Chapter 9

- Compared with several decades ago, how common are food-related illnesses today?

In the book, you will find that every day in the U.S, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and 14 die. Over the past two decades scientists have discovered more than a dozen new foodborne pathogens other than E. coli 0157:H7. These pathogens include Campylobacter jejuni, Cryptosporidium parvum, Cyclospora cayetanesis, Listeria monocytogenes, and Norwalk-like viruses. According to the CDC, it is estimated that more than three-quarters of the food-related illnesses and deaths in the U.S have not yet been identified.

-How has the centralization of food production influenced the spread of food-related illnesses?

During this generation of people, meat production is more centralized than ever before. This is because fast food restaraunts or meat manufacturing businesses are trying to do everything they can to provide massive amounts of uniform beef. For example, McDonalds produces their hamburger patties the exact same way every time to get the same exact taste every time. This keeps consumors coming back for more, noticing that every hamburger will always taste just as good as the last. Although this is good for the businesses, people are beginning to suffer much more than they were just a couple of decades ago. The centralization of meat producing companies has gotten to the point where only thirteen large packinghouses now slaughter the majority of beef consumed in the U.S. In result, if one mass production of beef from only one packinghouse is released with the pathogen E. coli, almost one-thirteenth of the beef provided throughout the whole country will be infected with the lethal pathogen.

Chapter 8

- How does the injury rate in meat packing compare with the injury rate in other occupations?

In the meat packing industry, more than one-quarter of the meatpacking workers in this country- roughly fourty thousand men and women- suffer an injury or a work-related illness every year. There is also strong evidence that these numbers, compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, understate the number of injuries that occur. Thousands go unrecorded. The author also states that the injury rate in a slaughterhouse is about three times higher than the rate in a typical American factory.

- What kinds of injuries do workers in meatpacking plants typically suffer?

The author gives many examples of different injuries reported in the meatpacking industry. Lacerations are the most common, but many other examples are used. These injuries include tendinitis and cumulative trauma disorders such as back problems, shoulder problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, and "trigger finger," a syndrome in which a finger becomes frozen in a curled position.

Chapter 7

• What changes did IBP introduce to the meatpacking industry?

IBP opened a large plant in Dakota City, Nebraska. This plant not only slaughtered the cattle, but came up with a process of "fabricating" them into smaller cuts of meat. Instead of shipping whole sides of meat like The Jungle, IBP shipped the smaller cuts in vacuum-sealed and plastic wrapped boxes. This new way of marketing beef enabled supermarkets to fire most of their skilled, unionized butchers. IBP was then left with a ton of leftover bones, blood, and scrps of meat that were then used for things such as dog food. This whole new process of marketing kept the company making tons of money, because of handing out low wages, and firing a lot of workers.

• Why were newer meat packing plants located in rural areas rather than in cities?

IBP was among the first companies to notice that immigrants were willing to work for lower pay than American citizens would. Companies then started moving their plants into more rural areas because there were more immigrants living there than in cities. More immigrants started coming down to work for these companies, and the more money the companies would make.

Chapter 6

• What impact has the consolidation of the meat packing industry had on cattle ranchers?

According to the author, the five meatpacking companies, Armour, Swift, Morris, Wilson, and Cudahy, signed a consent decree in 1920 that forced the ranchers to sell off their stocyards, retail meat stores, railway interests, and lovestock journals. A year later, the Packers and Stockyards Administration, a federal agency with a broad athority to prevent price-fixing and monopolistic behavior in the beef industry was created. For the next fifty years, ranchers sold their cattle in a competitive marketplace. In 1970 the top four meatpacking firms slaughtered only 21 percent of the nation's cattle. Today, the top four meatpacking firms, ConAgra, IBP, Excel, and National Beef, slaughter about 84 percent of the nations cattle. This is one of the main reasons for cattle ranchers pay decreasing so much. Over the last twenty years, the rancher's share of every retail dollar spent on beef has fallen from 63 cents to 46 cents.

• What are "captive supplies" of cattle?

Captive supplies are cattle that are either maintanined in company-owned feedlots or purchased in advance through forward contracts. The captive supplies are maintained until cattle prises start to rise. That is when the large meatpackers can flood the market with their own captive supplies, driving prices back down.

Fast Food Nation- Chapter 5

-Who is J.R. Simplot? What connection does J.R. Simplot have to the fast food industry?

According to the book, J.R. Simplot was born in 1909. His family left Dubuque, Iowa the follwing year and ecentually settled in Idaho. Simplot dropped out of school at the age of 15, when he was in eighth grade. He sorted potatoes with a "shaker sorter," nine to ten hours a day for 30 cents an hour. He then bought a rifle, which he used to shoot wild horses. He skinned them, and sold their hides for two dollars each. He also cooked the meat and fed it to his hogs, that he sold in the spring for $12.50 a head. At the age of sixteen, he became a potato farmer.

Simplot had a connection to the fast food industry in a number of ways. He started his own potato sorting buisness in his cellar in Declo. After that, he came up with a method for trying potatoes. He became one of the principle suppliers of food to the American military during World War II. By 1944, Simplot had his own company at the calswell plant with about twelve hundred workers. By the end of the war, Simplot was growing his own potatoes, fertilizing them with his own phostphate, shipping them in boxes from his lumber yards, and feeding the scraps to his cattle. Later, Simplot came out with a method to the mass production of frozen french fires, which eventually led to Simplot selling his frozen french fries to fast food restaraunts around the country. Due to his huge invention of keeping frozen french fries tasting fresh, Americans went from eating about eighty-one pounds of fresh potatoes and fours pounds of french fries a year, to eating about forty-nine pounds of fresh potatoes, and almost thirty pounds of french fries a year. Ninety percent of those were fries purchsed from fast food restaraunts.

-How have potato farms in Idaho changed in the last 25 years or so?

The author states that since 1980, the tonnage of potatoes grown in Idaho has almost double, while the average yield per acre has risen by nearly thirty percent. But the extraordinary profits being made from the sale of french fries have bearly trickled down to the farmers. The current market for potatoes was desrcribed as an "oligopsony," by Paul Patterson, an extention professor of the agricultural economics at the University of Idaho. The increased productivity of Idaho farmers has lowered the prices of the fries even further, shifting more of the profits to the fast food chains. Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of friens at a fast food resatraunt, 2 cents goes to the farmer who grew the potatoes. This is pressuring the Idaho potato farmers to either get bigger, or get out of buisiness. There was then a new machine manufactured in Idaho by a company called Spudnik, to harvest potatoes. It could set a farmer back hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the past twenty-five years, Idaho has lost about half o fits potato farmers.