MCDONALDS AND CRUELTY

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Mediawatch

 

McDonald and junk food industry

 

McDonald's, whose global sales are a whopping thirty billion dollars,

claims that its products are prepared using the most modern,

state-of-the-art cooking equipment to ensure quality and safety.

 

" OH Lord, give us this day our daily McDonald burger " . This would be

an apt prayer for us globalised-cum-Americanised Indians. To it

Satiricus would like to add— " But, oh Lord, please see to it that any

worm inside is not left half-fried but is fastidiously fully fried. "

This is not levity with the Lord. For some time back, when a

school-girl in New Delhi bit into her lunch-time McDonald's chicken

burger, she saw a half-fried worm in it. How could this culinary

calamity happen? It could not, declared McDonald's in a statement

issued on the momentous matter. Why? Because " Our rigorous systems

makes it impossible for an incident like this to happen. "

 

Ah, but then how did the impossible become possible and the possible

become actual? For that McDonald's had an excellent explanation— " There

is a possibility that the worm got in later (from the counter to the

car), as the order was a takeaway. " That certainly explains it, says

Satiricus—although a slightly suspicious Satiricus would have said it

certainly explains it away. For it would be an exceptional worm that

would hitch a ride from the counter to the car inside a burger for the

priceless pleasure of getting half-fried.

 

Anyway, McDonald's, whose global sales are a whopping thirty billion

dollars, claims that its products are prepared using the most modern,

state-of-the-art cooking equipment to ensure quality and safety.

Translated into English, this means their pots and pans are clean as

well as good to look at. And there's the rub. For here Satiricus

recalls that figure of speech— " container for the thing contained " .

 

Should Satiricus take it for granted that a good McDonald's pot will

cook a good McDonald's burger? Alas, not necessarily, if an Italian by

name Raspelli, described as " one of the top food personalities " in the

country, is to be believed. He says McDonald's burgers taste like

rubber and their fries like cardboard. McDonald's have sued him,

claiming that the comments were " clearly defamatory and offensive, "

but the critic says he has no intention of going back on what he said.

Good God! What would it mean if this anti-American Italian, this

anti-McDonald moron, is sticking to what he says because it is the

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the tasteless truth? Would it

not mean that modern, multinational Indians are disdainfully

discarding their delicious daily dal-roti and gorging themselves on

McDonald's rubber and cardboard? And if that is so, Satiricus,

although far from being a foodie, would firmly say that modernity and

McDonald's must meet at some point. For progress should be palatable,

globalisation should be good to eat. In the considered, culinary

opinion of Satiricus, modern progress (or progressive modernity), as

represented by McDonald's, should be like those books that Charles

Lamb described— " there are books and books, some books are to chewed

and digested... " And here he recalls what his grandma once said to

him— " Look, kid, God has given us thirty-two teeth, so we should chew

every Morsed thirty-two times. " How ridiculous that now sounds, no?

 

For Americans living life in the fast lane, eating food so slowly

would be an absolutely un-American activity, and so they invented fast

food in general and McDonald in particular. But here too, surprisingly

enough for Satiricus, he finds that there are people who side with his

grandma against the fast-food giant. And a prominent one among them is

the Raspelli quoted above, who is leading a popular " slow food "

movement in Italy. See? What is this life if, full of care, we have no

time to stand and stare—and eat a leisurely burger at a slow-food

joint?

 

So Satiricus solemnly suggests to the Italian powers that be in

secular, succulent India that instead of keeping India's globalisation

entirely American, it should also be allowed to be Italian to an

extent. In the meanwhile Satiricus is happy to learn that Kentucky

Fried Chicken (KFC), banished from India a few years ago, is set to

return. What makes him happier is the news that KFC has agreed to be

'chicken-hearted'. That is, under pressure from animal welfare

activists, the President of Kentucky Fried Chicken has pledged to

improve the lives and deaths of the 350-million chickens it serves in

the US every year. In return, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals

(PETA) will pull back its advertisements that accused this fast-food

chain of being " Kentucky Fried Cruelty " . There! Every chicken-hearted

Indian (Satiricus included) should rejoice at the big news that

Kentucky Fried Cruelty has agreed to become Kentucky Fried Kindness.

 

In accordance with reported terms and conditions of the KFC-PETA deal

(—American deal in deals, not us agreement), Kentucky Fried Chicken

promised to provide chickens with " mental and physical stimulation "

such as toys, increase the living space allotted to each chicken by as

much as thirty per cent, and overhaul the slaughter system to ensure

human deaths. Satiricus is impressed. In fact he is amazed. He is

amazed to see the milk of American kindness overflowing into the

animal kingdom and ensuring 'humane deaths' for chickens to be

slaughtered, fried and eaten. Now Satiricus does not know how humane

any killing can be, but then, what does this Indian ignoramus know?

 

All he can guess is that the people (who are) for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals (PETA) may have come up with an admirably ethical

method of slaughtering and frying chickens. Oh well, morality and

mortality fit together to a T, wot?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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