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What is McDonald's?
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Written originally by someone of the London Greenpeace
Copied from McDeath (http://www.newveg.av.org/McDonald's.htm).


McDonald's is an international corporate machine
out of control that brings environmental harm to the
world, contributes more to human disease i.e. heart
attacks, cancer, stroke, etc. than anyone in the
world, is the number one killer of animals in the
world, underpays and exploits it's workers, and
brainwashes innocent children into eating high-fat,
cholesterol-laden so-called food that starts to clog
childrens' arteries as early as 3 yrs. old. With over
15,000 locations in 79 countries, and a new
McDonald's opening every 13 hours you can see
why this multi-national company is the #1 major
disease of the earth that is spreading rapidly and
must be stopped if humans and other inhabitants are
to survive on this planet.



What's wrong with McDonald's?

A LOT! McDonald's spends a fortune on advertisements, trying to cultivate an image of
being a caring and green company that is also a fun place to eat. Children are lured in
(dragging their parents behind them) with the promise of free toys and other gimmicks.
But behind the smiling face of Ronald McDonald lies the reality - McDonald's only
interest is money, making profits from whoever and whatever they can.



RUINING YOUR HEALTH

McDonald's promote their food as "healthy", but the
reality is that it is high in fat, sugar, and salt, and low in
fiber and vitamins. A diet of this type is linked with heart
disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases. Their food
also contains many chemical additives, some of which may
cause ill health, and hyperactivity in children. Don't forget
too that meat is the cause of the majority of food
poisoning in the world, in which people have suffered
serious illness, kidney failure and even death. People
continue to eat billions of animals each year, when all the
time they never needed to. The human body has NO
requirement for the flesh of any animal or animal product.
There is no such thing as cow-flesh deficiency,
chicken-flesh deficiency, or cow-pus deficiency for that
matter. Nobody has ever been found face down in the gutter a mile away from
McDonald's, one Big Mac away from salvation. In fact as stated above, consumption of
these so-called foods "in reality" brings on the early disease and death that people should
truly fear.



WHAT'S YOUR POISON?

Meat is responsible for 70% of all food-poisoning incidents,
with chicken and minced meat (as used in burgers) being the
worst offenders. When animals are slaughtered, meat can
be, contaminated with gut contents, feces and urine, leading
to bacterial infection. In an attempt to counteract infection
in their animals, farmers routinely inject them with doses of antibiotics. These, in addition
to growth-promoting hormone drugs and pesticide residues in their feed, build up in the
animals' tissues and can further damage the health of people on a meat-based diet. 



MURDERING A BIG MAC

The menus of the burger chains are based on the
torture and murder of millions of animals. Most are
intensively farmed, with no access to fresh air and
sunshine, and no freedom of movement. Their deaths
are barbaric - "humane slaughter" is a myth. In the
slaughterhouse, animals often struggle to escape.

Cattle become frantic as they watch the animal before
them in the killing line being prodded, beaten,
electrocuted, and knifed. A recent government report
criticised inefficient stunning methods which frequently
result in animals having their throats cut while still fully
conscious. McDonald's are responsible for the deaths
of countless animals by this supposedly humane method. We have the choice to eat
animals or not, but the billions of animals massacred for human consumption each year
have no choice at all. It is often said that after visiting an abattoir, people become
nauseous at the thought of eating flesh. How many of us would be prepared to work in a
slaughterhouse and kill the animals we eat?



FAST=JUNK

Even if they like eating them, most people recognise that process burgers and synthetic
chips, served up in paper and plastic containers, is junk - food. McDonald's prefer the
name "fast-food." This is not just because it is manufactured and served up as quickly as
possible -- it has to be eaten quickly too. It's sign of the junk quality of Big Macs that
people actually hold competitions to see who can eat one in the shortest time.



PAYING FOR THE HABIT

Chewing is essential for good health, as it promotes the flow of digestive juices which
break down the food and send nutrients into the blood. McDonald's food is so lacking in
bulk it is hardly possible to chew it. Even their own figures show that a "quarter-pounder"
is 48% water. This sort of fake food encourages over-eating, and the high sugar and
sodium content can make people develop a kind of addiction -- a 'craving.' That means
more profit for McDonald's, but constipation, clogged arteries and heart attacks for many
customers.

Picture: A cow and a human stuck in a burger. The cow says: If the slaughterhouse doesn't
get you... The human says: The junk food will!



GETTING THE CHEMISTRY RIGHT McDonald's stripey staff uniforms, flashy
lighting, bright plastic decor, "Happy Hats" and muzak, are all part of the gimmicky
dressing-up of low-quality food which has been designed down to the last detail to look and
feel and taste exactly the same in any outlet anywhere in the world. To achieve this
artificial conformity, McDonald's require that their "fresh lettuce leaf," for example, is
treated with twelve different chemicals just to keep it the right colour at the right crispness
for the right length of time. It might as well be a bit of plastic.



THE NORMALITY TRAP

No parent needs to be told how difficult it is to distract a child from insisting on a certain
type of food or treat. Advertisements portraying McDonald's as a happy, circus-like place
where burgers and fries are provided for everybody at any hour of the day (and late at
night), traps children into thinking they aren't 'normal' if they don't go there too. Appetite,
necessity and -- above all -- money, never enter the 'innocent' world of Ronald McDonald.
Few children are slow to spot the gaudy and yellow standardised frontages in shopping
centres and high streets throughout the country. McDonald's know exactly what kind of
pressure this puts on people looking after children. It's hard not to give in to this
'convenient' way of keeping children 'happy,' even if you haven't got much money and you
try to avoid junk-food.



RONALD'S DIRTY SECRET

Once told the grim story about how
hamburgers are made, children are far less
ready to join in Ronald McDonald's
perverse antics. With the right prompting, a
child's imagination can easily turn a clown
into a bogeyman (a lot of children are very
suspicious of clowns anyway.) Children love
a secret, and Ronald's is especially
disgusting.



HOW DO MCDONALD'S
DILIBERATELY EXPLOIT CHILDREN?

Nearly all McDonald's advertising is aimed
at children. Although the Ronald McDonald
'personality' is not as popular as their market researchers expected (probably because it
is totally unoriginal), thousands of young children now think of burgers and fries every
time they see a clown with orange hair.



TOY FOOD

As if to compensate for the inadequacy of their products, McDonald's promote the
consumption of meals as a 'fun event.' This turns the act of eating into a performance, with
the 'glamour' of being in a McDonald's ('Just like it is in the ads!') reducing the food itself
to the status of a prop. Not a lot of children are interested in nutrition, and even if they
were, all the gimmicks and routines with toys, paper hats, straws and balloons hide the fact
that the food they're seduced into eating is at best mediocre, at worst poisonous -- and
their parents know it's not even cheap.



GROSS MISUSE OF RESOURCES

Grain is fed to cattle in South American countries to produce the meat in McDonald's
hamburgers. Cattle consumer 10 times the amount of grain and soy that humans do: one
calorie of beef demands ten calories of grain. Of the 145 million tons of grain and soy fed
to livestock, only 21 million tons of meat and by-products are used. The waste is 124
million tons per year at a value of 20 billion US dollars. It has been calculated that this
sum would feed, clothe and house the world's entire population for one year.



EXPLOITING WORKERS

Workers in the burger chains are paid low wages. McDonald's do not pay overtime rates
even when employees work very long hours. Pressure to keep profits high and wage costs
low results in understaffing, so staff have to work harder and faster as a consquence
accidents, particularly burns, are common. The majority of employees are people who
have few jo options and so are forced tyo accept this exploitation. Not surprisingly staff
turnover at McDonald's is high, making it virtually impossible to unionise and fight for a
better deal, which suits McDonald's who have always been opposed to unions.



WHAT'S IT LIKE WORKING FOR MCDONALD'S

There must be a serious problem: even though 80% of McDonald's workers are part-time,
the annual staff turnover is 60% (in the USA it's 300%). It's not unusual for their
restaurant-workers to quit after just four or five weeks. The reasons are not hard to find.



TRAINED TO SWEAT

It's obvious that all large chain-stores and junk-food giants depend for their fat profits on
the labour of young people. McDonald's is no exception: three-quarters of its workers are
under 21. The production - line system deskills the works itself: anybody can grill a
hamburger, and cleaning toilets or smiling at customers needs no training. So there is no
need to employ chefs or qualified staff -- just anybody prepared to work for low wages. As
there is no legally-enforced minimum wage in Britain, McDonald's can pay what they like,
helping to depress wage levels in the catering trade still further. They say they are
providing jobs for school-leavers and take them on regardless of sex or race. The truth is
McDonald's are only interested in recruiting cheap labour -- which always means that
disadvantaged groups, women and black people especially, are even more exploited by
industry than they are already.



EVERYTHING MUST GO

What's wrong with McDonald's is also wrong with all the junk-food chains like Burger
King, KFC, Wendy's, etc. All of them hide their ruthless exploitation of resources, animals
and people behind a facade of colourful gimmicks and 'family fun.' The food itself is much
the same everywhere -- only the packaging is different. The rise of these firms means less
choice, not more. They are one of the worst examples of industries motivated only by
profit, and geared to continual expansion. This materialist mentality is affecting all areas
of our lives, with giant conglomerates dominating the marketplace, allowing little or no
room for people to create genuine choices. But alternatives do exist, and many are
gathering support every day from people rejecting big business in favor of small-scale
self-organization and co-operation. The point is not to change McDonald's into some sort
of vegetarian organization, but to change the whole system itself. Anything less would still
be a rip-off.



STARVING THE POOR

While millions of people are starving, vast areas of land in poor countries are used for
cattle ranching or to grow grain to feed animals to be eaten in the West. McDonald's
continually promote meat products, encouraging people to eat meat more often, which
wastes more and more food resources. 145 million tons of grain fed to livestock produces
only 21 million tons of meat and animal by-products.



EARTH DESTRUCTION

The worlds most beautiful forests are being destroyed at an appaling rate by multinational
companies. McDonald's have at last been forced to admit to using beef reared on
ex-rainforest land, preventing the regeneration of forests. Also, the use of farmland by
multinationals and their suppliers forces local people to move on to other areas and cut
down further trees.

McDonald's is the world's largest user/killer of cows. Methane (cow farts) emitted by
cattle reared for the beef industry is a major cause of the global warming crisis.

Every year McDonald's uses thousands of tons of unnecessary packaging much of which
ends up littering our streets or polluting the land buried in landfill sites.



Can you explain the McLibel trial?

Five members of London Greenpeace were sued for libel and accused of distributing a
pamphlet called: "What's Wrong With McDonald's -- Everything They Don't Want You to
Know." Three reluctantly apologized, rather than risk losing everything fighting a vicious
team of libel lawyers hired by McDonald's, but two, Helen Steel and David Morris,
decided to fight.

In British libel suits, the accused must not only prove their statements were not malicious,
but actually true. Since the pamphlet was based in fact, Steel and Morris have kept
McDonald's in court, proving each statement. The McLibel trial is now the longest
running libel trial in British history. This is most impressive since Steel and Morris are
representing themselves, and at the start of the trial, were on welfare (in Britain, "income
support.")

The trial is still going on. This is a great story -- the little guys taking on the giant machine,
and not only holding their own, but winning. Since so many people support McDonald's,
you might at first think, "This is big news!" But you'd be wrong. This isn't big news,
because if you look at every news outlet, chances are they run ads for McDonald's. Get
the picture?


Maybe you're wondering about the truth of this
information. Or you're suffering from
"corpse-eater denial." Either way, if you have
doubts, then ponder this: Why is a
mega-multi-national corporation, over the course
of two years, still unable to defeat two
unemployed people representing themselves in a
court of law? This is the strongest evidence that
the pamphlet has plenty of truth to it. So far the
environmentalists are digging a very big grave
for the corporate fast-food giant with facts, facts
that even people on the side of Mcdonald's can
not dispute. As the trial continues, more and
more truth sufaces - sinking McDonald's deeper and deeper into the black mass of the
public eye.

If you're interested in the McLibel trial, and want to know more truth about McDonalds
then you need the McLibel mailserver:

To subscribe to the "mclibel" listserve, send email
To: majordomo@world.std.com
Subject: 
Body: subscribe mclibel
To unsubscribe, change the body to "unsubscribe mclibel"

*London Greenpeace contributed to the information found here.



WHO IS LONDON GREENPEACE?

*The London Greenpeace Group has existed for many years as an independent group of
activists with no involvement in any particular political party. The people -- not 'members'
-- who come to the weekly open meetings share a concern for the oppression in our lives
and the destruction of our environment. Many opposition movements are growing in
strength -- ecological, anti-war, animal liberation, and anarchist-libertarian movements --
and continually learning from each other. We encourage people to think and act
independently, without leaders, to try to understand the causes of oppression and to aim
for its abolition through social revolution. This begins in our own lives, now.