In the early 1990s Will Dana, an editor at Rolling Stone magazine, came up with a story idea: a look at America through its fast food. Fellow editor Bob Love liked the idea and knew just the person to write it: Eric Schlosser, an investigative journalist who had published a long exposé in the Atlantic Monthly on the transformation of California’s agriculture. Schlosser signed up, and in 1997 he began his investigation. He spent a year researching the rise and influence of the fast-food industry after the Second World War, its influences on the American agricultural system, and its promotional campaigns targeting children.
Schlosser’s three-part series, ‘Fast Food Nation’, was published in Rolling Stone beginning in 1998. His book of the same name based on these articles was released in January 2001. It was a surprise bestseller, with more than 1.6 million copies sold within a few years of its publication.
Schlosser raised many issues related to fast food, but among the more shocking to readers was his description of working conditions in the meatpacking industry. Meat-packers had managed to operate under the radar for decades. Although no major meatpacking plant allowed Schlosser to visit, workers in the industry were willing to talk to him. He was stunned by the conditions they described – the abuse of their fellow workers, the deterioration of safety standards and the cruelty to animals. One result of these practices, reported Schlosser, was that meatpackers ‘facilitated the introduction of deadly pathogens, such as E. coli O157:H7, into America’s hamburger meat’.1
Reviewers and pundits proclaimed Fast Food Nation one of the most influential books ever published about the American food system. It has gone through 85 printings and has been published in fifteen languages. The British edition was titled Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World (2001); the German edition was subtitled ‘die dunkle Seite von McFood & Co.’ (‘the dark side of McFood and Co.’). The book inspired a film of the same name, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, and Food, Inc., a documentary released in 2008.
Despite the popularity of his book and films, little has changed. When Schlosser wrote an afterword for the tenth-anniversary publication of Fast Food Nation, he despaired, ‘I’d love to report that the book is out of date, that the many problems it describes have been solved, and that the Golden Arches are now the symbol of a fallen empire, like the pyramids at Giza. Sadly, that is not the case.’2
Adulterated meat has generated attention in Europe and the United States for centuries. The German-born chemist Frederick Accum included a chapter titled the ‘Disgusting Practice of Rendering Butcher’s Meat, Fish, and Poultry, Unwholesome’ in his Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons. Accum’s book generated excitement throughout Europe and America. Vegetarians jumped on the anti-meat campaign and regularly reported on adulterated and poisonous beef, pork and poultry products and the negative consequences of eating meat. It wasn’t until 1875 that the British Parliament passed the Sale of Foods and Drugs Act, which made the adulteration of food and the sale of unwholesome meat illegal. In the U.S. similar bills were introduced into Congress, but none passed.
Meat had held a central place in the American diet since colonial times. By 1900 a survey estimated that Americans consumed, on average, 136 pounds (61.7 kg) of meat annually. Virtually every American ate meat. When Upton Sinclair published The Jungle (1906), an exposé of the American meatpacking industry, it caused a public uproar against the meat industry, which ensured the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act by U.S. Congress. The Pure Food and Drug Act created what would become the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has been charged with ensuring the safety of the nation’s food supply – except for meat, poultry and eggs. The Meat Inspection Act empowered federal inspectors in the U.S. Department of Agriculture to examine animals before and after slaughter, to be present when diseased animals were destroyed, and to inspect processed products for dangerous chemicals, preservatives or dyes. No meat that had not been inspected could be shipped across state lines. Rules, regulations and inspection programmes were established to ensure compliance. Over the following decades, the meatpacking industry gradually improved owing to governmental regulations and inspections. Workers’ pay increased; by the 1960s meatpackers were among the highest-paid industrial workers in the United States. Their workers were represented by unions and employee turnover was low.
Beginning in the 1960s, the American meat and poultry industries bore the brunt of the fast-food revolution, which was directly linked to an enormous increase in meat production. Large chains pressurized meatpackers for cheap, uniform products that tasted the same regardless of where they had been produced. In 1982 the American meatpacking industry was deregulated. The unions that represented workers at packing plants were decimated, and strikebreakers were brought in by plant owners to operate slaughterhouses and processing facilities. Wages dropped by 30 per cent and working conditions deteriorated. This was a major victory for the plant owners, who enjoyed lower labour costs, higher production rates and greater profits. Once the unions were out of the picture, immigrant workers, many of whom are undocumented, made fewer complaints to regulatory authorities. The result was that the meatpacking industry now provides the lowest-paid and most demanding, hazardous and exhausting jobs in America.3 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than one in four workers in meatpacking plants have suffered a job-related injury or illness.
The meat industry has continually lobbied against regulations for food safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration can levy fines on non-compliant meatpackers, but the maximum fine for a human death is only $70,000 – hardly a burden for a meatpacker making millions of dollars a year. The meatpacking industry has also supported so-called ‘veggie libel laws’, which forbid the defamation of agricultural products and place the burden of proof on the party being sued. When Oprah Winfrey, a talk-show host, badmouthed beef on her hugely popular television show in 1996, she was sued by cattle ranchers in a Texas court. Although Winfrey won the case, the meatpacking industry had proved that it could threaten critics – even popular television stars – with expensive lawsuits.
During the Second World War an agricultural labour shortage hit the U.S. just when farms needed to step up production. More food was required for the 11.5 million U.S. military personnel and to help feed America’s allies in Europe and Asia. To ramp up production, farmers began confining cattle, pigs and poultry to large buildings or outdoor pens for most of their lives, and feeding them a scientifically formulated diet. The animals could be fed more easily and quickly, and their manure more efficiently collected for conversion into fertilizer. Confining animals also reduced losses to predators and illness. Raising livestock in confined areas made sense even after the war: by 1960, 26.7 per cent of cattle in Kansas were raised on large feedlots; by 1975, 87.6 per cent of cattle were housed on feedlots for part of their lives.
Fast-food chains typically acquire their meat indirectly from industrial feedlots called animal feeding operations (AFOS). Large cattle concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOS) can feed as many as 100,000 animals at one time. Feedlots are factory-like buildings or open-air pens where food animals are kept. Meat animals are typically raised from birth on farms and then shipped to feedlots or other facilities that ready cattle, pigs and chickens for market. Cattle usually have their horns cut off or chemically reduced in size to prevent the animals from goring one another in the small, confined space. In the feedlots the animals are fed a special diet to fatten them before they are shipped to slaughter.
Broiler chickens are raised in hatcheries, farms and AFOS; they are sent to be slaughtered five to nine weeks later, when they reach market weight. Broilers are usually housed in factory-like buildings of about 20,000 square ft (1,858 square m; 40 ft wide and 500 ft long, or 12.2 × 152.4 m). Large operations can process 600,000 broilers per year. Because birds in confined areas tend to peck each other to death, their beaks are partially seared off. Antibiotics (or antimicrobial medicines) are administered to prevent disease and increase growth. The introduction of antibiotics also had an impact on laying hens. As a result of such changes, egg production soared; some hens began to lay as many as 300 eggs per year. The size of henhouses sometimes increased to 100,000 layers, and profits soared.
During the 1950s pig farmers moved their swine off pastures and into buildings, where the temperature, lighting and feed could be closely controlled, thus creating the ideal environment for fattening the animals to their maximum weight in the shortest time. Pigs raised in feeding operations progress through three main stages: sows are naturally or artificially inseminated; the piglets are weaned at two to three weeks and then fed for six weeks before being shipped to another operation, where they are fed a high-calorie diet until they reach market weight. The pigs are then sent to slaughterhouses.
Although animal feeding operations are usually family-owned and operated, they rely more and more on hired labour. The farms operate on efficiencies of scale; as a result, American meat production has shifted to larger operations. The increasing volume of animals caused large meat processors to grow even bigger; small ones closed as their distribution channels dried up. These operations are closely connected with large food processors, which have become highly concentrated as well. In 2005, for instance, four multinational meatpackers – Tyson Foods, Cargill, Brazil-based JBS and National Beef – controlled about 80 per cent of all beef cattle slaughtered in the U.S. The same companies, plus the Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods, control 60 per cent of America’s pork. The broiler chicken industry is controlled by four companies, Tyson Foods being the largest.4
The manure generated by animal feeding operations is considerable and requires proper disposal. Typically, untreated pig and cattle waste is stored in above-ground, open-air earthen pits or ponds called lagoons. Poultry producers typically use dry-waste systems, where the manure is scraped out of buildings or collected on conveyor belts and then moved to storage sites. When the waste decomposes, it is sprayed or spread on farmland to enrich the soil with nutrients such as nitrogen. But improperly managed wastewater from animal feeding operations has generated significant environmental concerns, including nutrient over-enrichment of surface water and groundwater, contamination of drinking water, fish kills and production of methane and other greenhouse gases.
Proponents of animal feeding operations argue that these operations are efficient and safe. Confined livestock is supervised more closely than free-range animals, and diseases can be treated more quickly should they develop. Because animals are given antibiotics and their diet is carefully managed, they gain more weight than free-range animals. Proponents claim that the greater efficiencies of animal feeding operations – which produce more meat and eggs than traditional methods – mean that fewer farm animals are being raised, which has a positive overall effect on the environment. Another argument in their favour is that they have led to lower retail prices for meat and eggs. They also use much less farmland than do traditional livestock operations, and they employ less labour. They have thus freed land and labour for other uses.
Environmental concerns over animal feeding operations have emerged since the 1970s. In general meat production has a much greater impact on the environment than cultivating crops: livestock require more land, feed and energy to raise and transport. Intensive animal farming also requires a tremendous amount of water, and this can lead to water depletion in areas where it is naturally scarce, or in periods of drought. Decreasing consumption of meat, opponents claim, could thus improve the environment. In particular animal feeding operations produce large amounts of animal waste, which is stored in lagoons, some the length of multiple football fields. Unlike human waste, which is treated with chemical and filtration systems before being released into the environment, animal waste is not treated. Typically it decomposes in lagoons before being sprayed on fields as fertilizer.
Lagoons have broken, failed and overflowed, especially during rainstorms. Virtually every state with animal feeding operations has suffered from multiple releases of untreated waste. There have been massive spills with lethal results. In the summer of 1995 heavy rains caused several lagoons to burst in North Carolina. A dyke surrounding an 8-acre pig-waste lagoon at Oceanview Farms in Onslow County burst, spilling an estimated 25 million gallons of liquid pig faeces and urine into neighbouring crop land and two tributaries of the New River. As a result, an estimated 10 million fish died and 364,000 acres of coastal wetlands were closed to shellfish harvesting for several months. Four years later, when Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina, almost 50 lagoons burst and their waste was released. In 2011 a pig farm near Buckley, Illinois, spilled 200,000 gallons of untreated animal waste into Spring Creek, killing more than 100,000 fish.
Animal waste contains potentially harmful substances: nitrates, heavy metals and micro-pollutants. Traces of steroid hormones, acaricides (which target ticks and mites) and insecticides are released into the environment by animal feeding operations and treated animals in general, and traces have been found in groundwater. Little is known of the processes that govern their transport in soil or how they eventually reach groundwater. As they are widely used in animal husbandry, they have significant impacts on soil.5 They have been found in low concentrations in the environment, but their presence is persistent and ubiquitous, and this concerns many scientists.
Environmentalists have also targeted animal feeding operations because of the real and potential damage caused by high concentrations of manure-based nutrients, which may result in a loss of groundwater for commercial or recreational use. As the cost of transporting liquid waste is high, it tends to be sprayed on nearby crop land, which can absorb only so much moisture. Excessive waste applications create runoff that ends up in groundwater, streams, rivers and lakes. Nutrients in animal waste contribute to algal blooms; these uncontrolled proliferations of algae deplete the oxygen in the water, resulting in ‘dead zones’ in lakes and oceans where fish and shellfish cannot survive.
There is also an environmental concern with air pollution: environmentalists claim that large animal feeding operations are the largest single cause of ammonia and other emissions, such as methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and nitrous oxide, variously associated with global warming, ozone depletion and acid deposition. More than 160 gases are known to be emitted from the waste. Ammonia, a toxic, colourless gas with a pungent odour, has been known to travel more than 300 miles (480 km) through the air before being dumped back on to the ground or into the water, where it also contributes to algal blooms. Airborne particulate matter found near animal feeding operations can carry disease-causing bacteria, fungus or other pathogens. Several studies of workers and people who live near AFOS report health problems, including eye irritation, sore throats, coughs, nausea, shortness of breath, fluid in the lungs, headaches, diarrhoea, dizziness, depression, loss of appetite, poor memory and fatigue.
Proponents argue that, when properly located, managed and monitored, animal feeding operations have created production efficiencies in raising animals. They have given farmers the ability to manage animal husbandry much more effectively. These operations provide a reliable, reasonably priced supply of meat, milk and eggs. Advocates also maintain that the economics and concentration of animal feeding operations result in less environmental impact ‘per animal’ delivered to market. While conceding that environmental concerns have substance, supporters of animal feeding operations see these issues as greatly exaggerated, and stress that improvements are underway. For instance, new systems have been developed for the improved handling of animal waste. The waste can be used to produce methane, which can then be used to fuel machinery.
Thanks in part to fast food, meat consumption is increasing in many countries, particularly in developing countries such as China and Brazil. Factory farming is accelerating as a means of animal production to keep up with increased demand. In 2006 these systems generated 74 per cent of the world’s poultry products, 50 per cent of all pork, 43 per cent of beef and 68 per cent of eggs.6 McDonald’s is the largest purchaser of beef in America, and is second only to KFC in its purchase of chickens. As meat consumption is increasing in many parts of the world, observers are concerned about the potential environmental effects.
Another major shift in animal husbandry occurred with the discovery of antibiotics (or antimicrobial medicines) in the 1930s. Antibiotics, such as tetracycline, penicillin and erythromycin, kill or retard the growth of bacteria. They have been tremendously effective in treating and preventing diseases in humans and animals and are generally considered safe.
The use of antibiotics in farm animals commenced in the 1940s when producers started vaccinating their herds and flocks and testing them regularly for pathogens, hoping to forestall the spread of illness among farm animals. In 1950 scientists at American Cyanamid’s Lederle laboratory found that antibiotics could be added to feed – not just administered when disease was already present. Antibiotic-laced chicken and pig feed were quickly adopted.7 This method was less successful with cattle, as bovines have multiple stomachs that process feed differently, but other means of administering the drugs to cattle were soon developed.
For reasons that are not fully understood, antibiotics in feed accelerate weight gain in animals (about 70 per cent of the total antibiotics now used in America are given to chickens, pigs and cattle in the absence of disease). So the treated animals not only fought off diseases but grew faster, gaining 3 per cent more weight before slaughter – increasing profits for owners. The use of antibiotics increased herd and flock sizes, and per-unit production costs declined. In 1951 the Food and Drug Administration approved the routine addition of penicillin and tetracycline to chicken feed as growth promoters.
Also added to animal feed were vitamins and mineral additives, such as copper, zinc and even arsenic, because of their antimicrobial and growth-stimulating effects. With production costs dropping, many predicted that pork, chicken and beef prices would fall to new lows – a prediction that soon came true.
By the 1990s virtually all commercially raised livestock raised in the United States (except those certified as organic) were routinely administered antibiotics. Concern with these drugs in animal feed first emerged during the 1960s. Scientists found that bacteria that were repeatedly exposed to antibiotics developed resistance, becoming immune to the drugs designed to kill them. As the antibiotics were similar to those used in people, it was feared that using the drugs in animal feed could render existing antibiotics useless when needed to fight infection in humans. These concerns motivated some Americans to lobby for a ban on antibiotic use on farms, arguing that giving animals ‘subtherapeutic’ doses of antibiotics fosters bacterial resistance in meat-eating humans. Antibiotics are still commonly used in the United States, where about 16 million pounds (72.6 million kg) of antibiotics are administered annually to farm animals – about 30 times more than to humans.8
According to the Humane Society of the United States, ‘Indiscriminate use of antibiotics may lead to the evolution of resistance by selecting directly for drug-resistant pathogens as well as for mobile genetic elements carrying resistance determinants to both human and nonhuman animal pathogens.’ The Centers for Disease Control concluded that the reason for an increase in antibiotic resistance in foodborne diseases in the U.S. ‘is because of antibiotic use on the farm’.9
Another concern within the medical and scientific communities is that continued routine use of antibiotics in animal feed will create a ‘superbug’ that is resistant to all known antibiotics, and that it will wreak devastation on people, animals and other life forms. Many organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association, have endorsed efforts to phase out the use of antibiotics as animal feed additives.
Some fast-food companies have also opposed the use of antibiotics by their meat suppliers. Chipotle’s beef, poultry and pork comes from suppliers that do not use antibiotics or hormones. Pret A Manger, a British-based fast-casual restaurant chain, has proclaimed that they only use antibiotic-free, preservative-free and hormone-free ingredients. Wendy’s has sourced its meat from companies that do not use human antibiotics solely for the purpose of growth promotion in animals. In 2004 Panera Bread, a fast-casual restaurant chain in Canada and the United States, made the decision to serve no chicken, turkey or pork treated with antibiotics. Ten years later, Chick-fil-A, an American chain specializing in chicken sandwiches, announced that they are phasing out purchasing chickens raised with antibiotics. Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms, multinationals that supply much of the chicken to American fast-food chains, sell lines of chicken products from birds that have never been given antibiotics. In 2015 Tyson reported that they have reduced the use of human antibiotics used to treat their chickens by more than 84 per cent since 2011, and Perdue reported that 95 per cent of their chickens were raised without any human antibiotics.
McDonald’s announced that they will phase out buying chicken raised with non-therapeutic, medically important antibiotics in their 14,000 U.S. locations by 2017. Their pledge does not include antibiotics given to treat diseases that arise from overcrowded and unsanitary farming conditions. Critics were quick to point out that McDonald’s made a similar pledge in 2003: ‘McDonald’s prohibits the use of antibiotics belonging to classes of compounds approved for use in human medicine when used solely for growth promotion purposes. Growth promotion is defined as the use of antibiotics for any purpose other than disease treatment, control or prevention.’ That 2003 pledge, claimed critics, was unfulfilled.10 The 2015 pledge covers only chicken, not beef or pork, but the move by McDonald’s is expected to influence the poultry industry and perhaps eventually the production of other meat.
The European Union banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in food animals in 2006, but individual nations have applied the ban selectively. Fast-food chains operating in the European Union have announced that their meat products are from animals raised without antibiotics. McDonald’s UK reports that its hamburgers are 100 per cent beef and that they contain no preservatives or added flavours. McDonald’s UK’s burgers are acquired from Esca Food Solutions, which works closely with 16,000 independent farmers in the UK and Ireland to maintain high standards. (McDonald’s also notes that the fish used in Filet-O-Fish and Fish Finger meals are from sustainable fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.11)
Animal welfare came to the cultural forefront in the 1970s, when many new organizations focusing on specific aspects of animal welfare, animal rights, vegetarianism and veganism emerged. These diverse groups campaigned against the production and use of animals for fur, and against trapping, hunting, whaling, the killing of dolphins in the fishing industry and the display of animals in zoos and aquariums. Many animal-rights organizations see much to oppose in the fast-food industry, particularly in the meatpacking industry that supports it.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) claims to be the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 3 million members and supporters. It was founded in 1980 by Ingrid Newkirk with the mission of relieving the suffering of animals ‘through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns’. PETA maintains that it is inhumane to confine animals in tightly packed pens or cages. It has repeatedly filmed the inhumane treatment of animals in feeding operations and slaughterhouses to publicize these concerns. Other animal-rights organizations have also taken footage of these operations. In response agriculture organizations in the U.S. have supported ‘ag-gag’ laws making it illegal to film agricultural operations, such as animal feeding operations and slaughterhouses, without permission. As of 2014 two states (Utah and Iowa) have passed ag-gag laws; both have been challenged in court.
PETA targeted McDonald’s in 2000 in a ‘McCruelty’ campaign aimed at changing the way the corporation’s suppliers handled chickens. McDonald’s was targeted because it is the second largest buyer of chicken in the world, after KFC. PETA members engaged in more than 400 demonstrations against the company, and after two years McDonald’s agreed ‘to make basic welfare improvements for farmed animals’, according to PETA.12 McDonald’s also made a policy decision to purchase eggs only from poultry producers who adopted more humane production practices. McDonald’s also introduced vegetarian options after PETA turned the spotlight on them.
PETA released a video in 2004 taken at a slaughterhouse in Moorfield, West Virginia, owned by Pilgrim’s Pride, a KFC supplier. The video revealed workers cruelly abusing and killing chickens by throwing them against the walls or kicking them to death, for instance, simply out of boredom with their gruelling work.13 The renowned veterinary scientist and animal behaviourist Dr Temple Grandin proclaimed the actions shown on the tape ‘absolutely atrocious’. Pilgrim’s Pride fired several employees and began a workforce training programme aimed at preventing animal cruelty in the future.
PETA Asia Pacific complained about the treatment of chickens in KFC Korea’s suppliers in 2005. The Seoul Times reported that PETA’s exposé ‘revealed that workers were stomping on live birds, tearing their heads off, spitting tobacco in their eyes, and spray-painting their faces’. KFC Korea ignored recommendations for animal welfare improvements by its own Animal Welfare Advisory Council, resulting in the resignation of several members.14
PETA once again took on McDonald’s, claiming that the outdated slaughter methods used by the company’s chicken suppliers resulted in needless suffering. PETA stated that ‘McDonald’s has the responsibility – and the ability – to reduce abuse by demanding that its U.S. and Canadian suppliers use a less cruel slaughter method.’ In one demonstration in Chicago, the comedian and animal-rights activist Andy Dick dressed up as Ronald McDonald and wielded a prop cleaver to ‘scare’ McDonald’s management into changing company policy. Afterwards Dick said, ‘if kids knew how chickens were mutilated for McNuggets, they’d burst into tears every time Ronald McDonald showed his face – and that may well happen when they see what this clown has to say about it.’15
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine released a 30-second anti-McDonald’s commercial depicting a corpse lying in a morgue, a partially eaten hamburger still in his lifeless hand. A McDonald’s golden arch logo appears on the corpse’s feet along with the words, ‘I was lovin’ it.’ The voice-over says, ‘High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian.’16 Few television stations aired the commercial, but the advertisement received extensive visibility on television news programmes, in newspapers and online. By 2015, 1.7 million viewers had watched it on YouTube. McDonald’s, the National Restaurant Association and others condemned the advertisement, calling it ‘irresponsible’.
On the subject of irresponsibility, Google’s new YouTube Kids app features extensive fast-food advertising. McDonald’s has its own ‘branded channel’, where it advertises extensively. One promotion dubbed ‘The Unapologetic Big Mac’ warns: ‘All vegetarians, foodies and gastronauts, kindly avert your eyes.’ The camera then turns to a Big Mac and the narrator announces, ‘You can’t get juiciness like this from soy or quinoa.’ It focuses on the lettuce and announces, ‘Nor will this ever be kale.’ The company also paid for large billboards directing readers to ‘Go Beefetarian’ and buy the company’s triple cheeseburger.17 The sign didn’t report that their triple cheeseburger had 510 calories, 27 grams of fat and 1150 mg of sodium.18
A coalition of U.S. organizations – the Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Children Now, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Corporate Accountability International and Public Citizen – have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming that these advertisements were excessive and deceptive, violating the FTC’s restrictions against marketing junk food to children.19
Many animal rights advocates are vegetarians or vegans. Vegetarians, who eat no meat, poultry or seafood, and vegans, who do not eat animals or animal products, such as milk, eggs and cheese, have been among the most ardent opponents of fast-food culture. Vegetarians of all stripes have campaigned against intensive animal feeding operations, slaughterhouse and meatpacking procedures and fast-food chains.
In 1990, in response to criticism of the cholesterol content of their fries, McDonald’s announced with considerable fanfare that the chain would discontinue the use of beef fat for cooking fries and switch to vegetable oil (with ‘added natural flavorings’). In 2001 vegetarians initiated a class-action suit against McDonald’s, claiming that the company had concealed its continued use of an animal product in the frying oil. Similar suits were filed in four other states. When the news of the American lawsuit reached India, there was outrage among vegetarians. A Hindu fundamentalist group ransacked a McDonald’s in a Bombay suburb, and another group of demonstrators surrounded one of the chain’s locations and smeared cow dung on a statue of Ronald McDonald. The company denied that anything other than 100 per cent vegetable oil was used to cook fries in its outlets in India.
McDonald’s management admitted that ‘minuscule’ amounts of beef flavouring had been added to the oil. In the settlement McDonald’s agreed to donate $10 million to vegetarian, Hindu and other groups, such as Muslims who eat meat only in accordance with halal procedures. Funds approved by the court were distributed to twelve organizations, including two Muslim groups that were not vegetarian. Two other groups that received funds were the Department of Nutrition at Tufts University, which critics claimed was opposed to vegetarianism, and the Nutrition Department at the University of North Carolina, chaired by Dr Steven Zeisel, ‘a notorious animal experimenter’, claimed a vegetarian.20
McDonald’s also published an apology online, stating that ‘We regret that we did not provide these customers with complete information, and we sincerely apologize for any hardship that these miscommunications have caused.’ McDonald’s also made it clear, however, that they had never stated that their french fries were a vegetarian food.21
When meatpackers process animal carcasses, they strive to get every bit of usable tissue off the skeleton. The traditional equipment for scraping meat from bones sometimes removed small fragments of bone as well, and occasionally pieces of the animals’ spinal columns. The latter became a major problem with the emergence of mad cow disease – bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a degenerative brain disease seen in cattle, and its human counterpart, variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (VCJD). BSE, first discovered in the UK in 1986, devastated the English cattle industry and killed 176 people in Britain. It is thought that people developed VCJD after consuming undercooked meat contaminated with BSE, and that the most likely vector was ‘mechanically recovered meat’, especially brain, spinal cord and other organ tissue.
In 2001 Eldon N. Roth, an inventor and founder of Beef Products (today IBP) in South Dakota, discovered a new way to remove edible pieces of meat, fat and gristle from bones by using a centrifuge. These trimmings were then liquefied and used for making canned pet food. Roth thought that this substance could also be added to ground beef for hamburgers. To be on the safe side, Roth injected the scraps with ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH), which killed potential pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. Coli. Ammonium hydroxide was (and is) approved for use in food by the U.S. Federal Safety and Inspection Service.
Roth called his new product ‘lean, finely textured beef’ (LFTB). It was approved for human consumption by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and in 2001 Beef Products began to sell ground beef with LFTB. The combination had several obvious advantages: it was cheaper and leaner than normal hamburger, and it tasted the same. What’s more, it could be labelled ‘all beef’ because, technically, it was. LFTB quickly became an important ingredient in ground beef sold in American supermarkets and fast-food chains, and it was distributed to schools through the federal National School Lunch Program. By 2009 about 70 per cent of ground beef sold in America contained LFTB.
When Michael Moss, a New York Times reporter, was researching an article on food safety, he filed a freedom of information request with the USDA regarding the safety of American beef. Among the many documents he received was a copy of an email from Gerald Zirnstein, a microbiologist working for the USDA. Zirnstein had been tasked with examining the make-up of ground beef to determine whether it met federal regulations. In some ground beef that he tested, he found LFTB. In 2002 he wrote an email stating that he did not consider LFTB to be ground beef, and that he saw allowing its inclusion in ‘ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling’. Zirnstein referred to LFTB as ‘pink slime’.
Moss’s article on food safety was published in December 2009, and included a quotation from Zirnstein’s email mentioning pink slime. Nothing dangerous had been uncovered about LFTB in the eight years that it had been used, and Moss’s article generated little interest. This changed with the British chef Jamie Oliver’s television show Food Revolution, which aired on 11 April 2011 in the U.S. Oliver revealed the facts about pink slime, calling it ‘shit’ (the word was bleeped out) and claiming that it was not fit for human consumption. The term ‘pink slime’ went viral on the Internet. Newspapers and television programmes picked up the story, and a chorus of objections were heard around the country. Facing potential public relations disasters, fast-food chains, including McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King, quietly suspended their use of LFTB in January 2012. Others followed. Wendy’s proudly announced that they had never used hamburger meat containing pink slime. Despite the uproar, fast-food sales did not suffer.
The pink slime brouhaha was just one of many meat-related controversies that have haunted the fast-food industry. The public reaction was based on a deep concern about the safety of meat in the modern industrial food system in general and the fast-food industry in particular, and consumers have good reason to be worried.
Another beef scandal was the one involving Taco Bell and its seasoned beef. In 2011 an Alabama law firm, Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, filed a class-action lawsuit against Taco Bell chain for false advertising. What Taco Bell called seasoned beef was actually just 36 per cent meat, according to the law firm’s analysis. The rest consisted of extenders, binders and preservatives, including wheat, oats, water, modified corn starch, sodium phosphate, soy lecithin, autolysed yeast extract, maltodrextrin, soy bean oil, flavourings and other ingredients. If this were the case, they argued, it would violate U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines that require ‘beef’ products to be at least 70 per cent beef. Taco Bell denied that their advertising was misleading, and claimed that their seasoned beef was 88 per cent beef, with the addition of a ‘secret formula’ consisting of water, sugar and spices. Taco Bell carried out a major campaign on Facebook offering a free ‘crunchy seasoned beef taco’ to users. It became the largest promotion involving complimentary tacos in fast-food history.22 Taco Bell also threatened to counter-sue the law firm and its client. The firm dropped its lawsuit, claiming that Taco Bell had made ‘changes in marketing and product disclosure’.23
Yet another crisis overtook KFC China and other fast-food chains in China. On 23 November 2012 the State Television station in Shanghai reported that two of KFC’s poultry suppliers had used excessive antiviral drugs and hormones to make their animals grow faster. KFC sales in China plunged 37 per cent in a month. It was later revealed that KFC had been testing its poultry supply since 2010 and knew that it contained high levels of drugs, but used the chicken anyway and did not inform the authorities. The company reassured the public that it had expanded its testing programme, and cut 1,000 small chicken farms from its supply network, shifting to major companies, such as the Shanghai Husi Food Corporation, a subsidiary of osi Group of Aurora, Illinois.
KFC China sales had just started to recover when Dragon TV in Shanghai broke the news, on 21 July 2014, that Husi had sold beef, pork and chicken with expired safety dating to KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Dicos, a fast-food chain specializing in chicken that is owned by Taiwan’s Ting Hsin International Group. A television clip showed workers in Shanghai Husi’s plant picking up meat scraps from the factory floor with their bare hands, and reported that employees had mixed ‘stinky beef’ past its expiration date with fresh meat. Reports later surfaced that Burger King, Papa John’s Pizza, Subway and Starbucks locations in Shanghai had also received products from Husi, as had McDonald’s outlets in Tokyo and Hong Kong. The fast-food chains immediately withdrew all products received from Husi, and apologized to the public for the scandal.
Simultaneous with the stinky beef scandal in China was the horsemeat scandal in Europe. Although most of the horsemeat was sold in supermarkets, some was found in products made by companies that supplied beef to Taco Bell and Burger King in the UK and Ireland. In January 2013 horse DNA was found in beefburger patties sold in groceries. In some cases the horsemeat was almost 30 per cent of the entire burger. Some horsemeat originated at a Romanian-based slaughterhouse, and it was widely used throughout England and Ireland. Burger King UK admitted that traces of horsemeat had been found at one of its Irish suppliers. It then changed suppliers. Other fast-food chains were required to deny that their burgers contained horsemeat.
An independent investigation in 2008 of the content of the hamburgers sold in eight fast-food chains found that the actual meat content (defined as skeletal muscle) ranged from 2.1 per cent to 14.8 per cent. In addition to skeletal muscle, the study found connective tissue, blood vessels, peripheral nerve adipose tissue, plant material, cartilage, bone and Sarcocystis parasites. Their conclusion was that ‘Fast food hamburgers are comprised of little meat (median, 12.1%). Approximately half of their weight is made up of water.’24
Many religions have dietary codes, with forbidden foods, fast days, holiday specialities and dining customs. When people who follow religious laws encounter fast-food chains, conflict sometimes results. The Jewish dietary laws, known as kashruth, were outlined in the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and have been amplified by centuries of scholarly interpretation. The laws fall into three basic categories: prohibition of the consumption of blood, of certain categories of animals (such as swine or shellfish), and of combining milk and meat products. Animal slaughter must be carried out under very stringent conditions, and the handling, processing and packaging of all food must take place under rabbinic supervision. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations is the best-known certifier of kosher foods in the United States. Foods certified by this group are identified with a symbol consisting of a letter U inside a letter O.
In Israel most fast-food chains, such as Burger King, KFC, McDonald’s and Sbarro, have kosher restaurants. In the U.S. chains have kosher-certified outlets. Many Baskin-Robbins outlets are kosher, but a few flavours served at kosher outlets are not, and each store has a sign indicating which are kosher. Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Nathan’s and Subway have kosher outlets. Most are located in areas with large Jewish populations, such as New York City.
The laws of Islam, called sharia, are set down in the Qur’an and other holy works. The dietary laws identify foods that may be eaten – called halal, or permissible – and those that may not, which are classified as haram, or forbidden. The manner in which animals are to be slaughtered for consumption is also delineated.
In the U.S. KFC has served halal chicken in some locations for years; many halal outlets are in urban areas with large populations of Muslims.25 Other fast-food chains, such as Subway, that operate in the Muslim world are certified as halal. Halal meat served in fast-food establishments has become an issue in several European countries. In France the hamburger chain Quick has opened franchises that serve halal foods in order to attract customers from the country’s 6 million Muslims. Non-Muslim mayors and political leaders from left to right on the political spectrum vigorously objected to the outlets that did not sell non-halal options.26
In the UK halal food is sold in many Subway outlets. In 2010 McDonald’s UK admitted that some of its 1,200 British outlets had sold some chicken that had undergone halal procedures. It upgraded its practices to prevent this from happening. Christian groups complained that menu items with halal foods were not identified as such, and they requested that companies clearly label halal foods giving customers the option to choose what they preferred.27
Beginning in 2000, McDonald’s outlets in areas with high concentrations of Muslims in the U.S., such as Dearborn, Michigan, sold clearly identified Halal Chicken McNuggets and Halal McChicken sandwiches, but discontinued them in 2013 due to lawsuits by Muslims who claimed that McDonald’s was selling non-halal food labelled as ‘halal’.28
Along with animal rights and dietary laws, another objection to meat consumption at fast-food chains is world hunger. In her book Diet for a Small Planet (1971), Frances Moore Lappé argued that feeding vegetable protein to animals rather than directly to people was a waste of scarce resources at a time when many around the world were starving or suffering from serious nutritional deficiencies. Since large-scale intensive livestock operations are constantly producing more meat and dairy products, world hunger activists have bemoaned the fact that countless acres of crop land are used to grow food to feed animals rather than people. An estimated 90 per cent of the world’s soybeans and 33 per cent of its grain are consumed as animal feed. If people in high-income nations stopped eating meat, claim many advocates, the rest of the world could be better nourished, and crop land could be preserved, thus improving the environment.
Yum! Brands, the owner of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, has raised money to fight world hunger. In 2007 it launched the World Hunger Relief programme to support the efforts of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and other hunger relief agencies. In 2009 KFC teamed up with WFP to raise money for food assistance programmes in Somalia, India, Rwanda, Colombia and Ethiopia. As of 2015 WFP has generated an estimated $600 million in cash and food to alleviate hunger, making it the world’s largest private-sector hunger-relief effort.
Despite such meritorious efforts, an estimated 805 million go hungry around the world today, according to the United Nations. This number will likely increase during the following decades as climate change disrupts the world’s agricultural patterns, fresh water supplies decline, and the world’s population increases from 7 billion to 9.6 billion by 2050. The vast increase in meat production during the past several decades has been directly linked to the rise of the fast-food industry. Due in part to the projected global expansion of the fast-food industry, world meat production is expected to rise from 275 million tons to 475 million tons by 2050.29 Where the additional farmland will come from to grow crops to feed so many additional animals is unknown. Hunger activists, vegetarians, vegans, animal rights proponents and many environmentalists argue that it’s time to stop eating fast foods containing beef, pork, chicken and farmed fish, and begin working on meatless alternatives.
Unlike animal feeding operations and meat-processing facilities, fast-food chains sell their products directly to the public. Public disclosures about animal welfare, ecological problems, health issues and working conditions in multinational supply chains can damage a company’s public image and hurt its bottom line.
Chains have frequently responded defensively to criticism of their suppliers. When Eric Schlosser published Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about Fast Food (2006), his book for teenagers, and the movie Fast Food Nation (2006) was released, large food corporations and their trade groups, such as the National Council of Chain Restaurants, launched a coalition called ‘Best Food Nation’ intended to counter ‘critics of our food system’ who promoted agendas ‘using information that is inaccurate, misleading and incomplete’. After sending out press releases and publishing a few online articles praising the food industry and demonizing Schlosser, the ‘Best Food Nation’ coalition quietly disappeared. McDonald’s and other companies partly funded a website called TCS Daily, which published an article attacking Schlosser; two days later the article was removed. All these efforts accomplished was to give Chew on This and Fast Food Nation more visibility.
Fast-food chains have learned to respond more positively. McDonald’s has regularly launched media blitzes promoting new, healthy menu offerings and spotlighting workers who have moved up the corporate ladder at the company. Chains have responded to pressure from animal-rights advocates by requiring that meat processors handle and slaughter animals more humanely. After PETA and other animal-rights groups staged protests at McDonald’s, the company hired Dr Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and one of the nation’s foremost experts on animal welfare, to create new procedures for the slaughterhouses that provide the chain’s meat. McDonald’s threatened to stop buying meat from suppliers that mistreated animals, and auditors were hired to guarantee compliance. They make unannounced visits to slaughterhouses to make sure that animals are properly handled and stunned before being killed. The system that Grandin devised was supported by the meatpacking industry, and other fast-food chains, such as Burger King and Wendy’s, required their suppliers to follow the same procedures. Grandin has since proclaimed that U.S.-based slaughterhouses are more advanced than European ones in terms of animal welfare.30
Other fast-food chains have developed policies to reflect public concern and perception. Chipotle’s founder, Steve Ells, announced that the company’s mission was to serve ‘food with integrity’. The beef, chicken and pork used at Chipotle outlets comes from animals that have been treated humanely. Chipotle foods are free of trans fats, and the company uses organic and locally grown ingredients when possible. Its prices are higher, but its profits have been escalating while those of traditional American fast-food chains, such as McDonald’s, have not.
Fast-food corporations have taken micro-steps in the right direction, but they need to take more responsibility for controlling the unsustainable harm caused by their meat suppliers and improve the nutritional content of the beef, pork and chicken that they serve. Harvey Blatt, author of America’s Food: What You Don’t Know About What You Eat (2011), offered an easier solution: ‘Perhaps children at fast-food restaurants should be told by Ronald McDonald that hamburgers are ground up cows that were killed by a metal rod shot into their heads before their throats were slit by a machete so their blood could be drained.’ He also suggested that children should be told that Willard Scott, who created Ronald McDonald, is now a vegetarian.31