[Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #9

[the madison insurgent]

Burgers and SuperSized Misery
A review of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation
by Victoria Prozan

When looking for reasons that our society is failing
so many individuals, it is easy to blame guns,
television, under-funded schools and politicians. But
don’t forget to add McDonald’s and other fast food
chains to the list.
Fast Food Nation, the Dark Side of the All American
Meal by Eric Schlosser, is an in-depth look at the
greed and exploitation that is at the foundation of
the fast food industry. Many people have long been
aware of the cruel conditions of factory farming that
keep these restaurants afloat, but unfortunately, this
is only the tip of the iceberg. Animals are not the
only suffering beings in this story. Potato farmers,
low-skilled workers – often people of color,
immigrants, and even franchise owners are all trampled
on as they attempt to carve out a small living. Do
consumers really know what they are supporting when
they order? 
The objective of fast food chains everywhere is to
maintain a consistent product through every franchise.
This approach ensures consumers are much more likely
to head to the Golden Arches if the alternative is
unfamiliar to them. Imagine trying to keep thousands
of restaurants identical; then, realize that chains
can only accomplish sameness through cheap,
dehumanizing means.
A French fry seems harmless enough, right? McDonald’s
“revolutionized” the French fry by switching from
fresh cut fries (too expensive – the fresh produce,
the labor to peel, cut, and fry them) to frozen fries.
This allowed McDonald’s the consistency they craved,
while at the same time eliminated the need for more
employees, thus reducing the cost of the product (for
McDonald’s, not the consumer). This bit of “progress”
was partly responsible for McDonald’s growing from 725
restaurants in the mid-60s to 3000 only a decade
later.
How did this affect the potato farmer? Initially,
McDonald’s purchased produce from 175+ farms; but the
change to frozen fries allowed them instead to buy
from one or two big suppliers. As the suppliers’
strength grew, they controlled the prices paid to
small, local farmers. The number of farmers in Idaho
has decreased 50 percent in the last 25 years, yet the
amount of farmland growing potatoes has increased.
Small farmers are being driven out of business, and
then hired by agri-businesses to manage the farms they
once owned. To put it in perspective, $0.02 for each
$1.50 order of fries goes to the actual farmer.
Another hidden evil of the McDonald’s French fry is
the fact that they contain beef fat. When McDonald’s
switched to frozen fries, they needed to find a way to
improve the taste. This was solved by frying them in
rendered beef fat. However, public health concerns
caused them to abandon this practice and switch to
frying in vegetable oil. Once again, McDonald’s faced
the dilemma of how to better flavor their fries. The
solution: just put beef fat in the fry itself.
Vegetarian and Hindu groups in the U.K. recently sued
McDonald’s over this issue and won.
Who staffs the Golden Arches? People who would have
difficulty finding work elsewhere – teenagers,
elderly, immigrants, and others with few job skills.
These same folks are often the most likely to put up
with unsafe working conditions and low wages, leaving
them with little chance to build actual job skills
that could lead to more rewarding work.
Labor practices in the fast food industry are a
worker’s worst nightmare. Another of McDonald’s
“revolutions” was bringing assembly line work to the
kitchen, reducing virtually all positions to
repetitive, non-thinking actions. This allows them to
not “waste” any time training new employees –
especially important since the average turnover in the
fast food industry is four months. But if training
employees gets too expensive, that’s okay: the federal
government provides subsidies for the “training”
programs in fast food chains. The tax break amounts to
$2400 for each employee “trained.” To qualify, the
chain needs to employ the person for just 400 hours,
or about 10 weeks full-time. Given their high turnover
rate, most employees won’t be around much longer than
that anyway. Thus, the chain is free to start the
whole subsidized training cycle again.
There’s another group of employees who actually have
it worse than those running the fryers and cash
registers: the miserable souls whose job it is to run
the slaughterhouses that supply those sought-after
burgers. Few people in the United States even consider
doing this work. Teams of recruiters have active
offices in Mexico City and other places south of our
border to ensure a steady supply of bodies to fill
these retched jobs. For $8–9 per hour, immigrants are
willing to leave home and be transported to (usually)
the Midwest. They can earn twice as much money as in
Mexico, allowing them to help support their families.
But is the pay worth it? The number of amputations and
repetitive stress injuries in slaughterhouses is
astounding. Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration is rarely around to properly
monitor the situation. Even one day after an
amputation, employees are coerced into showing up for
at least a few hours of work, so the company can avoid
a lost workday on its paperwork.
The issues raised here only allude to the big picture
of the fast food chains’ conquest of employees,
suppliers, consumers, and the environment in building
their fast food empire. Once you pick up Fast Food
Nation, be prepared for your view of the endless
chains on every highway and roadway in American to
change forever.

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