One day twenty years ago in the Anthropology building I was early for class. I was reading the cluttered bulletin board in the hall and a list caught my attention. It was ostensibly an analysis of hamburger meat used by a prominent fast-food chain. It was supposed to be common knowledge that, decades ago, they purchased beef from certain South American countries. These suppliers would increase the mass of the product by including non-beef meat. They would include butchered capybaras (a large rodent) for example.
At or near the bottom of the list, unless I am having a false memory, was something like this: “Indigenous Humans - .001%”
Can anybody either verify this or disabuse me of the memory? Was it a hoax perpetrated by radical vegans? Or was this a valid laboratory analysis silenced by the powers that be?
Well, I remember reading a thread on here about the acceptable number of ant heads and limbs allowed in cereals and what not.
I could imagine that someone could cut themselves and a slip of finger or something could make it’s way into ground meat.
Unfortunatly I don’t have a cite or anything.
I guess this isn’t a really helpful post, except to say that I too would be interested in the answer (I’m already veggie, so my interest is purely academic).
Well, there are apocryphal stories of various extremities found in fast food meals, and anectotes by fast food workers admitting leaving bits of themselves in the grated cheese, so it probably deserves one of those “probably true but unverifiable” bullets at Snopes.
Now what I want to know is, what kind of domesticated meat are they stretching my long pig with?
Reality check: hamburger chains don’t make their own ground meat (and those that do don’t have much extra human flesh lying around, no matter how much Emeril-esque BAM! they want to "punch it up with). They get their ground beef from the same LOCAL distributors as your local supermarket does. Yup, local. McDonald’s doesn’t ship its patties from a secret factory/ slave camp/worm farm deep under Oak Grove, IL. Local McDs buy from McD-approved LOCAL distributors - cheaper and faster. (I don’t recall if the company approval provision was upheld in the most recent court challenge)
Why on Ghu’s green-shifted Earth would they go to all the expense and trouble of shipping, refrigetating and and certifying imported beef for cheap burgers, when we are the world’s largest producer of beef (and probably the cheapest source)? Sure, Argentina makes some fine specialty steaks, but you’re probably more likely to to find imported beef in the fancy joints, not the cheap ones.
Canadian beef was (until recently) treated essentially the same as US beef in the domestic market. Perhaps some Mexican beef is as well (I don’t know). It simply isn’t cost effective to ship locally inexpensive ground beef from overseas, and then redistribute it across the country. No chain I know does central national distribution, much less mass import of ground beef.
Most processed food contain some human material. There is an amino acid, I forget which one, that is a common texture agent in processed food that is commonly made by digesting human hair. It’s perfectly legal and once the process is completed it is no longer any more human hair than the air that you breathe is cremated corpses.
It’s quite possible that this is what contributed the tiny portion of human matter. It does in almost any processed food.
O course it’s also possible that it’s entirely fabricated.
Big huge slaughterhouse, with a secret side door for the delivery of (I don’t know, pick a number) dozens of Capys each day. It wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
I think like all the other ingredients that have “acceptable amount” restrictions, human material is not intentionally added to the mix. It is probably meant to include sloughed skin, hair, etc… It’s just a disclaimer.