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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: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:17PM (11 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:17PM (#921934) Journal

    I wondered if the veggie burger was cooked side-by-side with real meat. But, I didn't care enough to ask. Still don't, really. You bought a burger, and you got a little beef flavoring with it? Cool. Sounds like an added benefit to me.

    But - people allergic to peanuts - to seafood - eggs, milk, or dozens of other items that most of us eat without a thought. Those people are entitled to consideration when they order a meal. At the least, they deserve a warning, such as "We process eggs/peanuts/chocolate/whatever in our kitchen. If you must have an egg-free product for health reasons, please let us know when ordering!"

    I mean, maybe this guy got a transfusion from a cow when he was a kid, and eating beef makes horns grow out of his forehead, or something weird? Come on, people, work with me. Is there such a thing as allergy to beef? Or is all that stuff just so much mind-jerk bullshit? Then, there's religion. There's a whole bunch of people in this world who think cows are holy. We don't want them to lose karma, or something, just because some slob cooked their veggie burgers on the same grill as real meat!!

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:27PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:27PM (#921941) Journal

    Is there such a thing as allergy to beef?

    Yes, yes there is. [stopallergyguide.com] More specifically it is an allergy to one of the subcomponents found in all red meat. And it has been somewhat linked to tick bites. [acaai.org] And like most any allergy, it requires exposure and maybe several exposures to the source to form the antigens which trigger the histamine responses. (i.e. the first bee sting you ever get is almost certainly not going to put you into anaphylactic shock... the next time sometime down the road might.) And yes, some people with red meat allergies are severe enough to carry an EpiPen or similar.

    All that said, if one actually had that level of allergy one would be a fool to eat at Burger King. Too much risk of cross-contamination too many different ways. It is not dissimilar to how if one has a *really* serious peanut allergy one should avoid almost all fast food places, period, because such places aren't into guaranteeing that what they sell you was made in plants where peanut products weren't processed too.

    --
    This sig for rent.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:15PM (5 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:15PM (#922003) Journal

    Well, I'm allergic to something related to beef. It can't be to beef itself, because I eat and enjoy hamburgers, etc. But I can't wear a leather belt or shoes where the leather touches my skin. Fortunately, shoes are now often plastic and rubber, and I can use suspenders instead of a belt.

    That said, I have a sister with celiac disease, and even a slice of meat that's been cut with a knife used to cut bread is enough to send her to the emergency room. So dietary rules can be important. So if they make false claims about what's in the food, they should suffer strong penalties. A short web search shows that beef allergies exist...though it's not clear how common they are, or whether an impossible burger would be inherently dangerous to a person with such an allergy. (One site called it "mammalian meat allergy", but most seemed to think it was likely restricted to a few closely related species, such as chickens, ducks, and turkeys. Perhaps there's more than one causal mechanism.

    All that said, I've another sister who's a rather extreme vegetarian, but not so extreme that she made her kids be vegetarians. Just enough of one that she won't (as opposed to can't) wear leather. (E.g., I am currently wearing a canvas and plastic based shoe with a leather outer surface, and she wouldn't wear that.) But she's never sued anyone. And my mother became lactose intolerant when she was in her late 80's or possibly early 90's. But she was quite willing to drink lactose free milk.

    So. There are dietary requirements, dietary preferences, and dietary "it's not a requirement, but if I eat this I'll regret it"'s. All are important, though to varying degrees. So if they advertise something about food, it should be mandatory that they fulfill the promise. Because they don't know which it is.

    --
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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by slinches on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:43PM

      by slinches (5049) on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:43PM (#922096)

      It's still accurate to the number of significant figures stated. The beef "contamination" by cooking the fake meat on the same grill as the real meat is almost assuredly less than 0.5%. Unless the plaintiff can prove that, it isn't false advertizing.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by krishnoid on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:51PM (2 children)

      by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:51PM (#922099)

      You can acquire a beef allergy from a tick bite [mayoclinic.org].

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:45AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:45AM (#922308)

      What's in a food and what the food touches when you handle it are two different things. Look at the gluten labels. There's the label for whats in the food and often a label for how the food was handled. When you're in a public place, there's the assumption that whatever you're getting may have contacted anything else which gets sold there.

      If it really matters to you, then you ask before you purchase, just like everyone with severe health issues does. I'm glad us GF people aren't as stupid as this person.

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

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:19PM (#922007)

    At the Burger King near me, they have signs that state that the vegetarian patties do get cooked in the same devices as the normal stuff. I didn't think anyone would assume otherwise. I don't recall seeing them advertising it as full vegan. Did they?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @08:29PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @08:29PM (#922071)

    No one is actually allergic to peanuts. It's actually something that was invented by millennial mothers so they could be a nuisance to other people.

    • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:10PM (1 child)

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:10PM (#922082)

      > No one is actually allergic to peanuts

      Not quite. In the old days last century there were almost no adults fatally allergic to peanuts, because they all _died_ suddenly early in life.

      _Now_ that we've been diagnosing it and have a chance of preventing death from it for a few decades we now have a couple of generations who have lived to breeding age, with the result that prevalence has increased...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @09:53PM (#922101)

        The more effort is spent to shelter expectant mothers and then their progeny from Evil Allergens, the more hysterical and over-the-top the reaction of an untrained immune system of said progeny when the inevitable contact does happen at last.
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4617537/ [nih.gov]