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In the beginning, mankind ate natural stuff and died around age thirty. In the middle, mankind ate processed stuff and died around age fifty. Toward the end, mankind ate FDA-approved synthetic "cheeze" food products and died around age eighty. People were still dying, and having no other logical explanation, it was declared that modern processed food was lethal. A government study of joint and several legal liability, supported by the American Bar Association, dropped the bombshell that each time a citizen died his estate could successfully sue for and recover real and treble punitive damages from every food manufacturer that contributed to the person's death. The logic of this assertion escapes all but those who use TV to beg for alms, and who are not constrained by the need for internal consistency or even the use of a believable fib. The lawyers didn't seem to be hurting either.
We are visiting today with Herb Manteca, president of the American Margarine Manufacturers of Costa Rica.
"Gee Herb, how is it that the association of all US margarine manufacturers is located in Costa Rica?
"The FDA did a bunch of studies, stuffing special cancer-prone experimental rats with pounds of margarine manufacturing effluent until their little beady red eyes bulged and they became odiously obese and greasy like Mexicans. They lived more than twice as long as the control rats, and eventually died of cancer. The control rats also all died of cancer. The FDA concluded that any industrial process that gave even the control rats cancer had to be banned from the United States."
"So now you are all down in Costa Rica..."
"...Where there are no manufacturing or waste disposal rules of any kind. We get a lot more margarine out of the same manufacturing process now, and produce almost no wastes at all."
Every domestic food manufacturer has been hounded out of business, relocating beyond the venal reach of the American legal system. With Third World quality and purity protocols amounting to little more than getting product into a mostly non-leaking can, a profitable diversification into toxic waste disposal has saved the industry.
Go into the dairy section of your supermarket, over to the margarine area. Notice how the light now comes from the packages, and the refrigeration machinery has been turned up as high as it goes. Slip on a lead mitten and pick out your purchase.
"This is Parkay-239. We originally proposed using this concept to smuggle fissionable material to Israel, but the advantages of a self-sauteing margarine in light of the continuing American energy crisis have proven too attractive to ignore. Blue Bonnet does indeed glow blue, creating wonderful marketing hype and making it convenient as a night light. Heavy Fleishmann's is a hit in Germany, and is custom labeled as Chernoble Brand for our nostalgic Eastern European comrades."
Over-the-border manufacture of all US comestibles resulted in the immediate reduction of average US lifespan to about 55 years. The Social Security Administration went wild, increasing in size by 15%. There was nobody left to be paid benefits, necessitating a bureaucracy large enough to internally consume unanticipated excess accumulating cash. The extraordinary variety and concentration of xenobiotics in everybody totally filled and deactivated their biological receptor sites for recreational pharmaceuticals, winning the War on Drugs. Spontaneous consumer heat and light emission curtailed the consumption of gas and electricity, domestic production of petroleum now being sufficient to meet America's energy needs, blowing Arabs out of the economic life of the planet.
American lifespan soon dropped to 40 years and the birthrate hit zero. The borders were opened wide to any immigrant who cared to walk in. Expected ponderous waves of stomping foreign feet amounted to only seven people that year, four of whom had taken a wrong turn near the Sargasso Sea.
American lifespan hit 30 years, and the Fundamentalists declared that the Garden had been reattained.
That was about 1300 years ago, and we figure that the North American continent is ripe for repopulation. Exploratory groups have reported back that the whole continent is heavily forested, rich with game, and the streams and rivers run clear and sweet. Records have been recovered from buried vaults, and while most of what we have found is consistent with the oral history handed down over the generations, their remains a single puzzlement: What is a "lawyer?"
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