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Ethical issues the fast food industry faces
Ethical and moral issues in the food industry
Oppression in today's society
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Oppression has always been a concept that humanity has turned its head too. Whether that means a country is being governed by a dictatorship, an individual race being discriminated against, or immigrants in a country not being able to find adequate working environment. Even today, big businesses and individual supervisors are oppressing many people, specifically immigrants in the lowest jobs available. Books like Fast Food Nation and documentaries like Food Inc. have brought light to the situation of the grotesque, dangerous, and immoral environment in which many people are forced to work within the American food system. Situations like the ones discussed in Fast Food Nation also brings to attention the ethical principles of the labor force. Many people, however, argue that this cheap and efficient labor is not only a product of the dominant capitalistic society, but also a benefit to the marketplace and the economy. The people in big business would argue that paying people less than minimum wage and ignoring the high cost of safety equipment is acceptable because it is saving businesses money, which gives them opportunity to expand. Today, there is often little concern for these issues due to society being ignorant, indifferent, and having false-beliefs surrounding the labor force in the food system. The labor force is described in great length in the book Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser. He specifically discusses the working environment in the modern American slaughterhouse. Schlosser describes the brutal nature of the work by listing off some of the job description names such as “Knocker, Sticker, Shackler, Rumper, First Legger, Knuckle Dropper, Navel Boner, Splitter Top/Bottom Butt, Feed Kill Chain,” (Schlosser... ... middle of paper ... ... 80%. This solution, however, is considered too expensive and impractical to the cattle industry, and as a result is going unrecognized (Pollan 82). The food system is more concerned with profit, production, and efficiency, and this is why very little has changed in the last few decades. Although profit is a validly arguable for many people, the means in which to gain a high profit has become extremely unethical and hazardous to the general populations health. Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma. London: The Penguin Group, 2007. Food Inc. Robert Kenner. Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser, 2008. Farmer Working Conditions. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee. 2000. Agricultural Missions Inc. 11/26/11. http://www.ncccusa.org/publicwitness/mtolive/boycott.html
It is not just the animals who are being treated wrongly. The workers are vulnerable and suffer from injuries on a daily basis. This workforce requires so much protection, such as chainmail outfits to protect themselves from tools. From cuts, sprains, to amputations, “ The injury rate in a slaughterhouse is about three times higher than the rate in a typical American factory.” (238). Many immigrants come to the states, some illegally. Companies give their supervisors bonuses when they have little reported injuries as a reward for a spectacular job. Regardless, these supervisors do not make attempts to make the work environment safer. They threaten the employees with their jobs. They will put injured employees on easier shifts to heal so it will not look suspicious as to why they are in pain. Next to failing to report injuries, women in the slaughterhouses suffer from sexual assault. Male coworkers pressure women into dating and sex. Reported cases include men using animal parts on them in an explicit manner, making work another kind of nightmare. All this corruption and lack of respect for workers is all for a cheap meal people buy when they have the
The concept of discrimination is complex in the case of “The Big One” in this case, corporations in the United States of America such as Nike, Spalding, Microsoft and AT&T are not willing to change their ways of manufacturing their goods in third world countries and American detention centres, and this causes perfectly able bodied employees in the United States to become unemployed as more and more companies apply this measure to make additional profit for themsel...
The Omnivore’s Dilemma In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan challenges his readers to examine their food and question themselves about the things they consume. Have we ever considered where our food comes from or stopped to think about the process that goes into the food that we purchase to eat every day? Do we know whether our meat and vegetables picked out were raised in our local farms or transported from another country? Michael pollen addresses the reality of what really goes beyond the food we intake and how our lives are affected.
Fink explained that the title of her book “describes the painful and extended process by which women and ethnic minorities inserted themselves into the meatpacking workforce and redefined the struggle for recognition of workers’ rights”, (Fink, p. 3). Fink detailed that because the majority of the early meatpacking industry was centered mainly in the Midwestern cities which grew in part from receiving government help and contracts, the government then had some influence over labor in these packinghouse plants. Government regulations has strengthened the unions, improved the workers’ compensation, and “improved the conditions on their production floors”, (Fink, p.193). Furthermore, Fink also described that the entrance of Iowa Beef Packers in the 1960’s has resulted in the shift of the packinghouses from urban to rural areas which later on resulted to the government pulling away from “labor and toward business” (Fink, p. 193) which eventually weakened the union. Moreover, when the power of the union degraded, so did the incomes and the conditions of the workers on the production floor. In addition, Fink also explored how the union’s ability to represent the wage workers in the packinghouse has eroded with the admission of women in the workforce during and after the World War II. Although the union added women in the workforce, they were treated not as men’s equals and were paid cheaply less than men. Furthermore, Fink added that “Women’s position in post-World War II packinghouse continued to erode until the situation came a head with a passage of the Civil Rights of 1964” (Fink, p. 194) which was supposed to stop gender bias in employment but did not. Similarly, Fink mentioned that “contempt for women facilitated the meatpackers’ use
The need for affordable, efficiently produced meat became apparent in the 1920’s. Foer provides background information on how Arthur Perdue and John Tyson helped to build the original factory farm by combining cheap feeds, mechanical debeaking, and automated living environ...
From a financial and marketing standpoint, the effects have been catastrophic. In some areas, milk production has decreased by an average of two liters daily and calving index (efficiency at which new calves are produced) went down by an average of twenty days (Davies NP). Th...
Section 1: Typically, we need a well-balanced meal to give us the energy to do day-to-day tasks and sometimes we aren’t able to get home cooked meals that are healthy and nutritious on a daily basis, due to the reasons of perhaps low income or your mom not being able to have the time to cook. People rely on fast food, because it’s quicker and always very convenient for full-time workers or anyone in general who just want a quick meal. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation argues that Americans should change their nutritional behaviors. In his book, Schlosser inspects the social and economic penalties of the processes of one specific section of the American food system: the fast food industry. Schlosser details the stages of the fast food production process, like the farms, the slaughterhouse and processing plant, and the fast food franchise itself. Schlosser uses his skill as a journalist to bring together appropriate historical developments and trends, illustrative statistics, and telling stories about the lives of industry participants. Schlosser is troubled by our nation’s fast-food habit and the reasons Schlosser sees fast food as a national plague have more to do with the pure presence of the stuff — the way it has penetrated almost every feature of our culture, altering “not only the American food, but also our landscape, economy, staff, and popular culture. This book is about fast food, the values it represents, and the world it has made," writes Eric Schlosser in the introduction of his book. His argument against fast food is based on the evidence that "the real price never appears on the menu." The "real price," according to Schlosser, varieties from destroying small business, scattering pathogenic germs, abusing wor...
Speed, in a word, or, in the industry’s preferred term, “efficiency.” Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and for a half a century now the industry has devoted itself to shortening a beef animal’s allotted span on earth… what gets a steer from 80 to 1,100 pounds in fourteen months is tremendous quantities of corn, protein and fat supplements, and an arsenal of new drugs. (71)
We are appalled by the facts presented and we think that it’s not right anymore. The author wants us to see the truth behind the working conditions and feel like they are unacceptable. I feel as though we should protest the laws in place now that enable the dangerous conditions of these workplaces. As mentioned before, the “OSHA Reform Act” should be repealed because it prohibits OSHA from being able to inspect the factories. I think this is unacceptable and unethical because the act was put in place so factories do not lose money. Also, the rules in place at fast food restaurants, such as being trained before starting the job, should be more brutally enforced to ensure the workers’ safety. When I worked at a restaurant, the manager sometimes slacked on executing the rules so I didn’t know much about the job. I worked in a pizza restaurant that used cornmeal on the pans so the dough didn’t stick. When the cook took the pizza out of the oven, the cornmeal would fall on the floor making it slippery, but the manager never explained how to clean this up. Because of this, I would always slip on the piles of cornmeal while getting a pizza. Instead of owners and managers of fast food restaurants being worried about getting workers on the job more quickly, I think they should take their time explaining the job more carefully to prevent injury in the long
Fast food consumption is taking America by a storm and it is for the sake of our lives. Fast food relies heavily on industrialized corn because of how cheap and easy to grow it is. With that being said, animals are being fed with corn rather than being fed with grass. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Rich Blair who runs a “cow-calf” operation s...
From the start of the Civil War until the 1920's Chicago was home to the countries largest meat packing facilities; Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris. As much as 85 percent of consumer meat in the US came from Chicago's vast packing plants. Behind the companies were around 25,000 employees, making up almost half of the entire US meatpacking work force. Most of the employees were underpaid immigrants who spoke little to no english and made a meager one cent an hour. The highest an employee could aspire to was being a "butcher" who were considered the most skilled workers and made up to fifty cent an hour. Workers slaved away in gruesome, unsafe conditions for ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week. Laboring through the ear deafening shrieks of animals a slaughter, treading over slick blood soaked floors, suffering in unventilated rooms and constantly breathing in the vile, putrid smell of every that was the slaughter house. In 1904 the meatpacker union in Chicago went on strike and demanded better wages and working conditions, but the strike didn't even slow down p...
Since Michael Pollan received his Master’s Degree in English (“Michael Pollan: Biography”), he has written top shelf extraordinary books, some of which are New York Times Best Sellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A History of Four Meals, and many others (“About Michael Pollan”). Michael’s writing has won awards such as the World Conservation Union Global Award and the Genesis Award from the American Humane Association for his writing on animal agriculture (“About Michael Pollan”); therefor is credible enough to be writing about food and animals because he has been awarded in this subject. Moreover, Pollan is named one of Time’...
few ideas on the following subject. For many years, the meat packing industry of this
We live in an age in which we have come to expect everything to be instantaneously at our fingertips. We live in an age of instant coffee, instant tea, and even instant mashed potatoes. We can walk down the street at 5 in the morning and get a gallon of milk or even a week's worth of groceries at our discretion. Even though it is great that food is now readily available at all times, this convenience comes at a price, for both the producer and the consumer. Farmers are cheated out of money and are slaves to big business, workers and animals are mistreated.
Children today are suffering from both verbal and physical abuse, but a form of child abuse that is being overlooked is feeding children fast food on a regular basis. The leading cause of obesity in America is bad nutrition, and part of the cause of bad nutrition is the fast food industry. People do not realize how bad fast food actually is for the body, it creates bad habits for children by allowing them to think putting poison in their body is okay. Continually feeding fast food to children is abuse because of the sugar intake, weight gain and mental problems the fast food brings.