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Eat Shit and Die

Continued from page 5

Published on November 22, 2007

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?

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