Dear Cecil,
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_186.html
I was under the impression that McDonalds Burgers were not 100% beef, but that they had a large amount of filler, specifically soy, in their burgers.
If this is true, wouldn’t that drastically alter the number of innocent, and yet still tasty, cows that are slaughtered for McDonald’s each year?
Curiously,
Roy Sullivan
Well not that Cecil needs me to come to his defense, but if you look here http://www.mcdonalds.com/countries/usa/food/nutrition/categories/ingredients/index.html
you’ll see that a “beef patty” is 100% meat, no fillers, etc.
Now that information does come from McD’s web page, so the data may need to be verified by an un-interested 3rd party, but it seems McD’s would be leaving themselves wide open for lawsuits and such if the page lied.
A minor nitpicking note:
The “average” cow which is butchered and sent to McDonalds is actually a dairy cow. This does change the numbers slightly.
The average dairy cow weighs about 900-1000 lbs, lighter than beef cows. Dairy cows do NOT make good eating, as they have little fat – all that fat goes into the milk. Thus, when slaughtered, practically 100% of the edible meat (500-600 lbs) goes straight to McDonalds, who do not care too much about the fat content (and tenderness) of their patties. This knocks back the total number of cows slaughtered to 1.7 million.
Another interesting note: the average dairy cow in California lives about 7 years before going to the great Golden Arches in the sky.
Let’s all sing along:
“Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.”
Just from eating them - I can tell they’re all cow. Burger King also seems to be 100% bovine. The only claim I could readily find for them is “fire-grilled beef.”
It’s the smaller brands that scare me. Jollibee (Phillipines-based, but making some inraods in the US) tastes like they take about 50% meat and the rest is bread crumbs and onion soup mix. I tried them when they opened up near my office and was urping up the flavor all afternoon. Just nasty.
Nightshade
Have you got a cite for this?
While it is true that some of McDonald’s burger beef does come from spent dairy cows it is a very small amount. I doubt that there are enough spent dairy cows to be able to supply all of the beef McDonalds needs or even to be the “average.”
That being said, what’s wrong with eating a dairy cow that no longer produces? If you read any McDonald’s literature you will see that proclaim the use of “lean” beef. Obviously meat from a dairy cow would be lean.
You divide by 100, as if the other 600 to 700 lbs of edible beef per animal is thrown away. This doesn’t seem like a reasonable assumption. The numbers are fantastic enough without resorting to congressional mathematical techniques.
Here in Oz, raise the meat protein content in sausages and pies by adding centrifuged blood plasma to it.
You don’t suppose that 100% beef patty includes some percentage of beef plasma protein do you?
Is it cheap to put blood in a centrifuge? Don’t you need a lab for that? We are talking about 1400 tons of beef a day.
bstewart, I think the other 600 to 700 lbs of edible beef on the cow do not go to hamburgers, but are sent for steaks, roasts, ribs, and other cuts of meat. Not every part of the cow goes into hamburger.
Remember when your local McDonalds had a #### served on its sign? They were counting individual burger patties, not the burgers themselves. In other words, they count a Big Mac twice. Is that 5.5 billion figure based on the tradition of counting patties or is it the burgers themselves?
Yes, that is my point. Every 100 lbs of beef McDonalds uses is more like 1/7th of a cow.
If McDonalds switched to a tasty blend of horse, kangaroo, and ostrich meat tomorrow, most of the 10 million cows Cecil calculates would still be slaughtered for those other uses.
Therefore, a more reasonable guess is on the order of 1.7 million. Still a lot of cows…
Unless Oz has some very strange abbatoirs I can’t see the sense in that.
Blood is simply allowed to spill away through grates in the floor in modern abbatoirs for later use in fertiliser and stockfeed. Australia presumably has the standard first world hygeine laws when it comes to handling animal products. In order to use it as food filler the would need to be kept clean and separate from the faeces, hair and dirt that normally contaminates the waste chutes in abbatoirs. This would in turn require some serious changes to abbatoir construction. This becomes very expensive very fast. Way to expensive to warrant the use of the product as mere filler. Filler, almost by defintion, must be cheaper than meat or it would be more economical to simply use offcuts. When you add in the costs of centrifuging the blood as you described the cost of the plasma would probably be more than the coast of prime steak, certainly more than the cost of offcuts.
The only time blood gets collected in appropriately hygeinic situations for human consumpton is when it is going to high value products such as blood sausage ,which is far more expensive than sausage meat and hence justifies the expensive.
Have you got a cite for the use of blood in sausages and pies in Australia?
Actually, I won’t cite the web, but just my personal experiences. I’m a veterinarian. During my tenure in school at U/C Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, we saw a LOT of dairy cows. Perhaps not as many as go into hamburger, but I was told by several food-animal vets as well as the occasional dairyman themselves that the cows were destined for McDonalds after their productive period.
Is this a bad thing? Not really – it makes economic sense. The idea of fat being added to the meat post-slaughter I had NOT heard about, but it makes a huge amount of sense. I wonder if McDonalds gets charged for just the lean beef or beef plus fat, with a “combining” charge?
Nightshade, the amusing thing about that cite is the fact that it’s another SD column.
From Chapter 2 of the joint Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code
Except that’s just a cite for non-meat things being allowed in meat products. I see no mention made of blood, except for the “attached” blood and blood vessels, which I presume refers to the blood which was already in the tissues and not removed (in other words, the meat doesn’t need to be koshered). Definitely no mention of centrifuged blood plasma, or any blood being added to the meat.
I wonder what would happen to the prices of American foods and a lot of the American economy if the government assistance to American farms was lifted - I do not know the numbers, but I’ve gotten the impression that a good deal of money goes to the grain-growing and cow-using industries.
Back to the OP. I’m pretty sure the rumor that McDonalds uses soy products in its patties is a joke that’s gotten out of hand. Consider that McDonalds has a reputation of being bottom rung of even fast food burgers as far as quality and taste. Apparently this is due to their use of lower fat beef, which makes it less flavorful. Also, I suspect the use of heat lamps on prepared burgers plays a role in this. Anyway, someone wishing to explain the reputation might conclude that the patties must not be real beef. One joke on the Tonight Show is all it would take to make an urban legend out of it.
