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Andrew-John Torre

Mr. O’Meara

Advanced Freshman English Period 4

30 January 2019

The negative impacts of fast food expansion

Expansion has always been the key to human development; this is true for economics,

industry, and food. The fast food industry has been able to spread across the globe in under a

century. This has lead to great change in people’s dietary habits both in the United States and

abroad, as well as much change to areas where it has spread.The global reach of fast food

companies needs to be restricted. As the global scale of fast food increases, local businesses and

cultures are struggling to keep up. One example of this struggle in rural India reads,”The

protesters, from the ten-million-member Karnataka Rajya Ryota Sangha (KRRS) Indian farmers'

union, contend that foreign fast-food chains will degrade India's culture, agriculture and

environment,”(US Fast-Food 1). The protesters in India fear that foreign fast food chains will

degrade their culture through abuse and assimilation. They also fear that the spread of fast food

will harm India’s agriculture and environment by taking local resources for themselves and

replacing local businesses. This fear is found in many other locations around the globe as local

peoples fight to preserve their local businesses and culture from the assimilation and

opportunism found in the spread of fast food. The abuse, assimilation, and opportunism found in

the spread of fast food in foreign nations also happens to foreign workers within the meatpacking

plants. The global influence and reach of fast food industries gives them access to cheap labor in

the form of immigrants.​ As many migrants struggle to find well paying jobs in their own
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countries, they look for new opportunities and jobs in the United States only to be forced into a

system of abuse and blackmail​,”...at the mercy of unscrupulous employers who relied almost

entirely on immigrant workers…[T]hese employers threatened to contact immigration authorities

when their workers complained about exploitation and abuse on the job,”(Jayaraman 3).The

levels of abuse and exploitation that occur within fast food restaurants are used to increase

profits and undermine the workers’ safety. Undocumented workers are also unable to file

complaints or notify law enforcement because they will be deported back to their country of

origin. ​This system is not only abusive and a form of exploitation but also illegal. ​Not only is the

mistreatment of workers present in restaurants but the meatpacking houses as well, “As in so

many other aspects of meatpacking, IBP was a trailblazer in recruiting immigrant labor. The

company was among the first to realise that recent immigrants would work for lower wages than

American citizens-and would be more reluctant to join unions,”(Schlosser 162). This is another

example of undermining immigrant workers for the sake of profit.​ It should be noted that the

system of immigrant labor is helped by the international reach of the fast food system. The

global fast food system destroys local business and culture through abuse and assimilation. It

also undermines and blackmails immigrant workers by threatening them with authorities and

uses its global reach to achieve higher profits. As the global reach of the fast food system

increases so will the problems and misfortune that come with it.​ The global reach of the fast food

system causes many problems to places where it is spreading as well as mistreatment to many of

its workers and should be restricted.

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Works Cited

“US Fast-Food Giants Rock India.” ​Earth Island Journal,​ vol. 11, no. 2, Spring 1996, p. 16.

MAS Ultra - School Edition​,.Accessed 1 November 2018

Jayaraman, Sarumathi. ​Behind the Kitchen Door​. ILR Press, 2013.

eBook Collection (EBSCOhost),​ .Accessed 1 November 2018

Schlosser, Eric.​ Fast Food Nation. ​Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001