That Eric Schlosser quote I was telling Marcy about yesterday. 15 August 2007 9:56 am
Posted by Tracy in : books,cooking,eating,meat,politics,work , trackbackSo yesterday I published a very long Ask TracyFood answer to a relatively short question from the stupendously awesome Marcy, and made a reference to Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser — a book I highly recommend, by the way, and in particular for the chapters about the meat processing and packing industry, because holy sweatshops, Batman! I could go on and on but instead I will note that Schlosser appears to have learned a few important lessons from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, in particular that reporting on gross working conditions get less attention (and hence, inspires less public support for reform) than muckraking about gross stuff in food, which gets people all freaked out and maybe even agitated enough to clamor for better food safety. In the concluding chapter (epilogue) of Fast Food Nation, he writes:
Far more Americans are severely harmed every year by food poisoning than by illegal drug use. And the harms caused by food poisoning are usually inadvertent and unanticipated. People who smoke crack know the potential dangers; most people who eat hamburgers don’t. Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior. (Fast Food Nation 264)
I had to emphasize that sentence, because it cracks me up every time. Schlosser goes on to mention that some of the meatpacking plant workers he met preferred to work on days when they were processing beef for export to the EU, because they would slow down the pace so that work could be performed more carefully, to meet the tougher European inspection standards. Eek.
Anyway, that’s your food for thought for today. Tomorrow: my favorite cookbook, which just happens to be vegetarian!
