The Lecture of Eric Schlosser

I recently had the great pleasure of attending a lecture by Eric Schlosser, a journalist and the author of “Fast Food Nation” and “Reefer Madness”. Schlosser came to the university known as Ohio to discuss his recent work in examining the cold and monstrous world of fast food.
The drive to nourish ourselves is one of the most basic needs shared not just amongst humans, but all living creatures. Everything we have done on our short amount of time on this planet is built upon this need. Therefore this need should be handled with intelligence, respect, and acknowledgment. But the keyword here is “should”. As people like Mr. Schlosser have shown us, the way in which we handle our food(some would argue that what eat now is barely food.) is barbaric and riddled with greed.
The lecture itself was both entertaining and depressing. I did enjoy the conversational tone that Schlosser kept during even the most revolting revelations. The tone gave the experience a “classroom discussion” feel. For those of you that have read “Fast Food Nation” the lecture was a good summary of the work. The repetition of the idea, “ we must protect our food” never became stale during the lecture due to the realization of who Schlosser is. He isn’t just an author plugging a book, a lobbyer, or even a cracked health-nut…he is a concerned human. Concerned about the lack of honesty in our food; concerned about the disregard for sentient life.
One thing that I am glad that Schlosser addressed is the mentality that fast food corporations have developed for their “product” and their own employees. It is heart-breaking when you realize that these companies are creating a sub culture to produce drones. They actually desire a culture that values low pay, low intelligence, no benefits, and extremely high turnover. The birth of McDonalds in southern California also gave birth to this mentality. It is a supposed good way of creating a efficient/cheap business. It is so good in fact that almost every other fast food corporation adopted the outlook. It’s amazing how popular a bad idea can become. Let’s just make the money, consequences be damned! It kind of makes one ashamed to be human. This disrespect for employees extends to “the product”. Animals are being systematically being tortured before they are slaughtered. I will not say that it is wrong to eat meat, but there are no words to justify the abhorrent behavior being delivered on sentient beings.
I’m happy that Eric Schlosser came to OU, and even happier about the work that he is doing. All of our earthly systems are based on the need for food, and we must learn to respect that. Knowledge is power and spreading that power is the only way to change things.