Victory at McDonald's

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16551

 

Victory at McDonald'sWilliam Greider, The Nation

August 5, 2003

 

Since McDonald's is a global icon of cultural imperialism and the target for

numerous other social complaints, it's a little awkward to celebrate the world's

largest fast-food corporation for a progressive political breakthrough.

Nevertheless, McDonald's has taken on what American politics lacks the nerve to

confront: the dangerous practices of agribusiness in producing chicken, beef and

pork -- that is, the food McDonald's sells to families.

 

The company formally acknowledged in late June that the heavy use of

growth-stimulating antibiotics by the meat industry threatens human health. It

advised its poultry suppliers to phase out the practice or face the prospect of

losing the business of America's largest buyer of meat products. The warning is

less firm for hogs and cattle, but those suppliers know they are on notice too.

Mickey D is listening to his customers. " We would love to be a catalyst for

change industrywide, " McDonald's director for social responsibility affirmed.

 

Let's hear it also for the galaxy of civic-action groups, from the Union of

Concerned Scientists to Environmental Defense, from the Humane Society to the

National Catholic Rural Life Conference, who made this happen. A coalition of

thirteen organizations put aside cultural and political differences to educate

the McDonald's management. Some, like the Sierra Club, delivered the message by

direct action, picketing Golden Arches outlets with signs like Get Food Off

Drugs. Others, like Environmental Defense, pursued a lawyerly inside track,

negotiating in " partnership " with the company's proclaimed commitment to social

responsibility.

 

The victory at McDonald's is but one small piece in a much larger subject -- the

politics of food -- but it demonstrates that people are not powerless against

corporate behemoths, even the market leaders, if they find the right points of

leverage. In an era when politics is paralyzed, unable or unwilling to advance

government regulation of food and agriculture, some Americans have figured out

how to achieve the next best thing -- consumer power that changes industry

behavior, not by one purchase at a time but on a grand scale by targeting large

brands in the middleman position. We'll see a lot more of this consumer jujitsu,

because it works.

 

Michael Khoo, a campaign leader at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explains:

" It's definitely not perfect and it's an unfortunate substitute for law, but

people do have the power to change things. In a sense, McDonald's is playing the

role of what would be the USDA inspectors. If there's going to be a choice, I

would definitely rather have the government do it, but right now we don't have a

choice. "

 

The antibiotics problem is widely understood though not yet candidly addressed

by industry scientists or the federal government. Their egregious overuse

encourages the development of resistant strains of bacteria that then may

migrate into the environment at large, including perhaps human bodies. The

supposed efficiency of corporatized agriculture is riddled with many such

contradictions -- the company cuts costs and boosts profits by growing the

chickens or hogs faster, often in brutal conditions, then somebody else (usually

the taxpayers) pays to fight newly created strains of disease. Given market

competition, each company typically claims it has no choice but to adopt the

various practices of so-called efficiency that also produce collateral damage to

society, health and the environment. Then they hear from their customers -- not

just scattered objections now and then, but in concerted, coordinated,

well-informed waves.

 

Yes, it definitely helped that the long-running record of McDonald's sales

growth has stalled. When you're losing customers or not gaining enough new ones,

it does focus the company's mind on what might be wrong with the product. Nike

underwent a similar conversion experience on the issue of sweatshops when its

market share began to decline. Who knows why this happened, but Nike couldn't

ignore the possibility that all those crazy kids campaigning against foul labor

practices in Asian or Mexican sweatshops might have something to do with falling

sales.

 

In other words, winning reform is not a sentimental question about whether the

CEO has a conscience. The mechanism for change is market power, something even a

retrograde executive like Nike's Phil Knight has come to appreciate. Nike, like

McDonald's, naturally has a long way to go, but it does now respond to those

activists from United Students Against Sweatshops, exposing factory conditions

of the Nike contractors who actually make the shoes.

 

" Buy green " activism has been around for decades, of course, but with

exceedingly modest impact on industrial practices. What has changed is an

essential strategic insight. In the nature of American capitalism, consumers are

in a weak position and have very little actual leverage over the content of what

they buy or how it is produced (aside perhaps from feeling personally guilty

about destructive consequences). Instead of browbeating individual consumers,

new reform campaigns focus on the structure of industry itself and attempt to

leverage entire sectors. The activists identify and target the larger corporate

" consumers " who buy an industrial sector's output and sell it at retail under

popular brand names. They can't stand the heat so easily, since they regularly

proclaim that the customer is king. When one of these big names folds to

consumer pressure, it sends a tremor through the supplier base, much as

McDonald's has.

 

Rainforest Action Network was one of the pioneers in this approach. It organized

actions around Kinko's, Home Depot and other big purchasers of paper and wood

products. When hundreds of those middleman companies adopted RAN's policy

objectives for their suppliers -- no harvesting of old-growth forest -- the

issue could no longer be ignored by the timber industry. This is a hard, long,

messy way to change things, no question. Rainforest Action put the heat to Boise

Cascade, a belligerent opponent of environmental regulation, and the company

finally " capitulated " with a new policy statement. The commitment was bogus, RAN

decided, and continued its organizing.

 

The McDonald's commitment is regarded as genuine, despite some obvious fudging,

but only a first step too. The fast-food giant is already working with People

for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to reform the ways in which animals are

raised and slaughtered. One of the strong points in the McDonald's declaration

is a commitment to continuous improvement and an auditing system of regular

inspections that allows outside critics to judge for themselves whether the

progress is real. The activist groups well understand that they can't walk away

after the corporate press release. They have to stay on the case. This private

process, despite the weaknesses, may be developing new models for how to achieve

industrial change -- perhaps a prototype for more effective regulation if

government ever finds the will to act on these issues.

 

The notorious " hog factories " of capital-intensive agriculture are among the

ripe targets for similar campaigns. Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer,

continues to gobble up other major companies, tightening the market noose around

smaller independent farmers whose incomes have been devastated by the spread of

the factory model for raising hogs. But Smithfield's many retail brand names are

highly vulnerable, once consumers learn what they are buying with the bacon. The

food we eat relies on extraordinarily inhumane methods that also sow destruction

in surrounding environments while concentrating economic power in a handful of

dominating corporations.

 

All these issues are the subject of contentious conflicts around the nation,

especially in the farm states, yet the politics of food is not on the agenda of

either major party. Does Ronald McDonald perhaps know something about Americans

that the pollsters for Republicans and Democrats have overlooked? The

explanation for their indifference is well understood. Both major parties (and

most state governments) are fully aligned with the big names (and campaign

contributors) of corporate agriculture. Most politicians embrace the industry's

economics -- the logic that says big is better -- and pols typically hide behind

the veil of " sound science, " that is, industry claims that public complaints

about health, environmental damage or the destruction of rural communities are

mere sentiments.

 

Republicans are hopeless -- no surprise. Some Democrats (including

Representative Dennis Kucinich, a presidential candidate) do understand the

centrality of food as a public concern -- and recognize that the issue of food

can unite people across the usual political divisions. A new presidential

campaign is under way, and voters should listen carefully. Are any of these

candidates brave enough to talk about hamburgers?

 

The Nation's National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political

journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and

Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers 'One World,

Ready or Not', 'Secrets of the Temple' and 'Who Will Tell The People'.

 

 

 

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