The Meat Mafia Podcast

Welcome to the Playing With Fire podcast hosted by the Meat Mafia. Clemenza and mister Sollozzo are here to talk with the one and only Texas Slim, the founder of the beef initiative and the man behind the shake your rancher's hand movement and the food intelligence movement. We're excited for this one, so let's dive right in. And we are here with the one and only Texas Slim. Slim, how you doing?

Hey. Hey, guys. I'm doing good today. It's good to be here. We've been, we've been talking for a while and everything, and I think there's a lot of exciting things going on with you and, with, with the beef initiative.

So thanks for allowing me

to have a conversation. And we are we're excited to have you on because we know you've been doing a ton of work, you know, I think out in the, the Twitter verse with, you know, building your audience and getting the message out there, you know, getting your signal out there. But behind the scenes, there's been a lot going on. So, just as an introduction, you're the founder of the Beef Initiative, which is trying to consolidate all the different components of beef production under one umbrella. What's been going on?

How did you get started in this? Maybe just give us a little background on on how you got going, and then we can we can dive in.

Yeah. I think it's always best to start from the beginning, you know, with any story. That way, kinda give a good foundation of understanding, like, where it comes from. You know, I I'm from Texas. Many generations of ancestors come from Texas.

In the last over a 100 and something years, we've been in the Panhandle of Texas and, came from agriculture. And, I grew up doing it, you know, off and on, family farm, friends. It's just part of the the heritage that we have here. And then when I was young, I got tired of the small town. I wanted to go off in bright lights, big city, so I chose Austin.

And I got into Austin, and I was lucky enough to have a affinity to know how to network. And then I also love networking from a technology standpoint. So when I was young, I was kinda self my self taught myself, some, skill sets at the time that really helped me leverage to find a really good professional career in technology. I was able to get into several startups that had success, and I was also able to leverage it into more of a analyst and a researcher role. So I have a kind of a skill set that comes from the the soil all the way up into the the modern day technology apparatus that in in which we live in.

And then I I got busted up a couple years ago. I'm kind of a rough and tumble guy. I've broken over 20 bones in my body. I've got, like, 14 pieces of metal. I've broken my neck.

I've got a partially amputated thing. I mean, I've hurt myself. But the long story short, I got busted up a couple years ago, and I got pretty ill. And I had to really look at my health because it wasn't anything that was that, you know, I put on myself as far as my lifestyle, as far as eating, but I wanted to revisit food. And it's, you know, it happened where I was laid up for about 6 months, and, you know, I was easing back into health.

And so everybody has this health story, but mine was lucky enough to follow in where I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole at the Bitcoin rabbit hole at the same time. And so whenever I was looking at Bitcoin, I was looking at food. And so I said, you know, I'm gonna get to the source of the seed of all of this, you know, Bitcoin and food. And I just started finding a lot of corruption. And so I said, well, I need to get back out there.

You know, I was in good health again, and I was I was doing I was doing some consulting. That's what I do. And I I said, man, I'm gonna embed myself in a harvest company, and I'm gonna find out what this food supply is all about because I I like to do that. I like to get into the belly of the beast and kinda go poke around. So I was able to get a lot of good connections and networking.

And so I found out a lot of stuff, and I said, well, I'm gonna start writing about this. And I started writing about it, and it was called the harvest of deception. And a lot of people kinda took to it. And, you know, I I started from the ground up, and here we are. And I by riding and covering the corruption and and the and the poison that is our food supply that, you know, I I knew we had to have a solution that people could focus on and kinda create a new lifestyle out.

And so I decided to do being from Texas, cattle, the beef initiative, animal protein, pure animal protein, regenerative farming, soil, it all just fell into place, and, you know, I'm making it to where we can leverage the beef initiative as a solution instead of just talking about the problems.

What was, what were some of the things in your research that stood out to you the most that sort of kept you compelled to continue writing and going on this topic of uncovering all these different health health issues in our system?

One thing that hit home for me on a personal level was, you know, my my grandfather, I mean, he he battled the dust bowl. He battled the great depression. He battled confiscation. He he he battled the the banking industry, the devaluation of the dollar. I mean, everything all the way up until he truly passed away was manipulation after manipulation after manipulation after survival mode, survival mode, survival mode.

And watching the evolution of what happened to my grandfather in our family farm and then what happened in our our nation as a whole as from after World War 2, let's say, through the fifties, sixties, and how we started becoming a chemical industry, how our our farming became something based on chemical manipulation, seed manipulation. It just became very personal for me, and it was really easy to start identifying things because I could look at our family history and say, this is exactly what happened in the eighties. This is what happened in the seventies. And once you find that correlation, it's just it's amazing the things that you kinda come across from holistically looking at it, but also with my background skill and the access, I can find things as far as research and ground skill and the access, I can find things as far as research and analysis. It was amazing the things I under uncovered.

So by saying that, there's not one thing. The one thing that I do come away from is that, you know, the source of our seed of our nutrition has been manipulated in ways that people do not understand.

Yeah. I think I feel like, Brett, that kinda relates to your story a little bit with, you know, uncovering some truths in, your health story. So, I feel like that's there's all these connections from just creating the the honest processing fulfillment, of, you know, getting the beef and doing doing it all correctly. And also just like the consumer side of it, there needs to be a consistency with the the honesty and integrity throughout the entire system. So it's, definitely seems like it's kind of systemic, right?

A 100%. And that's why it's it's also cool for us to be here too, Slim, because Clemenza showed me your blog a few months ago. And it's interesting because we both use this meat based, animal based diet for us to feel and operate at our highest level. And since being exposed to your articles in the beef initiative, it's kind of ignited this fire within us to become more connected to our food, the way that we're feeding our kids, etcetera. So it kinda leads me to something that I wanted to ask you.

For for the average consumer listening to this podcast, what do you think they should know about the big four meat processors that are controlling the meat and beef industry?

There's a lot to know about them. I guess the best way to think about the processing, industry in the United States is it it's it has nothing to do with the United States. 3 of the biggest processing companies in the United States are actually owned by Brazilian global Brazilian conglomerate. And so they're just stationed in the United States, and they are our pivot point from producer to supplier to market access. They have a lot of control over price manipulation.

They just got sued for $58,000,000, which is nothing. It's a distraction. It has nothing to do with, you know, them admitting anything wrong. It was a multiyear whatever. It's just a clown show.

But the thing about it is that they they have the power to manipulate farming and ranching in a way that keeps the farmer and rancher at bay as far as having personal sovereignty or control of their protocol of raising their produce or their protein. That is a big problem to have that amount of control and a very few corporations' hands. That is where we bottleneck with food supply chains. We bottleneck with price manipulation and competition, and it really puts a choke hold on being able to have free access to the quality protein and nutrition that we we are. It is the problem.

We we we in the beef industry world, we you know, everybody focuses on processing, processing, processing. And that's yes. That is one definitely huge ass asset of it, our point of it. One thing that we're going to uncover for a lot of consumers and people is that the market access is also controlled by the processing centers. And whenever they control the processing and the market access, you don't even know what quality is anymore because they have that supply chain line controlled, and they're they don't wanna turn those

The right phrase there is that it's a complete conflict of interest. Right? When you have that, it's, it's pretty incredible that 4, you know, 4 mega conglomerates, 3 of which aren't even in the US, are controlling, such a vital part of our food supply. When, when did it become clear to you, this rabbit hole that you went down, was it because you you spoke about how Bitcoin played a role in it. I'm just curious.

It's still playing a role. So, like, you've that education piece from the beginning was, you know, partially Bitcoin driven and partially beef driven. Were they really working like hand in hand as you were going down and finding these different layers of corruption in the system? I'm just I'm curious how they they play a part in each other's Yeah. Like, that learning process.

It really was. I mean, when we when we think about Bitcoin, we think about, decentralization. Correct? So whenever I do anything, you know, I'll take a word and I'll dissect that damn word for a week, and I'll say, okay, decentralization. What are we talking about then?

What are we talking about now? What are we talking about the future? Let's really define decentralization. And so by going down that, dissecting of decentralization, what I was able to do is, like, okay, let's reflect that decentralization. But now let's let's compare that to the centralization of our consumption.

And I started with when I say consumption, I mean audio, video. I mean, any type of consuming that you're doing on a daily basis. Let's look at the centralized apparatus of that control And where we go? You know, here we go. We look at the money.

We look at everything. Well, let's look at food. And I was able to really identify the issues of centralization of food, and then the correlation of that centralization of food went into, let's go proof of work. You know, not proof of concept. Our food is a proof of concept backed by global marketing plans.

And so you look at proof of work. Okay. Let's what is proof of work in Bitcoin? Can we figure out what proof of work is? Let's find out what proof of work is in our food.

Let's see how we used to do it. Oh, my grandfather used to have proof of work because he had to. He found his community. He found his family. He had to have those relationships, those decentralized relationships.

So once again, it was symbiotic. I mean, anybody can do it if you give yourself a chance to understand what Bitcoin why it is we don't know exactly why it's so powerful, but we do know the decentralization of it, and we do know that scarcity is something that we do not live in in this world anymore. We need to have scarcity again. Scarcity creates something. Well, scarcity in food, what what does that mean?

It means you value it. It means you've put in some some, real time, low time preference into evaluating that scarcity. Whenever you can treat food in a scarce mindset means you're going to pay more attention to it. Our our consumption model with food right now is a of one of convenience and one of comfort and one of unlimited supply. And, you know, they don't work.

And we know that now. You know? We know we we have much proof of of why we do what we're doing all 3 of this.

Yeah. It's like the the proof is in the pudding in where the health care system is at right now with 88% of people having some sort of metabolic dysfunction. I think that it's been decades of just ignoring those central, points of failure in the food system, as those big conglomerates continue to consolidate. What I love about what you're doing though, is that you've taken this idea and now put some work into creating something to solve the problem. So I'd love to hear like the vision, right?

Like where where are you, where are you steering the ship?

Sure.

Mhmm.

And, you know, I wanna be honest with this. I wasn't gonna do any of this. And, you know, COVID hit, and everybody has their COVID story and whatever it is. You know, I it's not that I was retired, but I I I've definitely lived my own damn life. And I had some plans, and COVID kinda stirred that up.

I've been around the world a couple times, and I was gonna go do a walkabout again. But, you know, so here it is. I woke up one night about 3 o'clock in the morning, and I said, I gotta do this. I don't know where it's going. And I didn't plan it out.

I just knew a destination that was is is important to me. My destination was to help save children's lives with their consumption. And no matter what that consumption is, well, it just falls in that it became food for me. And so whenever I I I have that destination that I create, I don't know exactly where it's going, but I know that I'm gonna enjoy the damn road trip. And so that's what we're on right now.

We're on a road trip, and I know what the destination is, and that's to save one kid's life. If we can do that, then everything else is gonna come along and all the truth will come out, and we'll be at a better place as Americans, as men, as fathers, as mothers, as daughters, as everybody that we are, sons, whatever it is. And so with the beef initiative, it it's gonna have a lot of different aspects to it. One thing that we're gonna really do is decentralize our animal protein supply, give people that choice and that solution that they can build a consumption model lifestyle around that betters their time on this planet. It is gonna be empowering.

We're gonna do that in a lot of different ways. A lot of education within the beef initiative from, like, what you guys are doing as far as nutrition, how to live your life as a young man or, you know, anybody, really. Anybody can follow you guys and gain so much knowledge. You guys are doing a great job. Education.

Let's bring in some input as far as crowdsourcing, what all we want, and how we can solve each other's problems for each other. So we're building these nodes of networking, places across, you know, especially starting in Texas, but across United States and really across the world. It does has no boundaries here. We're gonna all do it together, and we're gonna bring a very decentralized approach to it. We're already doing, beef boxes that you can pay with, Bitcoin through the beef initiative.

We this is phase 1, of course. We we we made it pretty simple right now. It's gonna scale to where paying with, Bitcoin over the through the beef initiative will be like any like using Square, like any other, online transaction. We're taking the friction out of the transactional layer. It's taken us a little time, but we're a hell of a lot further than we thought we were gonna be.

So, this is gonna scale really fast. We're gonna try to bring in as many ranchers that have a lot of that have a proof of work, that have a protocol that they want the nation or or the region or their local, you know, local communities to know. Anybody can come into the beef initiative you want to tell your protocol, you know, in the regenerative in the regenerative basically, mindset, I guess, and of practitioner as a grass farmer, ranch, or whatever it is. We wanna know your protocol. We wanna know, who you wanna target.

We wanna know who you wanna educate. By saying that, we wanna have all these ranchers, let's say, collective history told, heritage told. We wanna know everything there is to know about a rancher again. We wanna know everything about grass farming again. And so by doing that, we're creating a large conversation here.

We're gonna be able to source and start creating a food supply and give market access to that pure animal protein that everybody can have access to. We're gonna educate everybody why it is important to start with the soil all the way up into your table. And so having that, we're gonna have conferences across the United States. We're gonna have 4 this year. 1 in Texas, 1 in Colorado, 1 in Georgia, and the 4th one, I think we're gonna let the Bitcoiners decide.

And, we'll bring that out to, you know, let them choose where we're gonna go. So, you know, that's that's really kind of the the high level approach right now, how we're moving forward, but I'm going to be announcing as well here within probably a week, a formal announcement that I've been building a team. And what we're gonna do is we're going to be common association. And this team is gonna consist of experts within the processing industry. And we're gonna we're gonna, bring a collective consulting service and advisory board for anybody who wants to open up a processing center in the state of Texas.

You're gonna come to the association that I create, and we're going to advise you. We have USDA precedents from facilities to regulations, to legislation, to inspections, to everything. It is a processing center through federal or through state regulations and laws. We're gonna be able to advise you on those. I don't I really don't think this has been done very much, but we'll be able to have, proof of work, proof of concept, and I'll be able to release that at some time.

But what it's gonna do is we're gonna start building local communities again, and we're gonna start with pros regional processing centers. By saying that, once we have these processing centers that are going to start opening up across the state of Texas, we're going to have a model where 5% of that processing center is owned by that local community. In that local community, we will have a educational program from nutrition to actually skill sets that basically lend and leverage the processing center that feeds that community within that region. So that business model is being discussed. I'll be going to Dallas this week, and we're gonna do some formal talks.

And so this this spring, there's gonna be a lot of announcements. We're gonna have a lot of you know, we're gonna have some very good base com, conferences across the United States. We're gonna be bringing Bitcoin education, financial education, nutrition education, medical education to where we are right now, and, of course, you know, beef education, animal protein education. So we're hitting a lot of facets of a new lifestyle that we're trying to let people know this is this is the step forward. Let's quit paying attention to all the distractions out there.

We're not gonna be the distraction, and we have proof of concept, and we have proof of work, and we're gonna hit it hard, and it's gonna be a Bitcoin only company all across the board. And then in the end, along with that symbiotic with the beef initiative and the association, we're gonna have a new, we're gonna have a nonprofit, and we're going to basically that nonprofit will be leveraging the cow in a way to where we can use the suet, we can use the animal fat, we can use the tallow, we can use the hides to where we're leveraging the cow all the way down to the molecule, and we'll have, that money. Everything will go into the no nonprofit, and it will be for single mothers and children, and it'll date be based on financial education and nutrition. That's the big umbrella.

Wow. That is, that is a massive undertaking, and it seems like it started from just like these these, humble curiosities, which is which is amazing. So a lot a lot more to come from you.

You know, you yeah. It's it's hard to it's hard to define how this, you know, because I've I'm, you know, entrepreneur a little bit. I've never been overly successful entrepreneur. You know, my skill sets were differently. And whenever you go out on something like this, what you have to do is you have to have a lot of faith.

You have to have a lot of faith in the you know, what you're doing is pursuing truth. And once you let that kind of be your your foundation of, intent, You know, things just happen. Like I said, I didn't plan this. It just it start it it it comes to you, and you meet people. And we met each other.

And I've met so many people that I would never have met before. There's something here that's going on that it it's not hard to pull off. It's taxing, but it's fun. The one thing that, you know, I tell everybody, it's like, it's time. It's time just to live in this truth that there's there's an awareness and awakening going on in our country because of the chaos that we're living in and the lies that we're living in.

Everybody needs to, you know, get based and get ready, go toe to toe with what's going on in this world. It'd be it individually as far as your health or as far as your your money supplies, whatever it is, we can fight back. It's time to innovate. You know, during times of mass prohibition creates mass innovation. Well, that's what we're doing here.

And we're gonna innovate, and we're gonna know the law better than the law knows itself. And we're gonna we're gonna punch hard, and I tell people we're gonna counterpunch. And I I think that's what the beef initiative really is. It's a counterpunch to awareness and to intent and to a new form of education and a new form of empowerment.

I think I think that that all that just speaks to the core of just fighting against, like, what all the problems are that are happening right now. And one of the things that I've learned from you is this idea of hyper localization. And I know that's kind of at the core of everything you do. I'm curious how you see the beef initiative growing from, you know, kind of the small Austin base outside of and then growing outside of that.

Well, that's the thing about the beef initiative. I mean, it's a scaled scalable project all the way around. I mean, what we're gonna do is we're gonna create that model, and we're we've already created it in many points of Texas already. It's just we we haven't been ready to, you know, unfold all of the proof of work that has happened. But I see I've already have a team in Missouri, and they're gonna be the Missouri beef initiatives.

And what they're doing is they're in a local community. They're bringing ranchers in. They're having conversations. The Bitcoin education is moving forward. The community is paying attention to the local processing.

They're finding ways to look at new protocols of raising their animal protein. It's coming I mean, it can be done in any community. What I want the beef initiative out of Texas to be is, hey. This is the center point. You wanna sell your beef, come in to the beef initiative.

We'll get you into ecommerce. We will help you. You don't wanna sell through the beef initiative? Well, let's get you on to onboarded onto our transactional transactional application, which we're in partnerships with the Ocea app. And so we onboard that rancher.

Okay. What happens? Well, whoever onboards that rancher, they're gonna get sats back for every transaction that rancher ever does. And so by coming through the beef initiative, you're gonna have onboarding education for the rancher and for the Bitcoiner or whoever it is. It doesn't have to be a Bitcoiner, but I'm probably I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a Bitcoiner.

The onboarding ranchers are gonna be something that anybody across the nation can do. Young guys, I've already talked to 3 guys that that they're ready to quit their jobs and go and onboard ranchers across the United States. And so we're gonna be the leading, you know, beacon of light saying, you know, onboard your ranch. Let them educate you so we can educate them, and we're gonna create this partnership. And everybody across, you know, we don't have to have a centralized apparatus control on this.

This is a decentralized model to where let us all learn together, let us all become very empowered together, and let's all create our own little local models of the beef initiatives. And we will lead you and we'll have all the intelligence. We'll have anything that you need as far as we're white gloving. You know, we have a concierge service right now. We've already got, 5 ranchers.

We start from day 1 of Bitcoin education, and we take them all the way into we'll be taking them all the way into a long term legacy financial, not not advice because we can't give financial advice, but, you know, we'll be it's all education, and we can educate. That's what we're good at. That's what we will do. That's what people need. That's what the ranchers need.

That's what the Bitcoiners need. They need, you know, that that type of nutritional education that, you know, pure animal protein does, and that's that's down the hall's rabbit

hole right there.

Slim, do you find that most ranchers are uneducated on Bitcoin when you talk to them? And then once they understand it through your explanation, almost like a light bulb goes off into how they could be implementing it to grow their own business and their lifestyle?

Yeah. I have this I have this kind of phrase. Well, I've used it a couple times, and it it was a moment of clarity for me whenever I because I know how ranchers no. I don't know how they all talk, but I understand the industry. I you know, they've already they got here by living a decentralized mindset and decentralized way as much as they could.

You know, all across the board, everything that they have to decentralize their selves out of just to survive. And so I see, like, there's gonna be a rancher out there that's been doing this for 4 generations and 40 years, and he's been understanding Bitcoin. Well, you know what? The ranching industry just changed overnight, and it's gonna happen. And it's gonna be fun to watch.

I think I already got the guy that's gonna do it, so he knows who he is. We're gonna have fun watching those damn orange lights come on these ranchers head. I'll just put it that way, and we're gonna get pussy.

Well, I feel like that that's like the perfect introduction to the beef initiative and everything you're thinking about in terms of beef and Bitcoin. Obviously, so much more to chew on with this one. I think we're gonna have to have a part 2, but, we've got some time constraints here. So maybe we, we wrap it up here and then revisit all all these topics, in a few weeks once once some more stuff has happened with you, Slam. I know you've you're, you're running at a 1000000 miles an hour right now.

Yeah. It's fun, though. Like I said, you know, let's just give a shout out to our conference in Kerrville, April 23rd and 24th 20 it's the that weekend. I I keep on getting them mixed up. But we're gonna have announcements coming out, and we're all we're gonna we're gonna pull off a big old meet up, m e a t, in Austin the week before that.

So, I just found out, and I don't know exactly the day, but we're gonna start, getting a lot of people there. We're gonna have a big old cow education on cuts of the cow, how to leverage the cow across the board, and we'll do it in Austin. So I'll be in I'll be in Austin the week before Kerrville. And so, you know, you and I, of course, are we'll we'll all meet up.

Absolutely.

We'll do what we can. And, so there's new announcements coming whenever we we talk again. We're we're gonna have a a big view

for that for everybody.

I was gonna say, Clemenza, do you mind if I ask one last question that I think Slim can answer pretty quickly?

Absolutely.

I was just gonna say, Slim, something that I really resonate with you is when you you talk a lot about shaking your farmer rancher's hand. And what does that what does that statement actually mean to you?

Mhmm. Well, whenever you can you know, I did a stat. I got cited for a study I did in in in in my professional life. And what they wanted me to look at the division of interpersonal communication as humans. And so what we've done and we've evolved and since I've done that paper and everything, what I know and how I was raised, if you wanna respect anything about your situation or your environment, you're gonna go up to that person.

You're gonna be able to look them in the eye, and you're gonna shake them their hand, and then you're gonna say, I'm glad to meet you. How can I help you? And once you've made that point of contact, a visual content, physical content, and of an intent of honesty and maybe a pursuant of maybe something bigger, magical things happen. Our society has has separated itself from that. We live in a digital world.

We know that. Well, one way with we're gonna circumvent around that digital world, we're gonna establish these new relationships that are that there's a start off with a handshake and a look in the eye. And somebody that can do that with you, well, they come with truth. Or, you know, you're gonna find out really fast that they don't. That's how I look at

it. I love it. I love it. I think it's a powerful message. And, Slim, if people wanna get, get more in touch with what you're doing, where where should they look?

I know you've got a podcast and and your Twitter handle, but, you know, where where's the best place to find you?

Sure. Right now for, you know, just education, just go check out the site. It's beefinitiative.com. And then we have, we have inside Twitter. We have at modern t man and at beef initiative.

And if you wanna kinda dive into our Telegram group, it's starting to grow. That's at at beef initiative as well.

Beautiful. Well, we'll wrap there. Thanks, Slim. Thanks, Lotso, and let's, let's do this again soon. This was a good one.

Perfect. Thanks, Nets.

Thanks, guys. I really do appreciate you. Keep up the good work. Yeah. Definitely.