Ég skrifaði fyrir stuttu grein hér, “Umkringdur ruslfæði”. Hún fékk ágætis undirtektir og langaði mig að fylgja henni aðeins eftir.
Þessi grein fjallar um nokkrar “staðreyndir” um skyndibitastaði, en þó aðallega um McDonalds skyndibitakeðjuna. Hún er á ensku og vona ég að það fari ekki í taugarnar á neinum, ég hafði ekki tíma til að þýða hana þar sem ég er að fara að sofa og þarf að vakna snemma í skólann á morgun.
Ath. þessi grein er ekki mitt persónulega álit á McDonalds, og firra ég mig af allri ábyrgð.
Grein upphaflega fengin frá: http://www.foodfirst.org/media/press/2002/mcdonaldsissu es.html
Compiled by Paul Hawken
Posted: April 25, 2002
- McDonald's spends more on advertising than any other brand in the world.
- It runs more playgrounds than any other private entity in the world.
- It gives away more toys than any other private entity in the world.
- During the vastly successful Furby giveaway in 1997, McDonald's sold 100 million Happy Meals to kids. Many of the meals were thrown away for the toy.
- Every month, 90% of the children between 3 and 9 in America visit a McDonald's.
- In a survey of nine and ten year olds, half of them said they thought that Ronald McDonald knew best what kids should eat. In China, kids said that Ronald McDonald was kind, funny, gentle, and understood children's hearts.
- The Golden Arches are more widely known than the Christian cross in the world today.
- McDonald's has 29,000 restaurants in the world and opens eight new ones a day.
- Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's said this: “We have found… that we cannot trust some people who are non-conformists. We will make conformists out of them in a hurry… The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.”
- The vast majority of workers at McDonald's lack full-time employment, do not have any benefits, have no or little control over their workplace, and quit after a few months.
- McDonald's jobs have been purposely de-skilled so as to be able to hire minimum wage workers on an interchangeable basis. One-third of fast food workers speaks no English.
- McDonald's and other chains are aiming for automated equipment that will require zero training and are nearly there. Nevertheless, they fight hard to retain hundreds of millions of dollars of government subsidies for “training” their workers. A worker has only to work for 400 hours for the chain to receive its $2,400 subsidy. In essence, the American taxpayer subsidizes low wages, automation, and turnover at fast food chains.
- Turnover is 3-400% a year. 90% are paid hourly, have no benefits, and are scheduled to work only as needed.
- Fast food pays a higher proportion of minimum wage to its workers than any other industry in America.
- In the late 1990s, the real minimum wage in constant dollars was 27% lower than in the 1960s. Nevertheless, McDonald's and other chains vigorously opposed raising minimum wages at the Federal, state, or local level.
- A typical McDonald's has fifty workers working 30 hours a week, thus avoiding the need for overtime.
- Managers make an average of $23,000 and work 50-70 hours a week
- Not one worker at McDonald's belongs to a union.
- The only time a restaurant was unionized recently was in 1997 in Montreal. The restaurant was closed just before the union was certified.
- McDonald's trade organization, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, has fought hard to prevent enforcement of OHSA regulations at fast food chains.
- Fast food restaurants are robbed more often by their employees than any other business.
- The average American now consumes three hamburgers and four orders of french fries per week.
- Due in part to the industrialization of agriculture driven by the fast food industry, the United States is losing farmers so fast that it now has more prisoners than farmers.
- The biggest seller of Coke is McDonald's. Americans already drink 56 gallons of soda per year. Coke wants to increase consumption of its products by 25% a year by focusing more on kids since the adult market is stagnant.
- McDonald's makes most of its profits on Coke, about a 91% gross margin. The food is a come-on which is why it is both sold and purchased at the lowest possible prices.
- The Center for Science in the Public Interest calls Coke liquid candy. Each can contains ten teaspoons of sugar. A significant number of teen boys are drinking five cans a day.
- 30% of American public high schools now sell fast food inside the schools.
- McDonald's uses a computer program called Quintillion that uses satellite imagery, GPS maps, and demographic tables to automatically site new restaurants. As one observer noted, McDonald's uses the same equipment developed during the cold war to spy on their customers.
- For decades McDonald's cooked their fries in 93% beef tallow, which meant the fries had more saturated fat than a hamburger. In 1990, they changed to vegetable oil after being hammered by critics. Recently, McDonald's was sued by a vegetarian Indian lawyer in Seattle when it was discovered that the natural flavor used by McDonald's in their french fries was made from beef.
- McDonald's is the largest purchaser of beef in the world.
- McDonald's buys from five large meatpackers. These companies have gained a stranglehold over the industry (just as in potatoes) that has driven down prices. Over the last twenty years 500,000 cattle ranchers have gone out of business. Over that time, the rancher's share of every beef dollar has fallen from 63 cents to 46 cents. The suicide rate amongst farmers and ranchers in the US is three times the national average.
- To satisfy and take advantage of the world wide growth of fast food, the large chicken and beef packers in the US are buying out local companies all over the world. Cargill, IBP, Tyson's control the world meat industry because of fast food chains.
- Chicken McNuggets were also cooked in beef tallow until public outrage caused McDonald's to stop. Even in vegetable oil, Chicken McNuggets contain twice the fat per ounce as a hamburger.
- Every time you eat a hamburger, you are eating anabolic steroids, antibiotics, and fecal matter. You can read it again. And it will still be true. You are better off eating a carrot dropped in your toilet than eating one dropped in your kitchen sink if you buy and use packaged meat.
- Feedlot cattle are also given shredded packaging, cardboard boxes, cement, and sawdust to put on weight.
- Cattle that go into hamburgers drink dirty swill water and dirty food. Until 1997, they were fed millions of dead cats and dogs purchased from animal shelters. They still eat dead pigs, horses, and poultry. (And chickens are fed dead cattle).
- Cattle are also fed chicken manure, which may contain tapeworms, Giardia, antibiotic residues, arsenic and heavy metals. Federal inspectors report that animals that are visibly diseased, cattle infected with measles, tapeworms, and covered with abscesses are slaughtered and processed into meat. This is why the industry and the USDA are pushing meat irradiation rather then safety, health, and inspections as a solution.
- One-fourth of the cows slaughtered is worn-out dairy cattle, animals most likely to be riddled with diseases, cancers, and antibiotic residues. McDonald's relies heavily on old dairy cows because they are lower in fat, cheaper, and allow them to say all their meat is raised in the US.
- Modern day slaughter houses and meatpacking plants are literally worse than in the day of Upton Sinclair. The rate of injury, mutilation, amputation and dismemberment of workers is extraordinary. Rapes, sexual harassment, and fondling of immigrant women are widely known. Most workers are immigrants and dare not report them.
- In congressional testimony, it has been revealed that injury reports are regularly and routinely falsified at meatpacking houses. All fast food chain meat comes from these four or five houses.
- Both the meatpackers and the fast food industry have been major supporters of the Republican right wing.
- The rate of obesity in the US is double what it was in the 60s. In children, it is double what it was in the 70s. The children of the United States are now the “fattest, least fit generation ever.”
- In 1991, only four states had obesity rates of 15% of higher. Today, 37 states do. Fifty million Americans are obese or super obese. Obesity is second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in America today.
- The annual health costs to America stemming from obesity are $240 billion. The costs are exactly double fast food chain revenues.
- Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast food restaurants doubled in Great Britain. Obesity doubled over the same period.
- The EU found that 95% of the ads there encouraged kids to eat foods high in sugar, salt, and fat. The company running the most ads aimed at children was McDonald's.
- According to consumers polled by Restaurants and Institutions magazine in 2000, the lowest-quality food of any major hamburger chain was served at McDonald's.