Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 110 - Barry Mizon

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

Marek Larwood, Tom Crowley and Linnea Sage join us this month as we speak to Barry Mizon of the Exotic Seeds Breeding Paddock to get an update on his progress towards breeding an "ultra cow".Stock media provided by Setuniman/Pond5.com and Soundrangers/Pond5.comMusic credit courtesy of epidemicsound.com:Aqua Flute / Osoku

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use the code Tony, Tony. Are you okay? Not again, Tony. Right in the face? You need to be more careful, Tony. What? You're Tony. For the hundredth time, your name is Tony. For the hundredth time, your name is Tony.

Hello, and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network Podcast, the number one podcast for those involved, or just interested, in the production of beef animals and dairy herds. The Beef and Dairy Network Podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website and a printed magazine, brought to you by the Harrington Hoof Hoist from Mitchell's. Mitchell's actually sent us a promotional hoist here to Beef and Dairy HQ, and yes, it's a great product for inspecting your animal's hooves, but we've found it's also a useful tool in disciplining recalcitrant employees. Hang on. Sandy? Sandy? Don't make me put you in the hoist again, Sandy! Oh please, no, not the hoist! Now, you may remember that four years ago I spoke with

Barry Mizen of the Exotic Seeds breeding paddock, who had set up a Kickstarter to raise funds to start a breeding programme where he hoped to cross-breed cattle with various other animal species in order to create what he described as an ultra-cow, a huge amphibious cattle which he claimed would revolutionise global meat production. Barry's Kickstarter target of £45 million is the second biggest ever behind Zach Braff's ill-fated 2011 campaign to build himself an aircraft carrier. But did Barry raise that money? Has he created an ultra cow? I caught up with him to find out. Well, I can tell you what happened. Things were going pretty well

four years ago. I'd started a Kickstarter fund. That was the whole basis that was going to fund my ideas and I was already on £111 by the time I did your podcast and then subsequently after the podcast I only managed to raise a further £7. Now I don't want to get aggressive with you. I've not listened to your podcast. I tried to listen to it, but I found your voice too annoying. So I just sort of gave up after the first bit.

But after doing that podcast, I received quite a barrage of emails from people. I mean, you call them people, the ones I saw, I had photos, they looked like they, you know, don't even know how to wash their hair. Right. I've got a lot of emails from people suggesting that my ideas were an affront to humanity and worse and I had to deal with quite a lot of bad language. And I even had some of these people in their caravans and stuff camping out in my paddock and preventing me from getting in there. Right.

Okay. I was a victim of several dirty protests. Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about then what their issues were because I think the issues that came up when we spoke, there was a couple of different ones. One was really the moral side of whether it's okay to crossbreed different breeds of animal. You talked for example about crossbreeding a cow with a beaver and an eel, and I think

some people might have taken umberdrew that and feeling it's kind of unnatural. I think though over and above that, there then began to be a suggestion that you would maybe be adding your seed to the mix. Well, hang on. My mate Dawn listened to the podcast and,, well she's dead now unfortunately so I can't remember what I'm just saying if I remember what she said and she said you were insinuating there was something wrong with me that there's something perverted in it which is quite nefarious is that the right word? No that's the wrong word. It's quite bad. Yeah. What you were doing after as, as someone as responsible, uh, voice of the

beefing dairy network behind my back afterwards, you were misflavoring my opinions and I think that led to a lot of these long haired unwashed folk basically throwing their shit at my house. So what do you feel about that? Well, I'll tell you what, whether that's true or not, you're here again on the podcast. This is your opportunity to clear things up. If you just want to be very bold about what it is that you're actually doing down there at the Exotic Seeds breeding paddock and maybe if I did misrepresent what you were doing, this is your chance to tell everyone what

it is you're doing. Okay, right. I'll say where we are. I'll tell you now where we are. Sorry, I'm just going to calm, take a deep breath. Okay. And relax. Okay. I'll tell where we are within the Exotic Seeds Breeding seeds breeding paddock, so you've even got me saying the name of the thing wrong. Right. What's happened is I already had the cow. Now the problem was my initial cow wasn't as good looking as I hoped. Where did you get that cow from? as good looking as I hoped. Where did you get that cow from? Well, I got it, this is the thing.

When you get a cup with things, animals on the internet, you see the pictures and stuff like that. And I don't know if that, it was some sort of cow filter on there or something. It looked much nicer than it did in real life. It was much shorter when it came round to my house. It didn't look much like the real cow. I always imagine in my head, one of those ones that you see in the anchor adverts with the

long eyelashes and you just think, I would eat up all your butter straight away. Don't even put it in the box, put it in my mouth. That's what I wanted. Because I know some farmers who've got those cows and they said, I didn't even think I was going to get, I only got into farming once I looked deep in that cow's eyes. Well, so describe your cow then, it sounds like it may not have even been a cow. It just, well, it was a cow, but barely. It just looked like, I mean, I don't know, it just looked like some sort of four year olds art project gone wrong.

And it wasn't attractive. That's the first time in my life I can hand in my heart, say I'm not percent attracted to a cow. And that's when I knew we're in trouble here, mate, because obviously there are some cows that are more attractive than others. Right. So I've got someone in, I've got one of those makeover people in to do something, shaved it all down, started from scratch, painted it, put the stuff on. Sorry, what did you say you put the stuff on?

Just, you know, makeup, paint, stuff like that, eyelashes. Right, yeah. I had some fillers put in. That's like five grand gone. Trying to make the cow look fit. Now I've gone from a two out of ten cow to a five out of ten cow. So then you think, what am I going to do now? I went back to my own sort of experiences of, you know, mating experiences, put my human

ones and thought, when have I managed to find a mate, usually in situations when it's dark. So I put like some disco lights and stuff like that, stuff, some sort of not, the sort of cow version, sort of Barry White music, stuff that gets cows going. So just to be clear, if you had raised the 45 million pounds through Kickstarter, you wouldn't have had to do any of this, right? You'd be able to buy a Fetcow off a catalogue. You would have no problem sort of luring animals to mate with it. I would have done in retrospect, I should have just set up something I was

interested in doing before, like World's, you know, fittest cow, England's fittest cow competition. And then kidnap the winner. Yeah. Yeah. Do that, something it's got, and then you just blame it on, I don't know. The IRA? That's a good one.

So you blame it on someone you no one's going to mess with. So any sort of paramilitary group, blame it on them. No one's going to mess with that. Anyway, so it just went wrong. The cow was unattractive and then I had to get fired on something to make with. So I told you about my mate at the safari park that had gone bust. Yeah, so your plan was that you had a colleague who owned a failing safari park and there

was a suggestion that you might be able to take some of the animals off his hands and put them into your breeding paddock. I went down there and this bloke was just lying, the stuff he had was rubbish. The stuff here was rubbish. Right. The only thing he had was like this hippo. So I said, all right, how much for like, he wanted like 60 grand for the whole hip. And I said, no way, mate. I'll, I'll, I'll just rent off you a couple of nights a week. You know, how much per hour the hippos up, we entered four 400 quid an hour. First night hippo comes over, he was banging about in his lorry so I thought this is a good sign he's ready for it. Put him in the garden, put the disco lights on, put the music on, I mean I was even feeling up for it. So that Hippo must have loved it.

If anything, it was too much. It absolutely went at the cow, snapped the back of it off. I thought, I thought jackpot from the sounds, put a disco lights up, I got half a cow. The other half's on this Hippo. We had to get the bloke from the garage with some specialist equipment to pull the back end of the cow off that hippo. I got charged another five grand for damage to the hippo so it never breathed again. I got half

a cow in my field. Needless to say, maybe, did the cow survive that experience? No, it was half a cow. I know. You just hadn't been explicit about it and I didn't want to be too indelicate. What do you think? Yeah, sure. So there's garage fees, hippo damage fees, and then the kids next door saw that they

were traumatised. I had to give them both 10 quid in book tokens. So, like, where are the most of the money's gone now? Sure, and you've got nothing left? I've got half a cow. I mean, you could say I've got some disco lights and some good music, so... Yeah, it's quite emotional thinking back on it. Nothing went right.

More from Barry Mizen later. But first, on the Network website this week, we asked you if you could cross-breed a cow with any other species, what species would you cross it with? We've had some great emails. This is the first one from Andrew in Rippon. He writes, I would love to crossbreed a cow with a giraffe. My hope would be that the creature would have the long neck of the giraffe, but instead of a giraffe's head at the end of the neck, it would have the udders of a cow. Then, by rigging up some sort of mechanism, I could make the giraffe cow neck rain milk down down on me like a shower. Interesting stuff, Andrew. Paul McRen writes, I would cross a cow with another cow. Think about it. Cow squared, the ultimate

beef. Not really how that works, Paul. And finally, Janet from Swansea writes, I've always longed for a cow with the political guile of Condoleezza Rice and the voice of Linda Ronstadt. Would that be possible? Um, I don't think so, Janet. Hang on. Sandy! Sandy, really? Right, I'm hoisting you. You're going on the hoist. You're going on the hoof hoist. Oh God, not the hoist. Please, no. No, not the hoist. I don't care. I'm not the stink, Those satsuas were for guests only. I'm not listening. I'm not listening Sandy. I'm just hoisting. Maybe you can, when you're up there you can think about how to be a less disappointing employee. Yeah? You think citrus fruits are free do you? We're going the full 12 feet

Sandy. We're going full hoist! More after this. Former American President and noted theatre seat stayner Abraham Lincoln is thought to have said, good things come to those who wait. I mean, it has been attributed to others. Like all quotes, it's been wrongly attributed to Churchill. Some people think it's from the Bible. It's not. It appears in a Victorian poem written by Violet Fane, but she didn't originate it. It was made famous by a Guinness advertising campaign. No one knows where it really comes from. But what people don't realise is that the rest of the quote,

good things come to those who wait, is, but only the things left by those who hustle. That's right. If you're a business owner and want the best people, the same applies. Thankfully, ZipRecruiter puts the hustle in hiring. ZipRecruiter's smart technology immediately starts showing you qualified candidates for your job.

In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter's smart technology immediately starts showing you qualified candidates for your job. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it free at ziprecruiter.com slash beef. That's ziprecruiter.com slash BEEF. Right, back to my big interview with Barry Meisen of the Exotic Seeds breeding paddock. It was clear from what he told me that his plan had failed, but Barry isn't the sort of man who gives up. So I thought let's go back to the blackboard and reefing the whole thing. OK. So I think where I was going wrong was channeling all my thoughts into the cow.

Right. And what is a cow? It's a meat vehicle, right? Wouldn't you say? Yeah. So if you want to grow beef, does it have to be in a cow? That's my question to you. Oh, well, hang on.

You know, you had promised your Kickstarter donors, should we say, that you were going to cross breed animals to create an ultra cow. But they don't know what an ultra cow looks like, do they? I decide what ultra cow is. I'm interested in what you're going to tell me about, but I'm just going to make reference to an email we received a couple of weeks ago. This is from Margaret from Bexhill on Sea. She writes, I gave £10 to the Exotic Seeds Breeding Paddock Kickstarter. I've received none of the promised perks, behind the scenes footage, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't created an ultra cow. Well, if Margaret would like to see footage of a cow being snapped by a hippo and gassed from the garage using a winch to pull half that cow off that hippo dick, I'm more than happy to send her

that footage. Yeah, I mean Margaret, if you're listening, do get in touch. If you want to see that video, I'm sure we can hook you up with it. Feel free to contact me, Margaret. Okay. What's Margaret referring to there when she says the promised perks? She said she was promised perks when she sent in the £10. It was the first meat, some meat samples. Right, I see. But she, she hasn't received those.

What does she want? Does she want me to spend all my time emailing all these people? Oh, you didn't get your meat and standing in the way of science. What's going to happen? Oh, she preferred to have, oh, I've got an email. I've got a picture of a hippo doing a cow in, or does she want me to focus my energies on doing something that will save her children and other people's children and even animals as well.

I don't know if she's got a cat. What's that cat going to eat in the future when all the cows have run out? Well, I'll tell you what it's going to eat. The new meat that I've created. Well that's exciting. So you have, you have created something. This, this. It's all about space.

Okay. How to add value to space. Now, if we were going to talk about your body, which is the least used part of your body, would you say? I've done some research and it's actually the back. Okay. It's just kind of empty real estate. Yeah.

Okay. It's just kind of empty real estate. Yeah. How about we use that space, we rent that space to grow meat. Well, if, I mean, if that were possible, that would- It is possible. You're telling me it is possible. You've seen the thing with the mouse with the ear on its back. Yeah. That's 20 years ago, mate. That's around the turn of the, that's, that's around the turn that's that's an ear that's a lot more complicated to grow an ear than ease to grow like a steak imagine that two big steaks on people's backs you're not even gonna notice it you carry a rucksack

around to protect it it's there and not said everyone's gonna do it it would just be for the kids at school like the thick kids at school who don't pass their GCSEs, they've got no hope, they've got no future. Oh yes you have mate. I'll grow a couple of stakes in your back. One's for you, one's for me. Can't say fairer than that, can you? Barry, I'm just going to, I mean you must have considered this, but there's a couple

of very obvious kind of ethical questions that come up. Okay. You were doing this last time, all this ethical stuff. All he's trying to say is you're right and I'm wrong. That's what you're using. You're misusing the word ethical. Ethical in whose book? The book of crybabies.

I think the things that I'm going to bring up are things that the public at large would probably think if they heard about or when they hear about your scheme. It's not necessarily my point of view. Oh, that's right. That's convenient, isn't it? There's a couple of issues here. One is scientific. Yep. Is it possible? I just told you about the ear on the shitting mouse. There's an ear on a mouse and you're

telling me you can't grow a stake on someone's back. Can you grow a stake on someone's back? I'm not saying can, you know, somebody might be able to, but can you? It's all on the internet, mate. Grow up. Okay, I'll move on to the ethical issue then. What do we say about a society that is suddenly split along, you know, there's kind of a two-tier system in which you've got citizens who are able to live life without stakes growing on their back and then based solely on academic performance at school, you have a sort of

lower class of people who end up having to grow stakes on their back. That's the kind of ethical issue, right? Oh, right. So you're saying that they don't enjoy having stakes on their back? Well, it doesn't sound like they have much choice in the matter. You said it was based on their GC, if they fail their exams, that happens to them. They don't choose for that to happen, right? I mean, what's, I don't see what's wrong with that. I think some people would say that...

Ethics. This ethics business. Sorry, I'm just sorry, it just annoys me, this as if you're speaking for someone else. Oh, the other, the general public. However, I create some imaginary friends and I say I'm speaking on behalf of them then. Fair enough, if a thousand people, if you go out to the, in the public and get signatures and a thousand signatures that people agree with you and also, and say how many people don't agree with you, it's a poll, it's what called a poll. You do that, then you can start saying a thousand people said like that, unlike family fortunes, that's fine.

Not, oh, here's my opinion, I am the voice of the bloody Republic of the world. But Barry, last time we did this, I invoked in a similar way, the kind of ethical objections people might have. You had a similar reaction, but then lo and behold, people did agree with me, didn't they? Because they turned up at your house and started hurling their own feces at your front door. Yes, exactly. That's the people, The people who would happily shit into their own hands and fling it at someone's house. That's the sort of people that listen to this podcast and agree with you. Shit-flingers. Well done. Well Barry, it's been great to talk to you. Is the Kickstarter still open? I don't know

if people, you know... Yes, it is still open. We're still accepting money for these things. Will you be making a contribution? No, and I don't think many listeners will. I don't feel like this is the interview that will finally get them over the line to pledge to the Kickstarter, but it's possible. They're too easy throwing their own excrement at people's houses. But I'm happy to give you the airtime now just to give that pitch to those listeners who might be on the fence about giving you their hard-earned money. Right. Listen, how about you listeners stop throwing

your butt remnants at my house and instead put your hands in your pocket and put some change into it and then maybe one day your children will have enough meat on their back to sustain their boring lives. How's that? Okay well Barry best of luck with ironing out some of the kinks in that technology. Yeah best of luck with ironing out some of the kinks in your podcast. And maybe if you've cracked it in the future we'll get you back on and you can tell us how you did it. Well, if I've got time. Okay. Well, all the best Barry. Yep. Bye. Yep.

A big thanks to Barry Mizen for that interview, and as he said there, the Kickstarter is still going, if you want to support his work, developing a way to grow a steak on a teenager's back. And it's also worth saying that there are a number of other worthy causes on Kickstarter that you can back. For example, Scrub Star's Zach Braff is currently raising money for a new patio. And that's all we've got time for this week. But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to the website now where you'll find all the usual stuff, as well as our off topic section where this month we've put together a guide on how to

give a no comment police interview but make it sassy. Hello? So until next time… Hello? Beef out. Can someone please let me down? I'm still up here! I'm still hoisted. Anyone? Thanks to Merrick Lawood, Tom Crowley, and Linnea Sage.

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