why I started so I'd be like but I know my why right so really quickly really quickly jump up jump up jump up see who's next to you see who's next to you and then ask them why ask why really fast I'm gonna do the little Jeopardy music you ready [Music] no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no [Music] no no bye bye boom boom all right guys are you ready for your next panel everybody say yeah I really think I'm at a comedy club okay next to the stage she has the b
alances to keep our food system in check please give it up to Jennifer stop clapping now start clipping now guys share the first story come in hello hello how y'all doing okay so I know we're the last panel you've been through a lot of great conversations we had Jane Fonda here how dope was gij how amazing was she I could not believe that that woman has been at this for this long hopefully we can put her out of business soon because we are going to actually pass the change that we need so I am v
ery excited to be your keynote panel host my name is Jenny stoykovich I'm the founder of vegan Women's Summit we are a global platform of over 60 000 women all around the world focused on changing the food system and I am the author of the future of food is female I'm really excited oh yeah that's right it is female come on come on um I'm really excited to be joined today by three of the most incredible voices in the plant-based space we're going to be talking about how to power the future of fo
od through film entertainment and more than anything how we build a culture around a plant forward diet it's so important more than ever that we are focusing on the tangible ways that we can make a difference on the planet and those are some of the things we're going to be talking about today so I'm going to invite up some of my incredible friends let's get started Peter McGinnis CEO of impossible Foods welcome to the stage welcome welcome Heather Mills CEO of V bites paralympian world record ho
lder [Music] and Isaiah's Hernandez found a queer Brown vegan welcome up to the stage you all ready for this we're ready let's do it never had already and sat down but that's good oh yeah it's like get ready go exactly how okay first off y'all been on a stage with these big towers before these statues no nobody else is uh no Oscar winners up here I've been at the Oscars I haven't been to the Academy Awards of course you've been to the Oscar yes of course I haven't had an Oscar I'm not a good eno
ugh actress I would have had a lot better press if I was so I am one of those people that hates when my bio is red and you have to stand there and they're listing where you went to college and all these things that you forgot about yourself so I'd love to go down the line and just say a few words about what brings you here today and and why you're part of the plant-based space we'll start with you Peter sure uh Peter McGinnis CEO of impossible um I've been an impossible for 15 months who's count
ing feels longer um here today just to have honest debates and discussions about the future of this industry it's a critical industry and it's an industry that you know needs everybody's help and support and I think the entertainment industry can amplify what we're trying to do here in a big big way and in the end of the day I think a lot of this is awareness understanding availability accessibility so the more we talk about it and the more people are aware of it and the more people that underst
and the benefits of it the better it is for Animals the planet Everybody's Health you name it so just trying to get the word out and uh join a coalition of the willing to do so amazing and Peter if you could give a brief description for accessibility uh Peter um an older man balding but I have a hat on um and I have a blue blazer uh on and I'm happy to be here and uh I'll say real quick I am Jenny I have long brown hair I'm wearing all white so I'm head the Mills vegan over 30 years um have the
largest vegan manufacturing food companies in the world and develop them for numerous reasons Health animals that we love sustainability and environment I lost my leg when I was 25 which is why I became vegan so left leg developed most of the Prosthetics you see in the Paralympics probably a problem solver is what I do whatever it might be and that's why we're here today to talk about Solutions because we can talk all day about the issues most the people in this room will know what the issues ar
e but what are the solutions and what are they going to do is unite a group to to make the difference so um that's why I've come to America to kind of get everyone together and stop the segmenting that's going on uh because we're pretty much a heavy vegan community in the UK in Europe and we do it in a specific way so we're not butted down by the meat and dairy industry we actually focus on making them richer and then actually becoming more and more vegan and that's the only way we've managed to
solve it 35 years ago I was like everybody else and saying okay do you know how bad it is you know how this and it you know it's important and we raised a huge following but we didn't create any solutions sadly until you make the powerful have a piece of the vegan pie there will be no Solutions so that's the only way to convert the ignorant which is what they are very well said yeah um hi everyone my name is Isaiah Hernandez I use uh he they pronouns and I have black short hair and wearing um a
green a dress shirt and a blazer and I think I'm here today as a climate media Creator on queer Brown vegan to talk about the intersections about our environmental crisis and how that's related to the human abuses that are happening the animal rights abuses and you know I think as a climate media Creator my job has always been to be able to really Empower black indigenous people of color as a lot of the dominant narratives that exist here and the global North have often really failed in providi
ng diverse voices and so I think for me you know the plant for discussion why I'm here today is to really recognize is like how do we hold space for multiple truths that are coexisting at the same time while also acknowledging that you know for us the goal here is to dismantle these large globalized food systems that are really detrimental to our planet specifically animal agricultural culture and how that really relates back to the fossil fuel industry and the border and surveillance industry a
nd my work that I do today okay so uh we have uh quite a few uh Folks up here that are really leading in various different ways but one thing I think we can all agree on is if I say food to you you're gonna think about your culture you're going to think about tradition you're probably going to think back to something that you ate as a young child you know food is our identity in many ways uh and yet so many of the foods that we have eaten throughout our lives and increasingly you know these last
few decades those are a part of a destructive future for this planet unfortunately and whether we know that or whether we have access to not being a part of that is going to be a big part of today's conversation I'm curious perhaps we'll start with you Isaiah says you uh kind of teeded off um how did you find food connecting to your personal identity and kind of going on your journey to discovering a plant-based diet how did your personal identity intersect yeah I think um being Latino one of t
he biggest things I learned about is that you know we're really huge on cultural stories and storytelling and um actually a really fun fact is that Mexico is a very large fungi of our population before um settler colonization and so there's this like really myth that's out there that certain foods have always been part of a culture like if you go to certain places in Latin America they'll be like Coca-Cola is part of the culture or beef tacos and you're just like but really is that because um as
a parent as someone that had parents that are immigrants from Mexico they grew up on Farmland so they really grew up on localized Food Systems and they weren't really rooted in this idea of mass over consumption and so when I was in college and like in college as an environmentalist I took this class on globalized Food Systems we had to argue which is better for organic meat or GMO meat and I kind of found it hard to really debate because at the end of the day the animal got slaughtered so I th
ought to myself I guess like if you look at certain instances you're fighting for a thing but something in me felt really against of like wow I can't believe like I I'm really not having these discussions with myself and I need to really push myself to understand why is this making me so uncomfortable and you start to recognize here in the global North we live in a very kind of normative structure where like meat is very rooted in like toxic masculine culture of like this which makes you a real
man and so when it came to my queer identity I think when I talk about queering Food Systems I don't not saying put a rainbow on it I'm saying put Justice on it and that to me is like an expansionary value to understand that I'm advocating for both humans and non-human animals and I do believe that those who are not vegan right there's a certain understanding that Liberation exists on the Spectrum so for me it's like I always loved animals and humans growing up I was scared of dogs actually my e
ntire life until recently I adopted a little one and I think for me like it was understanding that veganism was a way to really talk into this idea that what I'm consuming here as an individual that relies in an industrial grocery Market is a bit unsustainable and I have the economic privilege and access to start to ask those questions and to really push myself to say are there better companies out there that are really trying to change this food system wow okay quite a quite a college experienc
e uh Heather I'm curious your thoughts especially as Isaiah was bringing up you know gender identity you and I have had lots of long conversations especially in the future of food is female how have you considered the intersection of identity and how it's related to the plant-based space well I mean I'm a bit more simplistic um not as articulate as you and came from a Northeast family that we were brought up on meat and sausage and if you ever saw a vegetable it was a miracle it was like well wh
at is that and it wasn't and my sister became a vegan when she was 15 and I thought she was crazy I was like what's wrong with you yeah you're gonna die you haven't gotten a protein and this is a long time ago I'm 55 now and she's 52 and she used to go on these marches for the animals and I was as ignorant as 90 of the population uh or more at the time and it wasn't until I lost my leg um in a police motorcycle accident that my girlfriend came in the hospital I crushed my pelvis punked in my lun
g and spit my head open and they kept chopping my leg off more and more with infection and my girlfriend came in and said you gotta go vegan and I was like what the hell is that in 1993 and she said I just cured myself a breast cancer and I said well not really you couldn't have done that and she was like I did so she dragged me off to Hippocrates in West Palm Beach became raw vegan which was pretty intense for a sausage and meat eating Geordie girl from Newcastle and and I was put on all this r
oad stuff and I healed within two weeks so I started writing these books about it but then you go back to reality you're in the north of England it's freezing cold and you suddenly say I really want a burger and I actually want to eat some cheese and you start getting these Cravings that you don't understand so I started developing the first vegan meat Burger in 94 and then the first vegan cheese and always had this opposition from guys going what are you doing that's not real meat and then even
tually just not telling them it wasn't really meat and not telling them it wasn't really a fish or real Dairy and they'd be on it like a year or two and then I'd finally announce well you've been eating vegan for the last God knows how long and you haven't got a clue because you can't cook so if you want to convert a man just makes you find one that can't cook that's what I did with my current boyfriend I found him on a train and he was a big McDonald's Burger King Domino's eating guy hot as hel
l but hand up where are you he really stunk when he when he worked out from dairy so and he snored all the time so I said you know that's from dairy and now he's been vegan three and a half years only because initially I made the meat fish and dairy free and now he's on wholesome you know legumes and beans and so you have to as a woman you have to infiltrate the man's stomach you know we won't go any lower than that at the moment but that's that's the key that's the key area you have to change i
t and you have to get down at the basics because if you try and get in the brain forget it you know if you try and sit exactly well it's between the balls so you get there first so um that's what you have to do and then it's about incremental change you know when we were all young we had full fat milk then it was like oh my God skimmed what the hell is skimmed milk and now we're talking soy and oat and almond you know hopefully 10 years from now the thought of talking meat and dairy and fish is
like saying give me a pack of cigarettes that's where this should go and should be here sooner there are than later and it fixes everything so he was hot but he smelled and snored huh he was hot smelling snows now or anything now oh yeah that's right over there you can sniff him on your way out he's a football now um he doesn't have any meat or dairies no wonder the Chinese say we stink you know not we the vegans but Dairy makes you stink that is so fun that's your tea up that's a different pane
l I want to hear more about this they're never going to invite us back Heather thank you um let's hear it listen I grew up it's it's less of a colorful Story I mean I grew up in New Jersey don't hold it against me Garden State um on the Jersey Shore was not like the reality show by the way um and uh yeah my mother grew up in a farm in South Carolina my father grew up in a really bad area in the Bronx and um we just ate normal stuff and what we thought was normal we were as clueless as everybody
else and we just ate 888 chopped whatever you want had no clue of consequence had no clue of transparency what the stuff was made of how it was made where it was made and it was a pretty um you know and I say normal because there are a lot of people growing up in the suburbs of America that just grew up that way they didn't question things Y8 was on the table your mom and dad may ask hey what do you want from the grocery store you may add a few things to the list and you just went about your lif
e and it's crazy to think I look back now the lack of caring about what you're putting in your body was crazy part of it was your kid and you think you're Invincible part of it is you're clueless and you know um as a kid and then part of it was my parents and there was nothing malicious about it they just didn't know any better and so they just pushed it or they made it available to us and it developed all sorts of bad habits and I look back now you know I come I come into this impossible job no
t being in this space right studied it was curious about it when I ran tripani we launched oat milk and things like that and dairy you know non-dairy creamers and stuff like that but I looked at this industry and said there's a communication opportunity there's a narrative opportunity there's an awareness opportunity this only works if plant-based meat becomes Mass can't be by Coastal can't be elitist can't be academic it can't be VC it can't be Silicon Valley it has to be food that you relate t
o that you enjoy that satisfies you and we're not there yet right so some of it's the product and we're trying it impossible to make the products better and better and better and I think we have a very good plant-based burger and in fact nine out of ten people we talked to say that's a good plant-based Burger well I want it to be a good burger I want to lose the qualification because I don't want to compete against beyond meat and Gardena Morningstar that doesn't Advance anything we want to comp
ete against the animal analog and in order to do that products have and we have to be honest a lot of these companies in the plant-based space are making good products they're not great yet so if we can make the products better taste texture flavor nutrition so that they compete against the animal even more and then make everyone aware of how good these products are for you for the planet for animals and by the way that's a complex value proposition why should I eat this oh it tastes good it's z
ero cholesterol it's fifty percent less saturated fat it saves water it saves trees it saves land it avoids ghg and oh by the way you know um it doesn't Slaughter animals okay if you want to take out an infomercial for three minutes and explain that to the public it's a tough so we have to get this we have to get this and the last thing I'll say is we also have to the meat industry is very coordinated I had a spirited debate out there with a few folks they're highly coordinated they're well-fund
ed and they are winning yes now we are fragmented not well-funded in many cases trying to save our companies so we're a bit distracted and they threw out things like foe made in China processed just throw things out see what sticks processed has stuck I don't do a single interview anywhere without being asked that question now we haven't we got great answers for that we just haven't come out and played offense and look people still think the election was stolen so they just throw [ __ ] out ther
e and see what sticks and not all of it sticks but but my point is I think we have to go back foot to front foot we have to own our own narrative we have to play offense and we have to compete against the animal not amongst ourselves okay this is a big shift mm-hmm there is you know there's there's a real concerted campaign that's happened against this industry right like let's just put it all out there for a second here because if we're going to talk about how these foods are going to make a di
fference we also need to talk about the dis information that's going on out there right so who here has heard plant-based is too processed all right that's a lot of hands everybody and who here has seen a rise of you know Pro Mead and carnivore and keto over the last few years did you know that those are related so the national Cattlemen's Association has a director of influencer marketing they are paying influencers right now uh Isaiah knows it because he sees it because he's a content creator
out there there is a concerted campaign that's going on these things that are getting into our brain this repeated its processed Franken food what's faux fake fake fake fake we always say fake too long of an ingredient list that was a campaign that was started in 2019. why was it started in 2019 well there was a company called Beyond me that had the biggest IPO in 19 years and it caught everybody off guard nobody expected a little tiny plant-based company out of Los Angeles could make a boom lik
e that and when that happened all of a sudden a lot of folks started paying attention and then less than six months later we saw five million dollars spent on a Super Bowl ad to declare synthetic meat how do you spell it and that is when we really started to see this campaign ramping up and much of your conversations you have with family members I mean I've got family members in small town Canada they're repeating the same points to me that I seen created here so and they repeat it they repeat i
t right and repeat it it sticks because it's simple one other thing I just wanted to just build on and Jenny you know I've talked about this I'll give you one great example so and you did a lot of this work with the mayor of New York City and they went plant-based right Fridays or Mondays and they were developing a program and the media industry jumped on it immediately and they put out these ads and these social posts that you know they're going to revolt against the public school system of New
York and you know they're poisoning their kids and the stuff's processed and then they put an 8 out of 10 registered diet nutritionist a nutritionists agree and you're like where the hell that come from so they paid like seven people 50 bucks or whatever and they just put it out there now no one's looking at the source no one is really digging into it and all of a sudden you're busy you're a mom you're a dad you're a single mom whatever it is and you're like what the hell is that what's going o
n you don't think twice about it you don't you don't really dig into the source and then we lost Hillary factcheck.com didn't work it's like you have to stay at the Fox right there and then because no one's going to go and look at them afterwards in 2000 and eight we give a million dollars worth of plant-based food to the Bronx um the hunt points Alliance for children has a huge amount of help in that area but the Bronx in Hunts Point has the biggest distribution of vegetables so I won't have a
meeting with them and said what do you do when your vegetables are you know going out a date and they said well we tried to donate them to the schools but we're not allowed because we've got to go through a process and this and that so much like millions and millions of wasted vegetables thrown away that could go to these kids so we did a study and Analysis that basically ninety percent of the kids were getting one dollar a day to eat so where were they going to the local McDonald's so we said t
his is just horrific so we said we'll donate the food and the school system wouldn't take it in because he said it needs to be repetitive for the next 10 years so we thought what else can we do we set up vegan McDonald's next to McDonald's and we give it for free so the kids went there and they saved their dollar then we set up vegetable Farms on the rooftops all the flat tops slowly introduce one vegetable at a time and then we did analysis reverse to type 2 diabetes in three months and then we
got the type 1 diabetes down to one insulin to two injections a day and the pharmaceutical industry hate this because America makes money from keeping you all sick gonna make you well you know I'm not going to think bus past the next four years of election you know most people don't want to make you well that's how you make your money so educating people and then we eventually set up the new Coalition for healthy school foods and implemented a vegan option with the team in every school in New Y
ork state brain function went up by 42 all of this movement was driving and we were like finally you know it's now 30 years later people are starting to listen and then people saw money in this sector Beyond me impossible Burger all these people and they got so wrapped up in their own stuff but they didn't stay together as a community as you may mentioned before and we're fragmented and and dissected which we're not in Europe the solution is you have to look at making the meat and dairy industry
have a piece of the vegan pie and that is unfortunately the only solution so in the UK I replicated all of the famous cheese brands and said first order for free just put it on the shelves next to your normal cheese all of them said no except one company called Northland which was the largest and we put them on the shelves and then I drove the traffic through the market into it because it's about problem solving now they sell more vegan cheese slices than Dairy so slowly their factories are all
shifting more and more and more over and that's the only way you're going to bring about change in America is you will never beat the meat and dairy industry until you make them all vegan and the only way to do that is to match their products make them amazing as you have be the co-manufacturer for it and let them see a piece of the vegan pie and it's the same in energy it's the same in everything that you're going to discuss on the climate crisis you can stand and shout and scream about all th
e awful issues I've been in this industry for 35 years until you actually make them see the dollar like beyond meat did but they didn't follow the whole thing through with the supply chain the manufacturing all the things that we had set up you know people go for the quick dollar you've got to think of the long-term picture and what are you going to do to turn it around and that is making the meat and dairy industry so wealthy with vegan that they are no longer vegan that's why dairy free is win
ning and meat-free is going through a hell of a struggle at the moment with the [ __ ] word of process yeah yeah well forty percent of U.S households buy plant-based Dairy yeah right so there is a massive Market penetration and you know why because the likes of Starbucks and everyone else is making a shitload of money from oat milk and soy milk and you know that's all that needs to happen as soon as they're making margins from it it's going to accelerate more and more listen when I you know the
oat milk thing and by the way so the dairy fluid Dairy is 18 billion dollars in the U.S Starbucks is the biggest fluid Dairy well they sell more milk than coffee yeah but um true fact it is a true fact um and I think it's about six billion of that six of the 18 is plant-based total Global plant-based meat is 7.5 billion in the U.S it's only two and a half billion and it's taken off I think um for a couple reasons great uses and applications right I'll take an almond cap I'll take an oat cap I'll
take an oat latte and they democratized it through Baristas and and by the way oh and plant-based milk does quite well with coffee because of the pH the other thing is and I was joking around with some folks out there I launched Chobani oat milk just calling it lactose free milk because I couldn't go against the dairy industry because Giovanni had Dairy and it was lactose-free milk and now if you came in loving animals fine if you came in loving the planet fine it was lactose Freeman who likes
lactose so my second day and but but this is my point so you just very simple messaging he called it milk getting called a beverage you didn't call it a drink so it's milk and it's lactose free and lactose lactose intolerance is a real thing and rich Richmond Americans yeah Rich poor educated uneducated no one likes lactose so my second day at impossible and we're still doing some research on it I said we're going to call this zero cholesterol meat now I can wrap my mind around that by the way p
lant-based meat sounds kind of weird most people like plant what is that a riddle I don't even know what the hell that means doesn't sound very good by the way again Rich poor coasts interior Nebraska everybody knows cholesterol is gonna get you it's not a good thing so how do we distill this down to its simple and by the way we know plant-based meat is way bigger than having no cholesterol we I'm just trying to get what we need to focus on is is is getting more people to eat it try it and try i
t and what is that messaging and we haven't cracked the code that is the Holy Grail here in my opinion so Isaias you are the content creator that's up here this is what you do for a living you do messaging and you have a very precarious position because you're creating intersectional content that appeals to underrepresented communities you're talking about plant-based in a way that's non-confrontational and then you're also talking about climate and there is massive massive lack of awareness aro
und Foods connection to climate it's you know upwards of 20 of ghg it's you know a third of methane Emissions on the planet which is 27 times more heat capturing than carbon it is a huge part of it and yet people don't know and I'm curious how do you walk that line how do you have that conversation with people yeah I mean I think on my end like I do Environmental Education to empower black and brown communities of color because I think we've been disenfranchised from being able to even be in the
se conversations right um for instance I think ways in which I approach this Justice oriented content is through anti-racism and anti-specism like black and brown people of color deserve to know that I grew up accessing food bank and living on on food stamps not because my parents didn't quote unquote work hard in the American dream but that our food system is built on racism and speciesism the the fact that we are not we are so uncomfortable to say that the globalized speciesism that we rely on
today um it still links back to slavery it still links back to the degradation of the planet we need to be able to have these very political discourses and to be able to really transmutate that into social media I think I really have found that there needs to be Nuance in those conversations too right I think a lot of people want to be able to support these industries while also saying I want Industries to also commit to diversity Equity inclusion because you cannot have sustainability without
diversity and you cannot have Justice without the people that are making your supplies you know I tell people like usually the ones that are working those Supply chains are black and brown people so yeah always and I think that they're the ones who are the ones who are really changing the food system and they should be honored more and I also think on the last note on kind of my end it's like when communicating this this type of content to communities like younger Generations really want to get
politically and socially aware about these things it's no longer like I don't really want to get into these politics or I'm not really into it I know perhaps certain other Generations had certain privileges but you know gen Z for example like we are the most diverse generation and consumers so when I talk to Industries and trying to go against these meat Industries it's really horrific the way that they play because they're same the same like fossil fuels they will Mark you they will tag you the
y will denounce you they will say you know you use a car that's not vegan or like did you know that your your tire is made of animals or like you know that thing that you're wearing is made of animals and it's really disgusting to see um the ways in which I have to really present myself in a way of like having to advocate for justice for both humans and animals while also trying to navigate the complexities of this capital structure like I know that we all know that billionaires and millionaires
um are a huge issue for a lot of young consumers and I think that you know how do we have those conversations to say like you know what it when is enough money that we need in order to oppress ourselves like what are we chasing because 10 20 30 40 years from now will I have enough money to buy food that's really what worries me yeah I think it's very poignant to have this conversation right his lesson two weeks ago we had a historic change to the water system here in the Western United States d
oes this ring a build a bell to anybody does anybody know about this Okay so we've got well because we have a room of many climate activists the average American probably has no idea that the Colorado River is drying up right we all know that Colorado is drying up it is an arterial water system that provides water to seven states 40 million Americans seventy percent of the Colorado River is going towards Alfalfa Alfalfa is a hay that is fed tickhouse we're not eating it right and now we are faci
ng a historic water shortage and they have increased water prices by about 25x that's going to be the new water prices here in Arizona Nevada and California and yet it's barely making the news right what what are we missing like this is water this is an existential crisis we need water there are people in the Central Valley of California that do not have water because it went to irrigate Alfalfa which by the way two and a half hours of of alfalfa irrigation is equal to a family of Four's water f
or a year like think about how insane it is that we have a finite resource they're we're using that way what are we missing how are we not having this conversation I think look you have this goes back to everyone being busy and clueless and you have to make people care and and by the way food and I've talked to so many people I just do my research in grocery stores just chat with people give them lots good research yeah give them lots of coupons too but um no one equates climate change with food
okay with food choice I don't know why they they say electric cars they say recycling they say less electricity less water they will never say food we have a calculator on the impossible website if you put in plant-based meat versus animal meat and it spits out a linear totally accurate number about how much water you save how much trees you save how much land you save and how much Gigi avoid and it's a simple thing 50 million pounds of plant-based meat at displacing animal at 50 is 25 million
pounds of less animal meat and it puts out all the numbers in two seconds it's super compelling we don't really use it we don't Market it no one really engages with it um and I just we got it again we have to make people care and you have to do it in a creative way you have to do it in a loud way I mean this is it this is like gotta wake people up so they're almost in like this you know never never land or they're actually just consumed with their own lives and not worried about the bigger pictu
re it's going to make people care and that's a hard thing to do yeah and also give them the choices and the availability at the right cost efficiency so in the UK in around Europe now subsidies is starting to be discussed and removed because the British public thought that milk was cheap but they didn't understand that Services means it comes from your taxes so milk is not cheap ink free yeah so now that that's double different now that's happened in Norway which is TNA is one of the largest Coo
perative um Pharma community in in the whole of Europe they're now saying oh we're actually at Price Point comparison to to vegan um dairy free which puts us on a level pegging But ultimately it's about how do you make the farmers lives survive post not making Dairy so you have to have the solution and the solution was that we converted 20 000 Farms from dairy farms to arable land growing whatever grain we could grow on those lands and turn that into plant-based food not to feed an animal and no
w they have 12 to 17 ebitdar on those Farms that's the solution telling a farmer that he shouldn't be cruel he shouldn't you know milk a cow grow a cow shoot a cow make food out of a cow is not going to change everybody it's going to be like five percent of realization for whatever reason but telling him would you like to have an easier life and you know do Agriculture and actually get in the government to subsidize agriculture while he goes through that conversion period of three to four years
that actually feeds 25 times more people than the cow would plus saves all the 93 more water and and but you have to go from Farm to Fork if you don't look after everyone along the journey and keep everyone you know in the picture then there's always going to be a spanner in the works that stops you reaching the ultimate goal to Help the Animals the planet and your health it's it's that simple you have to look all the way through it's why we need to pull out 99 of men from politics you know it's
it's basically you know you get you get the odd crazy woman who's a man pleaser but generally no disrespect to to the the guys and everyone here but ultimately it's what's the problem what's the solution every single person along the line you have to think what are their issues what are their problems is it Financial is it pressure is it and if you don't think along those whole lines we're not getting anywhere I've been repeating these words for 35 years and we're sitting in the same situation
in fact we're going backwards because the fact that the people are believing the word processed is an issue compared to global warming and health and the death of animals if you want to have your healthier junk food Burger until you move on to some vegetables what the hell is that going to do with other than help everything and everyone but people just who don't understand it they repeat it verbatim and when you repeat something that regularly like you said it sticks and we have to pull that sti
cker off and start repeating the true facts of how the consumption of meat and dairy is killing us and the planet so one thing I really like I just want to build on what you said is that we're after getting meat eaters to eat more plant-based so can't vilify him you can't judge him you can't talk down to them invite them be more inclusive and if the products are great and we talk about it in the right way they're going to start to adopt right and I think so segregating the U.S and playing politi
cs and being divisive not the not the way I was talking about educating consumers and how hard that is and making them care Heather said it's even more interesting so what you do is you start up the supply chain and you make it economically viable for a farmer who's barely making ends meet as it is right now and say hey have you thought about growing crops this way for this purpose versus that way for that purpose and you'll make more money doing it and your life will be better versus having a p
hilosophical debate around Animal Welfare or climate change when the farmer's like what are you talking about just make it economically viable they're just trying to make a living so the solution Upstream can force more change Downstream it may be longer and more expensive to convert people right to pull the supply chain in a different direction versus just changing the supply chain my two cents I think it was brilliant you just said no but it's true but it but sadly we're in a world of money yo
u know and the people that do things for the for the wrong reasons uh do it for money you know so if you make that wallets fatter You've Won and it's literally that simple you know and then what happens is those people that you convert suddenly wake up 10 15 20 years later and get a conscience and actually go money doesn't mean anything if I'm not going to make a difference with it and they're on their last legs and their deathbed and actually go what the hell have I done with my life I'm going
to die on a bed of dollars or am I going to make a difference so you have to have patience for the ignorant um I wish I was thick as pig [ __ ] I really do because I would just be oh yeah really doesn't matter you know and not care so much but when you really care it's pay painful it's still you know it's painful for every all of you here it's because you care it's painful to care but you've got to take a deep breath and you know try and be patient for those that are trying to educate themselves
and catch up with you you know I literally was it non-stop but you know and it works for a tiny percentage of people and the rest that just put the heads under the parapet and disappear and so I just make great food and feed their stomachs and make them richer and it works Heather Mills never won the men's words huh so I want to take this back Isaiah to something that you reference at the beginning the vast majority of those that are producing the foods that we are are typically black or brown
or oftentimes undocumented immigrants that are producing this food particularly in the meat industry I thought for sure JBS you know being tied to using undocumented children as young as 14 years old getting permanently maimed in meat processing plants in the United States of America was going to be the turning point I thought for sure people would boycott they boycotted companies for less but what is it that you think what is it that we're missing in this picture you know from a human rights pe
rspective why are human rights organizations not more on the front lines of this industry yeah I mean I think it's the ways in which we understand the angling because I think in my view the top three industries that are the most lucrative business models is fossil fuels agribusiness and the border and surveillance industry so the industrialized food system is already reliant on fossil fuels for their Technologies and then they use migrants using service border and surveillance industry Technolog
ies and here in the United States right ice you know people say oh well they're the institution that protects the country but we know that the reason why those children that were caught 14 15 16 those Industries is that they had weakened policy laws that allowed any individual to go pick up those children and say oh I'm their cousin I'm their Uncle I'm their aunt take those kids even traffic them to States like North Carolina South Carolina California and then force them to work in these industr
ies and then they get threatened and those kids don't really have autonomy because they said hey I want to leave and go back to Latin America my family because I can't can't do this and of course those people say well if you'd go I will unalive your parents Enlighten America so these kids are already threatened they have to go to these Public School Systems the schools report to the governmental agencies saying there's something wrong that something's happening with these kids you need to come a
nd step in the government's like no we don't want to handle that human rights campaigns and organizations I think um you know I work a lot with immigration rights organizations and they talk about some of these intersections because I think the issue is the ways in which how can we uncover these truths but then they're usually covered up by US Government because you know they don't want that as PR pressed that the US government is using migrant children to produce in our Global Food system and w
e see right now with Miami like you know Ron DeSantis is such a horrible individual and you know literally people that are undocumented have left the states and now of course you know a lot of what you would call the quote-unquote people who say they're pro-freedom and pro-trump they're like why is my produce expensive why isn't anyone working there they can't even last for a few days in the field without saying I'm getting exploited so I I think on my end you know collapsing these narratives ar
ound um you know when it comes to the climate crisis of this human supremacist thing it's like we have to call it for what it is and call it a white supremacist capitalistic system that we built that has literally enslaved humans in this supply chain and slavery has never ended it continues to exist in those Industries [Applause] all right so it's getting a little a little deep here we we've tackled climate we've tackled you know the human rights atrocities of of the other side of things the way
that we're currently eating now so let's look a little bit optimistically about the way we could eat so what do you what do you think we'll start with you Peter and we'll go down the line what do you think our diet is going to look like in the next 5 10 and 50 years I mean I think it's under not now the other question I get asked or assertion I get jammed down my throat is the death of the plant-based Industries drives me bonkers um because I think we're just getting started seven billion dolla
r you know Global Market in a 1.5 trillion dollar animal Market um and so the world will go more and more plant-based because of a lot of reasons one Health one they'll taste better over time three um did I just Skip One I did two ones because I did two important so this is my third um and Animal Welfare Planet welfare water um water and then the simple fact there's not enough animal products to feed the population right so it's going to go in that direction how quickly what are the growth rates
What markets are early adopters like UK how all that shakes out we could debate forever but one thing that is undeniable undebatable is the world will go more and more plant-based we need to accelerate that Journey we need to make that Journey easier um for everyone to to participate in that Journey but it's going in that direction so 10 years from now I envisioned the seven billion dollar category being you know a hundred billion dollars that and then you're gonna get quoted on that just press
in here just ready for it I'm just kidding you know it's it's gonna multiply pretty rapidly yeah and I mean just to underscore that point Cargill CTO uh cargo one of the largest meat processing companies in the entire world said a few a few days ago did you read this in in a NBC he said we are going deeply into the plant-based space in the alternative protein space because they know as the as one of the biggest protein producers that there is no way to feed 10 billion with animal protein now wh
at they also know and by the way they're doing it defensively but it's okay I think this goes back to the pragmatism if the meat companies are going to get into the plant-based companies because they know their demise is coming it's still it's still a win even no one will like them it's a win so they know two things one not enough animals to feed the world they also their prices are soaring because of the drought because of input costs because of labor costs because they've called their herds if
I just look at our data you know we've gone down about 15 to 20 in price just through fixed cost absorption and operating leverage and all that kind of stuff at impossible in the last year and a half and the animal products have gone up 22 percent and they're projected to go up another 22 percent the next year and a half that's going to be massive for the plant-based industry right um and you're going to start to see the pricing tighten um and they know it they see this coming so they're scared
so they're getting in for the wrong reasons but it's still a win to a certain degree remember it was almost a year ago we were talking about the calling of the hearts right and that's a four-year phenomena it takes three years to grow a cow right and you need to in order to resupply we have the lowest cattle rate according to the USDA since 1967 right now that's how low our herds are and on top of that that's compounded by the fact that the average cattle rancher in the United States is a decad
e older than the average pork or chicken producer which means they're all hitting retirement age and their Millennial children don't want the ranch they don't because it's a hard hard life they're barely making any money off of it to Heather's point and there is no way for the feed cost to ever go down because the drought is not going to reverse itself livestock feed will just get more and more and more expensive right and then then it makes it easier for us so I have a analgal Oil Company becau
se 15 years ago there was a tiny percentage of vegans That Couldn't convert a short Gene fatty acid from linseed and flaxseed to a long chain fatty acid and I thought wow I hadn't even considered that so we developed the algaloids we have the highest level decosa hexanoic and icosapentinoic acid and all of these big companies came to us and said we want to buy your algae to feed our farmed fish and I went are you insane like well we've got no omega-3 in the fish so we need to buy your algae to f
eed it because they didn't know at the time that omega-3 doesn't come from fish it comes from the algae that the fish eat so of course we said no but other companies said yes like dsmr Tech and numerous others so people were eating putrified feces swimming fish with a bit of algae chucked in there and it's not cost effective they're realizing also that it's really really expensive um so what what I've come to America to do is to try and get all of the plant-based companies that are doing things
for the right reasons so they don't get squashed by the massive companies to own the plant-based sector to manufacture under one or two roofs not set up your little Factory reach a ceiling need to depend on private Equity VC companies then they cut you off at the knees when you don't turn over a profit quick enough profit comes from mass mass volume and mass mass demand and we've learned that the hard way and survived 35 years so we have to bring everyone together and stop segmenting them and th
en we have to think on based on your question of what are the Next Generation Foods well we created all of the protein isolates you can imagine because we've done it for 35 years but when we did the first pea protein Burger back in 1996 it was six pounds a kilo for pea protein it was two pounds a kilo for soy because of subsidies I never liked P protein way too much wind way too much inflammation wind are way too much no seriously and this is one of the main issues you know because of the miscom
munication if you can digest pea protein great but 80 of people can't and they have a lot of wind and so we have to look at what is true as you get older your digestive enzymes reduce and when you've putrified your colon with meat it takes 20 odd years to get it all out of there so you get issues so people who move from full-on burgers and you know and dairy and everything they haven't got a great colon you know it's not got a great peristalsis so when they shove a load of fiber vegetables in an
d they get all this gas and bloating and wind they go oh I'm not being vegan I feel like crap and they don't it's actually clearing you out but then you've got fructans like cauliflower asparagus all these things that if you don't understand that that's actually going to give you a lot of bloating gas you think you go anti-vegan so you need to really know yourself and the next generation of foods will be vegan FODMAP foods for people with gut health the gut be in your brain being you know you wi
pe out meat all the aggression starts to go around the planet just a domino effect is is massive so look after your gut and everything is solved look it all goes back to the train almost everything goes back to the train you should yeah it is um one thing I just want to pick up on I think it's a really important point the other thing we can do for this industry is make it a viable business industry second time we're not ngos we are for profit we have to make money and we should be unabashed abou
t it and unashamed of it the problem is we have 206 plant-based companies in the U.S 206. 20 to 25 of them go out of business every four months that's not doing anyone any favors it's not advancing anything and you bring up a great Point why dissect and by the way I love ambition I love entrepreneurialism and and when I first came to Impossible it was go it alone and vertically integrate your supply chain and someone had an idea to spend 900 million dollars growing on soy I was like we haven't e
ven done a marketing campaign we're going to grow in soy it's like we have you know ADM I don't love them but they've been doing soy for 100 years and they have 12 billion dollars for the factories and we've got to build our own we have to build our own Factory for 475 million dollars so I do the math and I said with inflation that's 580 million dollars so we're going to use half our money and then one why don't we just use a co-manufacturer use other people's money other people's muscle let us
do what we do and they do what they do it's okay right now what does that do that enables you to put money into r d that enables you to put money into marketing you don't have to do it all your you can't go It Alone it doesn't work and by the way if we're competing against massive companies Fortune 100 companies that have gazillions of dollars and we think these small plant-based companies are going to go it alone it's not going to happen no so it's okay to ask for help it's okay to have a coali
tion it's okay to have Partnerships joint ventures license agreements I don't care what it is but but you know going it alone and competing alone and not coming together as an industry hasn't worked and will not work absolutely Isaiah's what's the next Generation going to eat yeah um I think you know when I'm sorry I asked once at a climate event I said if you have any vegan food and the guy took out a banana and a wine bottle and he's like here's your food I hope that that's never the option ev
er story in my life with the canned film festival and ate at McDonald's it's horrible um but yeah I think with the you know next few years that are upcoming with cellular agriculture it's a new big thing in lab growing meat um I really think I hope that um corporations realize that apoliticalness for future consumers is not going to work like you must be political you must stand for black lives matter you must stand for queer and trans Liberation you must stand for pro-immigration pro animal rig
hts pro-human rights because the more that you Silence Yourself and you're saying we're changing the food system but we're not going to talk about BLM because that's too political we can't lose then that means we're already losing to the same people who are trying to be silent and we can no longer be silent in the food system like we have to really understand that who we work with corporations like I work with non-profits like supporting to communicate this information and to work with businesse
s like you all to understand like we I recognize I can't do this alone without the big players and industries with the money and I can't work without institutionally without the non-profits and we need to come together and recognize like apoliticalness is not going to get us Justice anymore no facts and you've been a supporter of vws you've been a supporter vws and so have you you know really getting around this Big Ten approach of you know how do we talk about what the future food system is goi
ng to look like and how do we make it Equitable for everyone uh I realize I don't know where we're supposed to have a flasher somewhere I don't see it but I think we're getting ready to wrap so I wanted to say thank you so much to all of you for listening to this deeply informative talk I think we dove into way more than the cue card said this was a little a little softer but we got intense and I hope that this was a good learning experience for all of you I hope we connected some dots that perh
aps hadn't been connected before so I want to say thank you to everyone and thank you so much to the Hollywood climate Summit team for everything you've done thank you [Applause] yeah okay I'm just hearing a final announcement hey everyone um thank you so so much for being here today um I have been hearing incredible things I'm gonna move this direction um if you weren't here this morning my name is Ali Weinstein my pronouns are she her I have medium length brown hair wearing a lime suit jacket
and lemon pants um I'm one of the co-founders executive producers and for this year director of programming for the Hollywood climate Summit um we are incredibly grateful that you all came today um we'd love to encourage you to come back tomorrow we're kicking it off with a must-see keynote that is about the the intersection of disability climate and media it is so so important I highly recommend that you you come at nine and see it we have a whole day of programming tomorrow as well as a lot mo
re yummy vegan food uh tomorrow night we have our Eco bash we would love to see you there it's a great party and we're having a slow fashion show and then Saturday we have our yoga La as well as our concert with intersectional environmentalists so we'd love to see you all there I've been hearing incredible things about all of you everyone keeps coming up to me saying that everyone's so nice they've made so many new friends it's a great community and we um really really love that and we can't wai
t to have you guys Foster more relationships tomorrow um so yeah we'll see you all then have a great night everyone [Music] all right [Music] there has been a significant lag in climate storytelling for decades the really great writers of this moment have to write about what's happening to all of us this is Hollywood's role of a lifetime [Music] when we began this work we knew that we needed to understand the challenge USC analyzed over 37 000 scripts from 2016 to 2020. only 2.8 percent included
any climate change keywords climate change takes up more than just 2.8 percent of our daily thoughts and actions we're standing on the precipice of the greatest creative challenge Humanity has ever known the climate crisis but we're missing the stories that can help us navigate it the purpose of the Playbook is to change that [Music] ensuring that film and TV Center climate Justice and climate change stories this is literally A playbook that tells you how to do this in a way that is organic to
Story the things that we make that don't include climate change those are the things that are science fiction we are in the age of systemic change and the time to act is now Bloomberg philanthropy said hit it out of the park launching the good energy Playbook you don't need to be a climbed expert to write about it you just need to be a human who cares we can help with the rest [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right
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