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April 2003
7 April 2003
Eric Schlosser on Fast Food Nation
So Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation spoke last night, and although I think he may have, to a degree, been preaching to the converted, I hope that at least some of the students who were forced to attend as a requirement for a class got something out of it.
He started out by asking why, in the midst of everything that is happening in the world right now, is the subject of fast food worth talking about? I think he summed it up very nicely in a quotation that is directed not just specifically at the fast food industry in the US, but to the world in general “giving unchecked freedom to one group means denying it to another.” When we refuse to regulate the fast food industry, or the meat packing industry, or the agribusiness giants, we are taking away the freedom or workers and consumers, and that is something that is simply not considered.
He says that you can tell a lot about a country by what it eats, and that fast food has really changed America, but he stressed that things don't have to be they way they are, because although these companies are extremely powerful, they are not invulnerable. These companies are having for the first time to deal with criticism of what they are doing, because the battle with the fast food industry is one for our health, our future and our freedom to choose.
He talked about how freedom is the bedrock of every society that ever was, because the ability to develop writing came from the fact that agricultural surplus allowed our ancestors the leisure to develop writing and culture and everything else that has come to define modern society.
Food defines the US today, and he said despite the fact that it is a cliché, it is still true, “we are what we eat” but yet in the US today, no one thinks about food, how it is made and where it comes from. No one considers their fast food meal, and this is just what the fast food industry wants. These companies do not want you to know what is in the food or how the food is made. Why? Because in the US, 70% of all fast food purchases are impulsive. Seventy percent. People don't make plans to go out to dinner at a fast food restaurant, they are simply driving along and decide to stop to eat. This makes fast food totally unlike other purchases in the US.
What disturbed Eric Schlosser even more is that people do not purchase these foods just for themselves, they also, without thinking, purchase this food for their children. Amusingly enough, it was at this point that a little toddler who was at the lecture with her mother, piped up rather loudly saying “Mmm! Yummy!” which made everyone close enough to hear, laugh.
Schlosser continued by talking about the fact that there is a whole world behind the counter that is deliberately hidden from us, and that when we have only one side of the story, there is no freedom of choice.
Fast food is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that has really taken off in the last several decades. In 1968 there were 1000 McDonalds in the US. Today there are 30,000 McDonald's world wide, and most of these were built in the 80s. This growth came because American society was changing, women were entering the workforce in record numbers, and fast food was inexpensive, convenient, and tasted good, and it is this that fueled the growth of the industry.
Recently there has been a huge surge of McDonald's expanding overseas, and this is due in part to the fact that there is nowhere left to expand in the US, so they only way to continue growth is overseas. Whether the war will effect this, is unknown, but as he said, McDonald's posted a lost for the first time in its history last year, and this is probably not an isolated trend. There is tremendous anti-American sentiment overseas right now, and that sentiment may well be expressed in a refusal to purchase American products, and one of the top products associated with the US is McDonalds. “I probably wouldn't recommend McDonald's stock right now,” he said, and not just because he is ethically opposed to the fast food industry.
But looking at what is wrong with the industry, we need to know that the minimum wage reached its peak in 1968, and has been on the decline ever since, and that worker safety, food safety, and anti-trust laws have all been relaxed at the same time, allowing these corporations to become bigger and giving them the power to do as they please. The fast food industry is adamantly opposed not only to minimum wage increases, but to increased regulation of worker safety and food safety, and right now they have the financial and political power to do it. We spend, in the US, $112 billion dollars a year on fast food. McDonald's is the largest purchaser of beef, potatoes and pork, and the second largest purchaser or chicken in the entire US. It is hard to underestimate the impact of McDonald's on how we work and live and eat, he said.
But he is not anti-business he said, and discussed the birth of the industry. The men who started these companies were entrepreneurs, without college degrees or much formal education. They were men who had ideas and despite the fact that everyone thought their ideas were ridiculous, they succeeded despite the odds. McDonald's started in Southern California as an attempt to antomate and speed up the restaurant business. The brothers who started that first restaurant were tired of their waitresses and short order cooks quitting, and the other problems associated with the restaurant business, so in response they brought the assembly line to the kitchen. The result was that when you don't have to pay short order cooks, you can hire teens and pay a lot less, and this brought a whole new idea of control into the restaurant kitchen. Individualism is not a trait that is needed or desired in the fast food business. Conformity is instead what is required.
He said that he has great respect for these individuals and what they managed. However, what these individuals created is different from what we have today.
Today the fast food industry is the largest minimum wage employer in the US and those who work in the fast food industry are the lowest paid workers in the US, except for migrant farm workers.
The average worker quits or is fired ever 3 to 4 months and has no benefits and no health insurance.
The fast food industry is also one of the most anti-union industries on the planet. Three times fast food employees have voted to unionize, and immediately after that happens—immediately—that restaurant is shut down.
The industry wants cheap, interchangeable workers who are under their control, who are willing to work for low pay, with now benefits, and this is affecting all industry. It has fundamentally changed what we eat and how food is made. It is the primary force behind the centralization and industrialization of food processing.
He talked about the effect this has on not just the workers, but on the food that is produced. The flavors in fast food come from the flavor industry in NJ, not from the foods themselves, because the processing that is required destroys the taste. He mentioned that the flavor industry had the ability to make his book taste like a French fry if they wanted. This is a rather disturbing concept, and one that reminds me of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the gum that tasted like an entire meal, and the no calorie food industry of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens I wonder if we are close to achieving those goals as well?
But the destruction of the flavor of foods is not the only concern. It used to be that the meat used came from local and regional processors. Today all the beef now comes from 5 national companies and that 4 of those companies control 85% of the meat industry market. This is an unparalleled control over those foods. And as the meat packing companies got bigger and more powerful, they changed. Initially the meat packing industry was one of the best paid industries with the lowest turnover rate. Once these companies became bigger and more powerful, they began to exploit their workers, and began to cut wages, cut benefits, break unions and fire injured workers. It is now one of the lowest paid industries with one of the highest turn over rates in the nation. All due to consolidation and control.
Eric Schlosser said that what is happening to these workers is really disturbing, and was the hardest part of the book to write, for he felt that he really could not get across what is happening and what these workers go through. Every single day there are people being badly hurt, to bring you your burger, and he listed off some of the headings from the OSHA reports of the accidents that are reported (as he details in his book, many accidents are not reported, because of pressure from the industry). He details this quite well in the book, I won't attempt to do so here, other that to say that it is simply horrifying.
But this consolidation has other effects as well. There are 13 slaughterhouse that produce most of the meat shipped nationwide, and with this consolidation has come an increase in food borne illness. 76 million cases of food poisoning, 325,000 hospitalizations, 5000 killed. All from food poisoning, and again it is this centralization and industrialization that has made these huge outbreaks possible, and even likely. Originally the meat for a hamburger came from one cow, but now, (and he says that a recent study by the CDC has shown that the numbers are even higher than mentioned in his book) the CDC says that the meat from one hamburger contains pieces of a THOUSAND or more cattle, from up to five different countries. This is the perfect vector for disease, because the food safety system has not kept up with changes in production. For instance, all food recalls are voluntary. The government can order the recall of a toy served with a happy meal, but they can not order a recall of contaminated meat.
There is also a huge social cost of fast food, in the obesity it causes. Fast food companies target children aged 3 to 9 and spend $3 billion a year on marketing, whereas the CDC has only $16 million a year to spend fighting obesity. How is fast food related to obesity? The fast food companies make most of their money from soda. When McDonald's started, a regular soda as 8oz. Now a child's soda, the smallest you can get, is 12 oz, and teens get about 10% of their daily calories from soda. The obesity rate in the US has doubled since the 1970s, and the health costs associated with obesity are now higher than the health costs associated with smoking.
From 1984 to 1993 the number of fast food restaurants in the UK doubled, and so did the obesity rate. In Japan the number of fast food restaurants doubled, and so did the obesity rate in children. What is disturbing in the US is that the people whoa who are becoming obese are the poor and the poorly educated, and the industry is now targeting larger portion sizes to children, which is, as he says, “the height of irresponsibility”.
To conclude, he said that he wrote the book not to be depressing, although it is depressing, but that he “wrote the book because I thought people should know these things” so that we can make an educated choice in choosing fast food.