Fast Food Nation, a non-fiction written by journalist Eric Schlosser, is that rare kind of a story, which turns the world upside down, for the facts enumerated in it are shocking. The author gives us a chance to learn more about the way the fast food industry functions and why it is not as innocuous as consumers like to think.
The appearance of the fast food industry has an interesting back story. Just like many other inventions, the first fast food restaurants were supposed to satisfy the needs of a new lifestyle of Americans, the nation’s car culture. The drivers found drive-in restaurants extremely convenient, for there was no need to leave a car and waste time. Not to mention that representatives of the working class finally got a chance to feed their families in the restaurants. It should be mentioned that the first drive-in restaurants changed the way the Southern United States looked, for enterprisers understood that it was more profitable to have a drive-in than orange groves, so the trees were cut down and the gardens were replaced with modern offices. New marketing techniques and national economic prosperity led the nation in the trap of consumerism.
Eric Schlosser pays special attention to continuous violation of labour laws by the owners of the fast food chains. To pay their workers less, they often hire untrained teenage workers, who don’t know how to protect their rights. What is more, the corporations do everything possible to keep its secrets. One of the brightest examples is closing of one of MacDonald’s restaurants in Canada, whose workers wanted to join the labour union in order to investigate the violation of their rights. This case shows that the corporations have enough power to disobey the law.
To satisfy needs of numerous fast-food restaurants around the country, the meat industry has to work non-stop. Being unable to keep pace with big meat producers, the independent ranchers went bankrupt. 4-5 thousand animals are killed in large slaughterhouses on a daily basis. This figure is rather scary. First of all, this over-production of animal products causes a great environmental damage and the consequences of it the mankind is going to see in the nearest future. The animals are killed cruelly, no matter how hard the owners of the slaughterhouses try to hide it, one should understand that there is no way to kill thousands of animals humanely. If animals’ rights are not the topic, which concerns the majority of the modern society, they can’t ignore the fact that the managers of the meat packing companies often hire illegal immigrants in order to hide the high death rate among their workers. What is even more important, that mean might be not safe to eat. Undercooked hamburgers can contain E. coli 0157:H7 which causes bloody diarrhea.
Eric Schlosser’s work shows that the mankind has one more urgent problem to solve. The task is to find the balance between amorality and efficiency of the modern market before it is too late.
