So where is this “market” for earthworm meat? Nothing here has shown that McDonalds is the market. You keep insisting that they do use it, yet no evidence has been offered to support the claim.
If you don’t want to accept that every answer here has been to the contrary of what you have said, then you might want to post to the message boards here http://www.disinfo.com
CKDextHavn wrote:
But if they did that, wouldn’t they have to change their name to KFP?
(Mmmmm, Kentucky-fried protoplasm…)
Not long ago, one of the Big Three networks ran a news story about the tendency of some grocery stores to fail to clean their grinders between batches of meat. As a result, the stores’ “ground beef” contained, in different samples, significant percentages of lamb, pork, and whatever else they were grinding that day.
The reporters purchased ground beef and sent it to a private lab, which tested the “beef” for the presence of meat from other than cattle. So, yes, the lab can tell what animal(s) produced the meat in a given sample, and give an accurate content percentage for each different animal source.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Telling the difference is exceedingly simple. I don’t know firsthand which method is used by the FDA, but there are plenty. The Ouchterlony method, for one. If you want details, I’ll be more than happy to provide them.
What I want to know is what’s happening to all the cows that are being saved by the use of earthworms? Shouldn’t we be up to our asses in bovines by now?
Just FTR, there are giant earthworms out there in some parts of the country that can get as big as snakes. Theoretically, it might even be possible to have some kind of giant earthworm ranch where you could raise them.
But I’d bet there would be all sorts of problems with trying to ranch giant earthworms – such as the worms burrowing under your fence and getting away. I cannot imagine the cost-per-pound of giant earthworm meat getting down into the same range as beef. One cow has a lot of meat on its bones.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Earthworm Jim in quite a while.
I believe McD’s buys around 1% of the US market for beef, which is a huge fricken’ amount of cow. Can you picture the size of the worm farms needed to produce that much meat?! I think someone would notice the processing plants somewhere, not to mention the occasionally tractor-trailer load spilled somewhere on the highways of America.
As others have said, McD’s uses fairly high grade USDA inspected beef. We have a huge army of health inspectors in the US that ensure the quality of the meat. With the recent E Coli scares and mad cow disease scares, you can be sure that something as bizarre as “earthworm meat” would have been detected.
This is ignoring the taste, texture, commercial unviability and general insanity of whole idea. But it’d be worthwhile just to see one earthworm roundup. Yeehaw! Move them squiglers!
Didn’t Cecil do a column on # of McD’s hamburgers eaten per year? I know it’s in one of the books.
There really is a product called “worm meat.” smartt’s assertions to the contrary, the worms are not ground up and used directly as a beef (or whatever) substitute. Instead, the ground worm is dried into a flour, which can then be used as a high-protein additive to things like hamburgers and sausages.
See these links:
http://www.wormsargentina.com/lombricultura_in.html
http://www.lombricultura.net/2Meat.htm
smartt, tell us - since you think that direct substitution of worm meat should be okay, and since you’ve an uncle in the business, why not tell us what it tastes like? If it’s THAT good, I’ll just have to insist that the local Brazilian restaurant start carrying it. I mean, I can’t imagine why my former officemate from Parana didn’t mention missing it as a staple for his famous barbecues, since we can’t buy earthworm meat up here.
:rolleyes:
Cecil’s column is here. Of course his answer about how many cows are used to make hamburgers must be adjusted by the amount of worm-meat used 
I’d guess that worm meat IS in McD’s burgers, albeit unintentionally. Surely a worm is on a cow carcass once in a while while being ground up for meat. Let’s say this happens once per every 500 cows. From the info in Cecil’s column, you get about 700-800 pounds of meat from one cow. Guessing that an average US earthworm weighs 1/4 ounce, that’s 0.00000208% worm meat in every burger, or about 21 parts per billion.
At that rate, you’d have to eat 3 million hamburgers to ingest an entire worm’s worth of worm meat.
Arjuna34
OK, smartt, what would you accept as proof that McDonalds uses actual beef in their hamburgers? If you’re willing to believe that McDonalds imports, without having yet been discovered, millions of pounds of earthworm meat per year, convincing everyone, presumably even the cattle farmers that would certainly like a piece of the pie, that it is fact beef, and that no one has yet tested a Mcdonalds hamburger to determine what type of meat it is, what proof could possibly exist that would convince you?
Do we need to account for every earthworm farmed on the planet? Do we need live footage of the entire process of a cow being slaughtered and divided up into Happy Meals?
Sheesh guys, the worms are obviously bait.
:whistles: here Bessie, Bessie, Bessie. C’mere girl! Uncle Billy Bob’s got some nice wormies for you. That’s a girl. Yeah, gooooooood wormies. ::grabs cow:: Hey Earl, I gots her! Go get yer butcher knife! We’s a making burger t’night!
Ok, I’m going to make the assumption that smartt is really looking for answers, not just arguing for the fun of it.
In the United States we have a lot of laws and regulations about food. There are also many laws about advertising.
The Federal Trade Commission enforces laws dealing with “Truth in advertising.” Here is their home page: http://www.ftc.gov The faq page is http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/ad-faqs.htm
One thing important to this discussion is the penalties they can impose:
“Cease and desist orders”
“Civil penalties, consumer redress, and other monetary remedies. Violation of certain statutes can result in civil penalties ranging from thousands of dollars to millions of dollars…”
“Corrective advertising, disclosures, and other informational remedies.”
“Bans and bonds: In some cases, individuals have been banned from an industry or have been required to post a bond before continuing business.”
Now bear in mind, these laws apply to any deceptive advertising. If I put out “Lesa’s Corn Flakes,” and it turns out they’re actually wheat flakes, I would be in a LOT of trouble. So if McDonalds says their burger is 100% beef, they face legal action if it’s not true.
You may not realize that people have been susicious about McDonalds hamburgers. During the 1970’s soy was a popular “padding” or “filler” for meat. Now, there’s nothing wrong with soy. But when people bought a hamburger, they wanted pure beef. This is why McDonalds advertises “100% beef.” They could throw in a little soy, or maybe a little ground turkey they get cheap after Thanksgiving, and no one would think it was gross. But it would still be deceptive advertising.
You also probably wonder who would bother to check the composition of a hamburger. That would be the health department. Each state has a health department, and they periodically test food. There are also many consumers’ groups. If they got the idea that McDonalds wasn’t serving pure beef they’d check it out immediately. Again, they’d probably be looking for soy. But if there was anything except beef present, they would make it known.
Hamburger meat has actually been under a lot of scrutiny lately. There have been several deaths because of e coli contamination. When this happens the suspected product is under a lot of scrutiny.
There is another aspect to consider. The fact is, McDonald’s buys a lot of beef. This is a matter of public knowledge. It’s not like a local restaurant buying beef from a local meat plant. McDonald’s beef purchases are speculated on in the future’s market. If burger sales are up, and cattle production is down, people will pay a higher price for cattle futures.
A few years ago McDonalds had a big effect of the futures market when they started serving bacon burgers. Because of the low-fat craze, bacon had been a fairly flat market. Suddenly there was a huge increase in demand, and this drove bacon futures much higher.
What this means is, if McDonalds wasn’t really buying hamburger, people who bought that meat to sell to McDonalds later would be stuck with it. These people are generally wealthy investors and speculators and they’d want to know why McDonalds wasn’t buying beef!
So is McDonalds serving worm burgers? It’s unlikely. Would McDonalds have anything to lose by serving worm burgers? Yes, the government could shut them down completely, and fine them millions of dollars. Even if McDonalds decided to pad their beef with something we commonly eat, like soy or turkey, the could get in a lot of trouble.
By the way, did you say you’re from Brazil? There’s a big lawsuit against McDonalds there. http://quote.bloomberg.com/news2.cgi?T=sa_news.ht&s=AOX9ASRTjTWNEb25h&TZ=:Brazil/East
Nope. He’s trolling, and I won’t stand for it.
This thread is closed.