On chapter 9 of Fast Food Nation, Schlosser talks about E. coli and how its slowly eating away people. Something that caught my attention was when Schlosser talks about how the government cannot control the meatpacking callbacks, yet they can control any other industry. This interested me because if almost every typical American eats meat, should the procedure they go through be properly and carefully done?
- “Today the US government can demand the nationwide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves. The unusual power of the large meatpacking firms has been sustained by their close ties and sizable donations to Republican members of Congress.” (Bottom of page 196)
It’s interesting because it states that the US government cannot control meat callbacks in meatpacking industries but they can control any other callbacks. Meanwhile the US government should be able to control just about anything, the fact that they can’t control a big industry that can affect just about everyone, since everyone eats, it’s a scary thought because the meatpacking industry basically has so much power. Meatpacking industries take their power for granted since so many recalls have been made just in the past decade or even farther. If they have so much power, shouldn’t the government do something about that? It’s also interesting how Americans don’t pay attention to food poisoning that much; deaths have been reported because of E. Coli O157:H7 and people should be more aware and cautious but instead, the meat consuming percentage just gets higher and higher.
Dear Katherine,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about how the government claims that they are not able to recall fatal beef or other foods from the market, but they can recall lots of other items. In my opinion, its all lies. I think this is a good topic but you should do more research as to what the government can and cannot recall and laws surrounding that.
You would think that it would be more important to the government to want to control meat call backs as opposed to toys because meat is something that we actually ingest. Contaminated meat can just as easily infect goverment officals like it does everyone else. Just by reading this quote you can really get the idea of just how powerful the meat packing plants are in America.
ReplyDeleteI think if the government were the ones getting sick from these food borne pathogens, they would recall them in an instant, but the health of millions of other people obviously is not a top priority, I guess there are other things more important like recalling defective toys. This is a good topic you chose, because its interesting to hear how the government operates these days, sounds like it's all about money.
ReplyDeleteIts pretty clear now, the government also just wants to make money. Its a scary thought that food is such a touchy subject and the ones in charge, meatpacking industries, really dont give a s****
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