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Yujia Huang
Professor Hanvey
STACC 100
24 November 2014
Food Safety, Whose Responsibility?
Fast Food Nation, the book written by Eric Schlosser, was an exposure of the
social disadvantages from American fast food industry. In the first few chapters,
Schlosser told the history about how fast food was originated and developed in the
postwar United States and introduced many worldwide fast-food brands; then, he
analyzed several undetectable facts about the process of food production from many
perspectives. In order to improve the quality of public life, a lot of negative situations
that were claimed in the book should be reduced and eliminated in the fast food industry,
such as the obesity caused by the unhealthy food, dangerous working conditions in fast
food restaurants, animal abuse, and the unsanitary food producing environments. Food
safety became one of the most influential issues since consumers began to worry about
their personal health. In fact, the American food is still not safe enough for us today
based on Schlosser and other journalists discoveries and our daily experiences. In the
past decades, many horrible foodborne events already happened and warned us about
the harm of our meals. For example, Hudson Foods recalled 35 million pounds of
ground beef in 1997 due to the meat contamination (Schlosser 194); also, early at the
beginning of 1900s, Upton Sinclair depicted the muckraking facts of the meatpacking
factories and aroused a public panic about meat (Schlosser 204). Unfortunately, actions
taken by the government did not completely solve the threads of food safety.

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In chapter 9 of Fast Food Nation, Schlosser revealed what made up our meat
productions and how they violated our health. He explored the horror of E. coli O157:H7,
which was a mutated version of a bacterium found abundantly in the human digestive
system (199). According to the book, the way cattle were raised, slaughtered, and
processed provided an ideal setting for E. coli O157:H7. The ground beef that was
produced in unsanitary slaughterhouses and the meatpacking environments spread
most of the infection of E. coli O157:H7; thus, hamburger was considered as the major
food that caused foodborne illness in the country. More directly, Schlosser wrote, There
is shit in the meat (197) as the simple reason why food caused diseases. In addition to
the potential hazards of beef consumption, Schlosser illustrates how restaurants,
particularly fast-food restaurants, are unsanitary and result in potentially dangerous
conditions for food production.
Because of the unsafe meat, many children who had weaker immunities died at
young ages after being infected with the bacterium in their meals. Schlosser stated that
students accidently ate the food with E. coli O157:H7 from school lunch and had
digestive problems that leaded to the damages of their organs. The little boy, Alex, who
struggled under the torment of E. coli O157:H7 from a hamburger, lost his life at 6 years
old. The description of Alexs suffering followed by Schlossers explanation about where
the problem occurred: on the one hand, the cattle was fed with the remains of other
dead animals and trashes; on the other hand, workers in slaughterhouses would not
clean the meat when they were operating quickly. At the end of the chapter, Schlosser
criticized the weakness and corruption of the government on its regulation since the
meatpacking industry provided huge financial support to the Republican Party.

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Even though we live in the current period of America, we still have no idea about
what we are eating. We wonder how the food is grown and prepared, what the
components of our meals are, and whether the restaurant kitchens have access to
adequate sanitation. The consumers would keep questioning the truth of food industry
while food poisoning still take place. Based on Schlossers description in Fast Food
Nation and what we observe in the restaurant today, the American fast food is unsafe
and unhealthy to eat. The food safety is still away from what we expect.
Our food is unsafe because it is mostly processed in the disgusting and
contaminative environment. As Schlosser wrote, The overworked, often illiterate
workers in the nations slaughterhouses do not always understand the importance of
good hygiene. They sometimes forget that this meat will eventually be eaten. They drop
meat on the floor and then place it right back on the conveyer belt (203). Schlosser
revealed how the beef in the meatpacking is operated by most of the uneducated
workers. His words remind us that our food was not sanitized before it is sold in the
supermarkets, which is a warning of the existence of pathogens that are carried by our
food. The consumers will reject the meat if they see how their food was prepared before
placing on the clean, freezing shelves.
Another reason that fast food is harmful for us is the various ingredients. Food
producers add a lot of unnatural ingredients in order to maintain their food in good
quality for a long time. If you would study the ingredients in your favorite meals, you
would be shocked to see that most of them are chemical preservatives, artificial coloring,
and monosodium glutamate. In the article, Secret Ingredients, the author states,
Researchers tested mixtures of several dyes plus the preservative sodium benzoate on

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children not previously diagnosed with ADHD (Nicole, par 32). Food colors would
violate peoples health while they decorated the appearance of food. The author also
points out that most consumers would compare the prices carefully but ignore the
nutrition facts on food label as if they are unaware with what kind of things they are
taking in. As the author said, Food labeling can inform consumer choices. But people
with limited means must often select the cheapest rather than the most nutritious option,
and surveys indicate less-affluent people also are more likely to trust the safety of foods
(Nicole par 14). The consumers should improve their consciousness to understand what
food is good for them and what is not.
As a worker in a food distributor, my dad seems know more about darkness of
the restaurant than I do. While he delivers the food in the back door of the restaurant,
he can see how the chef cooks the customers food in the most careless way. There is
an unspoken rule in the restaurant: if the customers complain about their food and
request for a new one, the chef would spit in the new food after they recook it. Like my
father said, The employees in the restaurant never eat the food they make; the
busboys never wash the vegetables that are directly from the farm; the meat you eat
stay in their kitchen over month and you never realize the difference between fresh
meat and rotten meat after adding those food fragrance. Even though the fast food
tastes better than our homemaking food, my family still do not feel confidence on eating
the food that is served in the restaurant today.
Overall, not only the unhealthy fast food that Schlosser discussed in his book,
any food in America contains the potential dangers for the eaters due to the
unreasonable processing methods from the farms and slaughterhouses, the unhealthy

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chemical ingredients from the producing factories, and the unsanitary operation in the
restaurant. Also, junk food adds another layer of complexity atop safety concerns and
regulation discrepancies, which shape the country with increasing obesity. The United
States would be a worthy of the name Fast Food Nation that everyone would become
overweight and extremely unhealthy. In order to solve the problems in food safety, the
consumers should consider more for their benefit and protect their own health by
opposing the darkness of the food producers; and the government should improve their
regulation on food safety by enforcing more powerful laws to the restaurants. Everyone
should devote to change the situation in food industry in America because it matters for
the profits of all of us.

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Bibliography
Nicole, Wendee. "Secret Ingredients." Environmental Health Perspectives 121.4 (2013):
A126 -A133. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston:
Houghton

Mifflin, 2001. Print.