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OBSERVATIONS Fast-food fallout


In ways that Americans don’t often consider, the story of fast food is an envi- ronmental saga extending back to the 19th century. Before the mid-1800s the dominant meat in the nation was pork, not beef. As historian Ted Steinberg points out, swine have large litters, in contrast to a cow’s typical one calf; their gestation period is five months instead of a cow’s nine; and they eat almost any- thing, so they could forage freely, even on city streets (New York City officials used pigs as street cleaners until mid- century). Also, swine meat was relatively easy to preserve. As a result, according to Steinberg, hog butchers in 1849 were producing some 139 pounds of pork per American citizen.


Once refrigerated railroad cars could ship dressed meat from Chicago to Bos - ton, beef production became a national industry that helped make meatpacking cities such as Chicago into teeming me- tropolises. Not everyone was happy about this trend. In 1882, John A. Renggly, the city physician for La Crosse, Wis., feared that “the condition of many of the yards of slaughter houses” in town would lead to epidemics of typhus, scarlet fever, and measles. Large-scale meatpacking was disgusting and dangerous: laborers be- came ill in cold meat lockers, cut off fin- gers as they butchered animals, and fell into meat vats. The rise of King Beef helped make city life in places like Chi - cago and La Crosse quite unappetizing by the turn of the century.


Cattle ranching also had important ecological impacts on the American West.


Overgrazing weakened arid grasslands in areas like northern New Mexico during the 1880s and 1890s. Cattle and sheep feasted on native vegetation, which was replaced by weaker plants that could not hold soil as well as the original grasses did. Aggressive cattle ranching set the stage for a massive transformation of the entire ecology of the West, contributing to the terrible Dust Bowl of the 1930s. King Beef has had another lasting im- pact on our social as well as natural ecol- ogy: the huge fast-food industry. As Steinberg reminds us, the first per- son to cement fast food in the nation’s con- sciousness was Ray


THE FAST-FOOD INDUSTRY PROVIDES AMERICANS WITH CONVENIENT MEALS, BUT AT A SERIOUS


ENVIRONMENTAL COST.


Kroc, who in the 1950s partnered with the McDonald brothers, owners of a pop- ular hamburger restaurant in San Ber nar - dino, Calif. Kroc soon made history when he opened the first McDonald’s franchise, outside Chicago in 1955. A marketing genius, he offered bland food designed to appeal to the widest range of customers, from children’s Happy Meals to over eaters’ “supersized” options. He tapped into postwar suburban culture by replicating franchises in shopping cen- ters and housing developments. Like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford before him, Kroc understood a simple reality of American capitalism: whoever could de- vise the fastest and cheapest manufac- turing could become fantastically wealthy. To lower costs, he simplified and mechanized McDonald’s production processes, which allowed the hiring of unskilled workers; he also cracked down on unions. By the late 1990s McDonald’s was selling billions of its iconic hamburgers every year. In 2012 the company enjoyed revenue of $27.6 billion, and today it em- ploys 1.8 million people world- wide.


Undeniably, the fast-food indus-


try provides Americans with convenient, affordable meals. But these come at a seri-


ous environmental cost. Ranching, notes Steinberg, requires huge amounts of gaso- line to run farm equipment, consumes millions of gallons of water in an increas- ingly arid region, and (often with federal approval) overgrazes the land, which ag- gravates soil erosion. Critics have also attacked the industry, and McDonald’s especially, for cramming landfills with polystyrene and other packaging. McDonald’s executives soon realized that being a polluter was bad for business, and since the 1970s the company has tried to improve its environ- mental practices. In 1989 it worked with the Environmental Defense


Fund to reduce the amount of packaging for a Big Mac meal from 46 to 25 grams. Just a few months ago it introduced Fish McBites, from wild Alaskan pollock fish- eries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. While the US Environmental Protection Agency and others have cited such actions as ecologically responsible, others have a different view. According to a recent story on National Public Radio, for example, the MSC often certifies fish- eries on the understanding that they will take steps to become sustainable, not be- cause they already are sustainable. In the minds of many critics, McDonald’s is adept at “greenwashing,” to look good in the eyes of environmentally minded but unsophisticated customers. Ultimately, the story of fast food helps demonstrate how the everyday choices we make—to recycle or not, to bicycle to work or not, or, in this case, to go for the Double Quarter Pounder or not—tie us into our larger environment and situate us in a history that reaches well beyond the comfortable confines of Skidmore College.


Eric Morser joined Skidmore’s history faculty in 2009. His research and teaching include such subjects as the American West and en- vironmental history.


BY ERIC MORSER


FALL 2013 SCOPE 3


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