SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Aeriel Belk from Auburn, AL 7-9-24
[Music] Now welcome again to Shark Farmer Radio. Hey! I'm your host Rob Sharky. We're in the studio today just outside of Bradford, Illinois. A lot going on on said farm today, isn't there? There is. We're moving dirt. Lots and lots and lots of dirt. You know they keep bringing dirt and bringing dirt by the semi-loads and I'm just like how much dirt does it take putting up a new shed? Why keep going out there and I'm like uh you know getting close and he's like now. I always underestimate always. Oh my gosh yeah how much it really takes if you're you have to build something up and not have such a slope on it. It always underestimated. They're bringing clay now from another job they're doing so that's nice it's it's packing uh getting a tires uh the front tires put on a tractor right now and oh we got our dumpster today. We talked about that you are gone one day we we had dumpster talk we talked about it for literally half the show. Oh my goodness well that's kind of embarrassing but yeah we do have the dumpster. Yeah apparently there is a dumpster shortage in the world so we've been waiting I think four months for a dumpster because I we always burnt garbage and then like whatever like the glass and that you would take so I don't know what you ever did with it. We cycle it. Yeah just throw it. Did you really or just like when you were going down the road toss it. Oh gosh wow. Oh heavens no leave no trace. No I would never do that. All right uh today let's go down to all burn Alabama. We're gonna talk with Ariel bulk. How you doing Ariel? Hi I'm fantastic how are you? Doing pretty good you've got those letters behind your name Ph.D. So you're a doctor. Yes uh not a medical doctor but a science doctor which technically used doctor first so well hypothetically if I was to cut my finger off would you be of any help. Um I could probably drive you to an emergency room. I'll take it. You're a downer in Auburn Alabama. You are assistant professor at Auburn University uh grew up in Colorado though huh? Yes there was a big change moving to the south. I was pretty nervous about it but uh it turns out I like it a lot. Uh huh. So you if I remember and we met you I can never remember the name of the them family. The reciprocal meat conference. Yeah why don't you guys name it like I don't know meat fast or something we can all remember. Well yeah we were competing with cattle con there for the the on the good names but uh oh yeah yes no that's a it's reciprocal meat conference because the idea isn't it's just people getting up to speak and present it's supposed to go back and forth and be a conversation right so we reciprocate as we're uh as we're communicating. Kind of makes sense when she explains it doesn't it maybe that's why you're in teaching. Well and you started a lot of conference. You started really early in life too. You were involved with 4-H. Is that where you got interested in animal science? Yeah so I started you know very young um nine years old my first year in 4-H because all my birth they fell and uh was immediately excited about all of the all the I don't know livestock things. I showed pigs and I was little and then graduated into sheep and then cattle when I was big enough to you know not get carried around by the cattle. Um yeah but then I was also meat judging and I did livestock quizbowl and some livestock judging so all around involved in um not just the practice of agriculture but also you know the knowledge behind it and that's kind of what made me want to go on and get my degrees in the field was I like knowing about things and how they work. You were a livestock judge? Yeah it wasn't a very good one. Um I was much better at meat judging but I was. Okay because that's that is always up there you know on the list of the biggest egos and agriculture livestock judges are always up there. Oh 100% I've experienced that for sure. Yeah did anybody try to bribe you? Oh my gosh yes just every time. Oh oh no see I just I did livestock judging as like the competition on the livestock judging team I never actually judged a show. Oh okay. I was not actually good enough for that. Did you grow up on a farm? We not really we lived in town when I was a kid and then we moved out and got some land um but we just did kind of the hobby farming thing raised our 4-H animals we never did it as a business. Um we grew a little bit of hay to feed our cattle but it wasn't even enough so I wouldn't I would not not really although I kind of always wished I did. It looked like a great place to grow up. I remember at the meeting you were forcefully introduced to us and the guy was like telling us all about how smart you were and how great you were and all that which is nice to have a hype man but do I remember right is your dad was a professor out in Colorado then? Yeah he was so I grew up on the academic side of agriculture and livestock. He was a professor in meat and animal sciences um but he always talks about and what he still tells me today even now that I'm a professor the most important thing is building our relationships with the cattleman and with the industry that's our real job is uh we we serve the community um you know we're trying to find the knowledge that they need or that farmers need to to do their jobs so that's our goal. So is this what you've always wanted to do? For the most part yeah my plan was always uh academia PhD um originally my plan was genetics um I want to do livestock genetics because in high school DNA was my favorite thing we studied um but then once I got into college and got involved with some of the meat science and meat safety research I realized I liked microbes a lot more so that's what I did my degrees in but now what's funny is I study I study microbiome so what that is is looking at the entire microbial community when people think of microbiology they think of maybe like microscopes and petri dishes but instead what I do is I sequence the DNA of everything in an environment um we think of like room and microbiomes right all of the bacteria in like a cattle room and that helps them um digest the uh foods um so I studied those and so it's fun because I'm looking at microbes which I love by looking at their DNA which was the original thing I want so it's a beautiful circle and I get to do everything oh boy we're gonna have to talk about this some more this is fantastic I have no damn idea what she just said we're talking science today Robbie we'll be back with Ariel Belk all right after the break this segment is brought to you by Common Ground are you looking for an easy way to buy sell or lease your land well check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too by the way go to commonground.io that's commonground.io hey looking for a great agriculture podcast well we just dropped one today Dr. Bob Delmore from what which Colorado state university oh yeah the fighting rams right there's something yes and it's so awesome because they have ram country meats which is like a meat processing facility within the university and they make meat sticks for backpacks and he's talking all about food insecurity today and it's amazing how many kids in the country are food insecure on the weekends they are come hungry to school on monday and so they send backpacks of food including meat sticks which is fantastic they make it there on the campus so many times it's too much carbs right they're packing these backpacks but there's Doritos you know they need they need the calories for sure but protein they need protein too so I love it that they're doing these meat sticks I asked him if they ever made meat sticks out of their mascot the ram but he kind of avoided the kind of avoided the question you would ask him that today's guess is Ariel Belk then she is a Ph.D. Alburne Alabama assistant professor at Alburne. Ariel did you know Dr. Bob? I did yeah he was one of my professors when I was a student at Colorado state so I was I was around when they were getting the beef sticks program started and it's amazing how quickly and how much it's grown from the tiny little service project to this huge I don't like what's the word I'm looking for the philanthropy sort of program yeah I know it's it's amazing a couple million meat sticks now like 20,000 a week that's so crazy yeah and it just occurred all from him but he like it's not just CSU right it's like this full partnership between the school and some of the meat companies that donate the products and some of the organizations that distribute them it's it's very cool yeah and they're cranking out as much as they can and he said they will not be able to fill the demand he doesn't see it happening there's just too much yeah anyway that's at shark farmer.com under the shark farmer podcast section all right Ariel so you fell in love with animals and you you went to what Colorado state first yes so Colorado state for my undergrad it was a great school but also I got 50% off my tuition since my dad works there so that was hard to be perfect but really really loved it there they have great classes great people I competed on the meat judging team but not the livestock judging team while I was there and that was a really important experience and then on to Texas yes Texas A&M okay well you you're very specific about the schools I just know people becoming after me and you if we get oh it's nothing new on my end so you went there for your masters I mean to why pick Texas I always wanted to go to Texas A&M my parents actually both went there and that's where they met was it the Texas A&M in the same building ride of my masters so that was kind of fun to go there to get my Aggie ring but also it's kind of with the birthplace of a lot of meat science and kind of where they figured out a lot of the big answers and things that we know about meat it's where they developed like how the yield grade formulas work for example and so I just really wanted to study there with these people who have been shaping the industry and shaping the science for a really long time so tell us about what you studied there what your thesis was on because I find that so interesting yeah my thesis was really cool so there's a big problem especially in cattle especially in south Texas of salmonella carriage right they have salmonella and then can pass it on to people and usually when we harvest animals we try really hard to remove any sort of pathogens right by removing the hide or removing the gut where those bacteria are living but also we spray the carcasses down with lactic acid or another organic acid that works as an antimicrobial but salmonella is sneaky and has the ability to actually crawl inside like the white blood cells or the macrophages that are supposed to kill it and they just live in there and then get transported and then can live inside the lymph nodes and just like hang out there so the lymph node that's like a protective bubble so when we spray the carcasses with the lactic acid it doesn't get to all of the salmonella if they have it and so then when you're putting it things through grinding if some of those lymph nodes remain in the trim which regularly happens because there's a lot of them they can then release the salmonella into the trim and into the ground beef and then obviously that can lead to infection so that's a problem so what I was trying to do is categorize some of the prevalence of it where it's located and where in the supply chain that salmonella kind of shows up and we figured out it's basically at the feedlot level is where the issue kind of is growing so we know we can target that level with some of our preventative methods so it's pretty fun I got to remove a lot of lymph nodes from carcasses which was hard and then the way we study it is we actually sterilize the outside of the lymph nodes so we know we're just getting the inside salmonella and then we put them in a bag and then we smash them with a hammer to release all the inside so it's pretty gross and pretty fun science that's awesome you you love this stuff don't you uh you got to because how about it smelled you have to appreciate it uh okay so that was that was your masters yes you have to text this university text saying in I know it's it's a it's a fun game with you are real well now that university of Texas is in the SEC and they're actually going to be playing against each other again it's gotten it's an even bigger deal now you even went on to do some forensic science which is probably what everybody wants to talk to you about when they find out forensic science yeah yeah what's cool is once you get trained to work with microbes especially microbiomes it's kind of the same regardless of the environment you're studying it right it's just different implications but the actual basic methods are the same so part of my PhD work back at Colorado State now um was doing um forensic methods so we were trying to decide basically you know when you watch CSI and they get on and they like the first thing they do and they get to the crime scene is like oh the time of death was between like 8 and 9 a.m. and they can tell because of the body temperature the lividity or whatever the those things those um tools to determine time of death go away after about 48 hours so if you discover a body much later than that it's really difficult to gauge like well time of death is basically impossible but even day of death becomes difficult so um we need tools to better determine the day of death or we call like the post-mortem interval when we're making it sound sciencey um and right now they use insect so forensic entomology a lot of the time um so like you look at how many flies have colonized and which flies and if they're they they're still eggs or if they turn into maggots or whatever it's very gross um and it works okay but the problem is um it's not always applicable because it depends on season it depends on where the body was found if there's even flies available to get to it so we thought well a lot of the bacteria well I say we my advisor who did most of the the work I just did I or who did all of the the thinking work I just did the lab work um but well we're already carrying we probably are already carrying a lot of the bacteria that are going to decompose us when we die on our skin so we don't have to worry about how long colonization takes it's already there so maybe we can use microbes as a predictor so we develop this model where basically we worked with donated human remains and we took samples of their skin microbiome and their soil microbiome every day okay all right yeah oh my gosh you can get away with the murder I get it we got around a break we're gonna have to finish this conversation with Dr. Erykle Buck right off the break this segment is brought to you by common ground are you looking for an easy way to buy sell or lease your land well check out common ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too by the way go to commonground.io that's commonground.io it's time for Auburn's favorite radio segment where in Alabama is will well what do you have for us today today I'm in Auburn a city in Lee County Alabama it's also a color yeah it is also the largest city in eastern Alabama uh Auburn is a historic college town and is the home of Auburn University the city's unofficial nickname is the loveliest village on the plains taken from a line in the poem the deserted village by Oliver Goldsmith so lovely yep Auburn is home to the Telfer Pete theater which performs a series of plays and musicals each year the Auburn community orchestra as well as the bands of Auburn University and Auburn High School perform dozens of yearly concerts including a series of outdoor concerts in the fall the theater is rumored to be haunted by a ghost named Sydney oh the theater department appeases Sydney before every performance with an offering of orange and blue M&M's oh okay peanut or plain I think just plain and only those colors I suppose okay Auburn has had many notable citizens in its 170-year history including Nobel Prize winners Frederick C. Robbins and George F. Smoote co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales Lillian Gordy Carter the mother of President Jimmy Carter I remember him yep Jimmy Buffett the owner of Margaritaville he passed away Danny he did rest in peace yeah another great musician Tony Tenil singer of Captain Antonyl uh-huh and American Idol winner Taylor Hicks as well as founder of seal team six Richard Marchinco gotcha nice and Robert Gibbs the 28th White House press secretary and the first press secretary for President Barack Obama graduated from Auburn High School I would hate to do that job press secretary because I mean you can't say anything you have to multitask the finest level yes all right that's it on Auburn yeah that's it for now I want to hear about this science stuff oh you forgot to say roll tied Auburn oh no you all down in Alabama are a little nutty but your schools aren't you Ariel yeah I've been indoctrinated into it super quick because it was not that way in Colorado state as much so you went back to Colorado state after Texas A&M to get your PhD how how did you end up in Auburn so you know they just you know with with academia they opened the jobs and you apply and if you get them you move there because there's not a lot available very often but it was really the perfect job opportunity they were looking for somebody to come in be a new scientist help build up their meat science program and they specifically want someone who can do microbiome and bioinformatic research because it can benefit all of their animal science programs so it was like it was meant for me so it was really exciting does Auburn is that a is that a big animal science school um yeah we have um you know it's a big agricultural state cattle tie for number two in terms of production with forestry and number one is poultry we have a separate poultry department because it's so big but we work with them a lot um but yeah our main thing here is uh cow calf hurts our research a lot of our program is in an extent research and extension goes into um cow calf and forage research because that's kind of the big needs here but we do have a pretty good program I love how you're so excited about meat science because that's a big thing now right is is for people to to get young people interested in animal science so that they can work in the fields because there's so many jobs and the importance of like land grant universities right yes they're so important um I so yeah Auburn's a land grant university and I imagine most your listeners are familiar with that because you've probably worked with an extension program at some point um but and Auburn's kind of unique because or Alabama because we have a couple different land grants with some of the different years we also have you know Tuskegee and um Alabama or Auburn the Alabama A&M but um it's just it's so important because we can really tailor our research program and our teaching program towards what the state and the region need so like I just mentioned our big extension push is for forage and so we do a ton of research on how to extend grazing seasons and how to the best way to put up silage and bailage because that's what people want and like I am doing some research on transportation stress and cattle because all of the cattle here have to get shipped so far to go to a feedlot that our cattlemen have indicated worry about that and yeah so I really love being a part of this sort of school where that's what matters is you know the end the end people who we can affect Mm-hmm aerial in our house if we have a food that's within a week of being expired we incinerate it and we just pray for our own safety is that the right thing to do oh no I I mean you knew you I'm never gonna you know tell people what to do with their own home but I will tell you and this is one of my favorite things to talk about so thank you for giving me the opportunity there is a huge difference between safety and shelf life of meat so all and all food products that meets what I know what those sell by or use by or expiration dates all they tell you is this is the end of the like super edible period and really they're very conservative because they don't want you to eat anything that's gone bad by accident so like your milk may be sour by that expiration date or your meat may have turned a little like green and that is not good and I wouldn't necessarily recommend eating it if it's bad but that's different than what's truly then safety safety is looking at actually the presence of pathogens like your equal life and your salmonella in those products and if those are in there they're in there probably day one right so the only way to combat that is by cooking it out um but the way throwing away at the expiration date isn't going to really do anything about whether salmonella and equal are in there and eating meat that has spoiled or gone past its shelf life can still make you sick but that's just because they're kind of gross stuff in there like the acids that the bacteria may be produced but the bacteria themselves don't have like the mechanisms to to give you a true disease um and there's like a strong distinction in there that maybe it's like a little scientific but I think it's important to know because food waste is a huge issue right now and if we're throwing food away a week before the expiration date then we're contributing to that food waste problem and I am really trying to do things in my research to help us uh lower that rate of that I love that I love that so what do you you maybe just uh instead of the medium rare you cook at medium I mean it depends on what you're cooking right steaks are probably fine medium rare because the outside of the steak is all that you really have to cook because that's the only place bacteria has been um ground beef I recommend medium well because the whole thing could have been exposed to those bacteria medium well I'd rather eat a roadkill possum that a medium well hamburger oh well I imagine at this point you have a pretty strong stomach so you might be all right but especially like part of the thing with this is it depends on um your immunocompromised state right and we're talking about that a lot these days because of the pandemic and stuff but like you you're probably fine eating something medium a hamburger medium but if you have kids who are you know under six you probably want to cook it a little more for them they haven't built up the immune system well we'll think of the children aerial if people want to find you social media email anything where would they go yeah so um it's all pretty easy because it's all just my name so I'm on twitter at aerial underscore belk my name is a little weird it's a er i e l and then my laughing b as in boy e l k my email address is aerial belt at auburn.edu so um and I'm on LinkedIn just with that same name so I'm not too hard to track down awesome well Ariel I want to thank you for coming on uh very very interesting uh I wish I was as smart as you I wish it was as smart as Emily luckily I'm smarter than Will Ariel thank you so very much for being on don't go anywhere though Sean Haney's coming up I think he's a doctor doctor of phone economics okay that's everybody next time get ready get ready for the next shake up