Since I like beef, and it’s a natural product, I can’t see any harm in it. I save hamburger grease every morning to make hash browns.
I’d be willing to bet the majority of consumers would vote for full disclosure of what was in the food they were eating.
I think it does. Unless a food package includes the word “partial” in front of its list of ingredients, it’s implicit that the list is complete.
Those votes should be confined to the commercial arena, and not involve politics.
No, it’s not. If a list of ingredients includes a term like “natural flavors”, and does not list what natural flavors it has, I would consider that accurate, but not complete. I think that it is rather clear from such a term that the list is not complete.
I think that was JDM’s point. How can he (she?) even begin to decide what to eat if the mfgr’s aren’t required to point out that their food may contain peanuts? Yes, someone with an allergy has to avoid those certain foods, but how can they do that if it isn’t on the package?
I have a friend whose son is allergic to peanuts, and the peanut allergy is VERY serious. It can be deadly within a matter of minutes. She reads the labels on everything she buys. IIRC, most veggie oils are okay, it’s the hydrolyzed vegtable proteins she has to watch out for.
The problem is that we’re talking about a percentage of the population that may not be large enough to convince the companies that full disclosure is in their economic best interest. If a minority of consumers can’t compel businesses to do something that would save many lives, the alternatives would seem to be either that the government does it or that people die.
Also, you know, dead people don’t have wallets to vote with.
Well, someone out there found a solution.
Suit Filed Against McDonald’s in Seattle
This is stupid. If you want to know precisely what’s in your food, then prepare it your f-ing self! Grow your own damn vegetables if you want to be sure there’s no animal products.
But wait: plants consume animal matter! What to do, what to do? Maybe you could just relax and be part of the food chain, just like every other organism on the planet.
If you want to be a good hindu or a good veggie, then clue #1 is this: Don’t eat at McDonald’s, as tbea925 kindly pointed out. ESPECIALLY if you’re doing it for health reasons.
I think they’re plenty detailed. But then I don’t adhere to a strict religious or vegan diet. If someone is reallythat serious about what they eat then they need to take it upon themselves to do the research. I don’t think the food companies need to bend over backwards to serve a tiny minority.
Although actually some of them might in order to appeal to a particular niche in the market.
Marc
**
**
What is the function of government if not to protect fools, idiots and weaklings?
**
**
How do you arrange your garden? Peas, carrots, cars with brake lights, fruit trees, flammable children’s pajamas, and then asparagus?
Granted - why would a vegetarian even want to breath the air inside a McDonalds?
However - this is no longer a hunter/gatherer or even an agrarian society. Food is produced and distributed by ever fewer sources, read companies . Companies that know not national borders.
Therefore - the function of government as product of and protector of its citizens, is consumer’s advocate in the arena of world wide enterprise.
For instance - ADM and a handful of other food producers conspired to fix the world wide price of lysigine(sp), a chemical used in chicken flesh production. It took the FBI, by luring the conspirators onto US soil, to defeat this. The FBI protected your chicken ass rights!
Uh, there might be another option. People with such allergies simply avoid buying certain products.
Marc
But that is just the point. To decide which products to avoid, one must first have complete and accurate labelling.
I agree, and freaking veggies should stop going to McDonalds and then trying to sue about it! Sheesh!
With all the talk about “complete” labelling, to include what is “not” in the ingredients, exactly how large should the packaging be allowed to get to display every single ingredient for religious reasons or possible allergen that is not part of the ingredient list? It’s like trying to put warning stickers on every item possibly bought, for all possible contingencies, in all possible languages.
I have a friend who is deathly allergic to any bird flesh, to the point where if you simply touch a pan with chicken, then cook a steak in that pan, he’s off to the hospital when he eats it. He understands that it is HIS responsibility to ensure his safety when eating. In a restaurant, he’s been known to talk to the manager and then go into the kitchen to watch a cook clean a grill spot for his food to make sure it is chicken free. Inconvenience for him? Not as much as getting sick or going to the hospital.
If as a vegetarian, you are concerned with what oil the fries are cooked in, or the croutons in your salad were prepared with, ask questions and go look at the label of the oil, or call the food company. If still in doubt, don’t eat. If you get sick from an allergy, sue the people for it not being disclosed when you asked. I have a box of vegetable dip mix where one of the ingredients listed is “natural flavoring”. Is that natural vegetable or natural meat flavor? I don’t know, but if I cared that much, I’d call Lipton and ask them. If it’s not on the label, then it’s a good bet that it’s not in the food. Eat M&M’s, get sick, find out it’s cause there is peanut something in them, sue Mars. If it’s simply a matter of being vegetarian, or religion, my thought is “get a grip”. A Hindu pissed at McDonald’s because a miniscule amount of beef fat for flavoring in his fries violates his religion’s view of sacred cows? Sorry, but being in a damn burger house alone should give a hint that perhaps you might eat something with a trace of cow on it, just as my friend will not go to a chicken restaurant and ask for fries. His fries did not have a disguised slim jim in them, or were cooked in lard. He was not harmed. He did not get sick. It’s just another ridiculous lawsuit by someone with too much time on their hands.
SterlingNorth quoted an article saying:
The plaintiffs’ll be hard-pressed to find any instance where McDonald’s claimed its french fries didn’t contain any animal products.
Mickey-D’s food contains beef?? You could have fooled me…
I can’t believe I am hearing this! You honestly believe that people who sell things meant for ingestion shouldn’t be responsible for discloseing what is in it?
The Hindu prohibition against eating cow flesh is not just a matter of preference. It is not something that they simply don’t like. It is akin to yours and mine prohibition of the consumption of human flesh. It is simply unthinkable.
For other vegetarians it is a little simpler, but not much. I don’t eat meat because I find the whole concept of it disgusting. When I first found out that the fries had beef in them, I felt mildly violated. Yes, perhaps McDonalds isn’t the best place to eat, but sometimes (often when I am with other people) there isn’t much of a choice. Processed food is a fact of modern life. While it is inadvisable to base you diet on it, it is almost impossible to avoid it entirely.
Anyway, we require all sorts of other lables, what makes this so sacred. Is the tiny bit of ink required to inform people about what they are putting in their bodies going to drive comapanies out of business and send the American economy plummiting? No, I bet you it isn’t.
I think that vegetarians and vegans should set up a system much like the kosher labeling system. If we could get volentary compliance with such a system I know I would feel a lot better. I would love avoiding the occassional “Oh, The can of soup I just ate actually had chicken fat in it wretching” and the “damn, I can’t use the salad dressing I just bought because looking closer, it has anchovies in it”.
How is more stringent labeling going to help you failing to actually read the ingredients? Even if we did go with the kosher method of labeling with a symbol or letter, you would still have to look closely for that symbol–overlooking an ingredient is no one’s fault but your own.
I’m an American who lived a year abroad in England, where folx seem much more concerned about issues such as this. Not having a peanut allergy myself, I was surprised at how well-labeled foods were in UK groceries (“May contain nuts,” or some similar statement). Also, many of the foods that had this warning surprised me…that is, I wouldn’t ever expect to find nuts in those foods. So I’m pretty sympathetic to the nut-allergy folx and the difficulties they have deciding whether or not food is okay for them.
On the McDonald’s/vegetarian side of things…I find that it’s a bit flip to consider McD’s a “no-veggies” zone. Not where I live, but I would expect in a major city like Seattle that there might even be some veggie alternatives at the chain (Again, this was true in the UK)?
Part of my thinking about better labelling or vegetarian identified foods is that folx don’t really want to think about what’s in their prepackaged/manufactured foods. I went vegetarian while living in the UK and often found myself disturbed when I saw the “V” (the Vegetarian Society’s symbol for lacto-ovo vegetarian foods) on a previously thought innocent food (What’s in my butter? What’s vegetarian wine? Not my crisps, too!). YMMV.
Fine, their religious restrictions are their problem. As is Halal meat for Muslims. Come up with a system of their own, visit Hindu “Kosher” groceries or don’t live in a non-majority Hindu society. Or be flexible.
Added costs should be rationally considered. Little tiny costs add up. What’s a bit here, a bit there? Eventually a lot. First, the burden should make sense in terms of its cost and benefits. The percent of people who need this may be too low to justify. And of course we have to define need/want. Do added costs impose burdens on other segements of society? How do those costs/burdens balance against desires/wants of the strict veggie market/lobby?
Who are the veggies? Me? I don’t eat meat but I don’t get “sick” from the idea either. I could care less about meat stock in general (frankly no one so prissy is gonna cut it two days outside of the nice little first world cocoon, with some exceptions). Do strict veggies and vegans make up such a market that mass production companies should serve it? If not, you have other choices.
Fine, I see no reason for paying for your daintyness. If there are genuine public health issues that’s one thing, else your tastes are best served by specialty markets.
Collounsbury wrote:
And there’s another, more sinister aspect to the added costs of additional labelling requirements.
A company that sells a LOT of an identical piece of food, such as McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, can easily afford the one-time cost of testing their products for specific ingredients and adding the appropriate symbols and caveats to its printed menus. A little company, like the mom-and-pop restaurant on the corner, will be much more hard-pressed to meet this one-time cost, and may choose simply to go out of business or never go into business in the first place.
You might think that stricter labelling requirements would “put McDonald’s in its place”, but in reality they will just eliminate more of McDonald’s’ competition!