There are so many people that do not know what goes inside some meats. Some meats are infected with E. coli 0157:H7, some are not even cooked all the way and are not sanitary. Meatpacking industries have gotten better at sanitation and quality of their meat because of investigative journalists writing about the meatpacking and the fast food industry. Muckraking still exists as demonstrated by Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation.
Eric Matthew Schlosser is an investigative journalist who has written a number of “muckraking” books about a broad variety of topics. He has written a number of articles for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the Nation, and the New Yorker. His hard work earned him a National Magazine Award, and a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award. One of his most famous investigative journaling pieces was Fast Food Nation (Schlosser).
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He explains how one diseased cow can affect other cattle in a slaughter house, and he provides examples on how these diseases affect human beings. For example, he reports that one animal infected with E. coli 0157:H7 can contaminate 32,000 pounds of ground beef (Schlosser). Schlosser cites a USDA study that exposes facts about the percentage of cattle that have E. coli 0157:H7 in their system. The study claims that the amount of infection cattle is approximately 1 percent in the winter months and up to 50 percent in summer months. Even at the time when the percentage is the lowest, the infected cattle are still exposing E. coli to an extraordinary amount of ground beef (Schlosser). In Schlosser’s question and answer with PBS he stated that “many of the workers at fast food restaurants and meatpacking plants were eager to talk with me. They felt that their stories had not yet been told, and they wanted the world to know what was happening. Their help made "Fast Food Nation" possible”
...in the market. Diversified mid-sized family farms used to produce most of our meat, but now, only a few companies control the livestock industry. This has resulted in driving family farmers out of the market and replacing them with massive confined feeding operations that subject the animals to terrible living conditions that subject our food to contamination. Major food corporations are only concerned with minimizing overhead in order to deliver the consumer cheap food, regardless of the health implications.
Eric Schlosser enters the slaughterhouse in the High Plains to show behind the scenes of fast food and how it is made. He was not expecting what actually lies behind the cold doors of the factory. People remain to have the misconception of fast food being made in the restaurant. Nobody thinks about there being a dark side to it all. Schlosser pulls on his knee high boots and guides readers through a pool of blood to show where we manufacture our food.
Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry. " Constitutional Rights Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. The Web. The Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was an attempt to regulate the meatpacking industry and to assure consumers that the meat they were eating was safe. In brief, this act made compulsory the careful inspection of meat before its consummation, established sanitary standards for slaughterhouses and processing plants, and required continuous U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection of meat processing and packaging. Yet, the most important objectives set by the law are the prevention of adulterated or misbranded livestock and products from being commercialized and sold as food, and the making sure that meat and all its products are processed and prepared in the adequate sanitary and hygienic conditions (Reeves 35). Imported meat and its various products are no exception to these conditions; they must be inspected under equivalent foreign standards.
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...
One of the first thing Schlosser address is work-related injuries. Schlosser states that more than “200,000 [tennagers] are injured on the job” (Schlosser 122). To the reader, this may be a large number, but in retrospect, it’s actually tiny. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, a report regarding workplace accidents in 1998 showed that a total of 5.9 million injuries was reported. In comparison, 200,000 only makes up 3.4% of the nationwide injuries making fast food restaurants relatively safe in that aspect. Schlosser misleads his audience by failing to give it a sense of scale or magnitude. Next, Schlosser concludes that due to the increased job opportunities for teenagers, as a result, fast food restaurants had become a target for robbers and other violent crimes. Schlosser backs up his statement through extreme examples of robbery cases and a few obscure statistical reports. First Schlosser lists numerous extreme examples of violent crime cases that resulted in a homicide. “A former cook… became a fast food serial killer, murdering two workers… three workers…” (Schlosser 127). Schlosser hopes that these examples will appeal to the emotions of the reader, in order to persuade that fast food restaurants had become a hub for violent crimes. While he lists many examples of this, these are individual cases that resonate a rather extreme case. Schlosser uses these example to visualize to the reader, that this is how most robberies end up when it isn't the case. The use of pathos in these examples exaggerate the problem beyond the actual scope. While this may be effective, it fails to provide complete transparency between the author and the audience. The statistical reports Schlosser offers are outdated, ones like “ In 1998, more
The Author and His Times: The author of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser was born on August 17, 1959. Eric grew up in Manhattan, New York and also in Los Angeles where his father, Herbert Schlosser, was President of NBC. He attended the college of Princeton University where he studied American History, and soon getting his in British Imperial History. Eric’s career soon took off when he became a journalist for The Atlantic Monthly, quickly earning two medals in a matter of two years. After that he wrote Fast Food Nation in 2001 soon created it into a film in 2006 called Chew on This. As you can see, Eric Schlosser has a tremendous life and has written many articles and books, but only one thing has remained in common, they
‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser traces the history of fast food industry from old hot dog stands to the billion dollar franchise companies established as America spread its influence of quick, easy and greasy cuisine around the globe. It is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism that looks deep into the industries that have profited from the American agriculture business, while engaging in labor practices that are often shameful.
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.
...es of cattle, which resulted in the increase of suicidal reports. Slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies have amplified the amount of cattle slaughtered each hour to fulfill the amount of meat consumed in the United States due to the cause of fast food. The damage that fast food had placed on illegal immigrant workers and sanitary workers that are employed in slaughterhouses are as much as murdering the men and women, minute by minute. The growth of fast food is too fast for our voices to be heard and fast food had implemented too much innovation in agriculture today for us to fix. We can still change the society that we live in today, as long as we withdraw our arrogant and selfish thoughts on fast food and think of ways to improve and recover what the fast food industry had done.
One of the important things that they talked about in the documentary was the lack of safety inspections being performed by the U.S.D.A and because of that, cases of salmonella have increased exponentially. Based on the documentary “Food Inc” “in 1972, the FDA conducted 50,000 food safety inspections, in 2006 they conducted 9,164.” Another thing that was talked about in the the video was that the animals are forced to wade around through ankle high manure for days on end until they are brought to slaughter. They are also forced to subsist on a corn only diet. This is due to the fact corn is subsidized by the US government and it is cheaper to feed animals while also fattening them up at the same time. Cows are not biologically designed to live off corn; their diet should consist of only grass. Research shows this change of diet is causing a mutated strain of e.coli to form in the cow’s stomach that is acid resistant. This strain of E.coli is known as 0157:H7 that was stated in the movie (Food
In Eric Schlosser book ‘Fast Food Nation’ he discusses his findings of the fast food industry and exposes it for what it is. Fast food has been an American tradition for over half a century and it’s not a mystery why. Fast food is the most convenient, quick, and cheapest way to get a meal. Not only is fast food cheap and convenient, it’s also loaded with grease and fat to make sure it keeps you coming back. Fast food has become almost more common than eating at home with “about half of the money used to buy food spent is at restaurants, mainly fast food restaurants.”(Schlosser) Fast food is causing problems because of the unsafe slaughterhouse conditions, questionable quality of food, and its advertising towards children.
Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. A. Fast Food Nation. N. p. : Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.
Whenever we buy a product, we’re relying on both the company being honest with us about its contents as well as government regulations that do not always have the best interest of the consumer in mind. The first element to be included in my Food Bill of Rights is honesty. There are too many cases where American food has caused people to become sick and even caused fatalities because consumers do not know what they are eating. If you really look into the standards of what can be labeled as particular foods, the knowledge is really shocking. Consider the current policy of the United States Department of Agriculture; only 40% of beef is required for a company to label their products as such (Taco Bell’s Beef Problem). Further research shows the standards for meat in schools is lower than the standards for meat in fast food. Even with these outrageously low standards, there are still places to eat that don’t meet the requirements to label their products. Only a few years ago, Taco Bell was sued because they claimed their beef was 88% beef. However, when their meat was inspected it didn’t even make the required 40% minimum standard set by th...