Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [186]
“The impact of McNuggets”: Quoted in Smith, “Changing Tastes.”
Twenty years ago, most chicken was sold whole: Industry and Trade Summary: Poultry, p. 21.
In 1992 American consumption of chicken: Cited in Linder, “I Gave My Employer a Chicken That Had No Bone,” p. 53.
Tyson now manufactures: Cited in Sheila Edmundson, “Real Home of the McNugget Is Tyson,” Memphis Business Journal, July 9, 1999.
and sells chicken to ninety of the one hundred largest restaurant chains: Cited in Douglas McInnis, “Super Chicken,” Beef, February 2000.
A Tyson chicken grower never owns: Interview with Larry Holder, executive director of the National Contract Poultry Growing Association.
141 Most growers must borrow: See Steven Bjerklie, “Dark Passage,” Meat & Poultry, (August 1994), as well as Dan Fesperman and Kate Shatzkin, “The Plucking of the American Chicken Farmer; From the Big Poultry Companies Comes a New Twist on Capitalism,” Baltimore Sun, February 28, 1999.
A 1995 survey by Louisiana Tech: “Economic Returns for U.S. Broiler Producers,” National Contract Growers Institute study, completed with cooperation of researchers in the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Louisiana Tech University, October 11,1995.
About half of the nation’s chicken growers: Cited in Sheri Venena, “Growing Pains,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 18, 1998.
“We get the check first”: Quoted ibid.
when the United States had dozens of poultry firms: See Marj Charlier, “Chicken Economics: The Broiler Industry Consolidates, and That Is Bad News to Farmers,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 1990.
142 “Our relationship with our growers”: Quoted in Venena, “Growing Pains.”
A number of studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: The most recent study, issued by the USDA’s Economic Research Service in May 1999, found “no evidence… that increasing [packer] concentration results in lower farm prices” — a finding considered absurd and ridiculed by a number of ranchers and economists. Quoted in Anthan, “2 Reports Focus on Packers’ Profits.” See also “Meatpacking: Where’s the Big Beef?” Bismarck Tribune, May 9,1999.
Annual beef consumption in the United States: See Chris Bastian and Glen Whipple, “Trends in Supply and Demand of Beef,” Western Beef Producer, October 1997.
A pound of chicken costs: Cited in Industry and Trade Summary: Poultry, p. 19.
“alternative methods for selling fed cattle”: Quoted in Alan Guebert, “Chew on This: USDA, Congress, Take on Meatpackers with Little Success,” Pantagraph, June 7, 1998.
143 Three of Archer Daniels Midland’s top officials: For the prison terms, see Sharon Walsh, “Three Former Officials at ADM Get Jail Terms,” Washington Post, July 10, 1999. For the cost to farmers, see Sharon Walsh, “ADM Officials Found Guilty of Price Fixing,” Washington Post, September 18, 1998. For a detailed account of the conspiracy, see Angela Wissman, “ADM Execs Nailed on Price-Fixing, May Do Time, Government Gets Watershed Convictions, But Company Still Dominates Lysine Market,” Illinois Legal Times, October 1998.
143 “We have a saying at this company”: Quoted in Kurt Eichenwald, “Videotapes Take Star Role at Archers Daniels Midland Trial,” New York Times, August 4, 1998.
many ranchers were afraid to testify: See Concentration in Agriculture, pp. 7, 29–30.
144 “It makes no sense for us”: Quoted in Kevin O’ Hanlon, “Judge Clears Way for Al-abama Lawsuit Against Nation’s Largest Meatpacker,” Associated Press, May 4, 1999.
Colorado has lost roughly 1.5 million acres: Cited in “A Report on the Conversion of Agricultural Land in Colorado,” Colorado Department of Agriculture and the Governor’s Task Force on Agricultural Lands, 1997.
eight of the nation’s top ten TV shows: Cited in White, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own, p. 613.
145 The median age of Colorado’s ranchers and farmers: Cited in Sam Bingham, “Cattlemen Organize Land Trust: Ranchers’ Group Works to Keep Colorado Properties Agricultural,” Denver Post, June 22, 1997.
thus far protected about 40,000 acres: Interview