Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens - as many as 1 million per farm - and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here's a fact you'd rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and antibiotic residue, and you've got a toxic seabed.

Does it matter?

Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman. Wal-Mart listens to "voters." If shoppers say they won't buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher standards from suppliers, then Wal-Mart will make those demands. Incentive is the engine that drives the company that promises low prices - "always."

Fishman also raises questions about worker wages, health insurance and working conditions in other countries where Wal-Mart suppliers treat human workers little better than Chile treats fish.

In the final analysis, he asserts that the scale of Wal-Mart makes it a different species of animal than we've ever known before and that, therefore, horse-and-buggy business rules no longer apply. He insists that transparency, which corporations (and especially Wal-Mart) resist, is key not only to preserving the capitalist system we value, but to ensuring fair and humane business practices here and abroad.

Ultimately, Fishman's book posits a question of values: What kind of country are we going to be?

It is a worthy question that consumers will have to answer.