Yeah.  I was once a McDonald’s kid.

My relationship with Ronald started back in the early eighties.  Some of my fondest childhood memories come from playing “McKim,” a fruitless game invented by yours truly.  Basically, I collected scads of those environmentally-unfriendly polystyrene clamshells the burgers came in, and exercised my unyielding corporate power over my then-two-year-old sister, the inauspicious burger-flipper.  Mind you, these were imaginary burgers.  She didn’t quite see the object of the game, but I saw it all: Big Macs, cheeseburgers, McChickens, Filet-o-Fish, French fries . . . dancing seductively in front of me like little sugarplum temptresses.  Saint Patrick’s Day was a much-anticipated holiday because not only did it mean I might finally score myself a leprechaun buddy; it also meant green milkshakes from McDonald’s.  Temper tantrums always ended with McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream as a peace offering.  Birthday parties and happy meals went hand-in-hand.  I even bonded with other naive McKids in Ronald’s Playland.  Ah, those were the days.

It was roughly a decade ago, back in the early nineties, when I met my best friend and current university roomie, Zelda*.  She’s a feisty Scotch-Irish redhead.  You know the stereotype.  Passionate.  Obstinate.  Opinionated.  Crazy (This is a girl who tried to convince me that all cats were Mao devotees . . . but that’s another story.)   I credit her with first exposing me to the notion that McDonald’s is not all fun and happy meals.  We were mere sixth-graders when she told me of her plan to boycott McDonald’s, citing numerous reasons for her intentions, ranging from animal rights to capitalism.  As high school passed us by, boycotting McDonald’s evolved into placing mini Zelda*-embargos on Disney, Paramount Canada’s Wonderland, Chapters, Coca-Cola, Nestle, and most recently, bananas (so all you evil monitos out there, find another staple food source).  Initially I dismissed her impenetrable ranting.  After all, everyone knew that Ronald was not the bad guy.  The Hamburglar was. 

Then I saw the light.

Several summers ago, McDonald’s came out with a Monopoly game (isn’t it ironic?).  You received a small game board, which you subsequently plastered with stickers (Reading Railroad, Park Avenue, etc.) that were conveniently located on the containers of drinks and burgers.  My parents like games.  So for one month straight, we had McDonald’s for lunch and dinner.  As you might expect, I soon became disenchanted with the processed junk.  It didn’t take me long to see that McDonald’s has more than a few tricks up their sleeves to gain new recruits.  Damn.  What was this world coming to?  My astute parents were sucked in . . . and Zelda* was right!  So I did a little research to soothe the soul.
                                                                    
First, I called my friend Link* for a behind-the-scenes scoop.She’s a veteran of three years of service to McDonald’s.  Here’s a taste of what she had to divulge: "During the Summer, the 'piggy pail' [the bin designated to hols wastes for pig farmers to use as pig feed] would literally be crawling with maggots. And once while making burgers, I cut my finger and put a band-aid on, but it wasn't grease proof. I went on making food and I noticed about a half hour later that I wasn't wearing a band-aid anymore. Needless to say, I think someone ended up with more than they bargained for. I think that now you have to wear gloves if you cut yourself. What else? Oh yeah, after busy hours, we would always use expired meat and chicken products. And sometimes we dropped meat on the floor, but we would just pick it up and use it. Nobody was the wiser. Knowing what goes on unnoticed in the kitchen, I myself would never eat there." Ok, that's just great. On a similar note, "the people who run McDonald's don't actually eat at the place, they leave that to the kids," [1]according to Geoffrey Giuliano, former Ronald McDonald impersonator for McDonald's of Canada.

Of course, the question on my mind was the age-old: are those real beef burgers?  The answer is yes.  Pure, one hundred per cent beef.  That entails every imaginable part of the cow, including the occasional splash of cow faeces and scrotum juice[2].  Scrumptious.  I’ll bet that explains the reported cases of E. coli poisoning after the consumption of McDonald’s products[3].  There have also been allegations of McDonald’s suppliers feeding arsenic to the chickens, as well as paper, cement, and animal products to the cattle[4].  The latter was actually the very cause of Mad Cow disease in the U.K.  Yet there is far more to McDonald’s than the lack of healthy food.

After typing in a web search for ‘McDonald’s’, I discovered was that there are plenty of anti-McDonald’s protestors out there, most notably Helen Steel and Dave Morris, key figures in the much-publicized McLibel Trial of the early nineties.  Their case against the ubiquitous food chain included issues of: environmentalism, animal rights and welfare, free speech, nutrition, expansion, advertising, the exploitation of children via the media in addition to school-supported McEducator Kits[5], and capitalism.  How can one company possibly have this much impact?

                                              

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