Eat Shit and Die

And in 2007, Congress passed a farm bill that would turn the job of certifying smaller slaughterhouses over to weaker state inspection programs.

Plop.

Some states don't even have meat inspection laws, while others only regulate production that stays within their borders. By Hayslip's count, Florida employs approximately 40 feed inspectors for its roughly 1.7 million head of cattle.

Whether investigations are undertaken by federal or state agencies might not ultimately matter much. The aforementioned Johns Hopkins review found that "guidelines are not adequately enforced at the federal or state level."

The FDA advises that state agencies adhere to definitions of feed ingredients promulgated by the AAFCO. Sitting on AAFCO's advisory boards are the National Renderers Association, National Pork Board, National Cattleman's Beef Association, American Feed Association, American Farm Bureau, and many other industry insiders.

The government's willingness to work hand in hand with agribusiness is nothing new. In 1976 then-Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Carol Foreman approved a change in food safety procedures that made it permissible for chicken visibly smeared with fecal matter to be rinsed and used. This proved a boon to poultry processors, whose losses from unsafe product were greatly reduced. It likewise proved a boon to germs: Within a year, the incidence of food-related illnesses began to climb — and the figures have ascended each year since.

Bob Mitchell is not the first to call attention to this matter. A 1997 US News & World Report article, "The Next Bad Beef Scandal?: Cattle Feed Now Contains Things Like Manure and Dead Cats," sounded a warning, but the story raised more eyebrows than alarm. Not until mad cow emerged, followed by bird flu scares, tainted pet food, beef recalls, and such, did the public's ears perk.

Still, the media feeds on food industry advertising, so these stories get dropped faster than crap through a chicken — and the multinationals that control our foods from farm to fork spend billions of dollars to keep it this way. If their spokespeople sound a little defensive, it's because they recognize that seeing feces and feed in the same sentence can have a potentially unhealthy effect on public perceptions.

"Feeding manure may not be aesthetically pleasing," says the FDA's head of animal-feed safety, Daniel McChesney, "but it is safe if you process it properly." He adds, "If you don't, it's like playing with matches around gasoline."

Proper processing requires that the feces be "dry-stacked" in a silo for four to eight weeks. The idea is that over time, owing to its weight and organic breakdown, the pile of manure will reach temperatures high enough to sterilize it of any harmful disease-causing agents. However, nobody knows how often, or even whether, farmers check their samples. And effective surveillance systems, as Dr. Sapkota pointed out, are simply not in place.

Some drivers slow down so they can read Mitchell's sandwich board, and many of their passengers peer at him or his sign out of sheer curiosity. Most cars just zip by without much notice. "At least nobody's thrown a beer can," offers the occasionally optimistic osteopath, who might be described as a doctor who looks at a bladder and sees it being half full and half empty.

Black clouds have rumbled in, and now it's raining — hard. Mitchell ducks under the Biscayne Commons clock-kiosk, remaining in sight of commuters. Huddled there with the message board still around his neck, surrounded by six lanes of splashing traffic, a sizable strip mall parking lot, and the big, wet, gray sky, Mitchell and his cause look small and forlorn. Not at all like Heston in Soylent Green.

He plans to be out here just once more after this, his final foray falling on Wednesday, December 12. Then he'll let folks worry about their own shit. "I feel that I've done what can be reasonably done. I'm just trying to make people aware. I don't want to get so caught up with the issue that I become consumed by it." He then tacks on cryptically: "It's the Semmelweis syndrome."

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Viennese obstetrician in the mid-1800s, spent 37 years trying to persuade Austrian physicians to wash their hands when they went from autopsy room to delivery room. His theory on controlling germs was viewed as heretical, and he eventually died in an insane asylum. Mitchell envisions himself ending up in a different kind of institution.

"I can see myself 30, 40 years from now in an old-folks home, and NBC Nightly News will come on with: 'Breaking news: Agriculture feeding feces to animals.' And I'll tell anyone who'll listen: 'Hey, I knew that!'"

Meanwhile the livestock industry plows ahead in its search for the perfect feed, experimenting with mixes that include newspaper, cement-kiln dust, and human sewer sludge. A spokesperson for the Animal Industry Association recently boasted that "the U.S. farm animal eats better than the average U.S. citizen."

Could somebody please pass the salt?