Fast Food Nation: What The All-American Meal is Doing to the World (52 page)

Norwood sponsored legislation:
In 1997, Norwood sponsored a bill (along with Congressman Joel Hefley from Colorado Springs) that essentially aimed to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. See “Hutchison, Hefley Introduce Proposals in House, Senate to Overhaul OSHA,”
Asbestos & Lead Abatement Report
, April 7, 1997.

repetitive stress injuries from skiing:
See Sarah Anderson, “OSHA under Siege,”
The Progressive
, December 1995.

The meatpacking industry’s lobbyists were delighted:
See Allison Beers, “USDA Plans to Change School Lunch Specs for Ground Beef, Pork, Turkey,”
Food Chemical News
, April 2, 2001; Marc Kauffman, “USDA Proposes to Reverse School Ground Beef Rules,”
Washington Post
, April 5, 2001; and Marian Burros, “U.S. Proposes End to Testing for Salmonella in School Beef,”
New York Times
, April 5, 2001.

roughly 5 million pounds were rejected:
Cited in Beers, “USDA Plans”.

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“For flavor enhancement”:
Quoted in Viji Sundaram, “Where’s the Beef? It’s in Your French Fries,”
India-West
, April 5, 2001.

“Eating a cow for a Hindu”:
Quoted in Laurie Goodstein, “For Hindus and Vegetarians, Surprise in McDonald’s Fries,”
New York Times
, May 20, 2001.

279
“We came to warn them”:
Quoted in “Hardline Hindus: Close McDonald’s,”
Ha’aretz
, May 6, 2001.

“If you visit McDonald’s anywhere”:
“Healthy Eating,” McDonald’s Corporation, Australian Web site,
www.McDonalds.com.au
, 2001.

adjusting its french fry recipe:
Interview with Anna Rozenich, the McDonald’s Corporation.

“We regret if customers felt”:
“McDonald’s French Fry Facts”, McDonald’s Corporation, May 2001.

“confusion” was the wrong word:
Quoted in Transcript, “Class Action Suit Against McDonald’s Claims Company Misleads Consumers About Fry Oil,”
CNN News
, May 3, 2001.

“We apologize for any confusion”:
The spokesman was Walt Riker, repeating a denial made on numerous occasions. Quoted in Transcript, “Class Action Suit.” See also “McDonald’s Apologizes,”
Calgary Herald
, May 25, 2001.

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“Thank you for contacting us”:
Letter from Beth Petersohn, Manager, Customer Satisfaction Department, McDonald’s Corporation, to Ms. Laura Strickland, May 5,1993.

the fast food industry did not gain any new customers:
Cited in Robert O’Brien, “Consumer Update & Industry Outlook,” NPD Foodworld, March 2001. See also Milford Prewitt, “COEX Attendees Upbeat Despite Economic Cloud,”
Nation’s Restaurant News
, March 12, 2001, and Peter Romeo, “Is Fast Food Ill?”,
Restaurant Business
, April 1, 2001. Romeo, the editor of
Restaurant Business
, subsequently spoke with me about some of the marketing challenges and economic problems that the fast food industry now confronts.

not only hamburger chains, but also pizza:
Cited in Robert O’Brien, “Consumer Update & Industry Outlook,” NPD Foodworld, March 2001.

at a cost of more than $70 million:
Cited in Jennifer Ordonez, “How Burger King Got Burned in the Quest to Make the Perfect Fry,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 16, 2001

a “K minus” program:
For the details and the rationale of “K minus,” see Richard Martin, “Taco Bell Accelerates ‘Value’ Exploration,”
Nation’s Restaurant News
, November 18, 1991; Ronald Henkoff, “Service is Everybody’s Business,”
Fortune
, June 27, 1994; and Tim Durnford, “Redefining Value: For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls,”
Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Quarterly
, June 1997.

fell by 9 percent in the fourth quarter:
Cited in Chuck Hutchcraft, “Off the Mark,”
Restaurants and Institutions
, May 1, 2001.

281
“We are not doing a great job”:
Quoted in Jennifer Ordonez, “Taco Bell Chief Has New Tactic: Be Like Wendy’s,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 23, 2001.

doubts on Wall Street:
For pessimistic views of McDonald’s financial prospects, see Ken Kurson, “Supersize Dread: McDonald’s Future is Smelling Worse Than Its Restaurants,”
Esquire
, April 1, 2001, and Alby Gallun, “McDonald’s Mid-life Crisis,”
Crain’s Chicago Business
, April 30, 2001. For a much rosier view, see Moises Naim’s interview with Jack Greenberg, McDonald’s CEO, “McAtlas Shrugged,”
Foreign Policy
, May 1, 2001.

doubling its sales within the United States:
Cited in Alby Gallun, “McDonald’s Mid-life Crisis.”

McDonald’s ranked just a couple of places:
Cited in Bob Krummert, “QSR Patron Picks and Pans; American Customer Satisfaction Research Shows Customer Dissatisfaction with Fast Food Restaurants,”
Restaurant Hospitality
, April 1, 2001. The survey was conducted by the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan Business School. It ranked two hundred national organizations on the basis of 50,000 consumer interviews.

282
acted decisively and hired Temple Grandin:
Grandin, an associate professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, has designed livestock handling facilities throughout the world. She gained renown for her ability to “see through the eyes” of cattle of order to minimize the fear and stress they experience before slaughter. Her commitment to animal welfare is heartfelt and unassailable. Grandin was profiled by the neurologist Oliver W. Sacks in
An Anthropologist on Mars
(New York: Vintage Press, 1996), and has published her own memoir,
Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism
(New York: Vintage Press, 1995).

According to Grandin:
Temple Grandin discussed McDonald’s humane slaughter program with me at length.

the enthusiastic support of the meatpacking industry:
Janet Riley, a spokeswoman for American Meat Institute (AMI), told me that the industry has eagerly backed the new guidelines devised by Grandin. Slaughtering animals humanely is a good idea, not just for ethical reasons; it also improves the quality of the meat. The meatpacking industry much prefers a program administered by McDonald’s to one administered by the USDA. McDonald’s inspectors are employed by meatpacking companies; their inspection reports are not open to public scrutiny; and the names of companies that fail an inspection are not disclosed. For the AMI’s resistance to greater USDA involvement in humane slaughter, see “Panel Gives Agriculture Dept. $2.5 Million,”
AP Online
, July 17, 2001.

I visited meatpacking communities in Texas:
Our photoessay, “The Most Dangerous Job in America,” appeared in
Mother Jones
, July/August 2001.

283
forever surrendering the right to sue:
See Tad Fowler, “In the Matter of Michael Glover vs. IBP, Inc. Workplace Injury Settlement Program, Judgement in Arbitration,” p. 3. The ability of workers to sign away their common law rights has been upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, which has given precedence to the sanctity of contracts. See Supreme Court of Texas,
Lawrence v. CDB Services, Lambert v. Affiliated Foods, Inc.
, Nos. 00–0142, 00–0201, March 29, 2001.

control over the job-related medical treatment:
See “Workplace Injury Settlement Program — Texas,” IBP, p. 7.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled:
According to the court’s perverse logic, companies participating in the worker’s comp system are not allowed to fire injured workers — but companies who leave the system are free to do so. See Supreme Court of Texas,
Mexican Railway Company v. Bouchet
, No. 96–0194, February 13, 1998.

When Lonita Leal’s right hand was mangled:
See Karen Olsson, “Chain of Casualties: How an Amarillo Beef Packing Plant Disposes of Injured Workers,”
Texas Observer
, May 22, 1998.

When Duane Mullin had both hands:
See ibid.

the world’s biggest and most powerful meatpacking firm:
See Kelly P. Kissel, “Tyson, IBP Agree to Terms on Chicken–Beef Merger,”
AP
, June 27, 2001, and Bill Hord, “Livestock Producers ‘Feel the Squeeze’ of Tyson–IBP Deal,”
Omaha World-Herald
, January 3, 2001.

$1.7 billion in debt:
Cited in Kelly P. Kissel, “Tyson, IBP Agree to Terms on Chicken–Beef Merger,”
AP
, June 27, 2001.

284
“If McDonald’s is requiring something”:
Quoted in Brasher, “McDonald’s Forcing Beef Industry,”
Associated Press
, March 13, 2001.

about a hundred people:
As of August 31, 2001, the number of confirmed and probable cases of vCJD in the United Kingdom had reached 106. See “CJD Statistics,” The UK Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit, September 3, 2001.

Roughly the same number of people die every day:
41,611 Americans died in traffic accidents during 1999 — a rate about 114 a day. Cited in “Traffic Safety Facts 1999,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 2000.

About 800,000 cattle with mad cow:
This figure was cited by Professor Jeffrey Almond, a member of the United Kingdom’s Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee. See Transcript, “Meeting of U.S. Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee, Gaithersburg, Maryland, June 3, 1999.”

If it takes about ten years:
For discussion of vCJD’s potential incubation period, and the implications for public health, see Charles Arthur, “BSE infection: This is a New Disease and We Are Entering the Unknown,”
Independent
, April 29, 2000; Dorothy Bonn, “Healthy carriers could increase vCJD risk,”
The Lancet
, September 2, 2000; Charles Arthur, “CJD Threat Could Last for 40 Years, Says Expert,”
Independent
, November 16, 2000; and David Derbyshire, “Scientists Fear Second Round of Human BSE,”
Daily Telegraph
, May 16, 2001. For a good review of the risk to human health, see Paul Brown, Robert G. Will, Raymond Bradley, David M. Asher, and Linda Detwiler, “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: Background, Evolution, and Current Concerns,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
, vol. 7, no. 1, January–February, 2001.

285
much as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl:
Nicols Fox astutely made this analogy back in 1997. See Nicols Fox,
Spoiled
(New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 331.

British agricultural officials were concerned:
See Volume I, “Findings and Conclusions, Section 3, The Early Years, 1986–88,” paragraphs 223–34,
The BSE Inquiry: The Report
, October 2000.

a leading manufacturer of pet foods:
The story of how the British pet food industry took the lead in defending the public from BSE can be found in Volume 5, “Animal Health, 1989–96, Section 3, Introduction of the Animal SBO Ban,” paragraphs 3.1–3.26,
The BSE Inquiry: The Report
; Volume 6, “Human Health, 1989–96, Section 3, Introduction of the Ban on Specified Bovine Offal,” paragraphs 3.91–3.203, ibid.; and Anthony Bevins, “How We Had to Rely on Pedigree Chum Firm for CJD Advice,”
Express
, October 27, 2000.

a good idea:
See Volume 6, “Human Health, 1989–96, Section 3, Introduction of the Ban on Specified Bovine Offal,” paragraph 3.201,
The BSE Inquiry: The Report. some of the nation’s cheapest meats:
See Judy Jones, “McDonald’s Takes British out of Burgers’,
Observer
, March 24, 1996.

The death of “Mad Max”:
See Allison Pearson, “How We Swallowed the BSE Lie”,
Evening Standard
, October 4, 2000, and Kamal Ahmed, Antony Barnett, and Stuart Miller, “Focus: BSE: How the Government Betrayed the People”,
Observer
, October 29, 2000.