Although there are exceptions, the thread weaving together this book seems to be greed over public concern at every step of the way. If there is good news for the future of the industry, it is that it ultimately reports the consumer, and we can choose not to support it. Although the book maintains of journalistic balance throughout, Eric comes clear in his personal view in the Epilogue: boycott fast food.
I paid especially close attention when reading about IBP, a major beef packer and supplier of meat to McDonald's (and other chains). There is an IBP plant located in Souix City, Iowa, near where my mother lives. They are partly responsible for a migration of Mexicans to the area.
Allegedly, they run the processing lines at especially an fast rate of speed to maximize production and profit, although they are sacrificing food quality, employee safety, and public health. In a tragic story from the meat packing industry, Kenny Dobbins an employee of the Monfort meat packing plant, had sustained multiple serious injuries on the job, working for the company for over a decade. Despite having saved another employees life on job (for which he was honored with a paper certificate), the story of his employment at Monfort ends like this: "In December of 1995 Kenny felt a sharp pain in his chest while lifting some boxes. He thought it was a heart attack. His union steward took him to the the nurse, who said it was just a pulled muscle and sent Kenny home. He was indeed having a massive heart attack. A friend rushed Kenny to a nearby hospital. A stent was inserted in his heart, and the doctors told Kenny he was lucky to be alive. Not long afterward, Monfort fired Kenny Dobbins. Despite the fact that Kenny had been with the company for almost sixteen years, depsite the fact that he was first in seniority at the Greeley plant, that he'd cleaned blood tanks with his bare hands, fought the union, done whatever the company had asked him to do, suffered injuries tha would have killed weaker men, nobody from Monfort called with the news...Kenny learned that he he'd been fired when his payments to the company health insurance plan kept being returned to the post office."
Although the meat packing industry is regulated by the USDA, the agency faces multiple problems enforces the laws. The have a fundamental conflict in that they are supposed to both promote the meat industry and regulate it. Additionally, they have overlapping responsibilities with other government agencies, often leading to delays in taking action. They are also underfunded for the job-- inspections occur rarely and the corporations are required to keep their own logs of on-the-job injuries. At least one corporation was caught keeping two copies of logs-- one to show the government and one for themselves. One of the few times mentioned that the plants did slow the line down was one the meat was being exported to Europe-- they demand higher quality than McDonalds.
The potential public health hazard of this system is huge. Which much of the nations meat coming from about 13 major meat packing plants, combined with the poor health conditions that the cattle are kept in (sometimes being fed cattle scraps for food, furthering contamination possibilities), combined with the low quality standards of the industry, contaminated meat could poison legions of people before a recall was even announced. Meat recalls occur more often than is reported in the news-- The meat packers themselves are often largely responsible for announcing the recalls. In one example, by the time a recall for 35 million pounds of meat had been announced, 25 million pounds of it had already been consumed by people.
Christoff, a yoga student in the Palm Beach, Florida area, isn't waiting for the results to come back. He brings in his own metal plates to use when he eats at Pollo Tropical. He also uses a stationary bike at home to power his TV. If only he had to pedal his bike to produce a new a spork and plastic plate each time he ate out, we could all watch and find out how much energy it took.
With so many "independent" restaurants depending on a single supplier, it would seem that they are subject to the constraints of the supplier, and my choices about where my food actually from are mostly an illusion.
All this makes me more excited about shopping at the local Farmer's Market, participating in the local food co-op, bring left-overs for lunch at work, and sometimes I even think about gardening myself (especially in the context of having less yard to mow.)
Whether you hate fast food or love it, I encourage you to read this book and find out in detail what exactly you are encouraging our despising.
Thanks to Working Assets for recommending this book to me. (my excellent phone company)
Read more about this book at Amazon.com.
I believe your summary was very useful. It was very handy because it gave me ideas on to what I should right about on my book report. Thanks again!
-James Smith
Thanks. I read the book, but forgot most of it (it's like an encyclopedai). Summary pretty useful.However, you could have put somthing in about ConAgra.
-Jimbo !@#$
Login to post your own comment