Fast Food workers across the nation went on strike on Thursday (“Hundreds of Fast-Food Workers Striking for Higher Wages Are Arrested,” NYT, 9/4/14) And if you walk into one of the chains--Burger
King, McDonalds, KFC or Popeye’s, to name a few--you might see what the brouhaha is all about. Many
of these outlets bear a strong resemblance to detention camps replete with a resident Sonderkommandant barking at inmates to speed up processing of the lines of
potential corpses coming in for their daily feed. The fact that many
fast food outlets are manned by minorities also creates the image of the
plantation, since the wages paid by these outfits amount to the equivalent of
slave labor. The movie Food, Inc. dramatized an infernal process that's camouflaged by the genius of
modern packaging and design. There used to be a rumor that through the miracle
of modern genetic engineering animal parts rather than animals were being
farmed. The prospect of such genetic
engineering may lie in the future. But in the meanwhile the conditions under which animals are raised for slaughter
on an assembly line like cars, with the precepts of both economy of scale and division of labor removing
any residue of human connection, leaves an ineradicable imprint on the process of
modern consumption. The food, those serving it and those being fed all lie at
the bottom of a modern food chain in which the natural world (and man’s organic
relationship to nature) is increasingly excluded. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal--the title of the Eric Schlosser’s book, is more apt today than ever.
