Common Food Exemptions

The food industries have much persuasion over regulatory organizations and can therefore assist in establishing laws that protect them. One of the ways that the food industries assist in establishing laws that protect them is through CFE s or Common Farming Exemptions. CFEs make any action legal as long as it is commonly practiced in the industry. In the book Eating animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, he agrees with my statement when he asserts that “ If the industry(food industry) adopts a practice—hacking off unwanted appendages with no painkillers, for example, but you can let your imagination run with this—it automatically becomes legal”(Foer,51). CFEs are an absurd proposition because this allows for cruelty to pervade throughout the food industries. For instance, if companies suddenly embraced a policy of hacking dogs for enjoyment. This practice would become legal. In my opinion even though CFEs are enacted state by state the practices will still almost certainly be completely ridiculous wherever they exist.

Farmer debt

The documentary, Food Inc by Robert Kenner demonstrates how multinational corporations purposely manipulate consumers, workers, and even animals to reduce costs and increase production. The farmers are greatly effected by this one-sided control of the farming industry. Carole Morison, a Perdue farmer describes this situation brilliantly when she says  “ “the corporations keep the farmers under their thumb because of the debt the farmers  accrue. “they(farmers) have no say in their business, and it is like being a slave to the companies(food Inc). Since the companies mainly develop the contract and not the farmers, the companies use that opportunity to make necessary components of farming extravagantly expensive in order to make the farmers accrue a massive amount of debt. For example a typical grower with two chicken houses has borrowed over $500,000 and  earns about $18,000 a year. This distance in earnings per year and the amount of money needed for a important part of farming for multinational companies is what forces farmers into this black hole of debt.

According to Eric Shlosser, Unifromity is the way a franchise attempts to maintain the same service as well as the same product in all of its various locations.(pg5)  Uniformity is of the utmost importance comments, Ray kroc.”We have found out … that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists, and “We will make conformists out of them in hurry… The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization(pg5). The rationale for this is provide to the patrons a sense of reassurance and regularity ; a “brand essence”. Since more than 70 percent of restaurant trips are impulsive, the customers should feel like they can expect the same service and product that they had in New York  City to be comparable with the one they have in Dallas. Uniformity is also useful in the kitchen area. As the workers obey specific standards to complete one task the food looks and tastes the same.

Blog #1

In fast food nation, Eric Schlosser defines encroachment as a situation where a member of the same fast food chain is put closer to one another. This act causes many franchises a loss of business, but does not affect franchisors because the bulk of their profit comes from royalty sales. A group of McDonald’s franchises, displeased  with the chain’s encroachment,  formed  an organization called Consortium Members, Inc. The fast food chains are periodically sued by franchisees for mishandled decisions like: unfair terminations  of contracts,  inflated prices charged by suppliers, and encroachment. During, the 1990‘s the most accused of these abuses was the subway franchise. Dean Sager, a former staff economist for the U.S. House of Representatives called Subway the worst franchise in America. “ Subway is the biggest problem in franchising,” Sager told Fortune magazine in 1998, “ and emerges as one of the key examples of every [franchise] abuse you can think of.