HEY, THAT ADAM SMITH WAS ON TO SOMETHING...

Victory at McDonald's (William Greider, August 5, 2003, The Nation

The company formally acknowledged in late June that the heavy use of growth-stimulating antibiotics by the meat industry threatens human health. It advised its poultry suppliers to phase out the practice or face the prospect of losing the business of America's largest buyer of meat products. The warning is less firm for hogs and cattle, but those suppliers know they are on notice too. Mickey D is listening to his customers. "We would love to be a catalyst for change industrywide," McDonald's director for social responsibility affirmed.

Let's hear it also for the galaxy of civic-action groups, from the Union of Concerned Scientists to Environmental Defense, from the Humane Society to the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, who made this happen. A coalition of thirteen organizations put aside cultural and political differences to educate the McDonald's management. Some, like the Sierra Club, delivered the message by direct action, picketing Golden Arches outlets with signs like Get Food Off Drugs. Others, like Environmental Defense, pursued a lawyerly inside track, negotiating in "partnership" with the company's proclaimed commitment to social responsibility.

The victory at McDonald's is but one small piece in a much larger subject -- the politics of food -- but it demonstrates that people are not powerless against corporate behemoths, even the market leaders, if they find the right points of leverage. In an era when politics is paralyzed, unable or unwilling to advance government regulation of food and agriculture, some Americans have figured out how to achieve the next best thing -- consumer power that changes industry behavior, not by one purchase at a time but on a grand scale by targeting large brands in the middleman position. We'll see a lot more of this consumer jujitsu, because it works.

The rest of us call it responding to market forces. It's been pretty well understood for a couple hundred years. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 7, 2003 8:48 PM