Another Uplifting Appearance from "Animal Factory" Author and I-Fave David Kirby

Whether he’s waxing poetic on why the food supply will kill us all, or why the air we breathe will kill us all, or why your neighbor’s cute kitten will kill us all, David Kirby, the author of Animal Factory, maintains a certain likeability that makes you want to read his very upsetting books.
 
“Animal Factory is about people in everyday American communities, where these giant animal farms had invaded their areas, who stood up and fought against big business and, in many ways, are winning this fight,” Kirby said.
 
A number of the scenarios addressed in Animal Factory have played out in the last year, including an increase in food-borne illnesses and in the cost of provisions.
 
“These factory farms require so much energy for the pesticides, for the fertilizers, to grow the feed, to house and heat and cool these animals, plus to transport them to market,” Kirby said. “As oil prices go up, or as energy prices go up, so do food prices.”
 
Eventually, if for no other reason than to bring costs down, farmers will be forced to turn their animals back onto pasture, a notion that pleases Kirby. “There’s a healthier way to grow these animals, and there’s a healthier way to eat these animals,” he said.
 
He was surprised to learn that most of the Tea Partiers in Congress voted to continue government subsidies for factory farms. “We give away billions and billions of dollars every year to multi-millionaire farmers,” Kirby said, adding that if the Tea Party really believed in eliminating wasteful government spending, “this is a great place to start.”
 
Because he was on a such a feel-good streak, Kirby turned to talk of the impending nuclear disaster in Japan after Friday’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake there. Having just completed an article for Discover Magazine on the long-range atmospheric transport of pollutants from Asia to the United States, Kirby was basically the perfect person with whom to hash out this subject.
 
“There are transport mechanisms to bring these things directly to the United States, where they’re often deposited, mostly on the West Coast, in the form of rain,” he said, but noted that many factors would have to be in alignment for that scenario to come true.
 
“First of all, we would need a huge release of radiation from Japan,” he said. “You would need a lot of heat to get that up into the upper atmosphere, where these currents could, in about 5, 6, 7 days, bring them over to the United States.” Much of the radiation would likely be diluted en route by rainfall over the Pacific Ocean, but maybe not.
 
With so many contaminants from faraway places finding their way into the U.S. everyday, Kirby concluded, “We all live downwind.”
 
He continued, “People in Europe breathe our fumes. People in the East breathe fumes from the Midwest. There is no place called ‘away.’ Everything has to go somewhere.”
 
And for Imus, who was understandably depressed after hearing Kirby’s dire predictions, that place might soon be rehab.
 
“If you’re a recovering alcoholic or drug addict, you might as well say, ‘The hell with it,’” he joked. “Get your dealer on the phone, go to the liquor store, get a bottle of Stolichnaya, fire up a big old hairy steak, get you some cocaine, and let’s have a party.”
 
-Julie Kanfer