Fast Food

With food prices rising across the board due to higher fuel costs and a spike in the commodities markets, you might think that the organics boom would be the first suffer — especially in the midst of a recession. The logic goes that since wallets are tightening across the country, consumers will turn to cheaper meat and produce, eschewing concerns about pesticides, growth hormones and sustainability issues. But could the long term benefits of a changing food economy actually outweigh the negatives?

After the CIW recently reached historic agreements with Yum! Brands and McDonald's — which would have effectively doubled the wages of the tomato pickers in Florida who supply America's largest fast food chains — it appeared that their campaign to improve the lives of migrant workers was picking up momentum. Then they set their sights on Burger King.

Nutritional labels used to be found on packaged food, and nowhere else. Now, labels are found on almost everything we eat. McDonalds even prints them on a lot  of its packaging.  But corporate restaurant chains aren't legally required to disclose nutritional information to the public. In fact, this information isn't even available upon request from most of the nation's largest chains like T.G.I Friday's, IHOP, and Outback Steakhouse.

A year ago, the school board in Seminole County, Fla., teamed up with the owners of local McDonald's franchises to create a junk food rewards program for students with good grades and attendance records. Rewarding good academic performance with a Happy Meal may not seem so bad, but the partnership between the school board and McDonald's didn't end there.

When the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' four-year boycott of Yum! Brands Inc. finally came to an end in 2005 with the company agreeing to pay tomato pickers a penny more per pound, it represented one of the largest victories that labor organizers have seen in American agriculture in many years. The CIW has since turned its efforts to convincing the nation's second largest fast food chain, Burger King, to join its competitors and institute a one penny per pound price increase. Burger King has thus far resisted.