You do realize that the book was heavily slanted towards the bad stuff? I read it, too, torn between annoyance and admiration. He put the worst possible spin on all the food industry statistics he could find, as this is what sells books. Nobody wants to read, “Everything’s okay in the U.S.D.A.–inspectors on the job, good food being sold…”
So all your questions are coming across as “bad slanted”, too. You’re taking it as your assumption that Schlosser’s statements are correct, which they aren’t, necessarily
My daughter works at a McDonalds at which all the employees speak English and get paid what they’re entitled to.
No doubt there are fast food joints where the employees are cheated out of part of their wages–but you’re going to find this in any industry. There are probably auto body shops, tanning salons, chicken-packing plants, and white-collar offices where the employees are also cheated out of part of their wages, but I don’t see anybody writing a flashy muckraking bestseller about those. No, Mickey D’s is the Villain Du Jour–everybody wants to read about the supposed Bad Stuff that happens down there.
The underlying assumption here is that the U.S. government in fact does a bad job in patrolling for e.coli, but the truth is that the e.coli outbreaks are the exception rather than the rule. Millions of people, and schoolkids, eat hamburger every day without getting sick.
I know I flunked Econ 101, but isn’t this what’s known as “capitalism”? See what I mean about his putting the worst possible spin on things? Yes, the farmers take a risk, but so do the companies. Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog world. The potato processor wants to buy potatoes at the lowest possible price–the farmer wants to sell him the potatoes at the highest possible price. Somewhere there’s a middle ground, called “doing business”.
And as for the companies “collaborating” on “reducing the farmer’s financial benefits beyond the point of sustainability”, well, this just doesn’t make sense. Why would all the potato processors want to get together and decide not to pay a high enough price for their potatoes, so that the potato farmers aren’t able to make a profit and are driven out of business? Doesn’t that mean that the potato processors then have nothing to process? Isn’t that kind of shooting yourself in the foot?
Yes, you can find instances of price-fixing in the food industry–but the thing is, they get caught. It’s not considered “business as usual” by the Feds, and simply winked at.
You’re saying, “The United States government doesn’t protect American workers from exploitation by Big Business.” Well, yeah, I suppose to a certain extent, it doesn’t. It’s assumed that the workers are all grownups (except for the kids, of course, and there are whole sets of rules just for them) and can mostly look after themselves, so it doesn’t take them by their little hands and walk them through it, holding an umbrella over their heads. But there’s OSHA, the USDA, the Illinois Attorney General’s office, and I dunno how many other state and federal agencies, not to mention a certain number of unions, all looking out for the Worker’s Interests. Yes, some fast food industry workers are probably being exploited by Big Business–but some auto body shop, tanning salon, chicken-packing plant, and white-collar office workers are probably being exploited, too, even as we speak.
So your entire OP is slanted (and if you were a stranger to me, I’d suspect an obnoxious troll. 
)
I think you should rephrase your question to read simply, “How does the Canadian fast food industry compare with the U.S. fast food industry?”