Central to the success of McDonald's, as envisioned by Kroc, was that
             everything would look and taste exactly the same at every location - he was
             a great believer in uniformity and conformity. Now that has one effect when
             you're talking about what a restaurant's architecture looks like and what
             that means for the American landscape, but when it comes to food it has a
             profound effect on how food is produced. Because if they want their
             potatoes to taste everywhere exactly the same, or their ground beef to
             taste everywhere exactly the same, they need suppliers who can produce that
             on a large scale. And so the effect of the fast food industry in the United
             States has been really to promote concentration in agriculture, to promote
             large-scale industrialised agriculture that can make sure that a potato
             tastes exactly the same in New York as it does in Oregon. The ripple
             effects have been profound throughout the American agricultural economy.
             Well, again if you go back to 1970, before the meteoric growth in the
             American fast food industry, the top five meat packing firms in the United
             States controlled about 20% of the beef that was being sold in America.
             Today the top five control more than 85% and there's really three meat
             packing companies that control the overwhelming majority of beef that
             Americans eat. There are 13 slaughterhouses in the United States that
             produce most of the beef that Americans eat and that's a phenomenal
             concentration and industrialization of this system over the course of 20,
             What compounds these problems is the extraordinary consolidation of beef
             production in the United States, largely under the influence of giant fast-
             food chains who want every one of their patties to look and taste exactly
             the same. Just 13 meat-packing companies control the industry, and their
             considerable lobbying sway in Washington - particularly with the Republican
             Party that has con...