Americans currently "enjoy" the cheapest animal protein in history. Such a monumental achievement could only have been attained through the industrialized mega-production of meat, milk and eggs -- which now cost about $1.56 on average for a large white dozen in the nation's supermarkets.

At just 13 cents apiece, even...

Last month, a camera crew from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) came to my home to interview me about Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment (St. Martin's Press 2010).

Today, a brief part of...

Grand Lake St. Marys -- Ohio's largest inland body of water and a treasured recreational area -- is dying. And if you barbecued some supermarket pork over the holiday weekend, you helped contribute to this disaster, however indirectly.

The lake's 13,000 acres of water surrounded by parkland, cabins and campgrounds,...

When it comes to all the addictions that plague our society, there are two that rarely get enough attention, let alone a badly needed intervention: our factory farms' addiction to low-dose antibiotics, and our politicians' addiction to high-octane cash from mega industries like Big Ag and Big Pharma.

On Monday,...

If President Obama really wants to champion a bipartisan issue, one that might appeal to tea-partying conservatives and -- in the wake of the Gulf spill -- jittery eco-liberals alike, he should consider tackling the worst excesses of industrial animal agriculture, better known as factory farming.

It's true that imposing...

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...

If it seems like most of the people you know with autism are 22 or younger, that's because most people diagnosed with autism were born after 1987. A recent US EPA study has found a distinct "changepoint" year - or spike - in autism in California and elsewhere...

First Lady Michelle Obama is on a laudable food crusade in America -- promoting the healthful benefits of fresh, local and sustainably grown nutrition, including produce raised in the world's most famous vegetable garden: that photogenic patch of organic land on the White House South Lawn.

But her office does...

When I was in my 20's, my friends and I knew that the cheapest food available was made of carbs, and we survived on mounds of mac-n-cheese and home fries for lunch, and ramen, rice and beer for dinner.

But animal factory farming has changed all that.

Last week while...

Washington dumped some more bad news Friday afternoon when the USDA's Office of Inspector General issued a damning and unsettling report on the department's "National Residue Program for Cattle." It found gaping holes in the safety of American beef production, including residue of drugs, poisons and heavy metals...

One of the most revolting things I learned while researching my new book "Animal Factory" is that some cattle are fattened on rations that include chicken manure. Poultry excrement is loaded with urea, which bovine stomachs are adept at converting into lean, ready-to-grill protein.

We feed chicken...

When you work hard for three long years, researching and writing a non-fiction book and hoping that it might be well-received, if not a financial windfall (few of us expect to retire on any of our books), critics' reviews become a form of psychic currency.

And though I cannot...

UPDATED AT 5:00PM EDT - The beleaguered Union Go Dairy will dispatch a professional team to the town of Winchester on Thursday to carefully excise the explosive and deadly methane gas that has been trapped under the synthetic lining of a mega-dairy near the tiny hamlet.

Over the weekend, I...

You are what you eat - and the same goes for the animals whose meat, milk and eggs you put in your mouth. We should not only be concerned about what we eat, but what our food eats as well.

Generally speaking, our food animals are not eating what they...

When The Washington Post's On Leadership section asked me to write an online column about Barack Obama's leadership -- or lack thereof -- on the hot-button issue of animal factory reform, I thought I would be penning a disapproving piece on reneged promises and ignored vows.

Candidate Obama...

This is not a story about junk bonds or shady hedge fund schemes. It's a story about industrial-scale cow-poop and the potentially deadly, explosive methane gas it produces.

Today, rising 20 feet or more in the air above the sprawling cornfields of eastern Indiana are several giant bubbles filled with...

On Friday, NPR named Animal Factory - The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment (St. Martin's Press) as one of its "Books We Like," and compared the work to that of two Great American Muckrakers.

"Kirby combines the narrative urgency of Sinclair's...

(NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on President Obama and the regulation of animal factories)

The Obama Administration on Friday fulfilled two campaign pledges that affect factory farming in America: It agreed to hold a long-delayed National Rural Summit and, on the same day, two Cabinent members...

The following is from the website of the Humane Society of the United States, in a Q/A on the new book Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Envrironment (St. Martin's Press).

In my new book, "Animal Factory - The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment," I describe the efforts of Pro-Agribusiness members of Congress who have been working hard to make sure that spilled animal waste from industrial farms is...