Evening Exchange; Economy, Beef Industry, Teen Construction Workers

A race to dominate the 21st century and where's the beef. Also a look at a hands on approach to preparing for the future that's all up next on evening exchange. Do. You know. A very good evening to you and welcome to evening exchange I'm James Adam sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi America could find itself last on the economic totem pole as we head into the 21st century with the death of the Cold War there begins a new battle a battle for who will control the economies of the world the economics of the world Japan the United States and Europe they're the major contenders but according to our next guest. Japan has momentum but the United States has a slight edge because of its massive ability to to shift and mobilize but

Europe stands ready to become a force to dominate the 21st century Lester thorough is the author of The Book head to head the coming economic battle among Japan Europe and America. Mr. Thoreau is also the dean of MIT Sloan School of Management. I want to welcome you to the show. Always a great pleasure to be here. Why are we looking at the 21st century in terms of who will lead. But the basic answer is it's a competition for the high wage jobs. If you get pushed out of the high wage industries by foreign competition like automobiles machine tools. Steele then you're going to have a lower income and in the 1980s the group that lost the most in America was male high school graduates precisely because they did lose their automobile job their steel job their machine tool job. And if you want to Americans they have a high standard of living we've got to be fully competitive with Europe and Japan. When you look at Japan everyone seems to assume that the Japanese juggernauts going to be unstoppable moving into the 21st century but you see problems with

continued world leadership in terms of economies and economics with Japan what are they. Well I think they've got two problems first of all for the last 50 years they've had basically an export pull the economy. When you get as big as Japan is you can't do that simply because at some point the rest will simply going to refuse to take your exports. And so if the Japanese want to be continue to be successful they've got to reorganize and be an import. I mean be an internally led economy as opposed to an export pulled economy. The other thing is if you're going to create a regional trading group in the Pacific Rim the Japanese have got to be able to bring foreigners into the Japanese society. And that's something Japan finds very hard it's not that they don't want to they simply don't know how to. They can't bring Koreans in they can't bring Chinese in. And Intel they can solve those two problems Japan has some definite limits on its upside potential. Are we choking ourselves here in the United States by forgetting the lower lower echelon the. The workers who have recently been been laid off is the high school graduates who are coming out of high school are not making it out of

high school unprepared for a high tech society. Our education system is in the K through 12 grades is our biggest defect and part of the problem is we've got to understand that every American is on on our team. And let me just give you a very personal example as a professor of economics at MIT I make a wage which is twice as high as that of a professor of economics at Oxford University in England. And I kind of seems unfair because he knows everything I know. At the same time today it is also true that I make a wage to 30 percent below what a professor would make in a German university that's very unfair because I assure you I know everything they know. And if you say why it has to do with the quality of our teams My team is better than the British team my team today is not quite as good as the German team. And that kid in the central city which isn't educated he's on my team. And if he or she can't succeed they're not just going to lower their income they're also going to lower my income. And we've got to have this idea that we're all on the same team and when it comes to skills we can't be satisfied until basically every American high school student graduates from a good high school. And then you put a good post-secondary skill

training system on top of that high school. Haven't we though traditionally in this country caught up with the rest of the world at the secondary level of education in colleges. Grades 12 through 1 in Japan they generally beat us in New York they generally beat us the GoPro the studies are broader the young people thought to be more intelligent but American universities are available more. And we happened to develop our talent there why won't that continue to work well because the basic answer is we're moving into an era where in order to be successful you've got to have average production an average office workers that just have skills they didn't used to have. If I'm going to do make semiconductor chips I got to do statistical quality control to do statistical quality control I've got to teach every single worker some operations research to do that they need to know some mathematics. And if you went off and looked at the employment test they were giving it the Japanese automobile factories in the United States. Most high school graduates in America could not pass those employment test. You had to have a little junior college because it required levels of

mathematics most people wouldn't get in high school. And we're going to have to really boost the quality of high schools now the other thing is we tell ourselves some very misleading statistics like we say about over 50 percent of American high school graduates go to college that's true but we don't tell you that only 70 percent graduate from high school. So it's 50 percent of 70 percent which takes you down to 35. And then we don't tell you that 10 percent never complete any degree including a two year degree. So only about 25 percent of Americans actually graduate from some kind of college education program. Let's. Uncloak for so to speak and talk about the team concept. Are you saying basically that as far as minorities are concerned the Corporate America has to remember that minorities are part of the team. Absolutely. And if they're not brought in we can look forward to a 21st century you know looking at the bumper of Japan and you're right if you've got 10 to 15 percent of your workforce that isn't world class you're not going to be a world class it's that simple and your up to the European community has come to understand that they need one another

in order to move forward in order to become a dominant market marketing force in the world. Why is it that you believe that here in the United States corporations are the people who are in the boardrooms have not yet come to realize that they have to invest in the human resources of this country that that one third of of those dropouts those African Americans those Hispanic-Americans those traditionally cast aside groups. Well I think it's because you know specially in the last 10 years we've sold the concept of individual ism and we've completely downgraded the time concept of teamwork. Now I think a lot of business firms are coming to the knowledge and they can't do that. But the problem is how do we sell it as a society because we have had this idea that you invest as an individual you succeed or fail as an individual but it's more complicated than that. We partly succeed or fail as a society I mean think about what happened last week in Chicago for want of basically putting ten thousand dollars into infrastructure investment repairing those tunnels. Chicago will lose a billion dollars worth of

private output and there are a whole series of public and private things that interact with each other. And if you're going to build a good high quality high productivity high wage society the tunnels under Chicago have got to work. The education system in Washington D.C. has got to work. They are in the system in Southern California has got their work and if you can't put it together as a package being very good an individual is and won't win all by itself. You know Japanese will say privately the problem with America is that the economy that the nation is too diverse it's culturally diverse. We on the other hand we're a single culture we have a single purpose. We have an understanding a national understanding of where we're going. If you take that same philosophy and take a look at Europe Europe is actually a combination of very diverse countries individual nationalities with perhaps working at cross purposes. How can you conclude then or can you conclude then that that Europe will move ahead of the United States and Japan. Well I think it's because Europe Istra T.G. position now it's going to be very hard and it will certainly take the next 50 years for Europe to do it. But think about what they start with Russia is a genuine high

science leader of the world. Germany is definitely a production export leader of the world. Italy and France are design leaders in the world. London's got a world financial market if you can put those things together and I grant you it's a big gaffe. The Europeans can essentially create something. Now they also have a tremendous advantage in that Eastern Europe in the communist ex-communist countries they couldn't run economies but they probably ran the best K through 12 education system on the face of the globe. So you start off with a very well educated group. We sometimes in this country are criticized for not looking far into the future and seeing where we're going to be the tech that that is the case here again that that we're not looking 20 years 50 years down the road to see where the United States will be strategically positioned economically way also. Absolutely and I think part of the problem is you know we have one characteristics that now makes it unique. We're the last country in the world with founding fathers George Washington Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin that crowd. And if you have Founding Fathers you tend to think that they were close to gods and they got it right

and can't be improved on. And you know the only other work for us for so well for a long time I did but of course bad Thomas Jefferson didn't foresee the 21st century. And if you think of the Soviet Union they were they had founding fathers Marx and Lenin and they have just renamed Leningrad St. Petersburg and probably psychologically we should rename Washington D.C. It's a new world. Or should George Marshall was a great hero but we should name cities for him 200 years later. I know a lot of our viewers just say let's just get at be a state of water then we have a number of folk out there who want to join in the conversation. Let's take a call from one of our viewers Good evening you're on the air go ahead. I've got a quick comment and a question I'd like to know. That's his opinion on the fact that there's these days to go to MIT or Harvard or brown or any fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. And if so few people that can afford that now withstanding the fact that man at the end. He added There got to be very careful because it's certainly true that tuition board room is up at that level but we do indeed blind admissions. We will give a scholarship to anybody for whatever amount of

money they need to come. And I think if you if you look at our admissions policy we're probably a more open university than most state universities because you can come to MIT with no money because we'll pay the entire bill MIT maybe but MIT is not going to fuel the nation it's not going to fill the entire needle Absolutely. But I think the gentleman is getting to basically say it's too expensive for me to to send my kid to school I mean there are stories appearing in local papers today about young people dropping out of school simply because they cannot pay for it. Do the research I would say this is this is the short sightedness because if you look at this round of state budget cuts and states have cut state universities more than anything else and we've got a very peculiar thing going on we're putting enormous amount of money into prisons and the money and education I suppose you can think of prisons as a particular type of education. But it cost $50000 per person to keep somebody for a year in a prison. It doesn't it the world's most expensive university doesn't cost half of that. The key is to give somebody education for the year. How different is that let's say in your path as opposed to Japan when when they look at how

much they spend on penal institutions as opposed to educate they spend much less. Partly because they have less crime but partly because they run a very different system in terms of how they punish people. In C I would argue this is a little off the topic but in the United States there's got to be some smarter way to punish people than for you and I the taxpayers to pay $50000 for every person we lock up. Now maybe if they're violent we have to do that but most people who are in prison are not violent and I think it's a real poverty of imagination. But it comes back to economics because if in the United States we put our money in prisons locks guards all of those kind of things. And in Europe they're putting their money in R&D robot skills infrastructure like high speed trains they win we lose the criminal their criminal justice problem does in fact relate back to some extent to the economic problem. All right let's take another call. Good evening. You're on the air you have a question. Yes my question is you know that to me racism and the plight of white supremacy is going to go away and I just don't believe it because if you look at Africa South America these countries have been devastated because of white supremacy

colonialism and a lack of trying to keep the educational standards up. And even with the Japanese they will not harm with out from outside of the nation. If you go to Japanese. And I don't see Americans getting jobs these companies are practicing their use and racial segregation every place the question is is that we really break out of that though nobody denies the history and of course the interesting thing is Korea Taiwan Hong Kong and Singapore were all colonies too and they've basically managed to break out of it. And you're saying basically because the color's basically I think saying that listen racism is part of the reason that we don't have all the assets of the human resource assets of the company a country fully developed and fully realized. And you're saying to him I agree with that. See I think you know you've got to understand that if you're a white Ph.D. as I am and you've got a black kid who in the ghetto who isn't getting educated it's important to me personally that he or

she gets educated and that's I think that's all the only way around the problem because you get a lot of people who think hey somehow I can jump off the American ship swim safely to shore even though it's sinking and I'll make it. And the answer is you're not going to make it that way we are in fact in this game together. And if you're black or brown or white or whatever we're still all Americans and to some extent we're going to sink and swim as Americans whether in addition to. Investing in human capital we invested in shopping centers instead of new plants and we invested in and all kinds of intangibles that were greed driven as opposed to things that would move us forward is it too late for that philosophy did you know you can change it but see the interesting thing in the United States in the 1980s we clearly did have a greedy decade but instead of changing the institutions to make sure it didn't happen again we said well there are a few devils out there Mike Milliken Mr Keating whomever let's throw them in jail and we'll all feel good about it now we may feel good but that doesn't change the system. So if you want to Americans to take a long view of the world you've got to change the American system because we've built a

system where the smartest thing you can do is focus in on the short run our corporations do that our families do that our educational institutions do it is not because Americans are dumb it's because we built a system that works that way. One of the things you point out in a head to head the American population is able to rally quickly we can mobilize for Gulf War we can come together and move as a nation with amazing effectiveness in ways that other countries are not able to do that. It has to happen in this country for that to happen in terms of how we view ourselves as as an economic power I think we have to. Usually it happens because we see an external threat Sputnik as another example of where we did it very well. In this case the external threat isn't from an evil empire enemy. It's for people who in some sense want to compete with us for the good high wage jobs and losing your high wage job is just as much a threat as having a Russian Sputnik go around the world and we have to understand it in those dimensions because see I could go to the rest of the world and I could give you the strategy of how they're going to conquer American computer software or how they're going to conquer American

biotechnology. If I come to the United States and say all right how is the United States going to conquer Japanese consumer electronics the answer is there is no strategy and we've got to start to think strategically about economic things as opposed to just thinking strategically about military things. We have a number of calls let's take another one good evening here on the air go ahead. Yeah look at the best. Well there's that. Change the world economies with Afghanistan and also what do you think planning in America is far even as big a planet with negative consequences. Well see we need. Yeah I use the word strategy because planning has kind of you become a bad word in the American economy. But the fact of the matter is you've got to put the pieces together now when people use the word planning they tend the discussion very quickly deteriorates and everybody asks like you're trying to do Russian central planning. That's not what the Japanese do that's not what the Europeans do but they do have a strategic vision of whether they want to be 15 years from now. Now I think the right way to do that is for our society to do what's called benchmarking look at who does everything in the economy best

in the world to make those standards widely available who gets the best high school graduate who does the most R&D and cetera who has the best high speed rail. And then let's set an American goal of getting there. See we're used to doing that in the military if the Russians had a thousand tanks we wanted to think 10000 tanks if the Russian missile landed within 20 feet we wanted a missile landed within 15 feet. We now got to do that in economy if they have two robots I want three robots and the other part of his question I with respect to Africa where does Africa fit in. Well you've got a big problem in the world economy that is developing because there are parts of the world that may very well be left out in the sense that none of the three big industrial groups Japan the United States Europe have much interest. Now the Europeans are going to take some interest in Africa north of the Sahara simply because they're just starting to get a lot of migration across the Mediterranean. But Africa south of the Sahara may be part of the world economy that in some sense is left out in the 21st century and I think that's a real danger. OK let's take another call good evening you're on the air go ahead. Gideon how do you know how in terms of the team content

your guests I'm sorry the doctor was to get the name of the row. Yes it's 1954 you had groups of particular from the south southern black man who went to college and most of them liberal arts degrees but the minds of it were activated by the impetus and all that kind of thing. And many of them now today they are not called upon from the trend but the trend for a particular lot of a doctor is considering this a mouse group. What what what are we really proud of it in of them are not ready to retire and they can't get employed with a need to because they were going to do that is committed to a program going to market on the record. Point it and these people didn't know that the of that group of individuals who can't find work who are educated who come from who are African-Americans. Well but see I think that goes back to this problem. Can't can we get an industrial structure that generating high wage jobs. See in the 1980s we generated 20 million jobs. The problem is they were mostly service low wage jobs.

And so it once again comes back to the strategy we had you know we were kind of like Chairman Mao let a thousand flowers bloom. The problem is all of our flowers the bloom were the flowers that tended to produce low low wage jobs. The rest of the world concentrated in knocking off some of our high wage jobs we see it at the moment on Air Bus industries. The purpose of Air Bus industries is to conquer the world aircraft manufacturing industry when that happens there will be another group of male high school graduates who are going to find their incomes pushed down. Simply because those are the places where the good jobs come from. Will there be more attention paid to this when it begins to affect the majority population in this country. Well see I think it is and that's part of the reason why there's this kind of hostility in this election so if you look at income distribution statistics for the 80s the top 20 percent gained in the 80s the next 20 percent held even and the bottom 60 percent fell. It didn't make any difference whether you were black white brown yellow What if fell they just fell in terms of absolute income. Now for a lot of these families their wage rate fell but the wife worked a lot more hours and they kind of held even by having the wife work a lot more. But in the 1990s she's already a full

time employee and can't really do that. And so it's just terribly important for the majority of Americans this is not a minority issue this is an American is an American issue. Let's take another phone call. Good evening you're on the air. Go ahead. Good evening Doctor and host I wonder if you can press on the fact that the reason they've been given the Asian countries has been reduced savings and I wonder if you think that come a time in this country when we see things as much as we do and secondly because I'm sure someone will want to get it I just have to question it up. Secondly do you see in the minds of the politicians who are running President Bush and Clinton or even Ross Ross anything that would make a lot of sense. Your contention when you look at their proposals. Well the big advantage day Asians have is they have saved and invested a lot but the real advantage is they've really focused on education from top to bottom. And if you go to Korea Taiwan Hong Kong Singapore you're going to see societies that have invested an enormous amount of money in education not just as a society but individual families pushing their kids very hard to be educated. And so you have whole countries

where you know if you go to Korea 1049 you basically had mass illiteracy. You go to Korea today you'll find high schools better than the United States and essentially everybody going through high school. And if you look at our presidential candidates I think the problem is they've all got a little bit of the truth but nobody has grabbed the whole truth. Mr. Tsongas talks about a growth policy we need that Mr. Clinton talks about falling incomes in the middle class and doing something about it and we need that. Mr. Brown talks about something being wrong with the American system and there are clearly places where it doesn't work. Mr Bush talks about a new world order now there is a new world order and he I think he thinks it's 70 percent military and 30 percent economic. When the truth is it's going to be about ninety nine percent economic and one percent military. And Ross Perot talks about government and industry working together to meet Japanese and European challenges now the question is how could you bring all of that together and make it into a package which is sellable to the American population. All right I think we have time for one more phone call it's taken I'll go ahead you're on the air. Yeah I would like to preface the room question and relate back to a

question that was addressed to him earlier concerning racism. He made a statement that he as a Ph.D. would much rather be a black individual black out in a ghetto to grow up and to become educated. How can we get more white men like you out here in this society to go out here and get these kids. Make sure that the schools are being educated make sure they have the correct education told the media to bring us up to par. Well see I think I think they're the real thing we have to understand and the way we get at that is to understand what the truth is going to be in the 21st century. General Motors makes Pontiacs in Korea. If you think about somebody offering to work for General Motors there are only two things you can offer. The first thing you can do is offer to work for less money than a Korean. The second thing you can do is offer to have more skills than the Korean. And if you won't offer more skills you're going to work for less wages and it's just terribly important that everybody in the United States and that everybody realizes that this whole skill acquisition problem is not a luxury. So we've been training education in skills kind of as a

lecture either get them or you don't get them and if you get them it's nice but it isn't absolutely essential. The problem is in the 21st century if you have a third world education in America you're going to make third world wages even though you happen to live in a wealthy country. Awful lot to think about as we go as you would say head to head as we head to the 21st century. Fascinating reading. Lester through I want to thank you very much for joining us today. My pleasure. When we come back who's afraid of the big bad cow. More folk in you think. Stay with us. Mostly Republican she said.

Oh and.

Welcome back to evening exchange a wave of controversy has welled up within the beef industry as a result of allegations by one environmental activists. Jeremy Rifkin He's the author of the book Beyond beef The Rise and Fall of the cattle industry. And he is setting out to prove that much of the beef we consume is not safe and it's environmentally damaging to produce it. In his book he explores what we are what he believes are devastating global consequences to eating beef. Welcome to the show. Nice to be around the dinner hour having read this book you wouldn't want to touch beef. Are you telling me that the thousands millions of Americans are poisoning themselves on a daily basis. Well you know basement a health issue for about 10 years people are reducing their consumption of beef. They realize that saturated animal fat is a real contributing factor to heart disease breast and colon cancer and strokes and

for that reason beef is down about 20 percent in the last 15 years. What's new in the equation. Are the environmental factors the food and hunger factors in the main issues involved in beef consumption. I think most of the viewers would be fairly surprised to learn that cattle are now a major environmental threat on the planet. I will get to the environmental threat but I'm worried about what I give out to those on my right late I mean I get what I want. We're going to share it with you tonight during the dinner hour but I will head. All right I will share with you I was going to kid ending up on my. Well let me tell you what's happening most people feel think that every carcass is inspected in that slaughterhouse by meat inspectors. Not true anymore. There's a new pilot program called the Streamline Inspection Service. It was put in in order to speed up production on the assembly line in slaughterhouses. Now less than three carcasses in a thousand are inspected by Federal Meat inspectors. Instead they're letting employees police their own their own meat as it goes through the line and I'll tell you what's going through the line is appalling. These according to

affidavits that by Federal Meat inspectors that we use in the book Here's what's going through the line to your dinner table. If you kids those are cattle heads where the room is still stuffed into the head cow bellies cattle going through the line with your and still in their bellies it has not been taken out. Cattle with with blood clots with feces measles measles peritonitis are going through the line. And not only that the conditions on the floor are unconscionable. Federal Meat inspectors in their affidavits tell about rat dung so thick. That you can scrape off the carcasses and ride off the machinery. And some of these pilot plants and these are affidavits of federal made inspectors currently employed by the US Department of Agriculture beef inspectors not beef inspectors let's say cattle producers and their industry representatives in this town right now have to be fuming at what you just said. They're going to say how many Americans are getting sick every day from that hamburger they get at McDonald's. That steak they throw on the grill.

Of whatever it is it's not that bad people are getting sick and while they have a new standard which they call aesthetically acceptable meaning that if it looks OK it's OK to put it through the line. Now this is not true for all meat inspection but it is true for the speed. Speed up in for us this streamlined Inspection Service. I noted two days after I started my tour on the book beyond belief. The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a press release that they were now going to seriously study the allegations and they've started an investigation into the. Into the problems at the slaughterhouses that's only the beginning of the story about beef it goes much further than that. You know when you start when you start going after the beef industry you might as well kick mom apple pie Chevrolets and John Wayne right out the door with them. Beef is American is all of those things I just mean you're absolutely right in fact most people around the world identify America with cowboys blue jeans and the hamburger. And I think what's happening in this decade is we're seeing the passing of 200 years of American tradition as we move beyond the beef

culture we're moving beyond the mythology that underwrites it the idea of the rugged individualism territorial expansion violence colonialism taming nature civilizing the frontier. Now we have a younger generation more concerned with our stewardship of the environment ecology and more green in their thinking. They want to develop a more humane relationship with the animals and the and the larger environment. And I think for these young people they're going to be less interested in consuming beef than in moving to alternatives. Now I know that a lot of high school kids are still grazing on hamburgers at McDonald's. But I think we're at the beginning of a long term trend that's going to be a little bit like cigarette smoking. Cigarette the anti cigarette campaign began in the late 70s early 80s on the east and west coast and then moved inland as same trends happening would be East and West Coast beef consumption is going down very rapidly and I would predict that in the next decade or so we're going to see a tremendous reduction in beef consumption all over the world.

I think Price may have something to do with it as well a little bit we have a number of folks who want to join in let's go to the phones. Good evening you're on the air go ahead. TURNER Well that's an interesting question. Obviously cattle are pumped full of hormones on the feed lots and dairy cattle which make up some of our beef are pumped full of antibiotics. The. We don't have really good studies to show how those hormones and antibiotics affect human health obviously is a great deal of concern in the medical community the scientific establishment I can tell you this several years ago the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences did a hypothetical study of worst case scenarios and it turns out that beef ranks number one. Number one overall in in second sector sides. Number two and pesticide contamination and the study concluded that hypothetically it would amount to about 10 percent of the cancer risks from pesticides in all

foods today. OK that's pretty high. Folks are saying OK OK you got me YOU GOT ME I'll eat less beef. Is that good enough. Well we're launching a global campaign in 16 nations and we're asking people to reduce their beef by at least 50 percent. Replace it with grains fruits and vegetables and if you're still going to eat some beef try and demand a market for beef that is organic in other words cattle that are raised humanely sustainable and organic standards. Many people are getting off the beef habit because the environment is not just health. And I think that's something I did want to move to that not only the environment. As you point out if you could address that but also the amount of grain it takes to feed one beef producing cow when you total up you could feed a lot of hungry. That's exactly right. Cattle are now a major factor in the global environmental crisis. They're one of the main the great threats looming on our planet their 1.3 billion cows now on earth. They're taking up 25 percent of the land surface of this planet. They're a major factor in deforestation. Mexico Central and South America they're raising those beautiful

tropical rain forests and much of it is moving in a pasture land for cattle. Some of it destined for North America. Some of it for the European beef market. In all of Africa below the Sahara and our western range the United States and in parts of Australia. Cattle are overrunning the grasslands. They're stripping the vegetation and creating manmade deserts. This is a particularly big problem in Africa. Africa has literally been overgrazed and burned out by cattle by too many cattle against too few resources. In the Midwest in the United States in those big feedlots we have 50000 head of cattle. The manure is going into the groundwater and contaminating rivers lakes and streams in the West where water is a big political issue. It now takes twenty two hundred gallons of water in the state of California to produce one pound of steak. You and I could take a shower every day for nine months for the amount of water takes to produce one pound of steak. And finally cattle figure in global warming cattlemen snicker about methane but 16 million tons of methane are made it

into the atmosphere from cattle worldwide. And then of course when they burn those trees in the Amazon for cattle pasture they emit carbon dioxide and that's a major contributor to global warming. So when you add it all up. Cattle are a major environmental problem we're going to have to reduce our cattle herds. OK let's take another phone call a lot of folk want to talk to you about this. Good evening you're on the air. It's going to be informative program. See but my question relates to to peace and the production of it and it disappears and nothing I just want to know if you can document it determine a turning point. When people were eating more organic foods more food grain. And when it moved it shifted from that overproduction will also have this isn't eating the terms of four of the four food groups and how much would you say how much influenced you to be produced and distributed avenues and political processes I mean do they have a whole get out of it. And my last point when it

comes to grain and people that don't have enough is it doesn't. Do you see animals known to take grain a seaport town to see have been with them to see TV that we have. How does that make sense. Well you question a gentleman had all the important questions and a lot of this is detailed in and beyond even the book but let's take the first one. When did the shift occur. After the Civil War. Giant beef packing conglomerates emerged in Chicago. Swift armor Wilson packing company. They became our first corporate giants they monopolized the beef industry and we began to eat a heavy beef diet primarily because Americans became well-off I was a country on the rise and beef is associated with status with wealth with power. Immigrants like to boast that they could have a steak every morning for breakfast which they couldn't have in the old country. But the giant corporations played a very key role and introducing the beef culture. After World War 2

Interestingly enough the reason for the hamburgers rise is quite fascinating. The hamburger was not a. A featured part it was a paranormal and it was a poor man's diet until after World War 2 and the American barbecue came in. People wanted fast foods the auto culture took off and of course the big beef companies took advantage of it. The interesting thing is the gentleman mentioned was the grain question. Cattle are the Cadillacs of grain conversion meaning they are very inefficient at converting grain. It takes nine pounds of feed to produce one pound of flesh on cattle. How many down to that. Well let me give an example. Seventy percent of the U.S. grain harvest is now being fed to cattle and livestock and a third of all the grain produced in the world today is not being fed to human beings but to livestock. If you use that arable land in the United States it's now being used to grow feed for cattle. And you took that arable land and grew food for hungry people on American streets you could feed 350 million

more people. Let's take another call of a lot of folks who want to ask you a question Good evening or on the air. Go for the pic like I never did. I don't get along with completely just you know I don't know how long it takes to completely digest about I do know this many people feel slightly ill usually sometimes after a heavy beef dinner and the problem is our inspection service can't deal with all the contamination that the microbial contamination in beef and we simply don't know all the ill effects of beef will have on the human physiology. I do know that when people move off of beef to a more vegetable oriented diet they feel lighter. They feel less heavy after they eat and and of course there are fewer people on vegetable diets who are checking in at the at the emergency wards with heart attacks and strokes you don't see a lot of vegetarians in the emergency rooms late at night.

All right let's take another call good evening you're on the air. Good evening. My question is do you think o me being processed. Thing just be you all meet under the streamlined Inspection Service now there are five pilot plants being run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture these are big corporate plants actually and I think it's somewhere around 18 or 20 percent of all the meat that's under currently under the system is going through the Streamline inspections process that's as best as we can calculate. So approximately one out of every five meals you're going to get beef or other meat. There really hasn't been properly inspected. Two things one FISA is designed to get more beef on the market. Quick but safe beef quicker. Number two why shouldn't we trust armor swift major slaughterhouses to give us the best they can because these companies have been caught time and time again and unfair labor practices in production technologies that are unsafe.

Remember the first antitrust laws in this country were passed against those very companies. They have a very dicey record where profit comes first in public health and safety comes last. Today three meat packers are dominating the industry IBP ex-felon Conagra and one of them was caught up in scandals a few years ago with the New York mafia and the syndicate. We're not talking about Stella's I mean to me I was in my hamburger Well I don't I'm not going to go don't know I can't comment on that. Now the other issue here that I think is important is the humane issue. You know if a high school class could travel with a calf from birth to slaughter they may think twice about that McDonald's hamburger tomorrow afternoon. Domestic animals are the most abuse the most misused of all the animals. But you know people believe that they have to have beef they have to have meat it's just so ingrained in society that that that's a lower form of of life and that's that's what it's testing. I think you're right people are ingrained to that but I think people are getting off the beef have a look when I was growing up and there wasn't beef on the table every night my dad would walk off until my mother threw him a cube steak or fixed in my

hamburger. So we all grew up with that. I think many professional people and middle class people around the country are reducing beef consumption. I think our our I guess our suggestion of people is this try and reduce your beef consumption by at least 50 percent. If you do perhaps you can restore some of the environment around the world that's being overtaxed by too much cattle. If you reduce your beef maybe you can free up some arable land to grow food for people rather than feed grains for livestock. Certainly you preserve your own health in the process maybe a few less animals will suffer in that production process. That's not a bad deal for cutting beef in half and probably your family doctor will tell you that that's not enough. Let's take another phone call good evening you're on the air. Go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. A little early I think well I think the public have to be re-educated and I think too much people rely on their taste bad rather than

you know taking some terrific and important steps in their lives. You know it's fine for eating habits but I do agree and I believe that this this this meat there but this beef is really what contamination Thank you said something earlier I really your question ma'am because I want to get as many people as we can. OK. Something you say this is a comment. It takes years to develop that skill. The Francis effect of cancer. Even so when I think earlier I didn't understand that because from your peers who happen overnight we will never know. Potentially could transfer from eating beef and thank you from my that's absolutely right. If you're interested in preserving your health if you want to reduce the risk of a heart attack stroke or breast cancer or colon cancer get off beef reduce your beef consumption. Your doctor's going to tell you the same thing.

But also if you want to save the environment and you know in the end you're interested in feeding people rather than livestock. So another good reason for reducing beef. All right let's take another call we have a number of good evening you're on the air. I would like to comment on some of the facts that you're putting out. Have a probably almost everything you're saying and the conversion of the animals are given all that he doesn't really know what he's talking about I work with animals and it's one of the things that one of those points is to challenge him on man. Well I guess let's see. The fact that the animals are you see could be better utilized if it's just not true that you have a dairy cow to ruminate which is a very complex digestive system or compartment we don't get quite that complex here. What about that let me comment on it.

If you read this week's last week's issue of TIME magazine they did a two page spread on our campaign and my book beyond belief. Basically agreeing with the points and you'll see a chart on feed conversion. The fact is it does take nine pounds of feed on the feedlot. Nine pounds of feed to make one pound of fat the same kind of know that I want to know what we are saying is that the arable land farmland can either be used to grow feed for livestock or food grains for us. Obviously the feed even the corn that we feed livestock isn't the same quality that we would get. What we're saying is use that arable land to grow food for human beings especially the poor. Rather than continue to use that land for feed for millions of cows and other animals it's really an ethical question. We've got a lot of poor people in this country. We have a lot of hungry people around the world. You go in a place like Central America or South America where people used to live on the land and grow corn and beans for their family. Those people are off the land they've been thrown off. Now they're growing soy and sorghum for the European livestock market for cattle. That's unfair.

I think we can take one more phone call yes we can good evening here on the air. I just wanted to offer a comment to the woman who asked how long does it take be to go through your digestive system. A couple of years ago my father had an operation the diverticulitis had to have but 10 inches of his intestines taken out and the doctor said that it was primarily from the consumption of beef and he said that it took eight days to go through your body. So that's a long time and he has been now since about five years. OK thank you very much and something nice out. Let's bring someone else in on the conversation. Good evening you're on the air. Yeah I agree with most of missed the risk in his arguments which is why I'm myself I'm a vegetarian but I'm just wondering why he's only arguing for a 50 percent reduction in beef where his arguments seem to point to a complete reduction or complete elimination not only of beef but of all animal products. Because if I can just take it one step further. The conditions for animals on dairy farms are the conditions for chickens or turkeys. Factory farms just as well.

Yeah I would agree with the caller the conditions are appalling for domestic animals and we need new regulations at least in the short run to help mitigate that suffering. The fact is our coalition is broad based in 16 countries we have farm groups we have animal protection animal rights groups we have environmental groups the one thing everyone agrees to is a 50 percent reduction in beef. It was a kind of a joint agreement to get us a very broad based coalition. Also I think it's important that we phase down this type of production the same time that we go to alternatives. We don't want the family farm to be the victim of our transition. And I think over the next 10 years if we begin reducing beef consumption it's going to allow the family farm to ease into other forms of production so that they can survive as well. What about the beef industry folk out there who are probably saying this is a bunch of bull steak that you're not getting charitable. Not given to the full benefit. Aren't there some benefits from the

consumption of beef that you're not telling us about. There are benefits from the consumption of beef but those benefits pale in contrast to all the potential harm to one's health to the environment to the animals themselves and in fact you can get all the benefits and beef from other food products proteins the one that I find most amusing people say we need the protein. Well the fact is the average American consumes twice as much protein as the body can even absorb and that protein can be gotten from other non meat sources. It seems to me as we move into the 21st century we're going to need to move beyond the beef culture and develop a dietary habit that's more responsible to our bodies and to the planet. Our phones have literally been ringing off the hook. We're going to take one more call before we say goodbye. You're on the air go ahead sir. We're guess I'd like to ask Mr. Rifkin if it's unnatural or unhealthy for human beings to be first of all why were we born and have we evolved with incisor teeth in order to hear me. There are various opinions on whether we were at war with evolutionary

history makes this carnivores or not the fact is where the only animal if you will that doesn't bite into flesh directly. That's a carnivore and eat it straight and we don't have the teeth to do that actually to bite into the flesh as other carnivores would. But that aside human beings make choices about dietary habits. Two thirds of our species are vegetarians. Two thirds of human beings on the planet eat a primary primarily almost exclusively vegetarian diet and in places like Japan they've been very healthy till recently. Now that they've moved up the food chain are eating a lot of beef. We see heart attacks and strokes in cancer moving up to parallel the beef consumption in countries like Japan. So I think that just good common sense says moderate your diet reduce the beef consumption. Well whether you agree or disagree with what you heard it's always good to be informed beyond beef is the name of the book The Rise and Fall of the cattle culture. Jeremy Rifkin Rifkin excuse me thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure.

OK up next a look at a character building the method that uses hammers and nails. Stay with us. It's going to be a Child Development Center a daycare center here in Washington D.C.. The program that we're always on the Casson Ferguson to Tedham in Detroit. And. Which is where schools are pregnant. We're back welcome to evening exchange once again James Adam sitting in for Kojo

babies with babies and no prospects for the future our sayings often used to describe teenage mothers. But one organization is proving that it's not necessarily so. In Detroit Michigan there is a group of teen mothers who are learning a very valuable skill to build a future on. And they are learning how to become construction workers in the process and they have brought their skills and their babies to the Washington area to build a daycare center for teen mothers in our area. Evening exchange segment producer. There are no Sterling met with them last week and would like to introduce you to them right now. We love is going to be a Child Development Center a daycare center here in Washington D.C. the program that we're always on the Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit. And. Which is where school for pregnant parenting to. Us. And. What our goal is just to give the young women who came with us an opportunity. To get some

experience in. Small business teachers are skilled trades. And also just to sort of give them a sense of themselves a sense of their capabilities. So often these jobs. The skilled trades are down the about particularly white and. It gives them an opportunity to see that. Anyone can do this job it just is a matter of training. And. Commitment to the job. We have 13 young women who came with us for this particular program for this project and there are six of them brought their children. The girls range in age from 14 to 18 and the babies range in age from. 18 months to two years. And so some days one group of girls takes care of the babies and. The other group is downstairs working and we rotate that way so that the girls who I work with are also. Excuse me provided sound there for the stove. What is special about this is a sort of sense of pride I feel

seeing their pride seeing how they accomplish it and they put their roof on over there and having them I watched them terrified to go up on a ladder. And conquer it. You know they're on the ladder there on the roof. And then they're almost playful about come on up here for you know that kind of thing so that part's real different I don't see it you don't see that as much as straight after dentist and one of the teachers from our school Mr. Wertz who is a licensed plumber in Michigan came with us and. Has a lot of experience in restoration with patients really and he's teaching all of us. This is. Why we want to be able to buy back quality care for this area of north east. We doing our research found that there's a lot of good childcare in D.C. but it's not affordable to middle class working families are to single parents. So we are to prevent the same kind of quality that center Georgetown might provide. But in this

community and this communities actually a misandrous was in town for a meeting and we were just having a discussion about the center and the fact that we were going to open a really quality childcare center and how there's so few women going into business that it was so good to see women starting a business and are that particular discussion. I had mention the fact that we were going to have to have this build and renovated and just chatting we thought what a great add to for the young woman at her school to be a part of something like this that the purpose of us coming west to prove that women not only women. Back when I make that comment that most people think they want to can do. Now we're finally happy that a lot of handier and discounted banking is now doing construction work and we're pulling a big ally. Now I don't understand our wonderful story and later in the week

we will take you back to the construction site and show you the finished product. We'll be right back with all of that. That's our show for tonight. And we want to thank all of our all of our guests tomorrow we will give you a chance to express any frustration you may have with how the federal government spends your hard earned tax dollars. We will also show you how each and every year your government wastes millions of dollars. And we'll also tell you how you can put a stop to the madness That's all tomorrow at 7:00 right here on evening exchange from all of us to all of you I'm James Adam sitting in for Kojo Nandi. Good night. Evening exchange depends on your contributions. Please send your donation to

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