Book Review: Fast Food Nation
Eric Schlosser's investigative account of the fast food industry and all of its associated businesses (meatpacking, advertising, and agribusiness in general) had been sitting in my house for probably a good year before I finally got around to reading it this past week. It's a shame that it took me so long.
In his book, Schlosser makes numerous references to one of my favorite books, Upton Sinclair's masterpiece muckraking of the Chicago meatpacking industry, The Jungle. While I do not compare the two books, and nor does Schlosser (Sinclair's work was officially fiction, though all the important details were factual), the two books have much in common. In fact, Fast Food Nation could be viewed as a sort of 100-year update on The Jungle, a sort of "where are we now?" Sadly, the situation has improved little, despite the long timespan and numerous half-hearted government attempts at regulation.
Sinclair's main topic in The Jungle was not, as many assume, food, but rather the immigrants who worked in the horrific conditions of the lines. Workers routinely were injured and maimed - sometimes even killed - working on the lines, fired by the company without compensation once the injuries occurred (since they were useless as workers), worked long hours for little pay, and had no job security. Today, the same situation still exists. Schlosser writes that nearly a third of workers in the meatpacking plants sustain some sort of injury, and hundreds die every year. One machine in a Kansas plant was responsible for the deaths of five men on two seperate occasions. The company that owned the plant was fined a mere $480 per death.
Which brings us to what is the main theme of the book, in my opinion. It is less about the greed and callousness of the the industry than the lack of involvement on the part of the government. Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism, was well aware that a true free market is a recipe for corporations to enslave the world. All throughout the book, example after example of corporate misbehavior is given, and any reader can easily see how a little government intervention would solve the problems. If the government were to treat the deaths of workers through corporate negligence in the same way as they treat any other non-accidental death - that is, prosecute those responsible and send them to jail - plant managers would be scrambling to implement safety systems and procedures that would save hundreds of lives, and thousands of limbs, a year. Of course, the Republican love of business has made this task nearly impossible: since Reagan, the words "free market" have become almost synonymous with words like "liberty," "freedom," and "democracy" in the minds of most Americans. Such things could not be further from the truth.
The situation with the food is equally atrocious, and only marginally better than it was in 1906. Sinclair's masterpiece of compassionate socialism, instead of eliciting calls for increased worker rights, lead to Theodore Roosevelt (who read books on contrary opinions, unlike our current president) forming a comission to investigate the veracity of the claims about the food quality in The Jungle. Such things as dead, cyanide-poisoned rats ending up in the meat, animal fecal matter covering the huge piles of meat, and dead and diseased cattle being slaughtered for food were all found to be true. Today, the biggest problem with the food can be summed up in a single phrase: "There is shit in the meat." This is quite literal. Schlosser details how the speed of the "dis-assembly" line prevents workers from taking their time removing the organs of the cow, so that the contents of the intestines, bowels, and stomachs of cows often spill onto the meat later turned into burgers. Furthermore, improper cleaning of the cattle leads to fecal matter from their coats getting into the food as well. The end result of all this is more than just the unpleasantness of having excrement in your food: it also leads to disease. E. Coli breeds most efficiently in fecal matter, and the presence of it often indicates the contamination of such. Schlosser writes that "Every day in the United States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die." If the government would be willing to inspect meat for diseases more effectively (right now they only check by sight, which is entirely useless against most diseases) and impose real penalties for the presence of such microbes in food (such as requiring the entire shipment of meat to be destroyed, regardless of the extent of the outbreak) such problems would be marginalized. The situation is easily rectifiable: Schlosser details a number of plants where the HACCP program, which aims to elimnate foodborne diseases from the plant's output, has worked very effectively and increased the end cost of a hamburger by a single cent.
There is plenty more, but this is long enough already. If you want to find out more, read the book, why don't you?
In his book, Schlosser makes numerous references to one of my favorite books, Upton Sinclair's masterpiece muckraking of the Chicago meatpacking industry, The Jungle. While I do not compare the two books, and nor does Schlosser (Sinclair's work was officially fiction, though all the important details were factual), the two books have much in common. In fact, Fast Food Nation could be viewed as a sort of 100-year update on The Jungle, a sort of "where are we now?" Sadly, the situation has improved little, despite the long timespan and numerous half-hearted government attempts at regulation.
Sinclair's main topic in The Jungle was not, as many assume, food, but rather the immigrants who worked in the horrific conditions of the lines. Workers routinely were injured and maimed - sometimes even killed - working on the lines, fired by the company without compensation once the injuries occurred (since they were useless as workers), worked long hours for little pay, and had no job security. Today, the same situation still exists. Schlosser writes that nearly a third of workers in the meatpacking plants sustain some sort of injury, and hundreds die every year. One machine in a Kansas plant was responsible for the deaths of five men on two seperate occasions. The company that owned the plant was fined a mere $480 per death.
Which brings us to what is the main theme of the book, in my opinion. It is less about the greed and callousness of the the industry than the lack of involvement on the part of the government. Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism, was well aware that a true free market is a recipe for corporations to enslave the world. All throughout the book, example after example of corporate misbehavior is given, and any reader can easily see how a little government intervention would solve the problems. If the government were to treat the deaths of workers through corporate negligence in the same way as they treat any other non-accidental death - that is, prosecute those responsible and send them to jail - plant managers would be scrambling to implement safety systems and procedures that would save hundreds of lives, and thousands of limbs, a year. Of course, the Republican love of business has made this task nearly impossible: since Reagan, the words "free market" have become almost synonymous with words like "liberty," "freedom," and "democracy" in the minds of most Americans. Such things could not be further from the truth.
The situation with the food is equally atrocious, and only marginally better than it was in 1906. Sinclair's masterpiece of compassionate socialism, instead of eliciting calls for increased worker rights, lead to Theodore Roosevelt (who read books on contrary opinions, unlike our current president) forming a comission to investigate the veracity of the claims about the food quality in The Jungle. Such things as dead, cyanide-poisoned rats ending up in the meat, animal fecal matter covering the huge piles of meat, and dead and diseased cattle being slaughtered for food were all found to be true. Today, the biggest problem with the food can be summed up in a single phrase: "There is shit in the meat." This is quite literal. Schlosser details how the speed of the "dis-assembly" line prevents workers from taking their time removing the organs of the cow, so that the contents of the intestines, bowels, and stomachs of cows often spill onto the meat later turned into burgers. Furthermore, improper cleaning of the cattle leads to fecal matter from their coats getting into the food as well. The end result of all this is more than just the unpleasantness of having excrement in your food: it also leads to disease. E. Coli breeds most efficiently in fecal matter, and the presence of it often indicates the contamination of such. Schlosser writes that "Every day in the United States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die." If the government would be willing to inspect meat for diseases more effectively (right now they only check by sight, which is entirely useless against most diseases) and impose real penalties for the presence of such microbes in food (such as requiring the entire shipment of meat to be destroyed, regardless of the extent of the outbreak) such problems would be marginalized. The situation is easily rectifiable: Schlosser details a number of plants where the HACCP program, which aims to elimnate foodborne diseases from the plant's output, has worked very effectively and increased the end cost of a hamburger by a single cent.
There is plenty more, but this is long enough already. If you want to find out more, read the book, why don't you?
posted by Jimmy at 7:41 PM
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