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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the at-least-it's-not-bugs dept.

Lawsuit claims Burger King's Impossible Whoppers are contaminated by meat

Burger King was sued on Monday by a vegan customer who accused the fast-food chain of contaminating its meatless "Impossible" Whoppers by cooking them on the same grills as its traditional meat burgers.

In a proposed class action, Phillip Williams said he bought an Impossible Whopper, a plant-based alternative to Burger King's regular Whopper, at an Atlanta drive-through, and would not have paid a premium price had he known the cooking would leave it "coated in meat by-products."

The lawsuit filed in Miami federal court seeks damages for all U.S. purchasers of the Impossible Whopper, and an injunction requiring Burger King to "plainly disclose" that Impossible Whoppers and regular burgers are cooked on the same grills.

[...] Its website describes the Impossible Burger as "100% Whopper, 0% Beef," and adds that "for guests looking for a meat-free option, a non-broiler method of preparation is available upon request."

Also at Boing Boing.

Previously: Meatless "Beyond Burgers" Come to Fast Food Restaurants
Burger King Adds Impossible Vegan Burger To Menu
Plant-Based "Impossible Burger" Coming to Every Burger King Location

Related: Inside the Strange Science of the Fake Meat that 'Bleeds'
FDA Approves Impossible Burger "Heme" Ingredient; Still Wants to Regulate "Cultured Meat"
Following IPO of Beyond Meat, Tyson Foods Plans Launch of its Own Meatless Products
Impossible Burger Lands in Some California Grocery Stores


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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by VLM on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:50PM (20 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:50PM (#921897)

    Take away legal enforcement of religious dietary laws like Kosher, and its human nature that a zillion people will spring to action demanding to be enslaved by new imaginary dietary purity laws.

    Honestly its the same thing with speech and lifestyle issues. Marriage, higher ed, new urbanism... A small, unfortunately too large, fraction of humans LOVE to be enslaved and demand we all be enslaved along with them. Its unimaginable to those of us who don't want to be enslaved. Then the "crab bucket mentality" of punishing anyone who doesn't deeply desire enslavement. And you get one guess which group the corporate legacy media exclusively supports.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @01:36PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @01:36PM (#921905)

    I also have to guess what your position is on this lawsuit.

    You've gone on about enslavement, and about food, but this is about someone suit because they believe 'advertised' != 'delivered' product.

    I frankly think the whole super-veg thing is nuts, but at the same time, if someone advertises something -- deliver, or suffer!

    Now I haven't seen all of the commercials. Suggestive advertising has cost money in court before. And loose lips, from execs, twitter, and other BK representatives can also cause issues, if they said the wrong thing, in the wrong way. I imagine something like "NO MEAT AT ALL!", and then the thing is covered in meat juice.. well....

    Frankly, I want the REVERSE! I don't want my burger coated with crappy vegetable seasoning.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:08PM (12 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:08PM (#921928) Journal
      What makes you think that Burger King isn't delivering? Vegan doesn't mean absolutely no trace of animal parts in food. I think it'd be educational for the defense to calculate how much bug protein the plaintiff consumes in a year and determine how much greater that is than protein transfer from cooking on the same grill as meat.
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:16PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:16PM (#921967)

        Dust mites go in with air; breathing isn't vegan.

        • (Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @06:20PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday November 19 2019, @06:20PM (#922022) Journal

          Fuck. There goes my commitment to breathairianism [rationalwiki.org].

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:31PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:31PM (#922088)

          So we're all murderers in the dust mite court of law!

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:05PM (3 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:05PM (#922081)

        Don't forget drinking water... just because drinking water chlorination genocided helpless bacteria and protists, that doesn't magically mean they didn't identify as animals. I'm sure vegans drink a considerable mass of microscopic animal corpses per year.

        Worse in areas with surface water. Little bits of decayed fish bodies and fish eggs and insect eggs in water.

        If I were somewhat worse of a person I'd try to whip vegans into a frenzy to only drink and bathe in bottled RO filtered water thats provably vegan, not merely chlorinated to safe levels.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:17PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:17PM (#922139)

          I imagine vegans are a lot more likely to drink RO water than non-vegans just because they are more conscientious about that stuff.

          I'm non-vegan but I try not to drink tap water unless I'm in a situation where I don't really have any reasonable alternatives.

          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:03AM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:03AM (#922237)

            I'm very much non-vegan, but I try to only drink RO water, or filtered at the very least. There's good reasons for this: 1) municipal tap water has been found to be contaminated at times, and 2) tap water tastes terrible.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:23AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:23AM (#922288)
          But would RO water really reduce the death count of the tiny creatures? The count might be the same it's just that the dead stuff goes to the filter etc instead of you.

          By the way many of those tiny creatures don't really seem much stupider compared to some larger animals.
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:43PM (#922150)

        Worse than that, I kill quite a number of animals by accident with my various farm equipment, especially the combines, each year. In addition, "ethical vegans" don't like the exploitation of animals at all, which not only means no honey or silk, but also no entomophily or zoophily crops because we are reaping the benefits from the labor of the pollinators.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:24AM (1 child)

        by edIII (791) on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:24AM (#922167)

        I think Vegan does mean that there are no traces of animal parts actually. You've got a great point about the bug protein because the rules regarding our food are actually quite fucking disgusting if you look. There are actual amounts of rat, insects, and feces allowed per tonnage of material. The FDA isn't even guaranteeing anything is going to be completely free from contaminants, but setting acceptable levels.

        This situation is more about false advertising than reasonable expectations. Replace vegan with gluten-free. Gluten-free is actually pretty damn important for some people. I feel tons better without it, but a relative needs a damn EPI pen.

        The real question may be if it is reasonable to expect food to be cooked without cross contamination. I think it is a reasonable expectation if they're saying gluten-free, but it's also reasonable to default to contaminated surfaces unless stated otherwise.

        For the Vegans, they need to assume the worst at all times, unless it is specifically stated there is no cross contamination and non-Vegan cooking products involved.

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:51AM

          by dry (223) on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:51AM (#922233) Journal

          And if you look at ingredient lists of lots of things where gluten etc is unexpected, often at the bottom of the list is a section, may contain, with wheat, nuts, peanuts and such, all due to the possibilty of cross-contamination.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:13AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:13AM (#922240)

        Vegan doesn't mean absolutely no trace of animal parts in food

        WTF?! That is EXACTLY what Vegan means. It means no bones, no fur, no meat, no bonemeal, no milk, no eggs, no fish meat, no fish scales, no insects, no Red 4 / E120 (it's made of insect shell), etc.

        That is LITERALLY the definition of Vegan. Dust in the air which might be off of skin from an animal (eg. a human) doesn't qualify, but literally if I cut a steak with a knife and then cut a cabbage with it, that cabbage cannot be used in vegan food.

        When I have bbqs at work, if afterwards I said "we cooked the veggie burgers on the meat grill" (or worse yet in the meat juices!), I'd probably get fired.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:55PM (#922015)

      I have ordered a “Garden Burger” countless times in the past and never under any circumstances believed that to mean “prepared in a hermetically sealed environment reducing probability of contact with non-GardenBurger substances to zero” because I’m not insane, stupid, or as evidenced in this case, insanely stupid.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:10PM (#921962)

    Old crazy cult goes out of fashion, crazies go and invent a dozen new crazier ones.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:27PM (#921976)

    Ah yes, racist VLM trying to bring back cultural acceptance of slavery. Does your depravity know no bounds???

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:55PM (1 child)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:55PM (#921993) Journal

    What about my own FREEDOM to make informed choices about the food I eat.

    If they advertise something then they damn well better provide it or that's FRAUD.

    It's up to the courts to decide whether they did, in fact, advertise a completely vegan product. And that's how it's supposed to work...

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:35PM

      by Bot (3902) on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:35PM (#922630) Journal

      >If they advertise something then they damn well better provide it or that's FRAUD.

      - burgerking
      - what
      - you fraudsters, your burger is not vegan, has traces of meat
      - so what
      - you advertised it as vegan
      - no we advertised it as "impossible"

      well played burgerking well played

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @11:53PM (#922157)

    In principle, there are legitimate concerns in this lawsuit. For people with food allergies, preparing or cooking their food where it could come in contact with foods they're allergic to, can be a very real health concern. Let's say I cook food in peanut oil. That could be a problem for people with peanut allergies. Now if I advertise an alternative that's doesn't contain any peanut products, but I cook the food in the same equipment that I'm cooking with peanut oil, I might be exposing those people to allergens that are very dangerous to them.

    To be clear, I think veganism is batshit crazy. However, there are other situations like this where the issues raised could have much more significant consequences for people.