The Prettiest Toxic Waste in America

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans podcast, episode 58. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi! Hi, everybody. So in this episode, we'll be talking about what I think is your new hyperfixation, which is pink pools of pig shit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:13

It is. Thank you for noticing that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:15

It'd be hard not to notice. We're also going to cover our bite-sized coaching topic, which is how to get enough protein without gorging on peanut butter or having to cook all the time. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:24

New news!

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:26

So the first piece of news we have here is that Misfits Protein Bars they're no longer a fully vegan brand

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:33

Yeah they announced it i think on tuesday, i didn't like the way they announced it yeah so on monday they were doing like stupid ass little teasers and they were like something new and exciting's coming right and then everyone in the comments was like oh what's it gonna be is it still vegan so excited then they come out on tuesday and they post some stupid video and it's and they don't even say that it's not vegan in the video you have to go to the caption to find out that it's not vegan, and then like everybody was commenting and they were like oh really disappointed to see this you know yeah and they were just like oh don't worry our plant-based protein bars aren't going anywhere.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15

Right. So the new protein bar has whey protein, which is from milk, and bovine collagen. So it's not even vegetarian anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:23

They went right past vegetarian to full omnivore. And then they're pretending to not know why people are mad. And they definitely know why people are mad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30

We want to make sure we share this as widely as we can, mainly so nobody accidentally buys non-vegan products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:35

Right. I mean, I know when I'm shopping, if the brand is vegan and I know it's a vegan brand, I'm actually not looking at the label. You know, like I'm just thinking of Violife cheese or like Daiya products. Right. It's like those are vegan brands. So I just know I'm safe to buy anything because I don't have any allergies.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:52

Right. And there are some, you know, vegan products we buy from brands that aren't exclusively vegan. But this is a different situation because this brand already has the trust of being like a fully vegan product.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:02

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:03

And then they kind of like sneakily a little bit, you know, launch this new product.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:07

That's pretty sneaky, actually.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:09

And they don't really say like, oh, this isn't vegan. Warning, warning.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:12

Yeah, like, it should be all over the front label. Right. Because everyone assumes it's vegan. Like, it shouldn't be just hidden in the ingredients, because most people aren't even going to be looking at the ingredients, because it was a fully vegan brand. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:24

So, there's been a lot of people commenting on their post about this, and, you know, they haven't really responded in a great way. I don't think they made anybody feel better about it. So, we'll see how it turns out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:34

My favorite one was... So I think we all assumed the name Misfits was because they were a vegan protein, bar. Yeah. And someone was like, you can't use the name Misfits anymore. You're just basic bitches.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:47

Yeah, that's funny. And I think there is something to that because now you're like competing with just commodity protein bars. Like you're losing your niche. You pissed off all your customers. I'm not really sure if this is worth it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:59

Yeah. Another thing I saw was like the only reason that you did well in the vegan market is because we bought it. we bought your stuff because you were an all vegan brand um but your products actually aren't that good to go to the main market no.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:12

I mean i don't disagree with that i've never uh they're never been my favorite even on the vegan

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:17

Market they were my favorite but and you're pretty picky yeah i'm incredibly picky but now we're looking for some new protein brands um, so if you want to support some fully vegan brands that aren't little bitch sellouts here's some options we've compiled So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:34

The first one we have here is Aloha. Their average macros are like 200 to 260 calories with 14 grams of protein. I haven't had this one yet, but it seems like a pretty good option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:44

I also haven't had this one yet. Gotten a lot of feedback that people really like this one. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:49

And I think actually several of these we're going to list I haven't tried. So this is not like an endorsement. This is just if you want to go find some new brands.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:57

Yes, this is like if you would like carefree shopping from brands that are fully vegan, you don't have to worry about accidentally buying something non-vegan. Or maybe you just don't want to purchase from someone like Misfits who was fully vegan, used vegans to get popular, and then screwed us all over. Here are some options.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:14

Yeah. Next is UbiBars, typically like just under 100 calories with about 10 grams of protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:20

Yeah, we did try these recently. We got like an assortment pack. They were pretty good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:24

They were okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:25

You didn't like them?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:27

I said they were okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:28

Yeah, he's just, he's kind of like that. I thought they were, I actually thought they were kind of similar to Misfits, like texture-wise. Yeah. And flavor-wise, so this will probably be my go-to.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:40

Okay. There's also Go Macro, which is a little heavier on the calories. It's like 260 to 270 calories with 12 grams of protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:48

I don't know that I've had this brand.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:49

I've seen it in stores a lot, but I've never tried it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:51

Yeah. People say a lot of good things about them. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:53

Next is my favorite, the no cow bars. It's like 190 to 210 calories and 20 grams of protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:00

Yeah. You know what? I love their commitment to the no cow cause, but I can't do the texture. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:09

So these kind of hit the golden rule for protein bars. It's like 40% protein a lot of people look for. So that's why I like them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:14

So does Yubi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:15

So does Yubi, yeah. A little more even.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:17

Simply protein. Now, it's about 140 to 150 calories with 12 to 13 grams of protein. I actually like these. They're basically, I don't know, basically edamame puff bars.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:30

These are really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:31

They are good. The macros aren't quite as good as like no cow and yubi, but it's pretty close. Yeah. I don't know. I just like that they didn't taste overly sweet and artificial to me, and the texture was good because it was just kind of like crunchy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:45

To me, this one almost tasted more like a granola bar than it did like a protein bar.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:50

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:51

But it was higher protein, so it was pretty good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:53

They were closest to something I would make in the kitchen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:56

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:58

So, that's why I liked them. I have a really big texture issue. I just don't like, like, chewy, dense, like, mushy. Yeah. Hate that. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:11

Next is IQ Bar, typically 170 calories to 12 grams of protein. I think these are also pretty popular. I've seen them in the store a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:18

I think we've had a few of these.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:20

We've had a few. The flavors I've tried I haven't loved, but I'm sure there's something out there that you'll like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:25

The next up is Trek Bars, which are 190 to 210 calories, 15 to 16 grams of protein. Pretty good macros. I think this is more in the UK because I couldn't actually find any here. But a lot of people from the UK were saying they were really good. So if you're in the UK, maybe try them. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:44

Then you have TruBar, which is like 190 calorie with 12 grams of protein. They have a lot of different interesting flavors.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:51

This one, so I posted about this on my Instagram, and this one kept coming up as, like, I think the majority favorite. Yeah. Lots of people like True Bar, and they got lots of favorite flavors. We actually bought an assortment pack and tried them last night. Yeah. I like the flavor. The texture, I cannot get behind.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:10

Yeah. It's kind of a very chewy, dense texture.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:15

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:15

I find it kind of similar to no-cow, which I kind of like. But they have really good flavors.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:20

The flavors were really nice. Yeah. I just have a real big hang-up with textures. They have to have crunch or something, or I can't. I physically can't swallow them. I don't know what's up with that, but I was like, ooh. Nope, couldn't get through the bar. They tasted good, though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:36

Yeah. Another one is Mezcla, which is on the lower end, I think, for the protein, for the ones we're looking at. 170 calories, 11 grams of protein, something like that. Haven't tried these at all, but they're a fully vegan brand, so check it out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:50

The next is, I think it's pronounced Vive.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:53

Vive.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:54

Vive or Vive Bars.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:56

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:57

It's a UK brand, another UK brand. But the calories are 170 for about 5 grams of protein, definitely lower. But I had a few people from the UK saying like, oh, don't forget about these. You know, they're fully vegan and they're really good. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:11

I would almost not consider that a protein bar, but if people like them, hey, sure. Yeah. Next is form bars, which we haven't tried these. We have some on the way to try them out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:22

They only had two flavors, but the flavors sounded good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:24

Yeah. 200 calories, 15 grams of protein. So not too bad.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:27

Yeah. Got a lot of good feedback on these two. Next is Huel bar. I didn't even know they had a protein bar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:34

I didn't either. Huel's protein, like drinks and their meal replacement drinks and stuff like that are really popular for vegans. Kind of pricey, but popular. Yeah. But, yeah, I also didn't know they had bars.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:43

So the macros on those are about 210 calories for about 13 grams of protein. So, like, also on the lower side. But a lot of people were saying they tasted good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:51

Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, if you're looking for something to make yourself feel better after the betrayal of Misfits, you can check out some of those brands.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:01

I also had people recommending Bearbell and Nugo as well. While they're not fully vegan companies, they have actually been adding to their vegan range instead of, you know, going the other direction and being fully vegan and then not being vegan. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:14

Airbels, I think, recently refreshed theirs. Like, it looked like at one point they were removing some plant-based flavors. Yeah. But then they started adding them back. So, I think they were just reformulating.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:23

Yeah. And then Nugo was, like, second most popular comment on my post after True Bar. Yeah. I had like 20 people saying try Nugo.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:36

I don't think I've even heard of Nugo.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:38

I haven't either. We'll probably try some of those too because now I don't have a favorite protein bar anymore. Also wanted to mention here because I got this comment in my comment section that apparently Hu Chocolate is also not a fully vegan company anymore. And I don't know when that changed because they used to be fully vegan. Yeah. But some of their products now have grass fed milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:02

Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:02

Yeah like okay yeah, Um, but yeah, it seemed like they pulled this one off pretty quietly because I, someone said it in the comment section and everyone kind of freaked out because I don't think most people knew that. So if you're buying hue chocolate, keep an eye on it because some of the flavors are no longer vegan. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:20

Good to know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:21

If you know of any other companies that have quietly shifted from fully vegan to not fully vegan, let us know because we'd like to let everyone know as much as we can so that we don't all accidentally buy things that we don't want to buy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:33

Yeah. And again, it's not necessarily like don't buy from companies that aren't fully vegan. It's just not accidentally buying something that you previously trusted. Right. The next piece of news we have is about biorefineries, kind of moving on to a more positive topic. A study recently found that integrated biorefineries producing plant-based proteins and sugars from leafy biomass like red clover and alfalfa could actually meet global protein requirements in less than two years. The study found that combining LPC and SCP production enables food protein per hectare yields higher than any conventional food crop. So this, again, this would be like the best thing to farm on an acre of land.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:08

Seems like we should be throwing money into this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:10

Yeah, it never really seems worthy. I'll be interested to see how it plays out. Hopefully it does get some funding and it doesn't dry up. The last piece of news we have is about carbon-derived fat alternatives. So, California food tech Savor got $32 million in new financing for its carbon-derived fat alternative. They use a thermochemical process to convert captured carbon, green hydrogen, and methane into fats that can replace butter and palm oil. They're chemically identical to conventional fats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:38

Yeah, so this could be pretty cool because I know a lot of vegans have ethical concerns with palm oil.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:42

Yeah, definitely. And obviously butter.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:43

Yeah, and butter, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:45

Saber already has an eco butter that was named one of Time Magazine's best inventions of the year last year. And that butter is currently being used in San Francisco for chocolate truffles.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:54

But if you're in San Francisco, you know, maybe you go try those and let us know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:58

Yeah. If you're in San Francisco, mail us some chocolate truffle.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:01

Probably not in this heat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:03

No, yeah, that's true. The production operations can be stood up anywhere in the world. And there's no need for fertile land, fertilizers, or fresh water, which is a pretty big deal. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:12

Yeah. And since global dairy production is actually responsible for 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions, having an alternative like this could be really great for the environment as well.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:21

Yeah. Cool. I'm really excited to see all these like innovative things come out. Yeah. Hopefully some of them play out and become like major factors in the food supply.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:30

Be nice. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:32

All right. Let's get into our main segment here. So this episode is going to cover issues with pig waste from factory farms, basically. Yep. So we have a segment next week about the experience for the actual pigs. But this discussion today is mostly about the issues with the waste.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:48

Yeah. You know, the obvious issue, the main issue we as vegans care about with factory farms is the animals. But today we're going to touch on all the reasons you should care about this, even if you don't care about the animals. Okay, so imagine you buy a nice house in the country. And then you find out you're actually living very close to a bright pink lake the size of several football fields.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:13

Hmm, I can see it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:14

Yeah, sounds kind of pretty, right? You're like, does Barbie live next door? What's going on?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:18

Pink water, that sounds nice.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:19

Yeah, that sounds nice. But, what if it wasn't full of water and it was actually filled with millions of gallons of untreated pig shit and urine?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:30

Starting to feel a little worse about this now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:31

It's not feeling great. It's not just bright pink, but it also smells like ammonia and rotten eggs combined.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:38

Yum.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:39

Yeah. Oh, also, it doesn't just stay in the pink pools. They also spray it into the air, where it drifts onto nearby homes. It could be your home. This sounds dystopian, but this is actually reality. This is how the majority of American pig industry manages their waste.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:00

Manages is a strong word for what you just described.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:03

I agree. So, like, when I was reading about them, some questions I had is, like, why is it pink? How is it legal? Why are they almost always located near poor communities? Why is nobody talking about them?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:19

Yeah. So we'll cover all those questions and some more.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:23

Lots more. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:24

First of all, according to the Sentience Institute, it's estimated that 98.6% of all farmed pigs are living in factory farms right now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:33

That's pretty much all of them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:35

Yeah. Talking about between 73 to 75 million pigs. So I know when most people like think pigs, you're thinking of like Babe, where there's a couple of pigs like wandering on the farm. It's like basically no pigs are actually in that environment.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:48

That's not the reality anymore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:50

It's sad.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:50

In the U.S., you'll find the largest concentration of these kinds of pig farms in North Carolina, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:58

When we talk about factory farm pigs, we're specifically talking about pigs that are part of a CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, for more than 45 days. A modern CAFO houses thousands and sometimes even tens of thousands of pigs indoors.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:10

They're slatted floors so that the manure and the urine can fall beneath the building.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:15

Why don't we have that in the house?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:16

Yeah, I don't know. It sounds really efficient.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:20

That waste is flushed with water and then pumped into massive outdoor lagoons, which are known as the pink shit pools. Yes. Now, anyway, we're calling it that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:28

That's what we're calling it. These lagoons are not treatment plants, and many of them are just large open-to-air storage pits.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:35

Yeah. And they're usually lined with clay instead of concrete, which means obviously they seep into the ground.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:42

Yeah, and I was looking into this, and apparently they're allowed using clay instead of concrete because it's cheaper.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:46

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:47

And I guess the farmers just get a free pass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:49

Yeah, that sounds about right. They contain untreated feces, urine, blood, bacteria, pharmaceuticals, parasites, and antibiotic residue. Basically everything that comes from the pig.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:00

Yeah. And I was also reading that sometimes it can contain stillborns.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:05

Oh, that's really depressing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:07

Yeah. Okay. So unlike municipal human sewage, this waste is not mechanically or chemically treated at all before entering the pink shit pools. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:18

And these lagoons are pretty much universal with modern pig farming. Some of them are not directly open air, but they pretty much all use some sort of lagoon or pit or tank for this kind of thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:29

Yeah. So why are they pink?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:30

That's a great question. They turn bright pink because of the presence of a specific anaerobic bacteria called purple sulfur bacteria, which thrive in the nutrient-rich oxygen-depleted environment of the waste pits. Waste pits also sounds like something out of Mad Max. The bacteria digest the pig poop mixture and produce the distinct magenta color that's often seen at factory farms.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:50

Yeah. I don't know if you, what was the documentary? They showed like some overhead footage of like aerial views of, they're so pink. So one of the main questions I had is like, why is the waste untreated? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:07

I think your experience makes you think that. For me, it's like, why would we treat a pool of pig poop, right? But I know you have some specific experience. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:15

I mean, okay. so i've worked in an ethanol plant and also a couple refineries that had a lot of strict rules and standards from like osha and epa and so like my initial thought was like how is this even legal um, why would we not treat like the other thing is like you know we treat human waste so why would we not treat pig waste yeah um so in case you didn't know, When you flush your toilet at home, the wastewater typically goes to a municipal treatment plant where it undergoes a few things. Okay. So there's primary treatment when the solids are removed. There's a secondary biological treatment, usually a tertiary treatment where nutrients are removed and there's filtration. There's disinfection with either chlorine or UV. And then monitoring and sampling before it can even be discharged into waterways.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:07

That's a lot of steps.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:08

It is a lot of steps.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:09

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:11

So we follow all these steps because of the Clean Water Act of 1972. The purpose of this act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waterways by regulating pollutant discharges and setting surface water quality standards. If you've ever worked in any kind of operating plant like a refinery, you'll be familiar with this because under this act, the EPA has implemented pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for the industries.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:38

Yeah, and I'm glad because I do like clean water that is not full of shit and parasites and all that stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:43

Right, because like, you know, if you were living next to a chemical plant or a refinery, you would expect them to be treating any of the water used in their processes before it went back out to the waterways, right? Yeah, for sure. So, why does pig manure not have to be treated the same way as human waste?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:00

That's a really good question. Do we know why?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:03

So, to answer this, we got to go, like, way back to how we used to farm animals, specifically pigs. So, in the past, pigs were free-roaming in really large fields. And because there was plenty of space, there was never too much manure for the land to absorb at once. Yeah. And so, it kind of just naturally, like, took care of itself, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:25

And I think this is still the idea that people have in their heads, not just for pigs, but for farm animals in general. Yeah. You think farm and you think like of the kids books and the movies you watch growing up. Right. And even if you live out in the country, you see farms that are just like animals are roaming around. It's just that's not where most of the animals are.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:41

Right. I mean, I think. In the other podcast we did, we found out that over 99% of all land animals, that are livestock in the U.S. are factory farmed. Right. And so like pigs, it's 98.6%. Yeah. That's most of them. So, yeah, back in the day, they were free roaming with a bunch of land to absorb all of the poop. And so the manure would go back into the farmland and then crops would use the nutrients to grow. So, because historically, regulators viewed manure as a valuable agriculture fertilizer and not as industrial waste. And because of that, it's still viewed as, like, something that's used in agriculture today.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:20

Yeah, they're just storing up nice, clean fertilizer.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:23

Exactly. Yeah. Today is obviously much different than it used to be because we are cramming tens of thousands of pigs into small enclosed areas. And we're collecting their poop and we're putting it into these massive lagoons.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:36

Yeah. And the lagoons are allowed because they're not intended to be permanent disposal sites. Right. So this isn't something where you fill it up, you put a lid on it, or you just leave it there forever. Yeah. That's not really how they're justifying it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:48

Exactly. So they're supposed to be storing manure temporarily, allowing it to do some biological breakdown, and then basically providing temporary storage until conditions in the fields become suitable for the land to accept the manure. Right. And once the conditions are acceptable, they spray the manure into the fields, essentially to get rid of it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:11

And, you know, at a high level, if it wasn't for all of the downsides, this sounds like a thing that makes sense from a farm efficiency perspective. Yeah. Like you're creating manure, you're using the manure to grow the crops. But it's just way more complicated and worse than it sounds.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:25

Yeah, which we're definitely going to get into. Okay, can you tell us how much poop this really is? Because I think it's going to blow some minds.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:31

Yeah. So if you happen to be in our book club, you might remember reading this statistic from the book Eating Animals. America's leading producer of pork, Smithfield, alone kills more individual hogs than the combined human populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Columbus, Austin, Fort Worth, and Memphis. Some 31 million pigs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:54

That's insane.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:56

Yeah. According to the conservative EPA figures, each hog produces two to four times as much shit as a human.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:02

Yeah, on average. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:04

In Smithfield's case, the amount of fecal waste that is produced from the pigs alone is equivalent to the amount of shit produced from the entire human population of the states of California and Texas combined.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:13

That's insane. That's a lot. Imagine if every human being in the states of California and Texas were just crapping and pissing into a huge open air pit for the day. That'd be like insane, right? Yeah. But like, I imagine this was happening every day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:29

Every year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:30

And these numbers might be increased because the book Eating Animals was published in 2009. But even if they've increased, those numbers are still insane.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:37

Yeah. So what happens to the waste if the storage is just temporary? After lagoons fill up, large irrigation cannons are used to spray the liquefied manure onto the nearby fields. The industry calls this land application, using the manure for the crops. Well, the problem is, though, that the waste can contain pathogens, heavy metals, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorus, nitrates, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It also houses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can make humans sick, including Salmonella, Cryptosporidium, Streptococci, and Giardia.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:15

So a bunch of really bad stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:17

And just as a quick aside, if you find this interesting, please remember to follow or subscribe to the podcast here so you can hear more exciting details like these in the future.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:28

All right. So now we're going to talk about the nearby human health impacts. Once again, obviously there's a lot of impacts to the actual pigs, but this episode is covering all of the other things that happen because of the manure. So the spray can reach nearby homes and drinking water sources. Some residents say that a fine mist of manure sprinkles nearby homes, cars, and even laundry left out to dry. So like people can't even leave their laundry out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:58

Yeah, that one was particularly crazy to me. Like, I mean, I don't want it on my house or my cars, but I would just I can't even imagine how I'd react if I walked outside and some farmer had misted my laundry with pig shit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:10

So the odor plume which reaches nearby communities contain, respiratory and eye irritants and a growing body of research suggests that these emissions may contribute not only to mucosal irritation and respiratory ailments in nearby residents but also decreased quality of life mental stress and elevated blood pressure which you know that makes sense to me yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:32

Um also children raised on the grounds of a typical hog factory farm have asthma rates that exceed 50% and children raised near factory farms are about twice as likely to develop asthma.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:43

That's, those are insane.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:45

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:45

But it makes sense. Like, the air quality is so bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:48

Right. Um, communities that live near the farms also complain about problems with persistent nosebleeds, earaches, chronic diarrhea, and burning lungs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:57

You know what this reminds me of? Remember that movie, Erin Brockovich?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:02

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:02

Where, if you haven't seen the movie, you should see the movie. But basically, there's a, you know, a chemical plant that has some kind of chromium in the water supply. And basically, like, all of these families that are living, also, it's based on a true story. So all these families that are living nearby are all getting sick and like she kind of puts all the pieces together that there's like I think a couple hundred families that are being impacted and like they're having nosebleeds and like cancer and, you know miscarriages and stuff. Yeah. And she kind of puts all that together and then sues the shit out of that company. And because factory farming notoriously gives animals loads of antibiotics, the manure can also contain antibiotic residues, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and resistance genes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:52

Researchers are currently studying more about how these organisms move through the soil and water and what it might mean for human health. So maybe there will eventually be some more regulations around this once we have better science in place for the things that seem fairly obvious.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:04

I kind of feel like if they wanted to, they could do that now, based on just some obvious anecdotal information.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:13

Yeah. Probably, yeah. Yeah. Um, so moving into some of the environmental impacts, um, aside from the human health implications, which we will get back to, there are environmental impacts as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:27

So the pig industry wants you to think that the ground can actually hold this manure, but the fields are often so oversaturated that the nutrients run into nearby streams.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:39

Yeah, they've found evidence that the nutrients wash into creeks and rivers from the fields where farmers spray the manure or inject it into the soil, which is common in the Midwest. And hog waste is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, which plants need to grow. But when too many nutrients flow from the fields into the waterways, they can contribute to harmful algae blooms and fish kills.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:58

Yeah. So nearby water can also be contaminated with parasites, viruses, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria that's from the hog waste. So if you want to understand how the pig manure actually kills the fish, here's what happens.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:15

Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:16

Pig manure is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. When those nutrients enter rivers, the algae grows rapidly. Then the algae blooms form, and then the algae dies. Bacteria then decomposes them, and then oxygen is consumed. And then fish and aquatic organisms can suffocate because there's no oxygen in the water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:37

Yeah, fish need to breathe too, guys.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:39

Yeah. This process is called eutrophication. You may have heard of dead zones or hypoxic zones. Basically, fish will leave if they're able to, but if not, they're going to die there. And bottom-dwelling animals are particularly vulnerable.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:53

Yeah. And large manure releases have caused documented fish kills. So this isn't just a hypothetical description.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:00

No, yeah. This definitely happens.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:02

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:03

When manure enters waterways, it can consume oxygen, increase ammonia concentrations, and, introduce pathogens, and smother the habitat with organic material. This can and has resulted in thousands and sometimes millions of fish dying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:17

This doesn't just affect fish, but all aquatic life and insects and birds that interact with these aquatic habitats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:23

One pretty prolific example of this, which, so I've worked in like industries for a long time and I took classes on process safety and stuff, but I guess since this isn't considered process safety related, I have never heard of any of these things, even though they are like... Pretty crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:39

Big process failures.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:40

Yeah. So in 1995, Oceanview Farms Lagoon failed. A berm around an eight-acre hog waste lagoon just failed, and it spilled 25 million gallons of untreated hog waste into nearby streams and eventually the new river. For some perspective here, the infamous Exxon Valdez incident only spilled a... only, spilled 11 million gallons of oil. And this hog waste failure was more than double that. That's nuts. Yeah. The manure was so destructive because it depleted oxygen in the water. Researchers documented that within just two days, a 17-mile stretch of the river had become completely without oxygen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:28

That's a huge impact.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:29

17 miles? The USDA summarized the event by saying that it killed virtually all aquatic life along the approximately 17 miles of the new river between Richlands and Jacksonville. Which is, that's fucking insane. Conservative estimates by the EPA indicate that chicken, hog, and cattle waste has already polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in just 22 states. 35,000 miles? Like, what other industry is polluting 35,000 miles of rivers and just getting away with it without being called out by the public?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:09

Also, pig factory farming specifically contributes approximately 9 to 14 percent of all global livestock greenhouse gases. On a broader scale, the global pork industry is responsible for generating 747 million metric tons of CO2 annually, which represents 1 percent of all human made greenhouse gas emissions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:26

It's actually kind of crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:27

One percent doesn't sound like a high number, but for 1 percent of all human greenhouse gas emissions to come from pig farming specifically is kind of nuts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:35

It is nuts. So there's also the matter of drinking water contamination, which could include nitrates, bacteria, E. coli, salmonella, and a lot of other pathogens.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:46

That's what I like in my water. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:49

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Isn't that the song? So pig manure contains a large amount of nitrogen. Nitrogen converts to nitrate, which can move through the soil and contaminate groundwaters and private wells. So if you have a private well, you're like more susceptible to this. Yeah, because it's easy. Yeah, you don't go through like the city water treatment.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:10

High nitrate levels are particularly dangerous for infants because they can cause methemoglobinemia, which is blue baby syndrome, a condition that reduces the blood's ability to carry oxygen.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:20

Seems pretty bad. So I do want to touch on the environmental justice piece. So research has consistently found that industrial hog operations in eastern North Carolina are disproportionately located near Black, Latino, Native, and lower-income communities and neighborhoods. So not only are the residents likely to experience an odor, air pollution, contaminated wells, and drinking water, but they also end up with even more reduced property value.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:46

Yeah. There have been debates on whether or not these farms are choosing locations with a large population of minorities and low-income households, or if the house values have just depreciated so much that the communities change once a factory farm moves in. Most studies show it's potentially the former. Research has also shown that people who have the financial independence to move away from those areas usually do, which creates even more disparity.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:12

So most studies are showing that these large factory farms are coming in to minority and low-income neighborhoods and communities. They're building these factory farms and then basically depreciating house values. People that have the financial means to move out, sell their house, take a loss, are leaving, which is actually causing more lower-income people to end up in the neighborhood because the houses are cheaper. A North Carolina study later reported nine times more hog CAFOs in areas where there was more poverty and higher percentages of non-white people, even after adjusting for the population density, as a measure of rural location and cheaper land.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:52

Oftentimes, these areas have less political power to oppose the construction of new facilities like these. And there's also the issue of hurricanes in some of those areas, especially specifically in North Carolina, which generally makes everything worse. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:06

Many of these lagoons sit in flood-prone coastal areas, and hurricanes increase the risk of overflow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:12

During the more recent major hurricanes, which were Floyd in 1999 and Florence in 2018, numerous lagoons overflowed, which released waste into the rivers and floodwaters.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:22

North Carolina had at least 50 shit lagoons overflow in the wake of Hurricane Florence. Which, you know, like when you're already dealing with a hurricane and stuff, that's the last thing you want to be worried about is like, can I drink drinking water? Can't like can I like you know what I mean? Right. Like you now you have to be worried about like drinking out of a bottle and like now maybe you're standing in very unsanitary water. Like it's just a big safety risk. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:50

And I know there are a lot of things that are floating around in a hurricane anyway, but most of those things are not like gigantic concentrations of very dangerous water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:58

Right. So now we're going to get into some of the worker safety implications. And this is stuff that I don't think is often thought about of like, you might be thinking like, OK, I don't understand how manure is going to cause worker safety issues. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:12

Especially if it's just a pool. Nobody's really tending to it for the most part.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:17

You'd be wrong. So something that's rarely discussed is that decomposing manure can actually kill you in seconds.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:24

Seconds?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:25

Seconds. Wow. Decomposing manure creates hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:33

I've heard all those things in bad terms when it comes to breathing. They don't really do well with the breathing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:37

No, they really don't. So the worst of these is hydrogen sulfide, H2S. OSHA has described it as one of the leading causes of workplace gas inhalation deaths in the U.S.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:48

Isn't H2S that thing you had to like specifically wear a monitor for when you were at the refinery? Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:53

So in a refinery, you have to wear a continuous personal H2S monitor that's like sits on your FR, like sits on your, your suit, your overalls, your coveralls. Yeah. Before you can even enter the refinery.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:09

Wow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:10

And, you know, for reference, like, The refinery usually doesn't have H2S in it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:14

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:15

Like, it'd be pretty unusual if there was actually H2S in the refinery. That would mean that something was leaking or, like, something bad had happened. Right. You're not normally walking through H2S in a refinery or really any chemical plant. That's unusual. Right. So you would normally have this monitor that you wear all the time. So it would alert you if you're walking into H2S so you can effing leave. So some more information about H2S. It smells like rotten eggs at a low concentration, but at higher concentrations, you can lose your sense of smell almost immediately, which, like, if you're walking into a cloud of it... Obviously, like, if you're not fully in the cloud yet, that's going to be lower concentration. So you're going to smell the rotten egg smell. You're going to keep walking. It's going to get higher. You're going to lose your sense of smell. And you might think the danger's gone. Yeah. Right? It's probably not. Right. It's also clear. I think that's obvious because it's a gas. But I just want to point out, it's clear you can't see it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:13

So you won't know. It's basically the moral of the story.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:15

All you have is your sense of smell, which... Gets lost almost immediately at higher concentrations. Yeah. You can literally collapse after a single breath of H2S and you can die within minutes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:28

That's some scary shit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:29

It's terrifying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:32

Manure is particularly dangerous because when it sits undisturbed, it's actually mostly fine. But the manure is constantly decomposing. So when you stir it or pump it or agitate or mix it, large amounts of the trapped hydrogen sulfide and other asphyxiants can be released all at once in a big puff, basically. Right. Not good. So this can literally create lethal, invisible clouds around manure pits, pump rooms, storage tanks, and enclosed barns.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:02

Yeah. And this is not something, based on what you're describing, this is not like, ooh, I breathe this in and I get sick 10 years from now. This is like, I breathe this in and I fall over and I'm dead now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:11

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:13

That's crazy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:14

Exactly. And I think the interesting point here that I want to like emphasize, is that undisturbed, there's nothing. Yeah. Right? So if you've been around this thing for fucking two decades, you might have never experienced, known, heard of this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:31

But then like, if you just happen to be there at the wrong time where something's being mixed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:35

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:35

Like you could be in a death zone. So because of this, multiple fatality accidents are pretty common. If you don't know what that is, it's when the first worker collapses because of the exposure to H2S or like some other toxin or asphyxiant. And then another worker rushes to help. And then that worker collapses. And then maybe another worker comes to help and see what's going on because everyone wants to help each other. Right. Like if you see someone that you've been working with for decades or even a couple of months, your initial reaction is going to be, oh, my God, what's happening to my my coworker, my friend, maybe my family member. I need to save them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:12

Especially if you don't suspect it's a gas thing. Maybe you think they like had a heart attack or something. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:17

Yeah, exactly. You don't know what it is because you can't see you can't see this. Right. So this is especially dangerous in confined spaces because you have limited ways to get out. And then there's also limited air circulation. So some recent examples.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:35

Examples of when this has actually happened.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:36

This has actually happened on farms.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:39

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:39

In 2015, a 31-year-old worker at an Ohio pig manure facility was loading pig manure into trailers when he was overcome by H2S and he died. that's really sad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:53

That is sad

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:54

He probably had no idea that was even like a possibility yeah he's literally moving around poop like i mean, think about how many times he's probably handled that and nothing has happened yeah um similarly in 2025 six workers were killed six workers six, were killed in one of the deadliest recent agricultural gas incidents, at a Colorado dairy facility. Now, this is a dairy facility, not a pig farm. Right. But, like, the dangers are the same, right? Right. So, a manure pipe was disconnected.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:28

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:29

H2S filled the enclosed pump room. One worker collapsed. And then, I don't know what they thought, but like you said, they might be thinking maybe it's a heart attack. Yeah. Right? Right. So, then five other workers attempted to rescue, and all six died.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:44

That's super sad.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:45

Um, OSHA later cited that the company for multiple safety violations related to atmospheric hazards, hazard communication, and worker training. Yeah. So, like, people might not even be trained on this stuff. Yeah. Like, you might see someone collapse and have no idea that, like, H2S is a thing. Right. That you're just, like, literally, like, what you said, thinking maybe it's a heart attack. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:06

Or it was, like, buried in some training manual as, like, a one-paragraph thing when you joined the company 10 years ago.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:12

It never looked at it again. Right. Right now we're reading Eating Animals for our book club. So this is a passage out of Eating Animals. A worker in Michigan, this one's really sad because it's a whole family situation. A worker in Michigan repairing one of the lagoons was overcome with the smell, and he fell in. His 15-year-old nephew dived in to save him, but he was also overcome. The worker's cousin went in to save the teenager, but he was overcome. The worker's older brother dived in to save them, but he was overcome. And then the worker's father dived in, and they all died.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:50

That is, like, a serious tragedy. I don't know. That's insane to even think that that's a possibility.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:57

I mean, even if you don't like that people are working on these farms, like, that's fucking sad, right? Because, like, they obviously didn't even know what the risks were.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:05

Yeah, it's crazy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:06

So the first thing I thought when I was digging into all these events was, like, holy, like, what the fuck is going on? Yeah. So, like, I worked at a refinery. I worked at an ethanol plant. But we have so many things in place to prevent a lot. I mean, things still happen, but there's like a lot in place to prevent this. So in case you want to know about those, which this is like my hyper fixation. But like in a refinery or a chemical plant, we have to wear continuous personal H2S monitors that would alert if there was H2S in the area. We also have confined space permits where we test the atmosphere before we go in. And you also have someone constantly watching the confined space. We have people that are specifically trained for confined space rescue, so they basically know what all of these things could be, and they're trained to handle it. And then we have personal protective equipment like SCBAs, which are self-contained breathing apparatuses. So you have air on, you know, so that you don't have to breathe this in. You can go into very dangerous atmospheres and save people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:06

Scuba gear without the underwater part.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:08

Exactly. We also have continuous gas monitoring in our facilities, like in different parts of the process, especially if this is a spot where you know... If a pipe were to leak, you would have potentially H2S. So then we have continuous gas monitoring, not even just on our person, but like out in the plant. Right. That's like also hooked up to like the control room so that they get an alarm that says some shit's fucked up. Go fix it. Right. And then, you know, detailed safety procedures, a ton of safety training that goes over all of these things in like great detail. And just like a bunch of people in health, safety and environmental department. So my thought was like, why are farms not required to do this?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:54

Yeah, that's a really good question. So OSHA does regulate agricultural workplaces, farms, but there are some major regulatory exceptions. Unlike refining, chemical manufacturing, and wastewater treatment, many farming operations are subject to a different regulatory treatment. OSHA is prohibited by congressional appropriations language from conducting program inspections on many farms with 10 or fewer employees that do not maintain a temporary labor camp. Although this exemption does not apply in every situation, such as like fatalities or formal complaints, they can go in after those things. But this does still significantly limit routine enforcement on many farms.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:32

Yeah, this basically means there are less inspections, less frequent enforcement, and a greater reliance on employees to recognize the hazards instead of employers training. And many farming operations don't actually have the safety expertise, the engineering controls, emergency procedures to handle these safety risks. Even though manure gases can become just as deadly under the right conditions as like a refinery, there's very little safety infrastructure and training. So, I guess my thing is, if we recognize H2S as a serious workplace hazard in refineries, wastewater treatment plants, and chemical facilities... Shouldn't we also require similar gas monitoring and safety procedures be a standard wherever workers are going to be exposed to lethal manure gases?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:18

Yeah. I mean, it seems like that would be a thing wherever these gases are like commonly at. Right. Any work environment where you could potentially run into this problem seems like it should kind of fall under the same regulations and stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:31

Yeah. Something really interesting happened when I was at the ethanol plant. So we actually, for the first five years I was working there, it was like H2S was never talked about. And it was interesting because I interned at refineries where we had to work H2S monitors. And I remember when I got there, I was like, do we not have H2S here? That's interesting. And they were like, no, we don't, we don't have that. and then it like just so happened that there was a dead line or something I can't remember the exact thing a while ago when I'm old, but like a line was open that had been, Like stuff hadn't moved around for a while. I think some decomposing had happened in it. But there was H2S trapped in it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:14

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:15

And so after that, it kind of changed how we looked at stuff going forward because we had always assumed that H2S couldn't happen at the ethanol plant. And that wasn't actually true. So it kind of changed a lot of our safety and the questions we'd ask when we were writing permits and stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:31

But, yeah, I mean, you would think that if H2S exists at a farm, you would have the same safety as you would anywhere else.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:40

Yeah. And maybe, you know, like in that situation, maybe you don't have those regulations at first. You don't think about it until something bad happens. But now at this point, we've had like something bad happen several times with H2S specifically. So it seems like there should be something to protect the employees. Like, and, you know, and it's really to protect the workers because it's not their job necessarily to, like, know the ins and outs of, like, all the different dangerous things the employer is doing. Yeah. And what the potential is there. Like, I think it's on the employer to say, OK, this is how we have things set up. This is kind of the risks we have created. And here's how you manage them and what to be aware of.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:14

Yeah. I mean, it's 100 percent on the employer to be training people on safety risks of a job. Yeah. Another interesting piece of information here is that because manure isn't considered a highly hazardous chemical in its undecomposed state, basically process safety management rules and a lot of other things just don't really apply to it, which is what can drive a lot of the safety practices in other industries.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:38

Oh, yeah. It is interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:41

So... In my opinion, OSHA should be creating more specific mandatory standards for manure gas hazards in these large factory farms, similar to like the detailed requirements that exist in other industries with toxic gas risks.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:56

Yeah, it does seem that way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:57

Another data point worth mentioning while we're talking about worker safety, is that it's estimated that approximately 68% of hog farm personnel in the U.S. are foreign-born, which means that English might not even be their first language. And that could make understanding the safety risks that much more difficult. And even if they do understand the risks, they might be more desperate to take on more dangerous work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:20

Yeah. Yeah, I think it definitely makes it more difficult to effectively communicate the risk all the time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:26

Um, yeah, I don't know about you. What was the most interesting piece for you?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:30

The most interesting part of this was definitely, like, the multiple fatality situation. Like, I'd never really considered something like that, and that sounds really just terrifying.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:39

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:41

I guess for me, obviously, I really, worker safety stuff is, like, something I used to do in my previous job, so that's all very interesting to me. Um, but I think... Another thing that doesn't get talked about much is the environmental justice piece of the fact that, like, minority neighborhoods and, like, low-income communities and stuff are being disproportionately affected by these large factory farm operations that can, like, ruin their quality of air and, like, potentially ruin their drinking water and all the other things that come with living next door to this stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:17

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:18

And I just don't think that's talked about much, you know? Yeah, definitely. So, in general, current factory farming practices are, I would say, more similar to other industries like refining chemical plants, like large corporations, that have a lot harsher regulations than they are to like historical farming practices.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:38

Yeah, I mean, they definitely seem like basically large production plants at this point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:42

Right. So I guess my main takeaway is why have the regulations not grown with these changes to protect human health, the environment and worker safety?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:53

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:54

Like, why are we regulating them as if they're just still a bunch of farmers raising a bunch of pigs in a huge land naturally? That's not what's happening anymore. Like, we've turned this into like... a massive like corporation type industry yeah we should be regulating appropriately.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:15

I agree maybe we'll see that in the future

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:18

I hope so or maybe we can just get rid of factory farming and that'd be a beautiful thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:22

Yeah there you go all right so that's it for the main segment about the amazing pink ponds of pig shit so let's get into our bite-sized coaching segment so if you don't know i am a personal trainer i coach people online and i didn't ask me anything on reddit recently which is basically I go in and say, ask me anything. And people ask questions about fitness, their training, vegan nutrition, whatever. And I had a lot of good engagement there. So one of the questions I got.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:47

I get to ask the question. Anyways, one of the questions I got was, how do I get enough protein without having to cook all the time? Or, you know, gorge myself on peanut butter. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:56

Well, peanut butter, probably not a great option if you're trying to get a lot of protein anyway. But smoothies with silken tofu are a really good one. You don't have to cook that at all. You just throw a bunch of cold stuff in the blender.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:06

Dude, that's what we've been doing this like, every morning for a couple weeks now that's like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:10

Our go-to breakfast

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:10

Yeah so basically it's soy milk, A thing of silken tofu, a shit ton of spinach, some frozen fruit. We're using pineapple and then like two scoops of protein powder.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:23

Yeah, that's it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:23

It's like 40 grams of protein a serving.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:25

Yeah, easy peasy. Peanut butter is very low on the totem pole of protein for me since it's mostly just fat. Although I do love peanut butter. I eat peanut butter.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:34

PB2 and PBFit are pretty good though. That's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:36

Yeah, they're like powdered form of peanut butter without fat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:39

Yeah, like 40 plus percent protein. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:42

Some other quick meals like tofu fajitas, red lentil pasta with silken tofu sauce, or some homemade quick protein bars like edamame puff rice, in quotes, crispy treats. All those things are recipes on Protein Deficient Vegans website, so you can find them there, and we'll have some links in the show notes. You can also make some simple swaps for things you're already eating, like switching to low-carb wraps, which are naturally fairly high in protein. And then you can also add TVP to your oats. So increase the protein a little bit there. And you don't really notice that there's TVP in your oats when you make it that way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:16

Yeah. Especially if you do like a 50-50 oats TVP.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:19

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:20

Seems like a pretty good ratio.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:21

Yeah. Snacks like dry roasted edamame are also good to pick up. You can get like a big box of little bags of dry roasted edamame on Amazon or sometimes at Walmart. Stuff like that. And then protein powder, of course, is kind of the goat for easy protein without having to cook. You can put protein powder in pretty much anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:42

Yeah. So another good option if you have some dough to spend is like some of the frozen meat alternatives have really good macros and just kind of like throw them in a pan and eat them up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:51

Yeah, those are super easy. I just had a video yesterday where I had some Beyond chicken pieces that were unbreaded. You just like put them in a pan for five minutes, dump a bunch of buffalo sauce on them and you're good to go. It was like 63 grams of protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:02

Yeah, it's crazy. Another thing that helps with this is like just some general meal prepping.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:09

Oh, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:09

Especially for like, I don't know, breakfast or lunch, maybe just meal prep. something that's high in protein that'll last you for like four or five days. You only have to cook it once.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:19

Yeah, that's the way to go. All right. So I think that's it for that. If you look in the show notes, you can join our Deficient Vegans Discord community. We have the book club going on right now. We also have a bunch of channels. Talk about a bunch of different things like fitness, nutrition, accountability, movies, music, TV, things like that. Just talking with a bunch of vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:35

Yeah, you can make some new friends. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:37

Got over 200 people in there. Very talkative these days.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:41

It's a pretty active Discord. If you're looking for, like, an active vegan community, we've got one for you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:46

Yeah, it's hopping. We also have our Deficient Vegans blog, which is linked in the show notes. That's also where the podcast episodes kind of live. But we've been doing more in-depth blog posts about some of the podcast topics. So, like, this one specifically, there will be a blog post at some point in the next few weeks. But some of the previous topics we've covered do have detailed blog posts with, like, references and sources and all kinds of stuff in case you want to share it. or like, you know, you're having a discussion with people about some of these topics, you can say, oh, look, this is the source behind this information. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:16

Good reference if you want to argue with people. For the book club, it is still ongoing. We are currently reading the book Eating Animals, which we mentioned a few times in the podcast. We are currently finishing up week three and then next week will be week four, which is the final week for it. But there's still time to catch up. And even if you miss it, you can go back and look through the discussion questions and still have conversations because those threads are still going to be in the Discord.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:43

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:44

But another interesting and exciting thing that we're going to be doing with the book club is quote unquote book it. Not authorized.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:56

This is not authorized or sponsored by Pizza Hut.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:00

So we made some vegan book club buttons and then we're going to do stickers. You fill in your button with stickers that are probably going to be little farm animals. And once you hit four stickers, which means four book clubs, we will do some pizza related prize, which we haven't figured out. the exact prize yet but we have like a year to figure it out because the book club is just quarterly so yeah i think you should join yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:26

Um also in the show notes you can check out our social media if you want to follow us there we also have the protein deficient vegan recipe site we have my muscle deficient vegan fitness blog and coaching site if you're interested in personal training

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:40

You should also check out our deficient vegan social media because we have been sharing some very shareable content around the podcast topics we do like carousels across the podcast topics and then just like shareable data pieces that get the word out about the pink pools of pig crap yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:58

Very useful little tidbits if you're trying to convince somebody to be a little more

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:02

Vegan we also um update the social medias with like vegan related news too so it's a good place to just kind of keep an eye on yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:12

Kind of like the misfit bar fiasco we were just talking If you're listening on Spotify or Apple Music, if you can leave us a review, that'd be really helpful. Also, if you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave us a comment. We love hearing from those and we'll get back to you there. I think that's it for this week. Do you want to say bye? Bye. Bye, everybody.