h hysteria in the bay. this is a toxic organism in the water that produced some kind of neuro toxin, caused millions of fish to die, and a lot of reported illness in fishermen and water, never really figured out, but one of the stimulating factors that was described was the amount of inputs of nutrient of poultry waste that went into the water. that was kind of the first thing. but the main thing that got me into this was going to a lecture and listening to the speaker talk about food-born infections and how these are big problems. and it was particularly a problem because many of them were drug resistant. i knew nothing about the subject. >> so infections, e.coli, listeria. >> right. exactly. we have something like 70 million cases a year in the united states. and it is the leading cause of morbid mortality. we have all been taught, don't leave chicken salad on the table because bacteria can grow. but i was puzzled as to why they wouldn't be drug resistant. i asked. she said, oh, that because they feed animals antibiotics. i remember thinking, this can't be a good idea. and i began to think well i think this is something that people should be looking into and at the time people weren't con negligenting this. it was understood by experts and for food born infections and it isn't put together. and because of my experience of thinking about chicken ways and and in the environment and that got me to thinking about how about the people who work with chickens. and so it so happened that this is also when i was enlightened about the fact that state of maryland was one of the leading in the country between 400 and 600 million boiler chickens each year. and the con glomeration of delaware and maryland is one of the leading poultry producing areas of the country. it was an optimal place to start thinking about these things and thinking about it beyond the food pathway, although i have sort of come back full circle to it. what got me to write the book is two things. one was, seeing a map that had been prepared by the food and agriculture organization in rome and it showed the spread of intensive or industrialized food animal production globally. and i had no idea. >> when you say industrialized, explain that to people, what that means. >> sure. industrial means two things. it has to do with the scale of operations but also the structure. so industrial means have you a process that is tightly controlled, that has specified inputs. in this case, chickens. and specify the outputs, which is consumer products. and the whole production process is highly organized and usually under the control of one entity. which is known as a producer, such as purdue or tyson or smithfield. and that then implies certain kinds of economies, and certain kinds of demands in terms of production. >> so does this mean that these entities don't operate as a small scale farmer would operate? their relationships with their producers are different than if you were an individual farmer growing wheat or raising cattle in my part of the country? >> absolutely. >> and that whole process of transforming farming from its traditional small entrepreneur driven kind of economic activity brought to an individual market sold to individual consumers is long gone. that process is what the u.s. department of agriculture means when they talk about chickenizing. i came across that word when i was searching for some information about the library. >> i didn't invent that term, however, when i was in the department. >> no. but usda invented it. and i remember i saw this paper called the chickenization of pork production. i was completely baffled. i thought, is this some sort of engineering? i called up the guy at the paper and he said no, no, no. this is the term we use when any kind offing ary t agriculture, . >> but you're basically saying that this applies to all of agriculture, at least the other animal parts of agriculture, but could apply to all parts of agriculture, that is the changing nature scale of producing food in this country has changed from largely small scale farmer model which we had up until the depression or maybe until the second world war. >> depression, probably. >> and then moving into larger and larger scale and different relationships between producers and those who process the food. >> exactly. and have you -- it's all integrated. so it is called vertical integration. because the company like purdue will actually breed chicks, they will grow feeds and blend the feeds. supply the chicks to what are now called the growers, not formers. that's really kind of share cropping. so growers own the houses and the land. and they receive the chicks. they feed them the feeds that purdue has assigned. and at the end of the growing period, which for a boiler is now between six and seven weeks. purdue comes to pick up the full grown chickens, take them to the purdue processing plant, and for a long time purdue was kind of the main conduit to wholesalers. but now of course, you can go into the grocery store and buy granded tyson and purdue product. so they become retailers as well.bgranded tyson and purdue product. so they become retailers as well.randed tyson and purdue product. so they become retailers as well. >> and there are other producers as well. >> not too many. not too many. >> i will talk a little bit about, and greater in-depth, but has this been a naturally occurring process given the nature of our economy and urbanization of the world, since most people don't live in rural settings any more, that in fact the movement towards industrialized agriculture is a natural phenomenon and the movement towards industrialization towards everything because the fact we are an urbanized society now. >> to one extent, yes. textile answers other manufacturers in the 19th century. so there are some for this and obviously henry ford and the ip dust real production of the first cars. away from the craftsman kind of operation when we belt buggies for horse and carriage. but it was vastly speeded up. so the first event which we can call the precursor event for chickenization, and i do give homage to arthur w. purdue, because he is the one who figured this all out, really. >> he was the founder of the company. >> that's right. >> which is now his son and his grandson. you see them on tv. and they have very, very kind of very human commercials that they run. >> right. >> but the interesting thing about him, which seems to be a common trait for people who are innovators in industry or in production, is that he was not a farmer. he had no cop tact wintact with. he lived near princess ann and he was a railroad clerk. now i think, and i propose, that his connection with transportation was key. because we're not talking about the late 1920s. we have already got the federal government investing in a national highway system and we've got the slid if ication of railroads and long distance trucking. a very key invention, h which w refrigeration for both truck answers for reailroad cars. and purdue sees that opportunity. here he is. he is not close it a big city. but he is part after transportation network. so i think what he saw was the opportunity to greatly expand production. so there was an innovator involved in this. this didn't just slowly begin to happen because we go from 1925 where, and i got all this data from usda which has the most wonderful library in the world, there were for the state of maryland, about 5,000 boilers. the boiler was another innovation from the usda support of research at the land grate colleges. so about 5,000 boilers sold. five years later, 500,000. five years later, 5 million. so it was not a gradual process. it was absolutely -- >> is the same thing true with respect to the pork and cattle industry as well? i mean, although, those are different industries. they don't is have exactly the same models. >> the pork industry does. >> but the cattle industry is more independent -- >> exactly. i think that may have something to do with where these things started. i think first off the reason the broiler industry began in southern maryland and we can say also in arkansas. by the way, john tyson ran a trucking industry. so he was also kind of knowledgeable about transport. and the opportunities that it gave to really ramping up agricultural production. i think there is a reason the broiler industry developed the way it did is it was really in the old south and to some extent the whole contract system has echos of -- >> contracted with employee, with people -- >> with farmers. yes. so that has, you know, share cropping overtones and that the grower is given the raw material, cotton seed, or chick, and is responsible for growing the product according to the instructions of the owner who is called the producer now. and then at the end, the producer comes and buys the full grown product if it's cotton or chickens, based on whether the product is acceptable. the producer deducts the cost of the original seed or chick as well as the feed or fertilizer and that's how it's operated. but in the north, you're right. much more tradition, certainly my family was involved in with dairy, where it was run with cooperatives. >> and co-ops were a big factor in the center of the country, the midwest, and you still see very strong cooperatives. >> you do. although, if you go on-line, you will see papers about the dairy industry. this model is beginning to erode the hold of the co-op. >> so now we see americans, over the years, americans, their diets have changed. we have a lot more protein than we used to. >> we do. >> food is relatively speaking inexpensive in this country. per unit of production and also per capita income. we pay less than any other country in the world. so why is this industrialization bad in your mind? >> i don't think it is. >> you don't? >> and i was trained as an engineer. and so i do not think of the word industrialization as a bad term. i think it is a way in which humans have organized economic and technological innovation. by the way, i don't think technology is a bad word. and i think the first human who picked up a stick and drew a line in the dirt who made water run from the stream to where he or she planted a few seeds, that was technology. so, no, these are not bad words to me at all. >> do you think the consumer is better off today than they were 60 years ago? before this movement got started? >> there are good things and bad things. >> okay. >> as with anything. >> so what are the good things? >> the good things are certainly that we have a reliable accessible food supply and just as you said, that the cost of food in real dollars is significantly less. that is of animal-based protein particularly. >> but also of wheat and milk, as you know. those are the good things. bad things are that this is an industry that has not really come under the appropriate purview. and that's because -- >> purview of whom? >> of my regulatory or even until recently consumer attention. >> and i'm come to think it is partly because for most americans, not like you and me, but they don't have any contact with farms any more. most people in america have never really been on a farm. maybe they go to, you know, the county fair. but they don't know what it is to be a farmer. which is, you know, not a romance. so there's this kind of romantic view of agriculture, which i find actually exasperating. because it makes it impossible to think about agriculture, clearly. and one of the most important things i think we need do is to recognize it is an industry. then we could start to apply the standards that we expect of any industry. for example, agriculture can employ children. agriculture has the highest rate of injury of any industrial area in the united states. between farms and also slaughter houses. we would not tolerate this. >> rates you're talking. >> rates. rates of injury in slaughter houses. and i'm talking about injury, not carpal tunnel syndrome dr, about 15% per year. we wouldn't tolerate that. agriculture doesn't treaty wastes. we wouldn't tolerate that. >> several states are now requiring that treatment. >> i don't think so. >> well, okay. >> we can talk about that. >> epa and various state regulatory authority have gotten involved in the regulation -- >> they are starting but there is no required treatment. >> and frankly, they have an unsafe product, which we would not tolerate. >> what do you mean by that? >> products with pathogens that can cause disease. rates of contamination in the food that we eat are very, very high. >> yeah, they may be very high, but the statistics indicate that food is prepared well and handled well and the consumer is properly informed. so you meet all those things together. food this this country is actually pretty safe. that's my impression. does it mean there aren't some issues there, but i've always felt that consumer when they go to the grocery store and buy the product that's there and they cook it properly and use it properly, you know, by and large we have a safe food system. and we have -- >> most of the burden, you've just said it, is placed on the consumer. the product itself is not safe, is what i'm saying. we rely upon the consumer to recognize this from start to finish. as to how they handle the raw product, how they cut it up, how they cook it, how they store it, et cetera. so the product, i think you and i are in agreement, is not in itself safe. >> you don't eat raw. and most cases except fruit and vegetables, you don't eat raw product. >> but you handle raw product. and you cut it up on your kitchen counter. i have a whole chapter about me in the kitchen and how i have change mid behavior. we have done a number of studies and they agree with what fda finds that 60 to 80% of chicken carry an unsafe product. >> unless cooked. >> right. but the consumer is getting it raw. >> let's get into this area about industrialization in agriculture. you talk a lot about things that allow that to happen and one has to do with the use of antibiotics. >> right. >> so common in the poultry industry and across the board in agriculture. >> very much so. >> though more and more consumers and more and more companies are now going to a product that is antibiotic free. tell me more about antibiotics and why they are used. >> sure. although let me preface this by saying over the last few years the total amount of antibiotics has increased. >> the rates have levelled off, though. they are not going up. >> the total amounts are increasing still. >> okay, but anyway -- and there are different uses for antibiotics too in animals. >> and this is one of the problems. >> okay. talk a little bit about this. >> this is one of the questions that came up in my mind. first, why did this get going and why did it start in maryland? and the second was, how did antibiotics get into animal feeds? this is actually a very interesting story. there are all kind of stories floating around about this. one of them is well we have the beginnings of antibiotic production up in new jersey. that was done through fermentation process, putting material that made antibiotics into vats and allowing them to brew like beer and that leaves and waste from fermentation were given to the poultry producers to use as feed. that turns out to be completely untrue. and it really goes back to a whole story which relates it vitamin b-12 and this goes to a remarkable woman -- >> the vitamin b-12 that my doctor gave mae shot e a shot or this month, right? >> before vitamin b-12 there was something called the animal protein factor. this was identified bay remarkable woman, lucy wells, trained in both medicine and nutrition because she was the first woman to be credentials from a regular medical school in england, not a women's school. she found it impossible to get a job. she ended up working in a texti textile factory and she found that the most infected were the hindu workers that didn't eat meat. so she thought, there is something going on here. at the same time, the broiler industry started up and there were problems if growing of the broilers. feeding them mostly plant-based feeds. and they were having troubles with them as well. from two different places, the notion of the animal protein factor was discertained. as it turned out, it of course could come from grinding up animal liver and some source source of feeds or as it turns out, vitamin b-12 is made by yeast. so it really was the vitamin b-12 in the antibiotic mix that probably supported the growth rate. >> yeast required -- >> they produce it. >> produce antibiotics. >> and therefore yeast was in the way in which they were brewing antibiotics at the time. the reason why i say this is i have looked at every single registration the industry sent in from 1946 onward for registration to add antibiotics to animal feeds. those are at the fda. and the kind of evidence that was accumulated to support it was pretty bad. now, this is not to criticize. that time, the evidence to support almost anything was not very rigorous but would you have a study in say which six chickens in lab had feeds and added for four weeks and you look at growth rates. so it wasn't really an empirical test. the first empirical test of antibiotics was done by the purdue company in the 1980s. and they did what we would call in public health medicine a clinical trial. they took 19 chicken houses and put afthalf of them on feeds wi antibiotics and put half of them on feeds without antibiotics. they didn't do anything else. didn't clean up the houses or add anything else in. then measured the important factors in agriculture. growth rates, feed consumed, illnesses, deaths, et cetera. they found there was no difference. >> and that made a tremendous impact on me. and we wrote this up with the assistance and not eventually the agreement of the purdue company but we contacted them to use their data. and that really convinced me, he ne we need to look at this again. it may not be the case that we need antibiotics at this point. as you know a lot of things happened with growing chickens and hogs since 1987. we have been breeding, mixing different nutrient into feeds and changing the environmental conditions of the houses in which animals are raised. perhaps there was an effect that was observed though i'm a little doubtful given the scanty evidence. but maybe there was back then in 1948. but at this point in time i'm not sure that there is. >> let me ask you something. i've not been in the business of growing chickens. but when you talk to a lost farmers, and talk to people at land grant schools, notwithstanding the fact there are harmful impacts of antibiotics and how it might impacts humans as well, there is evidence that it does in fact fight disease. particularly if you put large quantities of chickens or hogs in a confined operation, and it also has some sort of a stimulation on growth. >> well, remember the purdue study. they saw no difference in disease. >> i understand that. but there's been other studies what that have shown -- >> no. no studies as big as robust statistically as the purdue study. not at all. but let me continue and say, yes, certainly there is an important use of antibiotics for treating sickness in animals as well as people. but remember that the use of antibiotics in feeds is very different. by fda regulation, the concentrations of antibiotics and feeds are what we call sub therapeutic. which means they can't prevent disease. >> only the per putic -- >> right. >> nothing to do with disease. >> why use antibiotics if it doesn't have any impact. >> well i think we have to bring people that are never at table, which is the pharmaceutical industry. over 80% of it goes into agriculture. i think there is a part of the interest we need to bring into the conversation if we are really coming to a full discourse on where we go. but the problems to human health are enormous. >> okay, but let's get to this point. the use of antibiotics to treat sick animals, you're not opposed to that. >> i'm completely in support of that, of course. >> the general use that doesn't relate to the therapeutic treatment of disease. >> or prevention of disease. that correct. that's where most of the antibiotics are used. because it's the long duration feeding of feeding water to which the pub therapeutic concentrations have been added which where the vast bulk of antibiotics go. the detection of disease, isolation of sick animals, treatment of sick animals just as you would a human is not the big problem. >> then the link to human health, you might want to talk about that for a moment. is there a link to human health? >> there is an enormous link to human health. the real problem we are looking at is the end of antibiotics. we are now looking at a world with major pathogens. high strains of e.coli that are resistant to every single antibiotic that we have. the last one just fell. and it fell because of the use of a last stand antibiotic assistance in chinese hog production. now we have resistant strains of e.coli to that last drug. this is a crisis. the u.n. general assembly this year met and focused solely on the potential catastrophe of losing antibiotics. >> i've talked to physician and public health people who tell me we overuse antibiotics in treatment of human health too. that is resistance pathogenic resistance is not just only animals. it is also human use of antibiotics. >> absolutely. >> overuse. >> overuse, misuse, et cetera. no question. in the words of tom o'brien at harvard, every use of antibiotics create the resistance. but when you expose bacteria to some therapeutic that don't kill them, that the perfect recipe for selecting resistance. other thing is that in the mixtures we add to feeds, we are giving cocktails to drugs and we are now seeing pathogens that are resist uant to multiple dru. those come from agriculture. humans don't get cocktails of drugs. and when humans get treated for disease, they are given therapeutic concentrations. so i'm in the midst of an analysis for the world health organization about not really a useful argument. all has to be scrutinized and controls. i happen to think that because the vast majority are used in agriculture and used in ways that really fits the evolutionary agenda of bacteria to select for resistance. that we should pay attention to the -- >> okay. and i think is a growing issue and you hear people talking about it and hear companies like purdue now talking about it. earth other companies are looking at the use of antibiotics and hormones and other additives. something is happening out there. >> i think that's true. >> why is that happening, you think? >> i think consumers have become focused on this issue. i like to think that some research and papers we have written and others as well has generated a body of evidence that causes thoughtful people to focus on this. but we've got some problems. we have the fda right now relabelling growth promotion use as prevention. now that's, frankly, outrageous. >> explain that. a lot of viewers won't know what you're talking about there. i'm not sure i know. >> well we were talking about the use of antibiotics in needs to make animals grow faster and useless feed than we have the study done by purr you too which cast some doubt on it in the present day. that was the major use of antibiotics. if we look at where antibiotics and culture went, it was in feeds. the amount for therapy or prevention was relatively small. >> right. giving an animal a shot because he or she is sick, that's a different story. >> absolutely a different story. and has never really been the focus of our work because that something we support as anyone would. >> now let's roll ourselves up to the current recommendations. we have recommendations from the fda. what fda has permitted to happen is that companies can still utilize sub therapeutic concentrations. the same concentrations registered to promote growth which is sub therapeutic. companies are are allowed to call this preventing. now it can't be preventive. i started pharmacology at hopkins. if something is therapeutic, it can neither prevent or treat. this is something that should be stopped. >> why are they using it then? to make the animals grow faster? >> who knowes? >> these are business people so they won't do something just because they're cute. >> i would suggest you have queerries to the industries about this. but fact is, unlike countries in the european union where they have effectively banned the use of antibiotics in feeds, we are permitting the same use with at different name which is probably why the amounts of antibiotics going into agriculture have been steadily increasing over the past five years instead of going down the way you might think because that same use in feeds is still going on. and a lot of the companies, if you read their fine print, they will say we no longer use antibiotics for growth promotion. it doesn't mean they are not using antibiotics. >> but under the fda rules you say they have to label -- >> no, no, there is no labelling requirements in the u.s. they made themselves voluntary label because they know it may attract consumers. but there are no requirements for labelling. >> okay. so let's get to the consumer now as part of this thing. >> right. >> what does the consumer do right now? i mean, until there is some sort of macro change? and of course the consumer gets lots of conflicting information. >> of course. >> and by and large people do have comfort and are secure in their food supply and athey dont think about this all the time. what does an average consumer do, which you have written about in your book. >> i think number one they should look to see if there is a source of truly antibiotic free product. and for example, there is one major national company. not one of the big four but bell and evans, a national brand, which never used antibiotics in their chickens and they do exactly what you suggest if they have sick birds, they quarantine them off to another house and they sell them under a different brand name. so if you buy their chickens, they have nef had antibiotics. the other is that frankly you really should treat, and you said this earlier, and i have to say this is what we have to say at this point, you need to treat food with a great deal of caution. if you are bringing raw meat product into your home, you really need to pay attention to the recommendations that fda and others have put out. now fda has done some consumer surveys to see if people even though what the ten point are to prevent your own exposure to bacteria and other pathogens -- >> what are some of those ten point? >> one is to utilize, to store food at the proper temperature when it's raw. when you cook it, bring it out and cut it up on a special kind of cutting board. plastic is recommended. not wood. do not cut anything else on that cutting board or with that knife. cook your food quickly and to the proper timing so that all bacteria are killed. and then put it quickly into the refrigerator if you're not going to use it -- eat it immediately. clean up your entire work area with soap and water. including knives. including hands. so that there's a whole list of recommendations. but fda itself has done surveys of consumers and most consumers don't even know this. >> why not? >> well, i think partly because when you're cooking, when i had young children hanging around my knees, maybe you don't have time to pay to all these things. i remember the day i got rid of all my wooden cutting board that i loved dearly. you can't clean them. therefore, you shouldn't be using them. in terms of storing food immediately, people leave stuff out for a while at the end of the meal and instead of immediately hustling it into the kitchen and into the refrigerator. i think the problem is, we are relying on the con stumer to take these actions, recognizing that we have an unsafe product. >> yeah, it strikes me -- >> we could make the product safer. >> it strikes me that there are many players in this process. all the way as they say from farm to fork. >> exactly. >> i don't know if that's an overused expression. >> it's a good one. >> all the way from growing it, processing it, transporting it to then consuming it. everyone has a role to play in that process. >> yes. but we don't play too much after role from farm to slaughter house. there's very little control of what is going on there. and the kind of studies that have been done and we have done some of them but many of them show by the end of a flock lifetime or a heard of pigs, most animals are carrying at least one drug-resistant pathogen capable of causing disease in people. they come into the slaughter house. usually take it in open crates. very stressful condition. by the time they get to the slaughter house and are held, almost all of them are contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria on the external side of themselves. >> so we have a lot of things happening over the last 10, 15 years. very rapid growth of organic agriculture. and both from the usda perspective, as well as states involved in this. and you know, an organic -- generally has a pretty clear meaning of what it involves. >> i can tell you one thing it does involve, which openes a door here, organic agriculture is encouraged in many organic farmers i know of certainly look for using animal manures to grow their crops. there are several notorious outbreaks where drug-resistant bacteria ended up on spring onions, on spinach, on parsley from that soil. >> from the animal that has consumed the seed that you're talking about. >> exactly. when i give a talk too my student, i say, if you're a vegetarian, listen to the next thing i tell you. we are part of the same system. we need to get the whole system under control. but the other really alarming thing i discovered is what passes for food safety in slaughter houses. >> and what is that? >> we have this system that is developed almost starting in the 1940s calls haccp. or as workers call it, have a cup of coffee and pray. the wiley this works is there is supposedly a point within the processing of your live chicken to your chicken cut let where if you have control pathogens there, you can have a sense that things are safe. >> yes. >> that's absolutely false. >> that's not just true if poultry. the haccp systems are basically part of almost the production of all animal agriculture. >> absolutely. and it's false. because the last point comes very early in the process. so let me lead you through this. in a chicken slaughter house, chickens come in. killed. defeathered. dipped in chlorine or some kind of sterilizing bath. they then go into the cut room and are cut into pieces where they are packaged and sent out. the last point of testing is right after they come out of that bath. now the first problem is the testing. because in order to test for bacteria, i know that this bb you look at visual inspection, you smell, press on the flesh, none of that detect bacteria, let's be clear here. only way you detect bacteria is you take a swab from the chicken carcass. you don't get the results from that swab for, at least, two weeks. that chicken has gone out into the market and someone has eaten it. this is not a control system. we have to recognize it. it is an control point. the other problem is that bath, that chlorine bath. and i have been in chicken processing plants. it only changed once a day. now if -- >> do all plant do it the same way? >> more or less. more or less. >> are some better performers than others? >> some are worse. but once a day is probably good practice. >> yes. >> so it is recognized by usda that at this point, right after the chlorine bath, 30% of the chicken carcasses still have bacteria. 1 in 3. what does that mean? it means that down the line as the chicken is going through the processing plant, cut into various things, all that equipment gets -- >> let me ask you something, how could you absolutely prevent this from happening at all? are you saying there is a way in which we can totally eliminate the bacteria before the chicken gets to the consumer? >> no. no. we can totally eliminate drug-resistant bacteria. we can at least do that. for instance, the british have almost completely controlled salmonella in chicken. you know, the usda announced two years ago they were no longer going to test american chicken for salmonella because it all has it. that's not exactly reassuring. >> so did the british have a much lower degree of food born illness than the united states does per capita? >> yes. are those statistics available? >> yes. >> and are we worse than the rest of the world, other than the developing world? >> hard to say. went to have the best data from all countries. ? fact, in the u.s. we don't have good data also. one other thing i found out about food safety which is also alarming, you probably know this from being at usda, most of the chicken and pork that get us to to eat actually goes through secondary processing. so when you go into the store and this goes to your question about how come consumers don't know what to do, usda very wisely required the primary industries like purdue or smithfield to put on the label kind of a short statement of safe handling. >> yeah. >> however, if that piece of chicken was actually shipped to purdue by a secondary processor, a large part of the volume -- >> and they would do what with the chicken? >> might make a marinated pork, for example, or chicken mcnuggets. or some kind of specialty -- it is called a specialty product. and those then do not carry say the purdue label. they will have like ellen's chicken part. they are not required to put anything on the label even more tellingly, there's no id number. each package that comes out of purdue or smithfield has a number. if there's a food born outbreak and you can track it. >> yeah. >> and we get these notifications from usda of things that are pulled back because this batch, but since most of the food in our supply actually doesn't go through that process, this is why we can't even track food born illness. >> with the time left, i want to go through two different things. number one, do you eat poultry? >> i do. >> so you're an vegan, are you? >> i'm an vegan. >> you eat meat? >> i'm a very happy consumer of meat. >> how do you handle your product then? >> very carefully. but i think that it is really important not to kind of withdraw from the problems and challenges we have of food safety and food animal production and we haven't even talked about some of the environme environmental and ecological impacts as well as socio economic. but let's that go for now. >> sure. i will ask you. >> we have a kind of habit in this country that may have been called up in the last election where if you can buy your way out of a problem, you do it. like the schools are no good, send your kids to private school. too much crime in your community, live in a gated community. you don't like the food supply? spepd l spend lots and lots of money at upscale farmer's markets. >> there's nothing wrong with farmer's markets, is there? you can meet a farmer. >> well, that's nice. whether or not it's safer, that's a separate thing. i wrote this book, as i started to write the book, dan, i realized i had to think through, what are my real principles about the food supply. and the one that came to me was that echb deserves safe and affordable food. and i didn't realize it at the time but that actually made me unable to adopt some of the recommendations that you get from some people, like michael pollen, et cetera. that's not affordable food, as you know. we need to make the food supply safe for everybody. not just those who can buy their way out of problem. >> you have to use good judgment is what you're saying. >> well we need to do the things we can do. we need to tighten up on what is going on in processing plants. we need much more complete inspection of those plants. not just the first stage. we need to ensure that workers are protected because workers safety and food safety is absolutely connect ped. that a lesson that upton st. claire tried to teach us but we didn't listen. and we can make our food supply safer. but we have to really focus on this for everyone. not just for the elite. >> okay. let's try to sum up in some way, if you were to, let's say back at usda, i was -- of course everything was perfect when i was there. but it all changed since then. >> a lot of things changed, as you know. >> anyway, i think our current secretary has done a good job in dealing with these issues. let's go through the list of priority that you think need to be done to make food safer but also in the context of a kind of agriculture that's realistic. because we're not going back to 150 million small farmers. >> no, we're not. thank you for saying that. >> that's not going to happen. >> thank you. >> i have this debate frequently in academic circles where people want us to go back to 100,000 small farms. which we're not going to do. i always draw the analogy with the car. when the first cars were put on the market, everybody loved them immediately and everyone wanted a car. and so we develop the car and it took certain pathways. one thing we did is decide to put lead in gasoline so they ran better. probably not a great idea. then the engine turned out not to be so efficient so there was an awful lot of smog in cities like los angeles. then we realized that cars were not actually safe. people would have a small collision and they were killed. did we go back to horse and buggy? no. we took lead out of gasoline. introduced cat lettic converter and required seat belts and air bags. my analogy is there is nothing about industrial agriculture that can't be fixed. which is why i don't think industrialization as a bad word. i think the benefit, as you've said, are really overwhelming. >> do you think our research institutions -- a lot of these look like they require new ways of thinking by land dwrant school. and help consumers do things better as well? >> we just published a paper showing where we looked at the whole failure, you probably know, of the containment of various swine viruss and even outbreaks of avian influenza over the last couple of years. and the usda has done a kind of autopsy on this event. these outhouses are not control -- >> you mean the whichicen houses. >> or hog house. >> cattle is different. >> that's different. absolutely true. so there are things we know we have to fix. and then there are some ways in which a kind of public project partnership could help. bun area that i'm very interested in is how do we get really good treatment of animal waste so we can reuse this material in the same way we use human biosolids. but epa has all kind of regulations about reuse of humanitarian biosolids. it has to be tested, tested for pathogens, tested for nutrient for toxic metals. no requirement. all the usda has been recommending is that animal waste should be held for 90 days and somehow that will make them less hazardous. well we did a study. we took samples over the 90 days and guess what happened? there was more waste. >> i'm a chairman over entity, the foundation for food and agriculture research -- >> i have a project for you. sfwhez are looking for a variety projects in the area of agriculture to help farmers, help consumers and to also, you know, help feed a hungry world as well. this area sound like a, although they require to be matched and you know, money is not easy to come by, but it does sound like there is a great research opportunity in these areas. >> absolutely. and here is a topic. and draw on my training in environmental engineering. we need to find a way to make systems work such that poultry companies, hog companies and others can actually afford to get waste treated. and this means somehow setting up more centralized facilities that would receive waste, not solely from purdue or from this house and that house, that's not twoing to work. >> so economics to an individual producer can be very difficult. >> that's right. but we can get an economy of scale in the same way that wastewater treatment for a big city like washington or baltimore, you know, it's pennies on the gallon for each consumer. but because we are all part of one source, we pay our water taxes and that results in having appropriate treatment of wai wastewater. now the agricultural treatment needs the same kind of thinking and management structures that will allow for economies of scale. >> in the area of conservation, i've noticed that there's a lot of effort done, private effort done, largely in the midwest, to waste, nutrient explosions that would go into major rivers and that kind of thing. i think there's a lot of farmer interest in wanting to do these things. >> oh, yeah. and we've got to rethink kind of, i don't want it say zoning, but citing of these very intensive facility. not just innocencive in terms of, you may know in maryland now we have mega chicken houses. as many as 200,000 birds. but also a lot of them in one place. we need to think about that and certainly in southeastern u.s., an awful lot of this agriculture lowe located for instance in north carolina and again in del mar in flood planes. so every once in a while, just happened in north carolina, a hurricane comes up and washes out all the hog waste. you've got to be smarter about this. >> so let me ask you this, this doesn't really relate to poultry industry. but a great movement in this country in terms of the issues of health, food and nutrition and agriculture. >> right. >> more and more people are recognizing that the largest chronic disease is raps the most significant problem, just diabetes and obesity-related illnesses. >> that's global, by the way. >> that's global, that's here. so getting people to diversify their diets, eat more fruits and vegetables. and sometimes frozen is just as good as fresh and elves else. the principles you are talking about here also apply to that side of agriculture as well. >> i do talk about the nutritional issues. and the concerns that are raised. some of which i think are turned out to be like the whole concept of high fructose corn syrup. it turns out that fructose and suks to are not that much different. and what contributes to obesity is consumption of empty calorie answers too much food and that what epidemiology tells us. >> my goodness, you are a moderate. almost a conservative on that issue. >> i am. i'm the granddaughter of farmers. i don't like it when people pick on farmers. i think though that this principle in public health which we call farm reduction, we know that many of the problems in health stem from people's behavior and the choices they make. sometimes those choices are constrainted by economics. and by availability. and by access. but certainly there's a great deal of education at all economic levels and all levels of education, sophistication, that would be beneficial. but here is reduction in the meantime, before we reach that wonderful stage where people are behaving better, we have an obligation to reduce the harm. the example of this is hiv aids. now back when the first international programs were being developed by george w. bush, there were some people felt look, if we could just tell people to behave and stop having all this unprotected sex, we wouldn't have hiv. that again, as you know, when the messiah comes, we will have all this wonderful good behavior. but in the meantime, we need to treat and prevent aids. >> and to his credit, president bush did that. >> he did. >> unrecognized actually for what he had done in africa. >> i completely agree. but he understood that public health principle of harm reduction. we don't give up on the notion of educating people but we don't stand by while people are dying or being harmed because there are things we can do to reduce the harm. >> yeah, well you know, i would say that this is such an interesting and fascinating and to some degree a complicated subject. because as the old french philosopher said, you are what you eat. and what you eat in your mind has a lot to do with how it is ultimately produced and what circumstances and perhaps 700 or 800 years ago we didn't live very long because we died of pneumonia at age 24 or something like that. >> that will come back if we lose antibiotics, by the way. >> that, of course, is an item which requires not only the issues that you are talking about but also the incredible research that needs to be done, that deals with this issue. as time goes on. >> and in summary, why don't you kind of give me your two-minute water cooler of what you would like to -- the summary of your book and major things you want to leave with the audience watching here. >> it is a triumph of the history of agriculture that we have intensive industrial high production agriculture and we are able to feed so many of the world's people and certainly the united states is the major food donor in the world. and we support all of that. but we must recognize that agriculture is an industry. and we must take off all those rose-colored glasses of you know, marie ant net and this is an intensive operation with many extras with the environment and people that we can control. we know how do this. so we must come to an understanding of good agriculture and how to reduce its adverse impacts. i think we can. >> you think we can do that in a cooperative setting with all aspects of agriculture from farmers, ranchers, processors, all the way to the consumers? i mean, it almost looks like we have to get everybody at the table. >> we do indeed. >> otherwise the political fighting will never get resolved. >> absolutely. i'm hopeful. i gave a talk organized by duke and nc's north carolina state university, and large representation from usda state departments of agriculture and i think we add good conversation. because as you say, i'm not against farmers. i'm not against eating meat. i'm not against agriculture. we can do a better job. >> well, i think that this, i would tell you, this is a very interesting book to read. and as we've talked today, i don't agree with all of what you're saying. but i think it is something we need to think about. this is a dynamic and growing industry. the old movie "the graduate", when the young man that dustin hoffman played, what is the secret sauce for the future, and he said the famous word, plastics. i think food anding a can agric a growing in dynamic ways. >> it always has been. >> it will bet bigger and better but we have some small issues. >> we do. >> i think your book demonstrate an interesting perspective on how to deal with some of the issues. i hope you're successful in selling it and that's just been a delight to talk to you today. >> great to talk to you, dan, too. >> thank you. >> thank you. >>. every weekend, book tv brings you 48 hours of non-fiction books and authors. and here's what's coming up this weekend. saturday at 1:30 p.m. eastern, the 35th annual key west literary seminar in key west, florida. the seminar celebrates new voices in american literature from all over the world. through conversations and panel discussions. our schedule includes time columnist joe cline. author and yale professor steven carter on race, power and law. new york times op-ed columnist and author gail collins on women in politics. and a discussion on writing history, with buying fer robert caro and historian brenda wine apple. arab ambassador to russia, authors of "letters to a young muslim" talks about the dangers of extremis aenl what it means to be a good muslim in the world today. on sunday at the ok9:00 eastern bret baier talks about his latest book "three days in january." dwight eisenhower's latest mission. he is interviewed by susan eisenhower, ceo and chairman of the eisenhower group incorporated. >> in this meet aeng we have great detail from both sides, eisenhower is very impress end says to himself, you know, maybe the american people got this right. there is a lot to this guy. but what concerned him most is that he didn't allow kennedy the national security apparatus that was set up for dissenting views. >> go to booktv.org for the complete schedule. >> the u.s. senate will meet to begin voting on president trump's nominees for his cabinets. retired james mattis for defense secretary and john kelly for homeland security secretary. senate whip john cornyn says that senators could be in through the night with votes. watch live coverage of that session on c-span 2 beginning at 4:00 eastern. women across the country will be here in the nation's capital tomorrow for the women's march on washington. scheduled speakers include gloria steinem, harry belafonte and cecile richards. that starts at 10:00 eastern tomorrow. c-span 2 will be live with the 58 mg presidential and inaugural prayer service. president donald trump and vice president mike pence will attend that service at national cathedral here in washington, d.c. taking place after their inauguration. it begins saturday morning at 10:00 eastern. >> this weekend, c-span city's tour along with the comcast cable partners will explore the literary life and history of harrisburg, pennsylvania. on book tv on c-span 2 author of amiable scoundrel, talks about one of pennsylvania's most prominent political figures of the 19th century. >> people talk about the age the andrew jackson. but in many ways they should talk about the age of simon cameron. this is man whose political skills were undeniable and mab who built a political machine that lasted far beyond any of those constructed by his c contemporaryes. >> on american history tv on c-span 3 visit the site of the convention with a story on howard parker as he explains the back room deals and trickery that led to william henry harrison becoming the party's presidential candidate. >> what makes this convention so special, it was the first time that there was more than one candidate being put forward for the nomination for the presidency of the united states. >> and pennsylvania capital preservation committee historian jason wilson takes us on a tour of the house senate and supreme court of the state's capitol. >> at the time this capitol was built there was 15 or 20-year period when a capitol like this would have been built and that's about 1890 to 2011910. we are at the height of industry and capitalism and everything was being made and done in pennsylvania at the turn of the vint. >> saturday at noon eastern on c-span 2's book tv andun

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