Behind the Beef Smear: Is Eating Less Meat Really About Saving the Planet?

Texas Slim, founder of The Beef Initiative, on the campaign against beef

Texas Slim, founder of the Beef Initiative, in Washington on April 22, 2023.(Wei Wu/The Epoch Times)

“They’re trying to take the animal and the soil out of our consumption model,” argues Texas Slim, “and turn it into something that’s grown and produced in labs.”

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek and Texas Slim, founder of The Beef Initiative, discuss the campaign against beef and the radical transformation of our foods and its effects on our health in the past half century.

Jan Jekielek: We’re here to talk about The Beef Initiative. Beef has been getting a bad rap, in part from the way it’s processed. The idea is that at the scale we need to feed the planet, we need to have these industrial-level processing facilities. That’s often what people think of when they hear about inhumane treatment of animals.

Texas Slim: Animal welfare was far better before we industrialized our food supply. I agree, there’s a lot of nefarious ways to harvest an animal, if you look at the poultry industry or the hog industry. China has warehouses that house over a half a million hogs.

It’s not anything that we recommend with The Beef Initiative. We agree with you. Let’s get back to the micro level where we came from. Let’s get back to the source of that animal welfare.

The Beef Initiative is basically about taking care of livestock—lock, stock, and barrel. That’s what we do. I’m a West Texas cowboy that knows how to take care of cattle. That’s something this nation has lost.

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We need to get back to understanding and reeducating a nation on where food comes from. At The Beef Initiative, we’re giving you direct access to a rancher. We have an index where you can search for a rancher and establish a relationship.

Today, one multinational center can process thousands of cattle every week. Whenever you have micro-processing centers in your community, you have farmers, ranchers, processors, and distributors all focused within a 30- to 60-mile radius. That’s who they’re targeting to feed. That’s what a lot of people did in the United States, before they took those micro-processing centers out.

So we’re going to start with our communities first, and then we’ll go from there.

Mr. Jekielek: You’ve talked before about a crisis in the food supply.

Texas Slim: We’ve had a consolidation of multinational, industrial food corporations. They’re trying to create a one-world food group, to change what we consume, and the marketing behind it is big.

There will be a shift in the food supply for a lot of people. They won’t even notice it because of the types of ingredients and the type of things that they’re introducing into our food supply. It’s a fake commodity system, which basically takes out animal protein and injects soy protein into everything.

There was a report that came out saying 88 percent of Americans are now metabolically compromised. We have over 10 to 20 doctors that report data to The Beef Initiative. The No. 1 metabolic disease right now in the United States of America is fatty liver disease, partly because of the industrial food complex producing what we consume. They’re trying to take the animal and the soil out of our consumption model and turn it into something that is grown and produced in labs. So, there’s going to be a shift in nutrition, and it’s going to come with marketing plans that say you are saving the planet.

Look at Bill Gates. Why is he buying up farmland in the United States?

Mr. Jekielek: How much farmland does Bill Gates actually have?

Texas Slim: When I wrote “The Harvest of Deception,” he had about 242,000 acres of farmland in the United States. During COVID, China bought up about the same amount of farmland in the United States. It’s all done to control the food supply.

Now, Bill Gates is also one of the biggest investors in fake meat products that are coming to the stores and supermarkets. We’re being told to eat bugs and they’re saying it’s saving the planet and it’s just as good as animal protein. That’s 100 percent wrong. Besides, cows are land tools. They are the best thing that we have to sequester CO2.

Mr. Jekielek: How exactly are cows the No. 1 tool for sequestering carbon?

Texas Slim: In the panhandle of Texas, some of the most beautiful grasslands were there before any of us arrived. Those grasslands thrived because of the bison. They grazed on the grass, and they fertilized the grass. When the bison or the cow consumes that grass, it grows deeper into the soil. You have grass with a root system that grows deeper and deeper.

Whenever you’re able to regenerate the grass and the forage by grazing with a land tool like a cow, then that root system goes into the soil and into a density of nutrition, vitamins, and minerals.

That nutrition’s not there anymore because we’re using herbicides, pesticides, everything we can besides the soil itself to grow those plants. We need to replicate the successes of each small community, like Hometown Meats in Luling, Texas, Panhandle Meats in the Texas Panhandle, and Wrich Ranches in Colorado. We have so many different stories.

Mr. Jekielek: You’re not looking to fight with these large multinationals, you’re just looking at another way.

Texas Slim: It would be ludicrous to think that Texas Slim and The Beef Initiative are going to fight the corporations. But we have a business model we like, one that circumvents their protocols of producing food. We don’t have to participate, and I choose not to participate. I’m going to feed my child in a different way than they’re recommending. If they pay attention, maybe they’ll learn something from us.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.