Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [207]
268 environmentalists criticized the chain: For the story behind the “greening” of Mc-Donald’s, see Sharon M. Livesey, “McDonald’s and the Environmental Defense Fund: A Case Study of a Green Alliance,” Journal of Business Communications, January 1999.
269 it continues to use them overseas: See “An Incoherent Policy,” South China Morning Post, May 15, 1995; Jo Bowman, “Little Relish to Scrap Burger Boxes,” South China Morning Post, October 24, 1999.
it would no longer purchase frozen french fries: For McDonald’s decision on biotech fries, see Scott Kilman, “McDonald’s, Other Fast Food Chains Pull Monsanto’s Bio-Engineered Potato,” Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2000; Hal Bernton, “Hostile Market Spells Blight for Biotech Potatoes,” Seattle Times, April 30, 2000.
Afterword: The Meaning of Mad Cow
Since writing Fast Food Nation I’ve come across a number of relevant and noteworthy books. Almost twenty years ago Orville Schell issued an eloquent warning against treating livestock like industrial commodities. Schell approached the subject not only as a journalist, but as an innovative rancher. Had the recommendations in his book Modern Meat (New York: Random House, 1984) been followed, the American meatpacking industry would have avoided many of the health scares and export restrictions it now faces. In The Great Food Gamble (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001), John Humphrys explains the mentality and the institutional changes that have led Great Britain from one agricultural distaster to another. George Monbiot’s Captive State (London: Macmillan, 2000) brilliantly outlines the corporate takeover of the British government during the past twenty years. Naomi Klein’s No Logo (London: Flamingo, 2001) offers a damning critique of global corporate power and the reigning cult of the brand. Klein has rightly emerged at the forefront of today’s young rebels. Tony Royle’s Working for McDonald’s in Europe (New York: Routledge, 2000) skillfully outlines how McDonald’s has exported its anti-labor policies to countries with long traditions of respecting workers’ rights. Among other things, Royle describes how the McDonald’s Corporation recruited low-wage workers in Bulgaria and Romania for its restaurants in Germany, providing these new immigrants with housing as a means of controlling them (see pp. 76–8). José Bové, the sheep farmer who became a national hero in France by demolishing a McDonald’s restaurant, offers a plea for sustainable agriculture in The World is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food (London: Verso, 2001). Written with François Dufour, the General Secretary of the French Farmers’ Confederation, The World is Not for Sale argues that important decisions about what we eat should never be made without considering their social costs and their impact on future generations. The most radical thing about Bové’s argument is how sensible it seems.
Two alarming books have been published about the risk of mad cow disease in the United States. Richard Rhodes’s Deadly Feasts: The Prion Controversy and The Public’s Health (New York: Touchstone, 1998) contains fascinating information on the health risks posed by cannibalism and a fine account of the detective work that linked BSE to the consumption of tainted animal feed. In Mad Cow U.S.A. (New York: Common Courage, 1997), Sheldon Rampton and John C. Stauber reveal how the beef industry and the federal government collaborated to thwart public discussion of mad cow. The duo’s efforts at the Center for Media and Democracy offer a necessary antidote to the P.R. industry’s relentless propaganda. As of this writing, the most definitive and disturbing investigation of mad cow disease is the sixteen-volume report on BSE submitted to the British government by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. Its official title is Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of Commons dated October 2000 for the Report, evidence and supporting papers of the Inquiry into the emergence and identification of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and variant