By Sara Reischman
The fast food industry has affected our society in a variety of ways. From the way food is processed to the labor force, America has seen numerous changes. I plan to examine how corporations, the government and the food itself have had an adverse effect on people and our culture.

The fast food industry has affected our society in a variety of ways. From the way food is processed to the labor force, America has seen numerous changes. I plan to examine how corporations, the government and the food itself have had an adverse effect on people and our culture.

Fast food has been a part of American culture for nearly 70 years. What started out as a hot dog stand and a dream has grown to become an ugly monster that has taken over our society. Working in a carhop is only a faint memory for some and a non-reality for most. Jobs in the fast food industry are usually reserved for the uneducated, the young and immigrants. The food served in them is usually of the poorest quality and the standards are lowered to ensure company profit. The animals are treated poorly in the meat plants, because the industry requires a low- cost method. More people have gotten sick eating in fast food restaurants than anywhere else and because of its ease in our fast-paced society children are fed fast food at least once a week. Fast food is more than just a burger. It has become a way of life. The “slow food” approach to meals is nonexistent for most people. The fast food industry has saved many people a lot of time, but has taken a big bite out of morality and society in the process.

Being an employee in a car hop or burger place was once believed to be a respectable job. In the 1940s the line cook was valued for its ability to make delicious food in a timely manner. When the McDonald brothers decided that they could make more money if they reduced their menus and replaced the line cook with a few machines, the restaurant industry was changed for the worse. In 1948 The McDonald brothers closed down their restaurants for three months, fired all of their employees, installed machines that could do all of the cooking and called it the “Speedee Service System”(Schlosser 20). This required little thought on the part of the employees and made production quicker and more predictable. Soon many of the other restaurants got on the bandwagon. To this day you cannot go into a fast food restaurant and find a line cook or waitress. The industry prides itself on being a self-serve environment where the workers only have to push a few buttons and greet customers. It is this type of working environment that has poured over to all areas of employment. Many jobs now occupied by human employees are to oversee what a computer or machine is doing. The implementation of new technology into the workforce has left a lot of people unemployed, and many more nervous about their job security, or taking wage or hour cutbacks to stay where they are.

Creating a lower standard for education in fast food positions has opened the door to exploitation of the employees. Fast food industry restaurants pride themselves on creating an environment that appears to look like a family, but in reality, is filled with intimidation and fear. Many workers are pushed to their physical limits with long hours and are not given breaks. Because immigrants and high school students often fill these jobs the treatment of employees and the wages they are paid often barely meet the minimum requirement.

About two-thirds of the nation’s fast food employees are teenagers. This is not required of the positions, but fast food companies seek out these young people because they are inexperienced and easily intimidated. This makes them easier to control (Schlosser, 68).

Wages are usually right at minimum wage for these employees. “The fast food industry pays the minimum wage to a higher proportion to its workers than any other American industry. Consequently, a low minimum wage has long been a crucial part of the fast food industry’s business plan” (Schlosser,73). Not only has the fast food industry tried to maintain a low minimum wage, they have also tried to implement a federal guest worker program, set out to import workers from other countries to work for low wages and be exempt from the minimum wage of the United States. These ideas of treating the employees poorly is not exclusive to the fast food industry, but is most relevant due to the people that work these positions and the recent outpouring of advocacy for them.

The mistreatment of employees does not stop at poor hourly wages, but the denial of the right to join a union. When a group of employees decided that it would like to get some protection or raise the standards, the corporate headquarters send in what is called a “flying squad” (Schlosser76) of experienced managers to talk the employees out of it. The mistreatment of workers is not limited to fast food employees. It also affects the workers in the plants that create the food they sell there.

Many slaughterhouse workers are forced to work not only in unsanitary, but extremely dangerous positions.
“Working conditions on the slaughterhouses were Dickensian. Men were forced to work in dimly lit rooms with poor ventilation and even poorer sanitation. Laborers often stood in pools of stagnant water, full of effluent blood…. Workers often ate their meals near their work stations, while surrounded by the stench of dying animals” (Rifkin,121).

While the conditions of the workers is inexcusable the treatment of the animals was usually illegal. Because of the implementation of the new disassembly line the cows are hung upside down, punched in the forehead with a hammer their throat is cut and they continue down the line where they are disemboweled and skinned. On many occasions, the hammer does not strike the cow properly and it regains consciousness. In a panic over being hung in the air by its Achilles tendon, it shakes free of the shackles and falls headfirst into the conveyor belts and sometimes grinders below. The treatment of the cows outside the slaughterhouses is not better. They are often crammed into pens, one right next to the other. Standing in week-old fecal matter and eating food that is not only spoiled, but usually includes chicken manure and other items unfit for bovine consumption. Some researchers have experimented with feeding the cows a pellet mixture of 80 to 90 percent ethylene and 10 to 20 percent propylene. These not only act as an artificial roughage to fatten the cow up quicker, but can be recovered from the cow’s rumen, melted down and re-used (Rifkin,13) All aspects of the feed lots focus on fattening the cattle up as quickly as possible. Flies are an area of great concern. The animals can lose up to half a pound a day swatting at flies. To prevent this, the animals are showered with a toxic repellant from a nozzle or dusted with it from crop duster. The animals are then loaded into trucks where they travel for days without food or water. Because this makes the animals weak some fall in the truck beds and are trampled by the other cows. They are usually the last to be taken off of the trucks and lie for hours spread eagle on the floor with broken pelvises and legs. The animals will not be anesthetized or put down because this will cost money so they are left in pain until they are drug by chains on their legs into the slaughterhouse. The ones that do no make it are then flung onto the “dead pile” (Rifkin,14). The blatant mistreatment is not only cruel to the animals but causes illness in humans as well. The foul meat is often mixed in with the healthy meat and made into sausages or hamburger. Most of these products end up in fast food restaurants across America. Most food poisoning incidence stems from tainted meat.
One of the first people to become ill from tainted meat in the fast food industry was a girl from San Diego California. She was six years old and after having three heart attacks, and suffering terrible pain, she died in her mother’s arms on Christmas Eve. Her death from E.coli 0157:H7 brought much attention to the fact that this disease could cross-species and even kill. It was believed before that a small amount of fecal matter in the meat would be an acceptable amount to be consumed by humans and not cause any illness. What the FDA did not take into consideration was that most of the people consuming fast food burgers were children. Thus having a smaller body mass, the E.coli had a more severe effect on their systems. Surrounded by parents whose children had died of E.coli President Clinton adopted a new science-based meat inspection system (Schlosser,215). Many federal inspectors opposed the new system citing it as “greatly diminishing their authority to detect and remove contaminated meat”(Schlosser,215). Before the E.coli outbreak, the USDA had 12,000 inspectors. Today it has 7,500. The inspectors today feel immense pressure from both the government and the meat packing industry to not slow down the meat packing lines (Schlosser, 215). Now instead of trying to fix the problem of bacteria in the meat by monitoring feedlots and slaughterhouses, the USDA is advocating irradiation. This is a form of bacteria birth control ( Schlosser, 217). This will sterilize the bacteria that are growing on the meat. This process has been impeded, however by the public’s reluctance to eat meat that has been treated with radiation. Cost and regulations both play an extremely important role in the cattle industry in the United States. This is the motivation to move many of the cattle raising to other countries and bring about many environmental concerns.

“Global warming is fast becoming the greatest environmental and human threat in history”(Rifkin,223). In fact, much of the biomass being burned today is to promote the ranching industry. With rain forests cut and burned to make room for cattle grazing fields, there are millions of tons carbon being released into the air to support the cattle industry. Cattle also emit methane. This occurs naturally from various plant sources on the planet, but cattle emit it at such a rate that they account for 6 percent of the global warming gasses. Though the workers, the environment and the animals are all adversely affected by the fast-food industry, we cannot overlook the unhealthy impact it has had on America’s eating habits.

Fast food companies are more focused on the bottom line than anything else. They try to create a loyal customer and to do this they must implement the ”cradle-to-grave” approach to advertising (Schlosser). This means that with the understanding that a person establishes their brand loyalty by the age of two, they must direct most of their advertising to children. Because children are so easily targeted for advertising the corporation bank on the fact that they will whine, beg and cause a scene until they get what they want. To increase the effect of marketing, many big corporations are joining together to sell a ”package” product. Mcdonald’s is notorious for including a Disney product in their Happy Meals to promote a movie and the food product at the same time. Mcdonald’s tries to correlate fun with eating and though it entices children in with play yards and Happy Meals, it keeps the tables small, the chairs uncomfortable and the environment noisy so parents will eat and leave, opening a table for a new customer (Kincheloe,203). By directing their advertisement at children they are not only creating a customer for life, they are creating a fat America.

As people eat more outside the home they consume more calories, less fiber, and more fat (Schlosser,241). This combined with the evolution of modern technology and the more sedentary lifestyles of Americans; obesity is spreading across the U.S. with the spread of a communicable disease. 13 percent of all children are overweight and 300,000 deaths per year are due to obesity (Grange, 2002) The combination of fast food and video games is creating obesity in children at disgusting speeds. These are people whose lifestyles will likely not change. So a lifelong customer for one industry becomes a lifelong liability for another.

The fast food industry has also affected the way we live our lives in general. Americans are in more of a rush than any other country. We have more choices for the same product than any other nation. Americans are used the getting it “their way” and have taken to treating people poorly if that doesn’t happen. Gone are the days when a family sits down to a meal together and talks about their day or how each other is doing. Fast food has not only made it easy to avoid the hassles of eating at home but more acceptable to just “pick something up”. Fast food restaurants focus on broadening their attraction to groups of all income levels and races encouraging them that there is equality in a burger. We as a country have lost much respect from European countries and their people for making things like McDonald’s and forcing them on them. There used to be joy in eating out and now it is nothing more than something to check off on the to-do list for the day. Something has been lost. We are no longer simply the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are a country of unlimited options and various sizes of fries and drinks. It is unfortunate that all of the friendly slogans lie “have it your way” does not seem to apply to the young people behind the counters and I don’t think Mcdonald’s cares if the cattle they encourage to slaughter inhumanely are smiling. One cannot drive down the street without seeing at least one fast food restaurant every ten blocks. In this world of plenty, we are ruining the environment, mistreating animals, and fattening up our children like Christmas geese. There will be a backlash. It will come in the form of health problems and limited environmental resources. There will come a day when the land has given all it has to give and it will be because the human race has taken its resources and tried to “Super-Size” them.
Works Cited
Granger, Kay. 2002. Granger, Bono Introduce Bill to reduce Obesity
Kincheloe, Joe L. 2002. The Sign of the Burger. Temple University Press.: Philadelphia
Rifkin, Jeremy. 1992. Beyond Beef. Penguin Books.: New York
Schlosser, Eric. 2002. Fast Food Nation. Perennial.: New York