여전히 패스트푸드 국가: Eric Schlosser는 10년 뒤를 생각한다

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/12/still-a-fast-food-nation-eric-schlosser-reflects-on-10-years-later.html

Ten years after his seminal book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser reflects on how little has changed in the production, safety, and consumption in America—but why he’s still hopeful.

More than a decade has passed since Fast Food Nation was published, and I’d love to report that the book is out of date, that the many problems it describes have been solved, and that the Golden Arches are now the symbol of a fallen empire, like the pyramids at Giza. Sadly, that is not the case. Every day about 65 million people eat at a McDonald’s restaurant somewhere in the world, more than ever before. The annual revenues of America’s fast-food industry, adjusted for inflation, have risen by about 20 percent since 2001. The number of fast-food ads aimed at American children has greatly increased as well. The typical preschooler now sees about three fast-food ads on television every day. The typical teenager sees about five. The endless barrage of ads, toys, contests, and marketing gimmicks has fueled not only fast-food sales, but also a wide range of diet-related illnesses. About two thirds of the adults in the United States are obese or overweight. The obesity rate among preschoolers has doubled in the past 30 years. The rate among children aged 6 to 11 has tripled. And by some odd coincidence, the annual cost of the nation’s obesity epidemic—about $168 billion, as calculated by researchers at Emory University—is the same as the amount of money Americans spent on fast food in 2011.

Throughout both terms of President George W. Bush’s administration, every effort to reform the nation’s food-safety system was blocked by the White House and by Republicans in Congress. During the summer of 2002, ground beef from the ConAgra slaughterhouse in Greeley, Colo., was linked to an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7. The outbreak killed one person and sickened at least 46.

ConAgra voluntarily recalled almost 19 million pounds of potentially contaminated meat, less than a month’s worth of production at Greeley. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Inspector General subsequently found that the plant had been shipping beef tainted with E. coli O157:H7 for nearly two years. The Greeley recall later seemed minuscule compared to that of the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. In 2008 Westland/Hallmark agreed to recall 143 million pounds of potentially contaminated ground beef after an undercover video showed downer cows being dragged by forklift into a slaughterhouse. More than one fourth of the recalled meat had been purchased to make tacos, chili, and hamburgers for federal school-lunch and nutrition programs. As of this writing, the USDA still lacks the authority to test widely for dangerous pathogens, to set enforceable limits on those pathogens, and to demand the recall of contaminated meat.

The industry-friendly policies of the Bush administration also reduced government oversight of worker safety. In 2002 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration changed the form that meatpacking companies must use to report injuries. The new form had no space to report musculoskeletal disorders caused by repetitive trauma—thereby preventing a whole category of serious injury from being counted. Instantly, as if by magic, the injury rate in meatpacking dropped by almost 50 percent. “Recordable safety incident rate in plants cut in half since 1996,” the American Meat Institute proudly announced in a press release, without ever mentioning that the decline was due to the change in record keeping. In a scathing report on the exploitation of American meatpacking workers, Human Rights Watch suggested that the AMI had deliberately chosen the year 1996, as a basis of comparison, to mislead the public. “A 50 percent drop in meat and poultry industry injury rates in a single year would be implausible,” the report noted, “but reaching back six years creates an impressive but fictitious improvement in plant safety.”

A few years later the AMI claimed that “recordable injuries” had actually fallen by 70 percent, thanks to the meatpacking industry’s concern for worker safety. The claim was made in an AMI pamphlet commemorating the 100th anniversary of The Jungle’s publication.

The title of the pamphlet—“If Upton Sinclair Were Alive Today ... He’d Be Amazed by the U.S. Meat Industry”—was perhaps its most accurate assertion. Sinclair would no doubt be amazed. He would be amazed by how little has fundamentally changed over the past century, by how poor immigrant workers are still routinely being injured, and by how the industry’s lies, no matter how brazen, are still said with a straight face.

Emile Wamsteker, Bloomberg / Getty Images

Despite all the needless harm that continues to be done, much has changed for the better since 2001, when Fast Food Nation appeared in bookstores. Issues that were rarely discussed in the mainstream media—food safety, animal welfare, the obesity epidemic, the ethics of marketing junk food to children, the need for a new and sustainable agricultural system—have become inescapable. A food movement has arisen across the country, promoted by authors, activists, and filmmakers. Marion Nestle’s Food Politics (2002), Frances and Anna Lappé’s Hope’s Edge (2003), Matthew Scully’s Dominion (2003), Carlo Petrini’sSlow Food (2004), Deborah Koons Garcia’s The Future of Food (2004), Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004), Franny Armstrong’s McLibel (2005), Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), Aaron Woolf’s King Corn(2008), Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved (2008), Robby Kenner’s Food, Inc.(2008), Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland (2011), the reporting of Tom Philpott, the essays of Corby Kummer and Mark Bittman, the many books of Wendell Berry and Alice Waters, Jamie Oliver’s televised Food Revolution—all of these works have combined to create a new food culture in the United States. That culture rejects highly processed foods, genetically modified foods, and the whole industrial approach to food production. It champions farmers’ markets, school gardens, healthy school lunches, and local and organic production. And it has caused a sea change in American attitudes toward food. A decade ago, the idea of an organic garden at the White House would have seemed inconceivable.