This coming Monday, a courtroom in Central Florida will be mobbed with media and members of the public to witness one of America’s most beloved theme parks, SeaWorld, fight back against the federal government and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which slapped the company with a “willful neglect” violation and a $75,000 fine in Brancheau’s death at SeaWorld. Trainers there have not performed in the water with killer whales since Brancheau died.

It is not clear if these images will ever be seen by the public, though the judge in the OSHA hearing said he will not permit a public display of the videos or photo stills, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Nonetheless, OSHA has been flooded with requests for the materials through the Freedom of Information Act. That, paired with Judge Presnell’s ruling, makes it quite possible they will be released. This is obviously an emotional and highly charged story, with worldwide interest. Public access to these images will certainly be painful and devastating to all who loved Dawn Brancheau. It is, by all accounts, a brutal record (there are two sets of videos, and I believe it is the less graphic one that can now be released). The autopsy report alone will give one some idea of the ferociousness of the attack.

I sympathize deeply with Dawn’s family and know that I would not want my own family to endure the release of such images. On the other hand, they are evidence in a federal trial and, as Judge Presnell ruled, part of the public record. I know that television outlets will have the decency and good taste to cut or blur out the most unwatchable portions of Dawn’s death and aftermath. I fear I can’t say the same for the Internet.

But the airing of carefully edited video is essential so that the public may know the real risks involved in working so close with captive killer whales, the ocean’s top predator – in this case a 12,000 pound bull with two human deaths already on his rap sheet. I feel for Dawn, and I feel for Tilikum. Neither one of them should have been allowed to be in such close proximity to the other, in my opinion, and that of OSHA as well.

The larger question is whether killer whales should be kept in captivity at all, which is something I explore in my upcoming book, DEATH AT SEAWORLD.

For now, the most immediate questions are:

1) Should the public have access to these images? Federal Judge Presnell thinks that it should.

2) Should trainers be allowed in the water or, in Dawn’s case, onto a shallow ledge in the water right next to a killer whale like Tilikum? On that, I will let readers be the judge.

Dawn Brancheau was the fourth person to die in a killer whale pool. Dozens more have been injured, some quite seriously. There is only one known case of a killer whale injuring a human in the wild in all recorded history, and no deaths. In that instance, the whale probably mistook a surfer in a wetsuit for a seal, and quickly released him.

SeaWorld is fighting for the right to put trainers back in the water with its killer whales. OSHA is fighting to uphold a violation that its agents issued with the utmost sobriety and due diligence. And the fight over these images may continue in other courts, who knows? Stay tuned, it’s going to be quite a week in Orlando.

David Kirby’s book “DEATH AT SEAWORLD – Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity,” will be released by St. Martin’s Press in Summer, 2012.

As the following comments, funding decisions, research priorites and published papers suggest, the US government and many scientists will be researching and discussing this topic for years to come. Here are some reasons why:

I) FEDERAL HEALTH AGENCIES ENDORSE MORE RESEARCH

The federal government’s four leading health entitites dealing with vaccines and/or autism have all reached consensus: More vaccine safety research is required to fill gaps in knowledge, especially in the context of susceptible subpopulations, mitochondrial impairment, long-tern effects of vaccine-induced fever, seizures and brain injury, and other factors. Millions of dollars will be spent investigating these factors, and not because health officials somehow caved to parental pressure. Mercury in vaccines, for example, was designated as one of the CDC’s “high priority” vaccine safety issues, following an “extensive review of the literature, based on how strongly they seemed to be associated with ASD.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Office of Immunization Saftey

The CDC will study autism “as a possible clinical outcome of immunization” as part of its 5-year research plan. It will also study mitochondrial dysfunction and the risk for “post-vaccine neurological deterioration,” and will convene an expert panel on the feasibility of studying health outcomes, including autism, among vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Study to Explore Early Development - NOTE – THIS WEBPAGE WAS RECENTLY ALTERED BY CDC TO REMOVE ALL REFERENCES TO VACCINES AND MERCURY – HERE IS THE ARCHIVED PAGE: 

http://replay.web.archive.org/20080308214934/http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dd/documents/SEEDfaqs.pdf

The CDC is currently looking at environmental, genetic and socioeconomic risk factors for ASD, including vaccines and mercury. “We chose to look at vaccines and other types of medical procedures that may have mercury exposure,” the CDC says. The agency “designated these factors as high priority” following “an extensive review of the literature, based on how strongly they seemed to be associated with ASD.” Selected mercury exposures include “vaccines that the mom received during pregnancy, the child’s vaccine exposures after birth and specific other factors such as RhoGAM treatment in pregnancy if the mom has developed an immune response against the fetus that can harm it.”

Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) - Includes CDC, HHS, NIH etc.

The nation’s leading autism research entity, the IACC, recently announced funding for studies of environmental factors for ASD, such as toxic exposures and “adverse events following immunization (such as fever and seizures), and mitochondrial impairment.” It will also fund studies to determine if some subpopulations are “more susceptible to environmental exposures (e.g., immune challenges related to infections, vaccinations, or underlying autoimmune problems),” and will continue to coordinate with the National Vaccine Advisory Committee on “public concerns regarding a possible vaccine/ASD link.” The IACC has also concluded that existing population-based vaccine-autism studies are “limited in their ability to detect small susceptible subpopulations.”

National Institutes of Health Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation

A network of NIH agencies and affiliated sites are following some 1,200 pregnant women who already have a child with autism to identify the earliest potential causes and “possible environmental risk factors and their interplay with genetic susceptibility during the prenatal, neonatal and early postnatal periods.” Researchers are reviewing each child’s medical records, including vaccination history. They are also asking about mercury exposures through flu shots during pregnancy, ambient air pollution, seafood consumption, dental amalgams, and thimerosal exposure through contact lens solutions and other OTC products.

US Dept of Health and Human Services National Vaccine Advisory Committee

The nation’s leading experts on vaccine safey recently endorsed the study of adverse events following immunization (e.g., fever and seizures) to see if they increase autism risk. The NVAC also supports an expert committee to consider examining outcomes in unvaccinated, vaccine delayed and vaccinated children, including autism. The Committee recommends more study of “the possible occurrence of ASD in a small number of children subsequent to MMR vaccination” especially given “recent research around the incidence of mitochondrial dysfunction in children with an ASD phenotype.”

The NVAC also recommends studying adverse vaccine reactions in subsets of ASD children, given “recent developments around mitochondrial dysfunction,” and because some children “may be at elevated risk of reduced neurological functioning, possibly including developing ASD, subsequent to vaccination.”

US Dept of Health and Human Services Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

The so-called Federal “Vaccine Court” has asked an Institute of Medicine committee to consider adverse events from the DTaP and MMR vaccines, including autism and autism spectrum disorders. The IOM committee will will consider vaccine-associated “secondary” autism or autistic features arising from chronic encephalopathy, mitochondrial disorders and/or other underlying disorders. The vaccine injury program has asked the committee to consider “primary autism” in light of “recent theories of neuro-inflammation and hyper-arousal/over-excitation of the immune system via multiple simultaneous antigenic stimulation” (several vaccines at once).

SCIENTISTS CALL FOR MORE STUDIES

Today, more scientists and research institutions are supporting further inquiry into the role of environmental toxins in the onset of autism spectrum disorder. While many doubt that vaccines are responsible for the dramatic increase in autism incidence, they point to knowledge gaps concerning susceptible subgroups that may have been missed in large population studies of MMR vaccine, thimerosal and ASD.

“In general, vaccines are not the culprit, (but) there may be a small subset of children who may be particularly vulnerable to vaccines if the child was ill, if the child had a precondition, like a mitochondrial defect. Vaccinations for those children actually may be the environmental factor that tipped them over the edge of autism.”

–David Amaral, PhD, Director of Research, University of California, Davis M.I.N.D. Institute. PBS, April 2011

“One question [is] whether there is a subgroup in the population that, on a genetic basis, is more susceptible to some vaccine characteristic or component than most of the population, and may develop an ASD in response to something about vaccination. The trigger could be some adverse or cross-reacting response to a vaccine component or a mitochondrial disorder increasing the adverse response to vaccine-associated fever.”
–Duane Alexander, MD, former Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), current Senior Scientific Advisor to NIH’s Fogarty International Center. Interview, October 2009.

“It remains scientifically plausible that the challenge to the immune system resulting from a vaccine (or other immunological challenges) could, in susceptible individuals, have adverse consequences for the developing brain. Evidence does not support the theory that vaccines are causing an autism epidemic. However, it is plausible that specific genetic or medical factors that are present in a small minority of individuals might lead to an adverse response to a vaccine and trigger the onset of autism symptoms.”
–Geraldine Dawson, PhD, Chief Science Officer, Autism Speaks. July, 2009

“It is important for autism researchers to study the children who have been most profoundly affected by their response to vaccines.”
– Story Landis, PhD, Director of the National Institute of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), former member, IACC. Statement, October 2009

“If a child was immunized, got a fever, had other complications from the vaccines. And if you’re predisposed with the mitochondrial disorder, it can certainly set off some damage. Some of the symptoms can be symptoms that have characteristics of autism… I think we have to have an open mind about this.”
– Julie Gerberding, MD, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, current President of Merck Vaccines. CNN, March 2008

“I think it’s possible that you could have a genetic subgroup. You also might have an immune subgroup. There are a variety of subgroups. But the problem with the (vaccine-autism) population studies is they don’t… they aren’t necessarily designed to have the statistical power to find subgroups like that if the subgroups are small.”
– Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. PBS, April 2011

“We will continue to support authoritative research that addresses unanswered questions about whether certain subgroups of individuals with particular underlying medical or genetic conditions may be more vulnerable to adverse effects of vaccines. While large scale studies have not shown a link between vaccines and autism, there are lingering legitimate questions about the safety of vaccines that must be addressed.”
–Autism Speaks, Official Statement. February 2009

III) RECENT PAPERS AND FUTURE STUDY

Studies that refute an autism-vaccine association tend to get widespread coverage in the media, but studies suggesting that more research is needed tend to get overlooked. The following are just a few recently published papers, some from foreign journals. They are not presented here as evidence of an association between immunization and autism, but rather to demonstrate the types of investigations that researchers might pursue in the years to come.

Mitochondrial Impairment and Lead Found in Saudi Children with ASD – Vaccines May Trigger Metabolic Stress and Regression in Mild Impairment Cases

“Plasma fatty acids as diagnostic markers in autistic patients from Saudi Arabia”
Lipids in Health and Disease, 2011 Apr 21;10(1):62.

This small study found that “fatty acids are altered in the plasma of autistic patients,” and the differences were related to “oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and the high lead concentration previously reported in Saudi autistic patients.” Taken together with three related Saudi studies, the authors “confirmed the impairment of energy metabolism in Saudi autistic patients, which could be correlated to oxidative stress.” Vitamin E and glutathione were “remarkably lower” in ASD patients vs. controls. Saudi ASD children “are under oxidative stress due to GSH (glutathione) depletion,” the authors said. “This confirms that oxidative stress and defective mitochondrial energy production could represent the primary causative factor in the pathogenesis of autism.” And they added, “There may be an initial period of normal development and function before decompensation in association with metabolic stress or immune activation, such as fasting, illness or vaccination.”

Vaccine-Induced Fever Caused ASD Regression in Four Chidren with Mitochondrial Dysfunction

“Fever plus mitochondrial disease could be risk factors for autistic regression”
Journal of Child Neurology, 2010 Apr;25(4):429-34.

Researchers looked at 28 children with ASD and mitochondrial disease and found that 17 of them (60.7%) had gone through autistic regression, and 12 of the regressive cases happened following fever. Among the 12 children who regressed after fever, a third of them (4) had fever associated with vaccination, as was the case of Hannah Poling v. HHS.

Birth Dose of Hepatitis-B Vaccine Associated with Increased ASD Risk in Boys

“Hepatitis B vaccination of male neonates and autism diagnosis, NHIS 1997-2002″
Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health 2010;73(24):1665-77.

This cross-sectional study used weighted probability samples from National Health Interview Survey 1997-2002. It findings “suggest that U.S. male neonates vaccinated with the hepatitis B vaccine prior to 1999 had a threefold higher risk for parental report of autism diagnosis compared to boys not vaccinated as neonates.”

Thimerosal may contribute to infant neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.

“Lasting neuropathological changes in rat brain after intermittent neonatal administration of thimerosal”
Folia Neuropathologica 2010;48(4):258-69.

This study found that “numerous neuropathological changes were observed in young adult rats treated postnatally with thimerosal,” and that “These findings document neurotoxic effects of thimerosal, at doses equivalent to those used in infant vaccines or higher, in developing rat brain, suggesting likely involvement of this mercurial in neurodevelopmental disorders.” The authors concluded that thimerosal is “possibly contributing to pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.”

Risk of Neurotoxicity from Thimerosal is Plausible, at Least for Susceptible Infants

“Making sense of epidemiological studies of young children exposed to thimerosal in vaccines”
Clinica Chimica Acta, International Journal of Clinical Chemisty, 2010 Nov 11;411(21-22):1580-6

Although this review did not look autism, it compared eight epidemiological studies conducted in the US, UK and Italy on “neurological issues and thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCV)” and found the data were “insufficient to establish non-toxicity for infants and young children.” The review identified “ambiguity” in some of the studies, likely caused by confounding variables. “The risk of neurotoxicity due to low doses of thimerosal is plausible at least for susceptible infants,” the author concluded. “There is a need to address these issues in less developed countries still using TCV in pregnant mothers, newborns, and young children. Developing countries should intensify campaigns that include breastfeeding among efforts to help prime the central nervous system to tolerate exposure to neurotoxic substances, especially thimerosal.”

Once again, our industrial food production system has come to bite us back – this time in the form of drug resistant staph bacteria found in one-half of supermarket meat samples tested in one study, with one-half of the resistant samples found bacteria that were resistant to multiple drugs.

This sad and disturbing news will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the industrialization and consolidation of modern American animal agriculture. The american meat industry has already attacked the study as too small to be conclusive, but the take home message is clear: US producers rely far too heavily on unregulated antibiotics, and it’s time to put a stop to it.

I have written extensively about the overuse of antibiotics on American factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), including in my book Animal Factory. Sub-therapeutic antibiotics promote animal growth and stave off epidemics, a constant problem when animals are crammed into confinements by the thousands. I have also been keeping up with the presence of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), in our meat.

But many other warning about the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture have been issued over the years, including from the Union of Concerned Scientists – which estimates that 70% of all antibiotics sold in the US are used on food animals – and the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Production. Most of those warning went unheeded by the USDA and power brokers in Washington.

“The bacteria is always going to be there. But the reason why they’re resistant is directly related to antibiotic use in food animal production,” lead author Dr. Lance Price told Reuters. “Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to public health we face today.”

Staph causes hundreds of thousands of infections in the United States every year, and drug resistant staph like MRSA kills more Americans than AID/HIV.

Farm and feed magazines are overflowing with ads for antibiotics that promise “Fast growth” and “Record time to market,” not, “We’ll make your sick sow feel better!” Meanwhile, Danish pig farmers are doing just fine after adjusting to raising their animals without growth promoting drugs. US pig producers can certainly do the same.

Maybe now the average American consumer will finally take note, and demand that Congress do something about this growing problem. Candidate Obama ran in support of an antibiotic ban in 2008, but has done little to advance the cause since then.

The President should revisit his campaign pledges, and come out fighting for the “Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act” (PAMTA), introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), which has been languishing in Congress due to fierce industry opposition. The bill would phase out non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in farming, without restricting them for sick animals or treating pets.

Resistant staph bacteria in your beef, pork, turkey and chicken “is one more reason to be very careful when you’re handling raw meat and poultry in the kitchen,” Dr. Price told Reuters. “You can cook away these bacteria. But the problem is when you bring in that raw product, you almost inevitably contaminate your kitchen with these bacteria.”

And Dr. Price aptly stated: “To put it all on the consumer is really directing blame at the wrong end of the food chain.”

Yes it’s true, if you take proper precautions, cook your food well, and disinfect any surfaces touched by the raw meat, you can avoid infection for you and your children. But is the price of cheap meat really offset by the worry of bringing drug resistant bacteria into your home every time you buy something in the meat aisle?

Arsenic from industrialized chicken manure is a possible source of a cancer cluster identified in Arkansas, according to a new report that was featured at a Senate environmental committee hearing on Tuesday.

The report, “Cancer Clusters, Disease, and the need to Protect People from Toxic Chemicals,” identifies at least 42 disease clusters in 13 states reported since 1976. It calls for better documentation and more study of disease clusters, and for stricter control over toxic chemicals through changes in the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The report, co-written by the National Resources Defense Council and the National Disease Clusters Alliance, was discussed Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works by co-author Dr. Gina M. Solomon.

One of the clusters indentified was in the quiet little town of Prairie Grove, in northwest Arkansas, where a testicular-cancer cluster was identified between 1997 to 2001, including among three 14 year-old-boys.

“Though no cause was identified, the town of 2,500 people lies near a now-closed nuclear reactor, a low-level radioactive landfill, a poultry plant, and a manufacturer of poultry feed containing arsenic,” the report says. “Local residents were concerned that the poultry factories were contributing to the high rates of cancer and other health problems because arsenic-contaminated chicken manure was used as fertilizer and spread on fields beside schools and homes in Prairie Grove.”

In 2004, one resident sued the poultry farms and feed manufacturer, the report noted, but “the court did not rule in favor of the residents and the true cause of the cluster has never been determined.”

I spent five days in Prairie Grove in 2007 while researching my book Animal Factory, and though the town is filled with wonderful people, it was one of the saddest experiences I’ve had in 20 years of journalism.

In this one tiny town of 2,500 people, there had been at least 21 documented cases of pediatric cancer, and many more cases among adults. Many of them had died.

One afternoon a lawyer for some of the families, Jayson Hatfield, walked me down a single street of oncological horrors, pointing to each house as we walked.

“There’s a leukemia case in that house, a girl died of brain cancer in that house,” he said, “lymphoma there, skin cancer there…” and so on.

I spoke to dozens of affected family members, and they all blamed the arsenic that had been put into industrial chicken feed at nearby factory farms, and then dry-spread onto nearby cropland in the form of chicken litter (a mixture of organic bedding and manure).

Arsenic had been found in the air filters of several Prairie Grove homes, and at least one scientist traced its molecular fingerprint to the arsenic-feed product, Roxarsone. The heavy metal prevents certain intestinal diseases in birds and, for some uncertain reason, makes them grow faster. Roxarsone is also used at some industrial hog facilities.

It was Jayson Hatfield’s client, Michael “Blu” Green, now 26, who sued the companies and lost, including on appeal. The trial judge did not allow Hatfield to discuss all the other cancer cases popping up around Prairie Grove.

“I was one of three pediatric leukemia cases in a very short timeframe right on my street,” he told me. Green recovered, the other two, both girls, didn’t make it.

As I wrote in Animal Factory:

Blu testified about this illness. He grew up in Prairie Grove and spent time playing outdoors, even as dusty chicken litter was spread on the fields around his home and school. “You just immediately notice the smell,” he said. As a freshman, Blu started seeing inexplicable bruises on his body. Blood tests revealed a very high white blood cell count, and doctors diagnosed him with leukemia. He grew despondent and depressed, he testified, constantly warding off the fear of death.”I knew it was a real possibility,” he said with deep sadness.

 His schoolmate from Prairie Grove, John Blakemore, and the little girl that went to the babysitters house on Mock Street, Holly Green (no relation), had contracted leukemia, and gone into remission. But both of them got sick again and passed away.

Holly had been in the same hospital in Seattle while Blu was being treated there. “Me and Holly were next door to each other,” he testified to a somber courtroom. “I held her brother when they unplugged her.”

Roxarsone is made with organic arsenic, which is less toxic than inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen. However, certain bacteria found in the soil, and in chicken guts, can convert the metal from one form to another. 

Even so, the state of Arkansas says there is no cancer cluster in Prairie Grove, and judges in Arkansas have not been convinced that Roxarsone caused Michael Green’s cancer, (although there will likely be more lawsuits).

But something caused three boys in the same school to develop testicular cancer at the same time, and it wasn’t chance alone. Perhaps coincidently, their school was surrounded on three sides by fields that received routine applications of dry-spread chicken manure laced with arsenic.

According to Green and other residents, the chicken companies began to reduce or eliminate Roxarsone use, and to not spread litter so close to town, sometime around 2004 or 2005 “and there has not been a single case of pediatric cancer, that I am aware of, since then,” Green recently told me.

“I think there were things being put into the air that damaged my DNA and other people’s DNA, and it caused cancer. Some got one kind, and some got another,” he said.

Like many people in Prairie Grove, Green needs no convincing that the use of arsenic to make factory-farm chickens grow faster sickened or killed his friends and neighbors.

“Chicken is cheaper when they use those methods, but treatment for illness is not cheap. Cheap chicken will not offset the cost of treating a certain kind of disease,” he said. “The reduced cost does not outweigh the value of someone’s health, or their life. How much have we really saved? It would take years of eating nothing but low-cost chicken to save what it cost for my hospital bills.”

Animal Factory, The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, was recently released in paperback by St. Martin’s Press.

David Kirby with Elizabeth Taylor, Amsterdam, 1992

By David Kirby

On a warm June afternoon in 1991, about 800 members of the international press corps were fidgeting impatiently as they waited for Elizabeth Taylor to finally make her grand appearance at the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland. As National Chairwoman of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), she was to speak about the global AIDS crisis and AmFAR’s auction that night of three major works of art to support research. 

As AmFAR’s public information director, I had played this scene many times before. We all knew that Elizabeth (NEVER call her “Liz,” I was admonished on my first day) was not exactly an on-time sort of gal. She knew we would wait, and we always did – happily.

On this particular occasion, the wait was getting uncomfortably long. The press conference had been called for 1:00PM. I begged our Swiss hosts not to begin on time. Instead, they started 15 minutes early. By 1:00PM, the other press conference participants had completed their statements. 

There were no questions, just 800 reporters from all over the world glancing at their watches. We waited. The hall was stuffy. People complained. The Italians were indignant, the French were pouty. The Swiss were downright apoplectic.

But not a single grumbling reporter left that hall.

At around 1:20, I called over to the hotel. Sally Morrison, AmFAR’s point person for Elizabeth (and faithful friend and personal publicist for many years) picked up the phone.

“I’m afraid Elizabeth’s just now gotten out of the bath,” Sally said with her British accent. “It’s going to be a while.”

My heart sank into my stomach. I had witnessed Elizabeth’s extraordinary bath-to-motorcade process the day before. It was lengthy, though efficiently executed. I had watched in awe as Elizabeth sat wrapped in a towel at a small vanity brought into her Presidential Suite overlooking the roaring Rhine River. Her husband, Larry Fortensky, was watching CNN.

One person handled her magnificent chestnut mane; another applied makeup around those extraordinary eyes, which up close seemed to be more pale lilac than deep violet. As a third assistant began painting her nails, Elizabeth set down her Richard Burton diamond, a square ice cube, just inches from my face. You don’t forget these moments.

Florence, 1991

Back at the art fair, things were getting uglier. Luckily, Dick Cavett, of all people, happened to be in attendance and, thankfully, he began interviewing AmFAR Founding Co-Chair Dr. Mathilde Krim, who was born in Switzerland, a definite plus at the moment.

Around 1:45 I called the hotel again. “Sally, I don’t think we can keep these reporters here much longer,” I said. “They have an art fair to go write about.”

I heard Sally call across the hotel suite.

“Elizabeth. It’s David on the line. He says the media are getting rather anxious.”

And then I heard that squeaky, almost little-girl voice in the background. It was ET.

“Well tell David that I have diarrhea!” the voice said.

“Sally,” I said, “I can’t go out there and tell 800 reporters that Elizabeth has diarrhea. You need to get her over here now.”

Sally called across the room again. “Elizabeth, lots of people have diarrhea, and you never hear them going on about it.”

“Yes,” the voice said. “But I’m a movie star. My diarrhea is more interesting!”

It was classic Elizabeth Taylor. Defuse a tense moment with salty hilarity, preferably involving bodily functions, while telling the plain, simple truth. Her diarrhea was more interesting. If I had announced it to the press corps, it would have made worldwide headlines.

Instead, Miss Taylor arrived at about 2:15, radiant, charming, brilliant and gorgeous. By the time she finished, no one even remembered she had arrived late.

Such was the intoxicating magic of Elizabeth Taylor, and I was so lucky to be dazzled by her presence – backstage-close and personal – for four extraordinary years.

AmFAR Fundraiser, Amsterdam 1992

I was with Elizabeth in 1990 as she took Capitol Hill by storm to help introduce the Ryan White CARE Act, which still provides HIV/AIDS treatment, services and prevention programs to millions of Americans today. Senators, Hill staffers and the jaded DC media tripped over themselves to get a glimpse of Cleopatra and Virginia Wolf.

I was with Elizabeth when she got out of her sick bed and flew to San Francisco to speak to attendees at the International AIDS Conference in 1990, and with her at the 1991 conference in Florence as well.

At the 1992 conference, in Amsterdam, we had decided to hold a press conference denouncing the (now defunct) US immigration policy that prevents HIV-positive people from travelling to America. In her remarks that I wrote, I included the fact that Elizabeth carries a British passport, and would not be allowed back to America if she were HIV positive.

Much to my surprise, she had brought her passport with her, and she held it aloft as a theatrical prop, her voice trembling softly with rage as she spoke, all to tremendous effect.  The second she lifted that passport, the cameras exploded in flash. The image was seen around the world, and our message was heard everywhere.

At another press conference in Amsterdam, Elizabeth was asked what she thought of the AIDS policies of President George H.W. Bush. The movie star with interesting diarrhea did not hesitate for a second.

“I don’t think Bush even knows how to spell ‘AIDS,’ she said with a coy smile.

Once again, it was the sound-bite heard round the world, including the front cover of the New York Post back home, which blared: “LIZ: BUSH CAN’T EVEN SPELL A-I-D-S.”

There were so many fairytale moments I spent in her presence: Fundraisers in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, and AmFAR board meetings where she fought hard and passionately to direct money into an international fund to help fight AIDS in the developing world, an issue on which she was extremely ahead of her time.

On one trip, in the fall of 1992, we flew to Spain where AmFAR was to be honored with the Principe de Asturias Award – sort of the Nobel Prize of the Spanish speaking world – alongside South African President Nelson Mandela.

Oviedo, Spain 1992

The day of the ceremony, in Oviedo, Sally and I took Elizabeth upstairs to Mandela’s suite, where were all had tea, cakes and lively conversation. It was one of those moments where you cannot believe that you actually get to be a fly on the wall. But there you are, listening.

“When I was in prison in South Africa all those years,” Mandela told her, “They used to let us watch American movies. And we always asked to see your movies. It gave us great hope and courage to know that such beautiful women were there on the outside.”

Nelson Mandela was flirting with Elizabeth Taylor! He smiled, and she blushed, something I had never seen her do before.

Then talk turned to more serious matters of the world, and eventually to AIDS in Africa, where most cases of HIV are transmitted through heterosexual sex.

“Why do you think that is?” Mandela said. “Why do you think there is female-to-male transmission?”

Elizabeth pondered the question a moment. She stirred her tea. Sally and I waited in anticipation. This should be interesting, I thought.

“Well you see, Nelson. It’s like this,” Elizabeth replied. “Women have these, these,,, juices.

Another bodily function moment. Sally and I practically did spit takes with our tea, but Mandela nodded politely and knowingly and simply said, “Oh, I see.”

On our last day in Florence, where the hotel was surrounded around the clock by police and paparazzi, I spent an hour or two with Elizabeth as aides were busy packing up for the next leg of the trip. She was to fly on Gianni Versace’s private jet to Paris, and we were going to take her to the airport.

Elizabeth was sorting through a large bag of lipstick colors, searching for the right match to the coral lining of her black silk jacket.  I helped her as we chatted like school chums. Soon, I realized we were all alone.

Elizabeth told me how devastated she was by Rock Hudson and how angry she was that Reagan and Bush “had not done shit for AIDS.” She talked about Richard Burton and Mike Todd, and told me that Todd was the man she loved the most. There in the room were two giant trunks, covered in circa 1960’s indoor-outdoor carpeting.

“Mike had those made for me on our honeymoon,” she said. “He bought so much stuff for me we had to get these to carry everything home. But they are old and ugly now. I am going to leave them here.”

I was stunned. This luggage belonged in the Smithsonian! “Why don’t you auction them off for AIDS research?” I asked.

“Oh David,” she laughed. “Nobody is going to want those old things, silly boy!” They were probably thrown out by the hotel staff in Florence.

That same afternoon, Hollywood’s greatest living actress told me all about her wedding to Larry Fortensky at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. She was feuding with AmFAR at the time over the international program. She felt so strongly about fighting AIDS overseas, that she started her own group, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which thrives to this day.

“We sold the photos to People Magazine for a few million dollars, and that is when I got the idea,” she explained to me. “When the check arrived, I decided that I wanted to go down to the bank myself and personally open the foundation’s account myself.”

She got dressed, summonsed her driver, and left her modest Bel Air home to visit the bank.

“So I got out of the car, and I had this check firmly in my hand, and I walked into the bank,” she said. “And when I walked in, I looked around and I was stunned to realize: I had never been in a bank before in my life! Can you imagine that?”

Yes, Elizabeth, I can imagine that. Banks are for mortals. You were a goddess for millions and millions around the world. Yours was the only Hollywood death that could have interrupted newscasts today from Libya, Japan and Jerusalem.

Florence Airport, 1991

David Kirby is author of Animal Factory, now out in paperback.

By David Kirby

On a warm June afternoon in 1991, about 800 members of the international press corps were fidgeting impatiently as they waited for Elizabeth Taylor to finally make her grand appearance at the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland. As National Chairwoman of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), she was to speak about the global AIDS crisis and AmFAR’s auction that night of three major works of art to support research.

As AmFAR’s public information director, I had played this scene many times before. We all knew that Elizabeth (NEVER call her “Liz,” I was admonished on my first day) was not exactly an on-time sort of gal. She knew we would wait, and we always did – happily.

On this particular occasion, the wait was getting uncomfortably long. The press conference had been called for 1:00PM. I begged our Swiss hosts not to begin on time. Instead, they started 15 minutes early. By 1:00PM, the other press conference participants had completed their statements. 

There were no questions, just 800 reporters from all over the world glancing at their watches. We waited. The hall was stuffy. People complained. The Italians were indignant, the French were pouty. The Swiss were downright apoplectic.

But not a single grumbling reporter left that hall.

At around 1:20, I called over to the hotel. Sally Morrison, AmFAR’s point person for Elizabeth (and faithful friend and personal publicist for many years) picked up the phone.

“I’m afraid Elizabeth’s just now gotten out of the bath,” Sally said with her British accent. “It’s going to be a while.”

My heart sank into my stomach. I had witnessed Elizabeth’s extraordinary bath-to-motorcade process the day before. It was lengthy, though efficiently executed. I had watched in awe as Elizabeth sat wrapped in a towel at a small vanity brought into her Presidential Suite overlooking the roaring Rhine River. Her husband, Larry Fortensky, was watching CNN.

One person handled her magnificent chestnut mane; another applied makeup around those extraordinary eyes, which up close seemed to be more pale lilac than deep violet. As a third assistant began painting her nails, Elizabeth set down her Richard Burton diamond, a square ice cube, just inches from my face. You don’t forget these moments.

Back at the art fair, things were getting uglier. Luckily, Dick Cavett, of all people, happened to be in attendance and, thankfully, he began interviewing AmFAR Founding Co-Chair Dr. Mathilde Krim, who was born in Switzerland, a definite plus at the moment.

Around 1:45 I called the hotel again. “Sally, I don’t think we can keep these reporters here much longer,” I said. “They have an art fair to go write about.”

I heard Sally call across the hotel suite.

“Elizabeth. It’s David on the line. He says the media are getting rather anxious.”

And then I heard that squeaky, almost little-girl voice in the background. It was ET.

“Well tell David that I have diarrhea!” the voice said.

 “Sally,” I said, “I can’t go out there and tell 800 reporters that Elizabeth has diarrhea. You need to get her over here now.”

Sally called across the room again. “Elizabeth, lots of people have diarrhea, and you never hear them going on about it.”

“Yes,” the voice said. “But I’m a movie star. My diarrhea is far more interesting!”

It was classic Elizabeth Taylor. Defuse a tense moment with salty hilarity, preferably involving bodily functions, while telling the plain, simple truth. Her diarrhea was more interesting. If I had announced it to the press corps, it would have made worldwide headlines.

 Instead, Miss Taylor arrived at about 2:15, radiant, charming, brilliant and gorgeous. By the time she finished, no one even remembered she had arrived late.

Such was the intoxicating magic of Elizabeth Taylor, and I was so lucky to be dazzled by her presence – backstage-close and personal – for four extraordinary years.

I was with Elizabeth in 1990 as she took Capitol Hill by storm to help introduce the Ryan White CARE Act, which still provides HIV/AIDS treatment, services and prevention programs to millions of Americans today. Senators, Hill staffers and the jaded DC media tripped over themselves to get a glimpse of Cleopatra and Virginia Wolf.

I was with Elizabeth when she got out of her sick bed and flew to San Francisco to speak to attendees at the International AIDS Conference in 1990, and with her at the 1991 conference in Florence as well.

At the 1992 conference, in Amsterdam, we had decided to hold a press conference denouncing the (now defunct) US immigration policy that prevents HIV-positive people from travelling to America. In her remarks that I wrote, I included the fact that Elizabeth carries a British passport, and would not be allowed back to America if she were HIV positive.

Much to my surprise, she had brought her passport with her, and she held it aloft as a theatrical prop, her voice trembling softly with rage as she spoke, all to tremendous effect.  The second she lifted that passport, the cameras exploded in flash. The image was seen around the world, and our message was heard everywhere.

At another press conference in Amsterdam, Elizabeth was asked what she thought of the AIDS policies of President George H.W. Bush. The movie star with interesting diarrhea did not hesitate for a second.

“I don’t think Bush even knows how to spell ‘AIDS,’ she said with a coy smile.

Once again, it was the sound-bite heard round the world, including the front cover of the New York Post back home, which blared: “ANGRY LIZ SAYS  BUSH CAN’T EVEN SPELL A-I-D-S.”

There were so many fairytale moments I spent in her presence: Fundraisers in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, and AmFAR board meetings where she fought hard and passionately to direct money into an international fund to help fight AIDS in the developing world, an issue on which she was extremely ahead of her time.

On one trip, in the fall of 1992, we flew to Spain where AmFAR was to be honored with the Principe de Asturias Award – sort of the Nobel Prize of the Spanish speaking world – alongside South African President Nelson Mandela.

The day of the ceremony, in Oviedo, Sally and I took Elizabeth upstairs to Mandela’s suite, where were all had tea, cakes and lively conversation. It was one of those moments where you cannot believe that you actually get to be a fly on the wall. But there you are, listening.

“When I was in prison in South Africa all those years,” Mandela told her, “They used to let us watch American movies. And we always asked to see your movies. It gave us great hope and courage to know that such beautiful women were there on the outside.”

Nelson Mandela was flirting with Elizabeth Taylor! He smiled, and she blushed, something I had never seen her do before.

Then talk turned to more serious matters of the world, and eventually to AIDS in Africa, where most cases of HIV are transmitted through heterosexual sex.

“Why do you think that is?” Mandela said. “Why do you think there is female-to-male transmission?”

Elizabeth pondered the question a moment. She stirred her tea. Sally and I waited in anticipation. This should be interesting, I thought.

“Well you see, Nelson. It’s like this,” Elizabeth replied. “Women have these, these,,, juices.

Another bodily function moment. Sally and I practically did spit takes with our tea, but Mandela nodded politely and knowingly and simply said, “Oh, I see.”

On our last day in Florence, where the hotel was surrounded around the clock by police and paparazzi, I spent an hour or two with Elizabeth as aides were busy packing up for the next leg of the trip. She was to fly on Gianni Versace’s private jet to Paris, and we were going to take her to the airport.

Elizabeth was sorting through a large bag of lipstick colors, searching for the right match to the coral lining of her black silk jacket.  I helped her as we chatted like school chums. Soon, I realized we were all alone.

Elizabeth told me how devastated she was by Rock Hudson and how angry she was that Reagan and Bush “had not done shit for AIDS.” She talked about Richard Burton and Mike Todd, and told me that Todd was the man she loved the most. There in the room were two giant trunks, covered in circa 1960’s indoor-outdoor carpeting.

“Mike had those made for me on our honeymoon,” she said. “He bought so much stuff for me we had to get these to carry everything home. But they are old and ugly now. I am going to leave them here.”

I was stunned. This luggage belonged in the Smithsonian! “Why don’t you auction them off for AIDS research?” I asked.

“Oh David,” she laughed. “Nobody is going to want those old things, silly boy!” They were probably thrown out by the hotel staff in Florence.

That same afternoon, Hollywood’s greatest living actress told me all about her wedding to Larry Fortensky at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. She was feuding with AmFAR at the time over the international program. She felt so strongly about fighting AIDS overseas, that she started her own group, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which thrives to this day.

“We sold the photos to People Magazine for a few million dollars, and that is when I got the idea,” she explained to me. “When the check arrived, I decided that I wanted to go down to the bank myself and personally open the foundation’s account myself.”

She got dressed, summonsed her driver, and left her modest Bel Air home to visit the bank.

“So I got out of the car, and I had this check firmly in my hand, and I walked into the bank,” she said. “And when I walked in, I looked around and I was stunned to realize: I had never been in a bank before in my life! Can you imagine that?”

Yes, Elizabeth, I can imagine that. Banks are for mortals. You were a goddess for millions and millions around the world. Yours was the only Hollywood death that could have interrupted newscasts today from Libya, Japan and Jerusalem.

David Kirby is author of Animal Factory, now out in paperback.

“We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick,” Jack DeCoster told the panel. “We apologize to everyone who may have been sickened by eating our eggs. I pray several
times each day for all of them and for their improved health.”

Seeing as two victims of DeCoster’s slovenly egg production system were witnesses at the hearing, the apology was appropriate and welcome. But it was not nearly enough. We need tougher laws; not more contrite factory farmers.

More than 1,600 people were reportedly sickened by eggs from DeCoster’s Wright County Egg and from Orland Bethel’s Hillandale Farms, both from Iowa – but the true number is probably many times greater than that.

But when it comes to eggs and other animal food products raised in huge, industrialized, often unsanitary factory farms, we need more than apologies: We need inspection, enforcement, and accountability.

Rep. Henry Waxman, the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose oversight subcommittee is holding today’s hearing, promised tough questions for DeCoster and Bethel (Bethel took the Fifth and refused to answer any questions). He decried the “filthy conditions that caused food poisoning in thousands of consumers across the country,” and charged that “These facilities operate with a shocking level of disregard for basic food safety controls.”

How filthy were those conditions? Decide for yourself. This is from the hearing brief: “http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100914/Briefing.Memo.2010.9.14.oi.pdf

FDA investigators inspected multiple facilities of Wright County Egg from August 12 through August 30, 2010.8 In the course of their investigation, officials found chicken manure reaching eight feet high, employees who did not wear or change protective clothing when moving from one laying house to another, and many live mice throughout the facilities. Inspectors also observed wild birds sitting near and flying over grain bins that contained chicken feed. In total, six samples taken from the facilities and feed supply tested positive for Salmonella Enteritidis.

FDA also inspected facilities of Hillandale Farms of Iowa.10 During inspections from August 19 through August 26, 2010, investigators found numerous unsealed rodent holes, liquid manure “streaming” from a crack in the manure pit, and uncaged hens tracking manure throughout the laying facilities. FDA found Salmonella Enteritidis in a sample of spent water from an egg wash station.

It’s enough to make you sick. And no apology, no matter how welcomed and sincerely delivered, will prevent it from happening somewhere else.

As Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said in his opening statement, DeCoster is probably not the only bad egg actor in this whole mess “There are many egg producing facilities with corporate ties that have not yet been inspected by the FDA,” Markey said. “The corporate fox is in charge of the henhouse.”

DeCoster’s son Peter said he believes “at this time” that contaminated chicken feed, and not conditions in the barns, is what led to the outbreak. But the FDA “has not reached this conclusion,” said FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua M. Sharfstein.

FDA investigators, he testified, “found significant objectionable conditions observed at poultry houses, such as the presence of live and dead flies that were too numerous to count, as well as maggots at Wright County Egg and live rodents and structural damage that allowed rodents, birds, and potentially other animals to enter poultry houses at both companies.”

Sharfstein said that any number of factors could have contributed to the introduction and spread of the disease, and added that a newly adopted FDA “egg rule” will require “certain types of preventive measures that will keep salmonella from getting in eggs,” including better rodent control, refrigeration and testing.

Currently, the FDA  has “no ability to subpoena, the information they seek has to be given voluntarily, there is no obligation by the farms to report to the FDA even when they know there are food safety issues,” Waxman charged. “This is unthinkable.”

Waxman’s committee unanimously approved the Food Safety Enhancement Act,</a> which was overwhelmingly passed by the full house. The bill, which remains stalled in the Senate, would give the FDA new, sharp teeth to enforce inspections and mandate recalls of contaminated foods, including fruits, vegetables, seafood, milk, and eggs.

As good as that bill is, it apparently would not cover inspections and recalls of meat, poultry, and processed egg products, which fall under the auspices of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

But the Food Safety Enhancement act is clearly a necessary step toward protecting American consumers from food-borne illnesses, especially if this country is going to remain addicted to cheap meat, milk and eggs produced at gargantuan “concentrated animal feeding operations,” (CAFOs), better known as factory farms (traditional farms, while not free of these problems, are less likely to have such large outbreaks).

Democrats charge that Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is singlehandedly holding up the bill in the Senate, something that GOP members of the House committee denied today.

Whoever is responsible for holding up this critical bill, just like Jack DeCoster, they owe the American people an apology – and an explanation.

I don’t know what the editorial policy is toward factory farming at the very conservative Washington Times, but the paper apparently gives free rein to its book reviewers, even when covering politically controversial hot-button issues

On April 23, The Times ran a very favorable account of Animal Factory – The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, which reviewer Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, author of Mencken: The American Iconoclast, said “reads like the script of a gripping documentary.”

It wasn’t something one would necessarily expect to read in this particular newspaper, which The New York Times has called a “crucial training ground for many rising conservative journalists and a must-read for those in the movement.”

But if a conservative newspaper can write warmly in favor of factory farm reform – something that Barack Obama promised on the 2008 trail – maybe it can emerge as a truly bipartisan issue.

Industrial-scale, corporate-backed farming, the review states, “is something that concerns us all, no matter what our political persuasion: the long-term health of people and communities directly affected by factory farms – otherwise known, in Orwellian lingo, as ‘concentrated animal-feeding operations’ (CAFOs).”

And, Rodger wrote, “each of us can introduce one organic food element to one meal per day. Organic eggs and milk, for instance, contain higher concentrations of vitamins, so you get more bang for the buck.”

A pitch for organic eggs? In The Washington Times? Who knew?

Then again, why wouldn’t conservatives be concerned about factory farming? Nearly all of the anti-CAFO activists featured in Animal Factory come from Republican backgrounds. And, as Rodger noted, the “externalized costs” of CAFOs include pollution and disease – which should worry everyone, (one reason why National Public Radio gave the book an equally positive review), and “loss of property values, plus federal subsidies, buyouts and farm bill giveaways,” which are bedrock conservative issues.

Rodgers gets her digs in at the Obama people, and rightly so. “Efforts to include leaders from agribusiness and the federal government, especially from the Obama administration, were less successful,” she correctly notes, “and their silence is a resounding absence in this book.”

“The scandal of industrial food-animal production is a direct link to the health care debate, making ‘Animal Factory’ all the more urgent,” the reviewer reminds us all, no matter what side of that burning topic we occupy. “Mr. Kirby has produced a powerful, important book to all those who care about their family’s health.”

I do not know what Ms. Rodger’s personal politics are, but I am grateful for her and to The Times – not only personally and professionally, but because it brings this important message to an extremely important group – Powerful Republicans in Washington, DC and beyond.

As for reining in the excesses of industrial animal production, maybe that is the golden bipartisan issue that has thus far eluded President Obama.

The Full Review Can Be READ HERE

A Q&A in Time Magazine Online Can Be READ HERE

David Kirby is Author of “Animal Factory – The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment.” (St. Martin’s Press).

 New Book Club to be Launched at Book Court in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn – April 21 at 7:00PM

Brooklyn-based writer DAVID KIRBY, author of the book “ANIMAL FACTORY – The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment” (St. Martin’s Press, March 2010), is having a reading and book signing at Book Court on Wednesday, April 21, 7PM at Book Court, 163 Court Street (between Pacific & Dean) in Cobble Hill Brooklyn www.bookcourt.org

The event, which is free and open to the public, marks the launch of the new Slow Food NYC Book Club.  Slow Food NYC is a non-profit group founded “to counteract fast food and fast life” and “stand against the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat.”

Animal Factory describes the rapid rise in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and their associated pollution, threat to food safety, harm to humans, wildlife and rural communities, treatment of livestock, and corporatization of the national food chain. The book follows real Americans as they struggle to defend their communities.

NPR said:

While there’s no doubt that many Americans might rather not know how the hamburgers and hot dogs we eat make their way to our tables, it’s becoming impossible for anyone to ignore the provenance of the meat that many of us buy, cook and eat every day. In Animal Factory, David Kirby turns his eye to one of the more controversial elements of contemporary American food production — factory farms, or “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), which have allowed meat producers to manufacture meat more quickly, and in greater quantities, than ever before. These large-scale operations have managed, to some degree, to make meat more affordable for many consumers; Kirby wonders whether the cost to the environment — and the health of people who live near the farms — is worth it. Kirby combines the narrative urgency of Sinclair’s novel with the investigative reporting of Schlosser’s book — Animal Factory is nonfiction, but reads like a thriller. It has the potential to change the collective American mind about contemporary food issues.

More information is at www.animalfactorybook.com.

But animal factory farming has changed all that.

Last week while speaking on tour at San Francisco’s Book Passage, my 20-something nephew Michael commented that he and his struggling friends now fill up on cheap meat to tame their growling bellies, more than on bread, noodles, rice and tater-tots. 

“We can go to the store and get a pork roast, cook it, and stuff our faces on it for days – and it’s really, really cheap,” Michael said. “Meat has become the new carb.”

People in the bookstore were abashed by the statement. After all, the idea of blithely pigging out on meat – because it’s cheaper than anything else – is a bit nauseating, even to the most committed of carnivores. But when you are struggling to find work and make ends meat, cheap food is cheap food. And few things today, pound for pound, are cheaper than cheap meat.

American animal protein is cheap at the supermarket because animal factories cram thousands of creatures into single confinements, feed them a steady diet of taxpayer-subsidized corn, grain and soybeans (often laced with antibiotics and heavy metals to speed up growth), get billions of taxpayer dollars in direct-payment subsidies and federal grants for pollution control, and ship their “output” off to titanic slaughterhouses where costs-per-kill are reduced to a minimum.

I thought Michael’s observation was astute. But surely it was metaphorical. After all, how could meat be cheaper than pasta? How could the something inside a sandwich cost less that then bread that holds it together?

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true.

Today, I paid a visit to my local supermarket – nothing too fancy or upscale, but with admittedly inflated New York City prices. I wanted to see how much Michael’s pork roast would cost here. It was $1.19 a pound.

Not bad, but there was even cheaper meat than that. Whole turkey was $0.79/lb and whole chicken was $0.99/lb, (sometimes it falls to $0.69/lb). Beef could be had for $0.99/lb in the form of beef shank or beef rump steak, while ham butt and whole smoked ham were also $0.99/lb. Corned beef was $1.49/lb. And though these were the very cheapest cuts, and you were often paying for bone as well, it would be much cheaper to fill up on these meats than on the grains and potatoes found in the carb aisles.

The cheapest carbs were russet potatoes, at $0.99/lb, followed by rice at $1.49/lb and pasta at $1.99/lb. Once you wandered into the prepared and frozen food sections, however, the price-per-pound really began to soar, including $3.68 for corn flakes, $4.30 for 16oz of potato chips, and $5.12 for the same amount of microwave popcorn (See chart below).

Likewise, healthy fruits and vegetables were priced higher than the cheap meats – ranging from $1.49 per pound for apples to $4.99 a pound for strawberries.

In a world where most poor people will not even taste meat this year, it is somewhat perverse to think that animal flesh is now the cheap food of choice for low-income Americans. Why should a ham sandwich cost 99 cents-a-pound for the ham, and $3.59-a-pound for the bread? What is wrong with our system when chicken-and-rice costs $0.99 for the chicken, and $1.49 for the rice?

Yes, there are more expensive cuts of meat, and you can probably find cheaper carbs if you really shop around. But the argument remains the same. With all the advantages we grant to industrial-scale animal producers (ie, subsidies, drugs and open access to processing plants), aren’t we artificial deflating the price or meat? And isn’t that leading to comparatively higher prices for plant-based foods?

Maybe if we subsidized the production of fruits, vegetables and edible grains (most corn is not grown for human consumption) instead of the production of meat and dairy, we would get a healthier, more heart-friendly return on our national investment.

Actual Prices at Key Food Grocery, Brooklyn, NY – Week of April 18, 2010

MEAT

Whole Turkey – $0.79/lb
Perdue Oven Stuffer: $0.99/lb
Beef Shank: $0.99/lb
Beef Steak Rump: $0.99/lb
Ham Butt: $0.99/lb
Whole Ham Smoked: $0.99/lb Pork Roast Shoulder: $1.19/lb
Frierich Corned Beef: $1.49/lb

CARBS

Carolina Extra Long Grain Rice: $1.49/lb
Colavita Penne Pasta: $2.49/lb
Ore-Ida Steak Fries – $2.72/lb
Chef Boyardee Mac & Cheese – $3.20/lb
Wonder Bread – Light Italian: $3.59/lb
Kellogg’s Corn Flakes: $3.68/lb
Ritz Crackers: $4.09/lb
Lay’s Potato Chips: ($3.49 13oz) $4.30/lb
Thomas` English Muffins: ($3.39/12oz) $4.48/lb
Act II Microwave Popcorn – Light Butter: ($2.79/8.6oz) $5.12/lb

FRUITS & VEGGIES

Apples: $1.49/lb
Zucchini $169/lb
Bartlett Pears: $1.79/lb
Eggplant: $199/lb
Broccoli: $249/lb
Spinach (bagged) $3.16/lb
Seedless Grapes: $3.99/lb
Strawberries: $4.99/lb
Cauliflower: $4.99/lb</blockquote>