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Péssimas companhias > McDonald's

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Portuguese translation coordinator: Marta Caputo mvcaputo@yahoo.com.br

What's wrong with McDonald's?

Behind the smiling face of Ronald McDonald lies the reality - McDonald's only interest is money, making profits from whoever and whatever they can, demonstrating irresponsibility and lack of concern for public health, human and animal rights, and the global environment.

Short history: McDonald's Corporation, founded in 1955, opened its first restaurants outside of the USA in 1967.

In 1993, McDonald's and Texaco opened a restaurant, convenience store and fueling facilities on a single site for the the busy consumer.

In 1996, McDonald's and Disney announced a deal giving McDonald's exclusive rights to use characters from Disney films in its promotions around the world for 10 years.

Activities: McDonald's now has over 30.000 stores in 119 countries. The company claims it serves 47 million people a day and that a new store opens somewhere in the world every seven hours.

Bush donor: From 2000 till now, McDonald's has given US$820,300 to the Republican Party.

Promoting unhealthy food: McDonald's spend over two billion dollars each year on advertising its junk food - high in fat, sugar and salt, and low in fibre and vitamins. A diet of this type is linked with a greater risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases. Their food also contains many chemical additives, some of which may cause ill-health, and hyperactivity in children.

Murdering animals: The menus of McDonald's are based on the torture and murder of millions of animals. Most are intensively farmed, with no access to fresh air and sunshine, and no freedom of movement. Their deaths are barbaric. We have the choice to eat meat or not, but the billions of animals massacred for food each year have no choice at all.

Aggravating the world famine: McDonald's continually promote meat products, encouraging people to eat meat more often, which wastes more and more food resources. Vast areas of land in poor countries are used for cash crops or for cattle ranching, or to grow grain to feed animals to be eaten in the West. This is at the expense of local food needs.

Damaging the environment: McDonald's use beef reared on ex-rainforest land - vital for life- preventing its regeneration and forcing local people to move on to other areas and cut down further trees. Every year McDonald's use thousands of tons of unnecessary packaging, most of which ends up littering our streets or polluting the land buried in landfill sites.

Exploiting workers: McDonald's have always been opposed to Unions and exploit its more than one million mostly young employees around the world making them work harder and faster in poor safety conditions and paying them with low wages to keep profits high and wage costs low. Innovations to increase the workers' speed constantly are installed. Computerised machinery regulates the pace of work at each station to the precise second: each customer should be served within 180 seconds...

More information:
McSpotlight

Last update: May 2005

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