Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Doug Willhite <drwillhite@earthlink.net>]

1. Largest Egg Recall in US History Brings Renewed Attention to  
Dangers of Industrial Farming

Watch the video here: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/24/ 
largest_egg_recall_in_us_history
...or read the interview transcript below.
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2. David Kirby on "The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and  
Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment"

Watch the video here: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/24/ 
david_kirby_on_the_looming_threat
...or read the interview transcript below.
_________________________________________________

The largest egg recall in US history is bringing renewed attention to  
the dangers of factory farming and to growing consolidation in the  
industries responsible for the food many Americans eat. Over half a  
billion eggs have been ordered off US shelves in the past two weeks  
following an outbreak of salmonella in the Midwest. Nearly 1,300  
cases of people sickened by the eggs have been reported. Despite the  
size of the recall, responsibility falls on just two factory farms:  
Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg, both from Iowa.

Guests:
Patty Lovera, assistant director of the food safety group Food &  
Water Watch

David Kirby, journalist and author of the book Animal Factory: The  
Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms on Humans  
and the Environment. Website: "AnimalFactory.com"http:// 
animalfactorybook.com

AMY GOODMAN: The largest egg recall in US history is bringing renewed  
attention on the dangers of factory farming and on growing  
consolidation in the industries responsible for the food many  
Americans eat. Over half a billion eggs have been pulled off US  
shelves in the past two weeks following an outbreak of salmonella in  
the Midwest. Nearly 1,300 cases of people sickened by the eggs have  
been reported.

Despite the size of the recall, responsibility falls on just two  
factory farms: Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg, both from  
Iowa. Both farms have also been linked to health, safety and  
employment violations. Wright County Egg was once cited for having  
its workers handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands.  
Neither factory had ever been inspected by the top federal and state  
agencies responsible for food safety oversight: the Food and Drug  
Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Department  
of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

In an interview with CNN, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg  
acknowledged the factory farms linked to the outbreak had violated  
safety rules.

MARGARET HAMBURG: There is no question that these farms that are  
involved in the recall were not operating with the standards of  
practice that we consider responsible. And it’s very, very important  
that those practices be cleaned up and that we work with this company  
and with others to make sure that they have the preventive controls  
in place and the responsible measures in place that will enable the  
safest food supply possible.


AMY GOODMAN: The FDA commissioner, Hamburg, went on to urge passage  
of food safety legislation that’s stalled in the Senate since the  
House approved it just over a year ago. The measure would allow the  
FDA to order a recall instead of leaving it up to corporations to  
voluntarily do so. The bill would also require mandatory safety  
plans, increase FDA oversight, and make it easier to determine the  
source of contamination.

For more on the egg recall and what it could tell us about the food  
we eat, we’re joined by two guests. Joining us from Washington, DC,  
Patty Lovera, assistant director of the food safety group Food &  
Water Watch. And here in New York, David Kirby, journalist and author  
of the book Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig,  
Dairy and Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment. His latest  
article in the Huffington Post is called "Lessons from the Egg  
Recall: Cheap Food Makes You Sick."

OK, David Kirby, let’s start there. What do you mean?

DAVID KIRBY: Well, these are the cheapest eggs on the market. The  
reason they are cheap is because they are mass-produced in these  
giant, often filthy factories, given substandard feed, in conditions  
that you would never raise a dog or any other animal. The drive for  
cheap food has a created a consolidated food production system that  
pushes out small and independent producers that tend to produce  
higher-quality food. Chickens that live in a sustainable farm produce  
eggs that are far less likely to be contaminated with something like  
salmonella than these big factories, which, as you mentioned, are  
basically allowed to police themselves. And we need much stricter not  
only regulations, but we need enforcement of the regulations. Right  
now we’re operating on the honor system. And this is food that we  
feed our families. This should be the most highly regulated industry.

AMY GOODMAN: These two factory farms in Iowa, under, what, thirty or  
so different names, are now being recalled, something like a half a  
billion eggs. Two farms, half a billion eggs.

DAVID KIRBY: Again, that shows you the scale of these operations.  
It’s possible to have salmonella in a small organic farm—much less  
likely—but if that happens, you’re only talking about maybe a few  
thousand eggs. In this case, we’re talking about half a billion eggs.  
Now these farms are—or factories, really, are associated with a  
company called DeCoster. And when I was in Iowa and in other states  
in the Midwest, that name came up over and over again. This company  
has a whole series of violations. But we have to remember, this is  
not the first time that salmonella has been found in eggs. This  
happens to be one of the biggest outbreaks, but this has been  
plaguing the egg industry for the last twenty years or so, ever since  
modernization/industrialization really came into place.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Patty Lovera, and let’s follow up on  
DeCoster. Both the factory farms that are affected in this recall are  
linked to a businessman named Austin DeCoster, who has a record of  
health, safety and employment violations. As we reported yesterday,  
in 1997 his company, DeCoster Egg Farms, agreed to pay a $2 million  
fine after then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich said conditions at his  
farm were "as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop." In 2002,  
DeCoster’s company paid one-and-a-half million dollars to settle a  
lawsuit filed by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission  
on behalf of Mexican women who reported they were subjected to sexual  
harassment, rape, abuse and retaliation by supervisors at his plants.  
And earlier this summer, another company linked to DeCoster paid out  
$125,000 to the state of Maine over animal cruelty allegations. Patty  
Lovera, talk about DeCoster and his eggs.

PATTY LOVERA: Well, I mean, DeCoster is a name you hear a lot when  
you start talking to people either who are—know about the egg  
industry or are from Iowa or Ohio or the other states that he  
operates in. And so, we think it’s—basically he’s kind of a poster  
child for what happens when we see this type of consolidation and  
this scale of production. It’s not just food safety or just  
environmental damage or, you know, how workers are treated. It’s a  
whole package of negative side effects when we have this type of  
massive production responsible for so much of our food.

So, you know, the two firms involved in this recall, it appears that  
they had a common supplier of feed. They may have had a common  
supplier of the baby chickens, which are eventually going to lay the  
eggs. We’ve seen consolidation through every step of this chain. And  
what that does is puts so much power in—to make decisions about how  
our food is raised, with people like Jack DeCoster or his family, and  
not us. You know, we see a lot of brand names in the store, but we  
don’t really have a choice, because we have such consolidation, so  
much of the food is coming from a tiny number of companies.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the legislation now in Congress.

PATTY LOVERA: So, a food safety legislation passed the House last  
summer, and it’s been waiting for its turn in the Senate. And so, it  
would basically be an overhaul of what the Food and Drug  
Administration does. The FDA is responsible for shell eggs, which is  
what’s involved in this recall; for produce, fruits and vegetables;  
for processed foods. And so, it’s really taking a look at their whole  
regulatory system. You know, they don’t have the same model as meat  
inspection. A lot of people are familiar with what the USDA does:  
they’re in the plant inspecting meat, because they have a law that  
tells them to do that. The FDA doesn’t have that mandate. They have a  
much more kind of guidance-oriented mandate. And so, for years,  
they’ve been saying, "These are best practices. Please follow them,"  
you know, and they don’t have this culture and this authority to go  
out and inspect. So this legislation is one attempt to do that. It’s  
been a long slog to try to get to this point. There are still things  
to be worked out, but it would give FDA mandatory recall authority,  
which they currently don’t have, and it would set up some schedule of  
inspections, where they get to food-processing plants more regularly  
than they do now. You know, there’s a lot of detail still to be  
worked out about how often those inspections would happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Who fights the legislation that would allow there to be  
something other than a voluntary recall by the corporations, which  
would take an enormous amount of evidence for them to do, Patty?

PATTY LOVERA: So, I mean, historically, there’s always been industry  
resistance to any food safety regulation, whether it’s in Congress or  
through the agencies. And so, you know, there’s large trade  
associations for every sector of our food supply, starting from, you  
know, the large agribusiness-type producers all the way through to  
the grocery stores. Interestingly, on this food safety legislation in  
the last year or so, seen a lot less public, at least, resistance to  
this legislation, because the industry is getting such a black eye  
from all these big recalls.

But on eggs specifically, a rule—you know, not legislation, but a rule 
—from FDA was proposed in the Clinton administration on salmonella in  
eggs. It just went into effect last month, because there was so much  
pressure for so many years to stall it that it took, you know, over a  
decade to get these rules through saying, "Here are steps you should  
do to prevent salmonella." So it’s just one example of how hard it is  
to get new regulation on anybody in the food industry.

AMY GOODMAN: The legislation called S.510 in the Senate right now.  
Patty Lovera, there’s also another hearing on Friday. Explain what  
these hearings are that are traveling around the country.

PATTY LOVERA: Yeah, this is a really interesting opportunity, we  
think, that—Food & Water Watch—that we have this year. So, sadly,  
it’s historic, but the federal government is, for the first time,  
doing some hearings around the country to talk about competition in  
agriculture, you know, to look at this issue of consolidation. Are  
these markets fair? Can everybody of all different sizes of farms,  
can they compete? Do they have options to be in agriculture anymore?  
And so, there have been three already around the country. The fourth  
one is in Colorado on Friday, and it’s focused on livestock markets.  
And so, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Agriculture will be  
there, and they’re going to spend a full day. And we were hearing  
that thousands of people, lots of them cattle producers and hog  
producers, are coming. And we hope it’s a good airing of these issues  
that these companies have so much power, they’ve consolidated so much  
of the market under their control that small family-sized farms,  
independent operators are just shut out. And so, it’s long overdue.  
And so they’re doing five hearings in total over the course of this  
year. And then the million-dollar question is, what do we get after  
the hearings? What kind of action are we going to see from the  
government in terms of antitrust and just basic regulations about  
whether these markets are operating fairly?

AMY GOODMAN: And the role of the family and community farms in these  
hearings?

PATTY LOVERA: Well, so far, I’ve been to the three that have happened  
already, and so far there’s been a pretty good, you know, airing of  
the problems. It’s been a good opportunity for folks to either be—you  
know, there’s official panels where people make official testimony.  
And, of course, both sides have to be represented, so there’s lots of  
large-scale producers saying how everything is great. But there’s  
also been, you know, a good number of independent, family-scale  
operators saying the rules are rigged, you know, this is not a level  
playing field, we need a referee, and we need these companies that  
buy our animals or buy our crops to act in good faith, which they’re  
not doing often. And so, there’s been a pretty good airing of the  
problem. There’s been a couple of, you know, chunks where people can  
just stand up and make a public comment, and people have been doing  
that. And so, I don’t think that the government can claim there’s not  
a problem, if they’re listening at these hearings. The question is,  
what we’re going to make them do about it when they’re wrapped up.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting that you mention that Secretary of  
Agriculture Tom Vilsack is going to be at this hearing on Friday. We  
know where he’s going to be today: he’s going to be meeting this  
morning with Shirley Sherrod. She told CNN she was offered the  
position of Deputy Director of Advocacy and Outreach, working to  
improve the department’s image. Of course, Shirley Sherrod is the—was  
the victim of the edited videotape of a speech she gave before the  
NAACP. So Vilsack and Sherrod are meeting for the first time this  
morning.

Patty Lovera, thanks so much for being with us, assistant director of  
Food & Water Watch. David Kirby, I’d like to ask you to stay with us,  
as we continue to talk about not only eggs, but the looming threat of  
industrial pig, dairy and poultry farms on humans and the  
environment. This is Democracy Now! Thanks so much for being with us.  
We’ll be back in a minute.

______________________________________________________________________

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the largest egg recall in US history,  
at this point half a billion eggs, our guest is David Kirby. His book  
is Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and  
Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment.
Actually, David, we keep saying half a billion eggs have been pulled  
off the shelves. How do we know they’re pulled off the shelves?
DAVID KIRBY: Apparently they haven’t all been pulled off the shelves,  
because they’re still warning people to check the numbers when they  
get the eggs home from the market. This is a voluntary recall, which  
just illustrates the point that I was making before. We need more  
regulations, and we need enforcement of the regulations. These  
companies are sel- policing, and they’re operating on the honor  
system. And consumers are obviously paying the price. Salmonella can  
make you very, very sick.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, we’re talking about more than thirty labels. You  
don’t see DeCoster. You know, you don’t—it’s not Hillandale. It’s not  
these—
DAVID KIRBY: These are market—usually under supermarket brand labels.  
A lot of these were sold to restaurants and food service operations,  
as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about the two factory farms in Iowa, as an  
example, what they look like in the community.
DAVID KIRBY: These things, when you drive down the highway in Iowa,  
for example, you see them one after the other after the other.  
They’re often interspersed, poultry factory next to a hog factory,  
which of course increases the chance for interspecies mingling of  
influenza virus. If we thought swine flu was bad, we may get an avian  
swine flu hybrid from the close proximity of these factories. From  
the outside, they look fairly innocuous. You’ve probably seen them on  
TV, this row after row of those tall green buildings. It’s once you  
go inside that the horrors really become apparent.
These chickens are kept in tiny little cages stacked one on top of  
the other, crammed in by the hundreds of thousands—same with pigs,  
oftentimes same with dairy cattle, crammed in by the hundreds into  
small confinements where the air is foul. They have to pump clean air  
at one end, and at the other end they push out all of the odors and  
gases and bacteria and ammonia and viruses and even antibiotics out  
into the atmosphere. These are not clean or sustainable operations.  
And without proper regulations, these kinds of diseases will keep  
coming.
AMY GOODMAN: What is salmonella?
DAVID KIRBY: Salmonella is a bacteria that can get into the  
intestine. It can get in the bloodstream. If not treated, it can  
cause all kinds of horrible problems, including arthritis, and it can  
even kill people, if it’s not treated in time.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you know if you’re affected by it? I mean, we’ve  
been saying now around 1,300 people. They say none have died. What  
symptoms are they coming down with? And how is it that the chickens  
contract them—salmonella?
DAVID KIRBY: The symptoms are often masked as symptoms of flu,  
especially in the early stages, so people don’t even realize they  
have salmonella. And probably the case rate is much, much higher than  
what’s been reported. Usually persists longer than the average  
stomach flu, and the symptoms become more severe—cramps, diarrhea,  
fever, chills.
We still don’t know exactly how these chickens got the salmonella,  
but there’s widespread speculation either just from the filthy  
conditions in the barns or it was in the feed itself. And that’s  
something else that Americans don’t realize. We worry about what we  
eat, but we also need to worry about what we eat eats. And the  
quality of feed can be highly compromised in these factories, where  
the drive to lower costs and prices is so great, and the temptation  
to cut corners is there, and this is the result. And we have to  
remember that factory farming has produced not only salmonella, but  
also E. coli, also mad cow disease, also swine flu, I believe, and  
MRSA, the drug-resistant staph infection that now kills more  
Americans than AIDS.
AMY GOODMAN: You say, "Swine flu. Bird flu. Unusual concentrations of  
cancer and other diseases. Massive fish kills from flesh-eating  
parasites. Recalls of meats, vegetables, and fruits because of deadly  
E-coli bacterial contamination." All as a result of animal factories,  
as you put them.
DAVID KIRBY: Correct. Now, those diseases could conceivably emerge in  
any farm, even the smallest, most sustainable farm, but they’re far  
more likely to emerge in these large industrial factories. And again,  
the scale is so much larger that when you have an outbreak, you have  
this massive problem that’s going to cost millions and millions of  
dollars, just in terms of the lost eggs and productivity.
And just to mention the workshops that you were mentioning earlier  
with the federal government, the Obama administration has vowed to  
try to even the playing field a little bit more, so that we have  
greater access to smaller, independently raised farms. And one way, I  
think, to do that is to address the subsidy issue. This farm got very  
cheap grain from a farmer who got millions, perhaps, of dollars in  
our money to lower the price of that feed. If DeCoster didn’t have  
access to that cheap feed, he wouldn’t be able to operate in this  
way, and that would provide greater access to the market for smaller  
producers.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain the significance of feed and what’s in it.
DAVID KIRBY: Well, feed is a huge issue. And for example, with the  
chickens that we eat, so-called broiler chickens, they often add  
arsenic into that feed to make the birds grow faster and to prevent  
intestinal diseases. Another thing we do in this country—
AMY GOODMAN: Arsenic?
DAVID KIRBY: Arsenic, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Isn’t that poison?
DAVID KIRBY: It is poison. Yes, it is poison.
AMY GOODMAN: And how does it affect humans? I mean, the chickens eat  
the arsenic. Why do they grow faster?
DAVID KIRBY: They don’t know. No one knows. The theory is that when  
you poison a chicken, it gets sick, so it eats and drinks more,  
consumes more, to try to get the poison out of its body. That makes a  
chicken grow faster, and it prevents intestinal parasites. The risk  
to humans, there have been studies done, and they have found residue  
of arsenic in some chickens. The real threat is in the litter that  
comes out the other end of the chicken. When that gets spread on  
farmland, people breathe in that arsenic dust. And there’s a town in  
Arkansas where cancer rates are just through the roof. There’s been  
over twenty pediatric cases in this tiny town of Prairie Grove with  
just a couple of thousand people.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Arkansas. Don’t—let’s not shortcut this,  
because you have a very interesting book, where you look at families  
in several different communities. Arkansas—describe what are the  
animal factories that are there and what happens to the people in the  
community.
DAVID KIRBY: Most of them are so-called broiler operations. Tyson  
chicken is from Arkansas. The big operators, they’re in northwestern  
Arkansas. It’s just—it’s chicken country. And with consolidation,  
you’ve had the rise of these very large factory farms. And again, up  
until recently, Tyson was using this arsenic product in its feed, and  
the other companies were, as well. And around this little town of  
Prairie Grove, as an example, this stuff is dry spread—the litter is  
dry spread on the cropland. And where the school was—
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the chicken manure.
DAVID KIRBY: The chicken manure. And the dust has been found in the  
air filters of homes and schools in this town, and it’s been found  
with arsenic that has been traced back to the feed in the chicken.
Something else we feed chickens that people don’t realize is beef  
products. And when those chickens eat that beef product, some of it  
falls into their litter. Well, we produce so much chicken litter in  
this country, because of these factory farms, and it is so rich in  
phosphorus and nitrogen, its land application uses are limited. So  
you have surplus chicken litter and nothing to do with it. What do  
they do with it? They feed it to cattle. So we feed beef cows chicken  
crap. That chicken litter often contains bits and byproducts of  
cattle. So we are actually feeding cattle to cattle, which is a risk  
factor for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow  
disease. We actually feed cattle products to cattle in three  
different ways: chicken litter, restaurant scraps, and blood products  
on dairy farms. And all the mad cow cases in this country came from  
mega-dairies where, when that calf is born, they remove it from its  
mother immediately, because that mother’s milk is a commodity, it’s  
worth money, so instead they feed that calf a formula that includes  
bovine blood products, and again increasing the risk of mad cow disease.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, that’s chicken factories. What about pig factories?
DAVID KIRBY: Pig factories, for me, were the hardest to witness and  
take in and see and hear and smell. Pigs are incredibly intelligent  
animals, about the same IQ as a three-year-old child, smarter than  
dogs. The breeding facilities, in particular, are just horrendous,  
where these pigs, these female sows, are kept in crates, gestation  
crates. They’re kept pregnant virtually their whole lives. And then,  
when they give birth, they’re moved into another crate where the  
piglets go under the bars so that the sow won’t crush the piglets.  
Their life is horrendous. And quite honestly, the piglets have it  
good, because they’re only going to live about four or five months  
before they go to slaughter. When you go into these facilities, they  
put the piglets in when they’re young, and by the time they’re done,  
they’re 250 pounds each, but they’re in the same space. So they’re  
now so big they can’t turn around. And I spent the night right across  
the street from a hog farm in Illinois kept up all night long—
AMY GOODMAN: Where in Illinois?
DAVID KIRBY: A little town outside of—I don’t remember, but not far  
from St. Louis in southwestern Illinois. Mendon. Mendon, Illinois.  
And at night, of course, people switch off the lights and leave.  
Nobody lives, typically, on a factory farm. It’s not a farm; it’s a  
factory. And the racket, the screaming and squealing and crying of  
these pigs that were obviously attacking each other and fighting and  
biting each other and just miserable, crammed together—they went on  
all night long. It sounded like a thousand children being tortured at  
once. It’s a sound I will never forget. And I saw and heard and  
smelled a lot in doing my research on this book.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happens to their manure?
DAVID KIRBY: Well, their manure is typically kept liquefied. In the  
Midwest, it’s kept in pits underneath where the pigs live. So they’re— 
when they defecate or urinate, it just goes right down into these  
pits, which of course creates huge amounts of ammonia and methane and  
hydrogen sulfide. If those fans were ever to break down, those pigs  
would die within minutes. That’s how bad it is. That then gets  
flushed out into these giant waste lagoons, and then it’s sprayed  
onto fields. And usually, very often, it’s overapplied. Again, these  
farmers operate on the honor system. They may file a manure plan with  
the state, but nobody is out there regulating them. And I’ve gone up  
in airplanes, both in the Midwest and in North Carolina, where the  
real hog factories are just crammed in one after another after  
another, and I’ve seen the spray fields, and I’ve seen those farmers  
out there spraying directly into creeks, applying so much of this  
brown water onto the fields that it pools up and you see the little  
rivlets and you see it running off into creeks, that bloom red,  
orange, purple and green with algae from all of the nutrients, and  
then that goes on to—we just saw a fish kill. That’s the number one  
cause of fish kills, including in the Gulf of Mexico every summer, a  
fish kill the size of New Jersey forms. That’s from agricultural  
runoff coming down the Mississippi River.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, say that again. A fish kill the size of New Jersey  
forms where?
DAVID KIRBY: In the Gulf of Mexico, right off the coast of Louisiana,  
every summer. And it kills billions and billions of marine life. And  
we don’t hear about this. We hear about the Gulf spill. But this  
happens every year, and it’s almost entirely due—largely due to  
agricultural runoff in the Midwest.
AMY GOODMAN: CAFOs, what are they?
DAVID KIRBY: A CAFO is the government designation for what we call a  
factory farm, concentrated animal feeding operation. It’s any  
operation that has more than what’s called 1,000 animal units. An  
animal unit is a beef cow. So it takes about fifty pigs to make an  
animal unit, young pigs. And the whole idea is to feed these animals  
and to get them to market as quickly as possible. Nothing wrong with  
a farmer wanting to get their animals to market quickly, but it’s the  
method by which we do it. It’s the mechanization. It’s the feed  
additives. It’s the antibiotic use, which we haven’t talked about.  
It’s the conditions—
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about it.
DAVID KIRBY: Well, it’s a very serious problem, and the FDA has been  
very lax and, I would say, asleep at the wheel, and continues to, as  
Patty said, offer recommendations without putting down strict rules  
on the overuse of antibiotics.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, FDA Commissioner Hamburg says they have very  
little enforcement power, unless Congress gives them—
DAVID KIRBY: They have more than they claim, and they do have the  
courts. And we do have Congress, as well, and the administration.  
Barack Obama campaigned on a bill called PAMTA to ban the use of non- 
therapeutic antibiotics in agriculture. They give them these drugs  
for the same reason as arsenic: it makes the animals grow faster, and  
it prevents disease. It’s used as a prophylaxis against disease, but  
at subtherapeutic levels, so it allows the microbes to mutate and get  
around these drugs and become resistant. That’s why we see MRSA  
emerging. Three percent of US pork sampled had—fresh pork, had MRSA.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what MRSA is.
DAVID KIRBY: MRSA is a drug-resistant form of staph bacteria. It’s  
extremely—can be extremely dangerous. And it kills, like I said, more  
people than AIDS in this country. And lot of it is—a lot of it’s from  
overuse of antibiotics in hospitals, but 70 percent of the  
antibiotics sold in this country are given to farm animals. And a  
farmer can walk into the feed store and buy a big barrel of  
tetracycline or some antibiotic without even a prescription, and  
there’s just—there’s virtually no regulation at all. And it is  
leading to widespread antibiotic resistance that’s going to make  
salmonella look like a day at the beach, I’m afraid.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to David Kirby. His book is called Animal  
Factory. David, you not only talk about the crisis of corporate  
farming, but the people who are fighting back, like—well, describe  
the man in North Carolina—
DAVID KIRBY: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: —who’s taking on pig farming.
DAVID KIRBY: Sure. Yeah, my book is not really about animals, and  
it’s not even just about animal poop, although there’s a lot of poop  
in the book. It’s about the people who live near these farms, who  
have seen their communities overturned and, in times, destroyed, seen  
the water polluted, the air polluted, people like Rick Dove, who is a— 
comes from a very conservative Republic background. He’s a former  
Marine, retired colonel, a retired Marine, a JAG, moved his family to  
the Neuse River, which is a beautiful river in North Carolina,  
pristine. And then the hog factories came in, and the river started  
to die. This dinoflagellates called Pfiesteria started to appear.  
Rick was trying to operate a fishing business, and all of a sudden  
the fish were showing up dead with open sores on their sides. And the  
fishermen themselves were getting disoriented from the toxins being  
released by this protozoa. And Rick took it upon himself to—he went  
up in the air and saw these hog factories. And he’s still fighting  
them. He works with the Waterkeeper Alliance. And they are  
successfully suing a chicken company, Perdue, and a chicken grower in  
Maryland, and they’re suing some of the polluting hog farms down in  
North Carolina.
My other two main characters are Helen Reddout, who lives in the  
Yakima Valley of Washington, a cherry farmer, grandmother, and Karen  
Hudson, who lives in Elmwood, Illinois—all three sort of bedrock  
conservative Americans from small town, farmers, fishermen, not your  
typical environmental activists, but they have become leading  
national spokespeople against factory farming, because they’ve  
learned firsthand what’s happened. In Yakima Valley, because of the  
mega-dairies, the nitrate levels in the drinking water, in the  
groundwater, are so high, EPA—
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
DAVID KIRBY: From the cow manure. There’s so much cow manure being  
applied to the land, and the lagoons themselves tend to leak, that  
it’s getting into the groundwater, contaminating people’s wells. And  
nitrates can cause spontaneous abortions, diabetes, blue baby  
syndrome. It can aggravate autism symptoms, etc. And they are finding  
the levels are so high—the EPA now—they’re telling people not only to  
not drink your well water, but don’t even come in contact with your  
skin, don’t wash your hands with it. That’s how contaminated it is.  
And, of course, it’s always the poorest people who suffer the most,  
because they depend on well water.
AMY GOODMAN: Her home is covered in soot?
DAVID KIRBY: Well, it has been. It’s covered in odors. I describe the  
scene in the opening of the book. One summer night, she had the  
windows open and woke up, and she said it smelled like a thousand  
cows had crapped in her bed. And I hear this story over and over and  
over again. And that odor is unforgettable. And people run around  
trying to close all the windows in their house, but, of course, then  
you just end up trapping the odor in it. And the problem—odor was the  
number one problem everywhere I went. And it smells terrible, and  
it’s completely unpredictable. You have these clouds of hydrogen  
sulfide and methane and ammonia sort of blowing around. And if it  
blows in your direction, you may be outside on a summer day with your  
laundry, having a lunch outside, and you have to literally pick  
everything up and run inside. It’s the unpredictability of the odors.  
But when I came back from Yakima Valley—I went there two times—and  
also in the Central Valley of California, I came back with what they  
call manure flu, from just breathing in this stuff and the viruses  
and bacteria that’s contained in it. You get a mild fever, achy,  
chills. And it’s really—
AMY GOODMAN: How consolidated is the farm industry in this country?
DAVID KIRBY: Highly consolidated. I would say chickens were the first  
to become consolidated, and virtually every chicken you buy in the  
store comes from a factory farm. Now we have the egg industry. In the  
'80s and ’90s, the hog industry became consolidated. Dairy industry  
has now largely become consolidated, with big exceptions. There's  
still pasture-fed dairies, particularly in Wisconsin and Vermont. The  
beef industry is the least consolidated. Most beef growers are still  
independent operators who raise their cattle out on range, on  
pasture. But then, for the last two or three months of their lives,  
those cattle are sent to feed lots, which are essentially factory farms.
AMY GOODMAN: And now we have this latest news. Zemco Industries in  
Buffalo, New York, has recalled approximately 380,000 pounds of deli  
meat that may be contaminated with bacteria that can cause a  
potentially fatal disease. The products were distributed to Wal-Marts  
nationwide. The meats may be contaminated with Listeria  
monocytogenes, which was discovered in a retail sample that was  
collected by inspectors in Georgia.
DAVID KIRBY: Yeah, that, to me, sounds more like a problem of  
processing than production. But processing is such a big key part of  
this story. I mentioned—and if we reduce antibiotic use in these  
factory farms, if we reduce the amount of subsidies they were  
getting, it would level the playing field between the big operators  
and the small operators. It’s the processing plants that are the  
final blockade. We have so few of them now that it’s harder for  
independent producers to get their products to market. But the other  
problem is, because we have so few processing plants and they’re so  
huge, that when you have a contamination issue like this, then all of  
a sudden tons—hundreds of thousands of tons of food is contaminated.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, farmers’ markets, community farms, family  
farms, do they stand a chance now? Describe the movement.
DAVID KIRBY: Well, from what I understand, you can’t find fresh eggs  
at the farmers’ market anymore. People are lining up to buy them. So  
this type of story only feeds demand for those things. Yes, of  
course, they can. And if we allow those operators—again, if we share  
some of these tax subsidies with them, if we ban antibiotics, if we  
create more processing plants so smaller producers can get into the  
market and get their product to market, that will level the playing  
field. That means we can bring prices of the smaller-produced items  
down. It may mean that the cheap stuff comes up a little bit and  
levels the playing field. So there’s great hope for independent  
producers.
AMY GOODMAN: David Kirby, I want to thank you for being with us.  
Animal Factory is his book, The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig,  
Dairy and Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment.

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Related stories:

Report: Global Food Security and Sovereignty Threatened by Corporate  
and Government "Land Grabs" in Poor Countries
The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It
Michael Pollan on "Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual"
"Lessons From the Egg Recall: Cheap Food Makes You Sick" (Huffington  
Post)

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