Factory Farming, Animal Rights, and the Fast Food Nation

The Creation of the Fast Food Nation

The 1950s were a time of elegance, charm, and what many consider the apex of American power. When one listens to music from this era or looks at photographs, one can almost feel the happiness that people experienced, especially after the war-torn decade that preceded it. Looking at old family photographs, one also notices very thin, fit young men and women lying on beaches, smiling up at the sun without, seemingly, a care in the world. Today, however, a trip to a beach in the United States reveals a different picture: alongside contented sunbathers, one encounters a notable percentage of people who are significantly overweight. This is an observational statement, but one supported by years of experience — and the statistics presented throughout this paper will confirm it. The United States and many other nations in the developed world are experiencing a phenomenon largely unknown to earlier generations: obesity driven by an overabundance of food that is often chemically treated and cheaply produced.

One could argue that the 1950s, that decade of such glamour, started the obesity craze, since this is when restaurants serving fast food as we know it today became widely popular. That view is partly correct. Fast food, in a loose sense, dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times, but for the purposes of this paper the focus begins with White Castle, a restaurant that still operates today and that opened in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. Before White Castle, many consumers considered hamburgers to be low-quality food, assuming the meat was spoiled or substandard. It was precisely because of this perception that White Castle's founders decided to change the public image of the burger. They allowed customers to watch their hamburgers being prepared and painted all their buildings white to signal cleanliness and trustworthiness.

White Castle, however, lacked something a future competitor would perfect: the assembly-line system of food preparation. McDonald's was the first restaurant to utilize this approach, beginning the process in 1948 when the McDonald brothers opened their own restaurant. The 1950s then triggered a boom; Burger King and Taco Bell soon followed. The McDonald's system proved enormously successful and survives in various forms across the industry today. According to the National Restaurant Association, fast food sales in the U.S. have totaled over $160 billion in recent years. The industry continues to expand worldwide, with companies like McDonald's growing not by hundreds but by thousands of locations as they push into Europe, Asia, and other markets.

According to research on the economics of fast food, however, McDonald's and similar chains are not always welcomed abroad. Fast food restaurants have been attacked — sometimes literally — in countries including the United States, China, France, Russia, India, and Sweden, with protesters accusing these establishments of selling unhealthy food and undermining children's health as well as the richness of local culture.

Reception and the Central Research Question

A separate but closely linked issue involves animal rights, which is directly connected to whether these restaurants are producing food that Americans — and global citizens more broadly — should be eating. This is one of the most consequential questions facing contemporary society. This paper therefore examines how the rise of the fast food industry has affected our world, and in particular how that rise relates to the treatment of animals and to animal rights, by exploring the accusations outlined above.

As demand from fast food chains has grown exponentially over the past fifty years, companies have required consistent-tasting food in massive quantities to be shipped to every corner of the world — a logistical challenge without historical precedent. The industry's success in meeting that challenge reflects its ability to optimize every stage of the food production lifecycle, from the crops fed to livestock down to the packaging of the finished product. In the early days of fast food, menus were extremely slim, rarely extending beyond hamburgers and French fries.

A Problem in America?

As businesses developed, so did their menu offerings, including items positioned as healthier alternatives to traditional fast food. The push toward healthier options began with the simple salad and expanded to include smaller-portioned items, fruit alternatives to high-sugar drinks, low-calorie wraps, and French fries cooked in healthier oils with less salt. In some regions, menus now display calorie counts next to each item so that consumers can make more informed choices. The twenty-first century fast food industry is forward-looking, expanding relentlessly across the globe while developing increasingly sophisticated menu options.

According to the feature film Food, Inc., however, a fundamental problem persists: the dilemma of industrialized food versus human health has been growing for decades. As the film states, "high calorie, sugar-laden processed foods coupled with our sedentary lifestyles is growing our waistlines and contributing to serious health issues like diabetes, heart ailments and cancers. One-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" (Food, Inc.). The film exposes the fast food industry — and the food industry in general — in ways it had never before been exposed, and the results are troubling. The fast food industry is enormously profitable, and consumer demands, particularly around price, are extreme; yet the film makes clear just how poor the nutritional quality of the resulting food truly is.

One driving force behind this problem is the practice known as factory farming. This concept first appeared in the 1920s when an over-delivery of several hundred chicks arrived at a small farm. According to industry history, "instead of returning the overage, the farmer decided to keep them indoors through the winter. The chicks survived and almost ten years later, she had increased her flock to 250,000. Although this was chicken feed by today's standards, the seeds of chicken factory farming were planted" (Factory Farming). It was in the 1970s, however, that the first true animal factories appeared, initially focused on egg production. Although advances in technology made certain processes more cost-effective, they also brought significant unintended consequences.