McDonalds - what is in the meat patties?

I was at McD’s with leechboy last night and as we consumed the goodness that is a quarter pounder meal we started discussing this seasons Buffy.

One episode of Buffy focused on her new job in the fast food industry at Double Meat Palace where Buffy finds out that the double meat in the burgers is actually a vegetable compound mixture thingy.

My questions is could McD’s do this to us in Australia?

Leechboy said that they already do this by advertising 100% Australian Beef Patties when in fact the patties are sold by the 100% Australian Beef Company.

Is this true? Is it UL? and why did the lady sitting at the table next to us keep patting my head?

According to this page from the McDonald’s Australian web site

So for McDonald’s to be a.) putting vegetable filler or b.) putting non-Australian beef in their burgers they would have to be flat-out lying in their official public relations/advertising. We have laws against that sort of thing in the USA; I assume y’all do in Australia as well.

Dead right. It’s called false advertising here in Australia and there is absolutely no way that McDonalds would breach it. There’s probably also some food laws involved.

Besides, what would they have to gain? Any cost savings would be minimal or non-existent (they buy their meat in very bulk quantities and it ain’t exactly high grade stuff) and the risks and costs of being caught would be too high.

So what holds the ground beef together?

My starting point for all things McDonalds:

" McDonald’s Corporation sued two unemployed British activists (Helen Steel and Dave Morris) in 1990 concerning a leaflet entitled “What’s wrong with McDonald’s?” This leaflet accuses McDonald’s of serving unhealthy food, promoting unsound environmental policies, and of exploiting animals and people in the blind pursuit of profit. The resulting “McLibel” trial lasted 335 days, making it the longest legal action of any kind in British history."

  • Just about all you’ll ever want to know about that wonderful company and its products:

http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/
http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/trial/evidence.html

The fat in the beef. Get fresh ground beef from a butcher and you’ll see it sticks together when molded into patties.

Sound suspiciously like the urban legend about KFC changing its name because they don’t use actual chicken. A transparent scam like this would never get by the authorities, and would come out pretty quickly, garnering tons of terrible publicity for McDonald’s. Why on Earth would they risk that?

More worrying is the fact (and I don’t know if this is still the case) that Maccy D’s used to buy from farmers who slaughtered their animals in such a way that the contents of their digestive systems (shit) would mix with the meat.

To combat this problem our favourite purveyor of “meat” patties in a bun use a “burger flavour” additive which gives that lovely moreish flavour we all love.

This is true, I read it in an article with evidence and all - it might have been the Guardian… Not sure though.

Agreed with Reality Chuck - I’ve made homemade hamburgers before out of plain ground beef; the leaner the meat, the harder it is to get it to form up nicely into patties. My husband and I tried this with extremely lean ground venison and had trouble getting the meat to stick until we added a little extra fat - we used cooking spray, though other fats might have worked as well.

The Master address the “100% Australian Beef Company” scheme here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_147.html

McD’s uses nothing but beef in their hamburger patties. You can discuss the healthiness of the meals or their supplier practices or even their legal strategies, but that’s not really a GQ.

Cite please? “I think I read it somewhere once in a newspaper but I can’t remember what one” ain’t a cite.

There have beeen a number of isolated outbreaks of e-coli infection resulting from poor slaughtering practices or undercooking of meat in the US - the biggest one involved a chain called “Jack - in the Box” in 1993, there was a smaller one involving Burger King in 1997 and a few smaller ones involving McDonalds. See http://www.stats.org/statswork/latimes-ecoli.htm for details.

Nobody died in any of the McDonald’s outbreaks, though a number of people got pretty sick. Several people died as a result of the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak. In comparison there are 70,000 e-coli cases in the US each year and 60 people die as a result. You are many times more likely to get e-coli contamination from food you prepare at home.

*McDonalds does not buy its beef from farmers. They buy it from abbatoirs and slaughterhouses

*The stuff about the burger flavour additive has the stink of UL about it as does the stuff about the “100% Australian Beef Company”

I’m not an apologist for McDonalds but there are other forums for this sort of unsubstantiated rumour-mongering.

You should check out a book called Fast Food Nation, now out in paperback, which is about the nice & the not so nice sides of the fast food industry. The main focus is on the US, but the book does talk about the aforementioned lawsuit by the 2 Britishers.

The thing that should be worrying is that while 20 years ago, int the hamburger that you got at McD’s the meat probably came form 1-2 cows. Now, one single hamburger contains the meat from up to 200 different cows which raises the chances for nasty bugs hanging on the meat.

A strongly-worded prenup.

Where’s the beef?!?!?!

Oh, sorry … wrong commercial …

Fine, have it your way!

:smiley:

Its posts like these that keep making me spit my tea everywhere, thank-you. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think my questions about what’s in the meat patties and what holds it together have been answered, thank-you to everyone that’s taken the time to reply.

I am now going to go get a McMeal and enjoy that yummy burger flavour additive whilst speculating on where the 200 cows came from that I am now eating.

McDonald’s burgers are actually extremely safe, from a microbiological point of view - among the safest products you can get. They have to be, since they feed billions. Even a small outbreak of food poisoning would cause massive bad publicity and cost a ton of money. You can argue about the health issues from eating that much fat and the quality of the meat all you want, but the odds are very very good that it’s not contaminated from poor handling.

[ul]Spiders. :p[/ul]

[sup]DISCLAIMER. I am only kidding[/sup]

Okay, so they’re 100% beef, but what does that mean?

My understanding, which often has no basis in fact, is that beef means that it all comes from a cow, but isn’t necessarily meat per se.

All McDonalds meat sold in the US is 100% pure USDA inspected beef; no additives, no fillers, no extenders. Beef generally means meat, unless the USDA allows otherwise. I suspect (but can’t find the cite on the USDA website) that means it is all meat, no bones, hooves, skin, etc. This doesn’t mean it’s the most expensive cuts available, but it appears to be all meat. They buy so much, and it is such a small percentage of the cost of delivering a burger, why skimp and risk backlash. It doesn’t make any sense.

Okay, so I’ve been hot dogs labelled “all beef” for years, and then recently they started selling “100% meat, all beef” hot dogs beside those. (One company, two products.) I figured that meant the “all beef” isn’t all meat. - Maybe we have different rules in Canada.

335 days is considered long in a legal action?