Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food

While ranchers and cowboys are a key part of the American West’s mythology, more of them than ever are being driven off their land. Since 1968, McDonald's has been the leading buyer of beef, which they prefer to be “manufactured on a large scale with a uniform taste” (121). This means that they only buy from five beef suppliers and put a stranglehold on the beef market, “using unfair tactics to force down the price of cattle” (121). As meatpacking companies have grown more powerful, independent ranchers have found earning a good income harder, meaning that whereas twenty-five years ago, ranchers got to keep 62 cents out of every dollar spent on beef, nowadays it is as little as 47 cents.

Most American beef comes from places like Greeley, Colorado, “a modern-day factory town where cattle are the main units of production” (123). It is a grim place, where staff are kept low-waged in order to respond to the needs of fast food restaurants and supermarkets and often suffer horrific injuries on the job. As cattle slaughtering must be done by hand, this can expose workers to severe back and shoulder injuries, deep cuts, amputated limbs and chemical burns. The job is so terrible that most employees last only a year before they quit or are fired.