How does one corporation cause so many problems throughout the Earth? In order for McDonalds to serve those cheap burgers, indigenous people in South America are displaced by force from their rainforest homes. Then the trees are clearcut, replaced by cattle ranching corporations who sell the meat to McDonalds here in the U.S., which people eat unawares of the political, ecological and social injustices committed against the native peoples and rainforests of South America by McDonalds (and other) fast food corporations..

Sister Dorothy Stang was not alone in her struggle to protect the rainforest, and like her companion Chico Mendes recieved the same retribution from the cattle rancher's hired guns..

“Mendes’s life is studied now in some business schools, which might seem odd at first, until one examines his character and tactics more carefully. He was the consummate achiever, starting with a clear goal but never getting locked into one strategy to achieve it….[O]ne thing he never abandoned was a core focus on nonviolence. He put a tropical spin on the tactics of Gandhi and King, organizing downtrodden rubber-tree tappers into a determined but peaceful resistance force that stood between the forest and the chainsaws of land-grabbing cattle ranchers.

“Like his predecessors, Mendes chose peace in part out of pragmatism, knowing that any other stance would be brutally crushed. The tappers’ goal in this resistance was twofold: to protect their rights to the land they had utilized for generations without title and to protect the rubber and Brazil nut trees that, while an impediment to a rancher, represented a renewable source of income to people willing to live within the standing forest.

“The tools and tactics Mendes devised to deal with road builders, ranchers, and the government still influence efforts to both develop and preserve the Amazon—and the planet itself….As the new millennium began, the daughter of a rubber tapper from Acre, Marina Silva, became the federal minister of the environment. A forest engineer and former political advisor of Mendes’s, Jorge Viana, was elected Acre’s governor. The mayor of Xapuri, Mendes’s home town, was Julio Barbosa de Aquino, a rubber tapper who stood shoulder to shoulder with Mendes in the confrontations with ranchers.”

read on @;
www.emagazine.com/view/

The cattle sold to McDonlads are themselves often mistreated and kept in crowded conditions, increasing the risk of spreading disease. To prevent the cattle from becoming ill from exposure to their fecal matter, they are routinely pumped full of antibiotics. Human consumption of meat saturated with antibiotics results in people being less resistant to other bacterial pathogens as our immune system no longer functions effectively..

Here's some other highlight's of McDonald's practices;

"McDonald's buys from five large meatpackers. These companies have gained a stranglehold over the industry (just as in potatoes) that has driven down prices. Over the last twenty years 500,000 cattle ranchers have gone out of business. Over that time, the rancher's share of every beef dollar has fallen from 63 cents to 46 cents. The suicide rate amongst farmers and ranchers in the US is three times the national average.

To satisfy and take advantage of the world wide growth of fast food, the large chicken and beef packers in the US are buying out local companies all over the world. Cargill, IBP, Tyson's control the world meat industry because of fast food chains.

Every time you eat a hamburger, you are eating anabolic steroids, antibiotics, and fecal matter. You can read it again. And it will still be true. You are better off eating a carrot dropped in your toilet than eating one dropped in your kitchen sink if you buy and use packaged meat.

Feedlot cattle are also given shredded packaging, cardboard boxes, cement, and sawdust to put on weight.

Cattle that go into hamburgers drink dirty swill water and dirty food. Until 1997, they were fed millions of dead cats and dogs purchased from animal shelters. They still eat dead pigs, horses, and poultry. (And chickens are fed dead cattle).

Cattle are also fed chicken manure, which may contain tapeworms, Giardia, antibiotic residues, arsenic and heavy metals. Federal inspectors report that animals that are visibly diseased, cattle infected with measles, tapeworms, and covered with abscesses are slaughtered and processed into meat. This is why the industry and the USDA are pushing meat irradiation rather then safety, health, and inspections as a solution.

One-fourth of the cows slaughtered is worn-out dairy cattle, animals most likely to be riddled with diseases, cancers, and antibiotic residues. McDonald's relies heavily on old dairy cows because they are lower in fat, cheaper, and allow them to say all their meat is raised in the US.

Modern day slaughter houses and meatpacking plants are literally worse than in the day of Upton Sinclair. The rate of injury, mutilation, amputation and dismemberment of workers is extraordinary. Rapes, sexual harassment, and fondling of immigrant women are widely known. Most workers are immigrants and dare not report them.

In congressional testimony, it has been revealed that injury reports are regularly and routinely falsified at meatpacking houses. All fast food chain meat comes from these four or five houses.

Both the meatpackers and the fast food industry have been major supporters of the Republican right wing.

The rate of obesity in the US is double what it was in the 60s. In children, it is double what it was in the 70s. The children of the United States are now the "fattest, least fit generation ever."
"

list continues @;
www.foodfirst.org/archive/media/press/2002/mcdonaldsissues.html

The effect of the saturated fat in McDonalds's cattle's meat on humans is often clogged veins and arteries, heart disease and high blood pressure. When will we hold McDonalds corporation responsible for promoting a lifestyle of overconsumption without at least a Surgeon General's warning as we have for tobacco products? What is the effect of unregulated McDonald's product consumption on youth and children? How dangerous is obesity if unchecked in the teenage years??

If you're into some humor, here's an article about a two million dollar attempt by McDonalds to research the causes of childhood obesity..

"Obviously feeling the public pressue regarding their high-carb, junk food offerings, McDonald's decided it was time to partner up with biomedical scientists at the California-based Scripps Institute for the first time in their company's history to look into ways to curb childhood obesity rates.

McDonald's President and Chief Operating Officer Ralph Alvarez said it is the goal of McDonald's to "make a difference in the lives of children."

"The collaboration with Scripps Research is an extension of McDonald's long-standing commitment to the well-being of children around the world," he said. "Everything that we keep on seeing is the whole issue of childhood obesity and the early onset of Type 2 diabetes has grown exponentially. We felt we needed to get greater education in this area."

Am I the only one who sees the incredible irony in this? Here we have the head of the #1 fast food company in the entire world talking about how much his company cares about the health of kids while at the same time they are marketing products directly to children that are arguably one of the root causes of childhood obesity. The fact that they threw a few pennies of their hundreds of billions of dollars in sales annually at obesity research does not get them off the hook from their culpability in the debate over rising childhood obesity. They hope it does, but it does not.

Fried junk food consumption has doubled among kids and a recent study showed that eating fast food makes you one-third fatter. Anyone who denies the contributing role of fast food in the current childhood obesity epidemic is either ignorant to the clear facts staring them in the face or they are simply protecting the financial interests of an industry that has a lot of explaining to do."

article cont's @;
www.commonvoice.com/article.asp

more info on McDonald's protest visit;
www.veggies.org.uk/event.php

Still hungry for a Big Mac??

On this Oct. 16th 2007, let's try to shut down the McDonald's fast food chains throughout the U.S. and elsewhere. People, animals and the ecosystem deserves better than this degradation of food by McDonalds..