14.501](indistinct chattering)
[00:22:16.470](attendees laugh)
[00:22:19.090]All right, so Gordon Ramsay, "Hell's Kitchen," the Brett,
[00:22:22.720]the angry Brett, he hates vegans, he hates them.
[00:22:27.690]And he has this thing he does called Ramsay Reacts
[00:22:31.760]where he goes side-by-side next to someone like this woman
[00:22:34.850]who's a vegan who wants him to feel bad for eating animals.
[00:22:38.720]So she sings a song to him and if he couldn't hear it is
[00:22:41.387]"Eating animals is wrong, Gordon Ramsey.
[00:22:43.507]"Hurting animals is wrong, Gordon Ramsey.
[00:22:45.477]"Share this song, and if you call me a donut, that's fine,
[00:22:48.537]"as long as you're a vegan from now on."
[00:22:51.880]Called her a vegan donut
[00:22:52.880]and then ate a cheeseburger as his reaction.
[00:22:57.160]But the beautiful thing about people like Gordon Ramsay
[00:22:59.790]is he's okay with who he is and he likes eating beef
[00:23:04.860]and people love eating his food
[00:23:06.820]and they love making his food at home now.
[00:23:09.470]And he can say things that you all cannot say
[00:23:13.090]because he has that authority.
[00:23:14.890]So I share this as an example of the good
[00:23:17.090]that's also happening that maybe you guys
[00:23:18.650]have never even heard of something called Ramsay Reacts,
[00:23:20.990]but he's out there single handily,
[00:23:23.380]promoting eating beef burgers,
[00:23:25.160]and slamming people who think that plant-based meat
[00:23:28.570]is an acceptable alternative to regular meat.
[00:23:31.560]So just fun fodder,
[00:23:32.840]if you download TikTok today
[00:23:34.270]that you can go find Ramsay Reacts.
[00:23:37.400]All right, to wrap it up, I'm gonna close it out
[00:23:40.220]with some of the research we've done.
[00:23:42.500]So we tend, in agriculture, to say, first of all,
[00:23:46.320]to give all of the information, I like to say,
[00:23:49.390]sometimes we wanna quote the entire Bible to people
[00:23:52.260]when really they just need one little Bible verse.
[00:23:54.570]So that happens when we're talking to people
[00:23:56.570]about environment, animal welfare, that type of thing.
[00:24:00.940]But what consumers here, when we say those things,
[00:24:04.335]they become defensive or they feel like they're not heard.
[00:24:08.220]So even sometimes they don't align with their own truth.
[00:24:12.980]So if we even say to them, in fact,
[00:24:14.570]43% of shoppers bought more meat
[00:24:17.800]as a result of the pandemic, they get defensive,
[00:24:21.160]where are they getting this?
[00:24:22.427]"That's not what happened for me, it was the opposite."
[00:24:26.880]Everyone can't be saying that if we know,
[00:24:28.870]based on the shopping data, that people bought more.
[00:24:32.230]We can't just say things,
[00:24:33.300]we envision a net-zero greenhouse gas emission farm
[00:24:36.160]of the future.
[00:24:37.470]Well, that's vague, how you get to net-zero.
[00:24:40.810]So we need to think about how do we word things?
[00:24:42.850]How do we have ownership?
[00:24:44.890]So then we started testing new ways to say things.
[00:24:47.780]So I'm just gonna leave you with these perspectives.
[00:24:50.670]So assume responsibility, first of all, we're all farmers.
[00:24:54.430]Everyone has a role to play.
[00:24:57.130]The farmers, the consumers, everyone in the middle.
[00:25:01.440]From producers to consumers,
[00:25:02.650]it's our responsibility to find solutions, takes ownership.
[00:25:07.280]And then they react,
[00:25:08.113]well, I'm glad they're acknowledging that,
[00:25:10.410]they just want you to acknowledge it.
[00:25:12.320]Now they're your friends.
[00:25:14.240]Companies are the ones with all the money
[00:25:15.790]that can make the real change.
[00:25:17.920]Emphasize choice.
[00:25:19.000]I feel like agriculture is really good about that,
[00:25:20.960]but sometimes we forget to mention it.
[00:25:23.470]So no matter where or how or where you choose
[00:25:26.190]to get your protein, it's always your choice.
[00:25:29.730]Well, they're not pressuring you
[00:25:31.476]to letting you know that you can do,
[00:25:35.700]you know that when you do purchase meat, it will be healthy.
[00:25:38.610]And then finally, when you spell out what we're gonna do,
[00:25:41.700]if we can reduce methane emissions by one third,
[00:25:45.540]not to zero, but by one third by 2050,
[00:25:47.950]it'll actually have a cooling impact on the environment.
[00:25:50.720]I like that, they specifically mentioned a plan.
[00:25:54.250]We're helping farmers get to net-zero,
[00:25:55.920]removing the same amount of greenhouse gas
[00:25:57.910]from the atmosphere as they produce.
[00:26:01.200]Well, I like that concept.
[00:26:02.740]I can see how they can reach net zero with that.
[00:26:06.370]So one last reminder, even during a pandemic
[00:26:10.870]no one buys plant-based food.
[00:26:13.002](attendees laugh)
[00:26:15.240]We were not that hungry.
[00:26:16.940]I have a lot of pictures like this, if you need any.
[00:26:19.840]All right.
[00:26:20.920]So a few takeaways.
[00:26:22.680]Pay attention to paid placement.
[00:26:25.210]So if you're reading a news article
[00:26:26.640]and it's really pushing climate change
[00:26:29.200]and beef plant-based propaganda,
[00:26:32.240]look for the paid or sponsored heading, it probably is.
[00:26:35.650]That's what we found.
[00:26:37.060]Everyone is looking for differentiation and trending.
[00:26:39.850]So you might be like,
[00:26:40.683]"Wow, everyone's obsessed with having a plant-based burger
[00:26:43.347]"on their menu."
[00:26:44.320]It's not because people are ordering it,
[00:26:45.830]they're just trying to differentiate themselves.
[00:26:48.860]Scarcity, think chicken wings,
[00:26:51.140]continues to be what motivates people to talk about things.
[00:26:54.980]People want to escape.
[00:26:56.670]TikTok is an escape.
[00:26:59.800]Key perspective again,
[00:27:00.800]on what the chatter is on meatless actually,
[00:27:03.100]people could be talking about meatless,
[00:27:05.090]people like Gordon Ramsay,
[00:27:06.510]but it's really because he's making fun of it.
[00:27:09.540]And then finally talk more about steak
[00:27:12.750]and less about the Colorado governor
[00:27:16.840]'cause people just wanna eat steak.
[00:27:19.340]All right, I'm probably out of time,
[00:27:21.360]but any quick questions.
[00:27:24.120]Quick questions.
[00:27:25.320]Hold on.
[00:27:26.772]I'll bring you a mic.
[00:27:32.130]Thank you, Leah, that was fantastic.
[00:27:33.800]And it really helped to reassure me about the perspective
[00:27:36.830]of the media versus what consumers
[00:27:38.580]are actually searching for.
[00:27:39.850]I'm impressed with all your skills
[00:27:41.250]to find all of that information.
[00:27:43.230]That last picture about the meat case
[00:27:45.180]with what people are actually spending money on,
[00:27:47.480]do we have any resources for consumer indexes?
[00:27:50.120]Like it's great that maybe the conversation isn't as robust
[00:27:54.470]around the these alternatives
[00:27:56.420]and not only plant-based but the other kind of
[00:27:58.900]more environmentally friendly premiums,
[00:28:01.530]PPCs that producers can enroll in.
[00:28:03.930]Do we have numbers about where money
[00:28:05.160]is actually being spent?
[00:28:06.530]Like what's the market share?
[00:28:08.700]Yes.
[00:28:09.533]So The Grocery Manufacturers Association
[00:28:11.400]and then also Nielsen, both have that data.
[00:28:14.110]So there's actually a gentleman at Elanco
[00:28:16.210]that works closely with those,
[00:28:17.490]and we have a lot of data on that.
[00:28:18.950]Actually, I'm gonna tell you to follow up with Bruce
[00:28:21.080]or Jerry, to get you information like that.
[00:28:23.670]'Cause if you're interested in it,
[00:28:24.690]it's something that gets emailed out once a month to us.
[00:28:28.330]So we understand those trends
[00:28:29.720]'cause like meat purchases and how they fluctuated,
[00:28:33.080]how does that compare to not just the meatless,
[00:28:35.210]but like the trendy or labeled foods?
[00:28:38.980]We have that data actually.
[00:28:40.310]And they are collecting that,
[00:28:41.550]which is why even things like cage-free eggs,
[00:28:45.230]like there's still too many on the shelves
[00:28:47.640]based on purchase patterns, people aren't buying them.
[00:28:50.220]But like it's almost hard for me
[00:28:52.590]at some of my grocery stores to find large white eggs,
[00:28:57.570]like normal commodity eggs,
[00:29:03.250]because there's so many of the other ones.
[00:29:04.530]Like Meijer is one of the stores, to pick on Meijer,
[00:29:06.610]where I'm just like where's your freaking normal eggs?
[00:29:09.230]So we have that data.
[00:29:12.640]I think, Bruce, can you follow up with her?
[00:29:15.310]It's Bill Gutridge.

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Beef & Environment: Do people really care?

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