Taco Bell Lawsuit: Tacos Don’t Have Real Beef
Beyond UCF, Business, News — By Staff on January 25, 2011 at 12:08 pm TweetUPDATE 1/25/11- KnightNews.com was just sent the following statement from Taco Bell President and Chief Concept Officer Greg Creed, concerning the lawsuit being filed against them:
“At Taco Bell, we buy our beef from the same trusted brands you find in the supermarket, like Tyson Foods. We start with 100 percent USDA-inspected beef. Then we simmer it in our proprietary blend of seasonings and spices to give our seasoned beef its signature Taco Bell taste and texture. We are proud of the quality of our beef and identify all the seasoning and spice ingredients on our website. Unfortunately, the lawyers in this case elected to sue first and ask questions later — and got their “facts” absolutely wrong. We plan to take legal action for the false statements being made about our food.”
One of the most popular late night restaurants for college students is lying about what’s in its tacos, according to a lawsuit filed against Taco Bell.
The lawsuit contends Taco Bell’s beef tacos have so little beef, it’s false advertising to call them beef tacos, according to a report in the Sentinel.
RELATED: Taco Bell Dog Dies at Age 15
The lawsuit reportedly objects to Taco Bell claiming it serves “seasoned ground beef or seasoned beef, when in fact a substantial amount of the filling contains substances other than beef.”
So what’s in Taco Bell’s “beef” tacos?
Things like water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate, as well as some beef and seasonings, the suit states.
The paper reported that attorney W. Daniel “Dee” Miles III, who filed the lawsuit, claimed just 35 percent of the taco filling was a solid, and just 15 percent overall was protein.
The USDA defines beef as “the flesh of cattle.”
“You can’t call it beef by definition,” Miles is quoted as saying. “It’s junk. I wouldn’t eat it.” The suit does not ask for money, instead, it wants Taco Bell’s alleged false advertising to stop.
Taco Bell has told media it denies it’s doing anything wrong, and plans to vigorously defend itself against the suit.
KnightNews.com Facebook fans sounded off immediately after hearing the news.
“Is anyone really surprised by this?” Amanda Leezer asked. “Seriously?”
“Who cares?” asked Noel Calzolano. “I’m sure anyone that eats it, isn’t too worried about what it technically is or isn’t. Taco bell is delicious nevertheless.”
Feel free to share your thoughts in our comments section below.
Tweet This
Digg This
Share on Facebook
Stumble it
RSS Feed
15 Comments
CRUNCHWRAP SUPREMES!
I mean honestly if you thought it was 100 % beef you are slightly stupid .. it would be almost impossible to produce the millions of pounds of beef that taco bell uses every day…KFC isnt chicken and 99% of all fast food is processed.. eat up and be AMERICAN!
TACO BELL and KB Home get less than you pay for? Melissa Lora is the currently a Board of Director for KB Home Inc and the Chief Financial Officer of TACO BELL. On Wikipedia Taco Bell’s bio has no mention of Lora who sits on KB Home Board of Directors? Clearly Melissa Lora does not want to be associated with one of the nation’s largest builders? Melissa Lora. CFO at Taco Bell Corp. Orange County, California
Melissa Lora does not have a biography on TACO BELL’s Official Website? No one in management at TACO BELL has a bio on their website. Are they hiding? Another reputation issue since the food poisoning outbreak TACO BELL’s E. coli bacteria was famous for? In March 2005, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) won a landmark victory in its national boycott of Taco Bell for human rights. KB Home uses undocumented workers to build its homes? Taco Bell? A lawsuit filed in 2011 alleges that Taco Bell beef is comprised of less than 35% beef. We’ve seen the goop, it pours out of a bag like dried brown flour that coagulates into something that looks like ground beef when water is added.
Currently, Ms. Lora serves on the following boards:
* KB Home
* Taco Bell, YUM Brands
* Discovery Science Center
Other distinguished KB Home Board members include Melissa Lora’s buddy Bruce Karatz who was just convicted as a felon and is currently under house arrest in his 24 room Bel-Air Mansion (not built by KB Home) serving out his 8 months home confinement for swindling 11 Million Dollars. Martha Stewart is a spokesperson for KB Home also served time for her former stock swindle. Gary A. Ray head of KB Home human resources is a convicted felon in this current stock swindle.
Melissa Lora and KB Home built this lemon with Bruce Karatz. KB Home is under a Federal Trade Commission Consent Order. KB Home must buy back your home if not 100% satisfied within the first year? Melissa Lora has never responded as KB Home Board of Directors to any customer complaint letter sent to him by certified mail. KB Home sells Lemons, Just Google Melissa Lora.. http://preview.tinyurl.com/6buzywe
Seems the entire management of both KB Home and TACO BELL has an image problem? Not mentioning their Chief Financial Officer’s proud accomplishments at KB Home. Where’s the BEEF in my poorly constructed KB Home? Both are misleading the public and getting less than they paid for. The only difference is TACO BELL exits after 24 hours; KB Home continues to give you irritable bowel syndrome. Should I be thinking outside of my bun? Taco Bell is a part of Yum! Brands, Inc. (“Yum Brands”). Yum Brands includes: Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC U.S. Properties, Inc., Taco Bell Corp., Pizza Hut, Inc., Long John Silver’s, Inc., A&W Restaurants, Inc., WingStreet, LLC, and Yum Restaurants International, Inc. She has been a Director at KB Home since 04/2004. She serves on the Taco Bell National Purchasing Co-Op Board of Directors and is a Member of the Unified Foodservice Purchasing Co-Op as well as the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, California. Are they all ripping you off?
“Our government, through the USDA and FDA, provides definitions, standards and labeling guidelines for ‘ground beef.’ Just like the FTC is enforcing the 1979 FTC Consent order Against KB Home. Yeah Right! B33F just 3s not E’s. Check the art they never spelled BEEF with E’s. Just flipped over threes?
did you stop reading right after the sentence you quoted? he doesn’t want money…
Carnivore and Omnivore,
The thing that sucks is that people are destroying the planet with factory farming and causing unecessary suffering to billions of sentient creatures. Factory farming is THE number 1 pollutant of planet earth more than EVERTYTHING ELSE COMBINED. So you can knock “hippy ideas” all you want but the facts remain the facts.
And Taco Bell beans are made with vegetable shortening, not dead animals.
Texturized vegetable protein is delicous apparently tasting like real dead animal so the best thing for Taco Bell to do for everyone and the whole planet would be remove the beef completely.
Which some day in a more advanced, enlightened, evolved world, they will.
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet”. ~Albert Einstein
Fast food corporations sucker-in the poor taste buds of young kids and then they can never give it up when they get older. People think they are getting a “great deal” with cheap fast food, but they will pay years down the road when their body starts to rot away from the years of junk they put in it. Making doctors and slimy corporate a*holes rich by eating crap is not cool. I gave up all fast food in 1995, you should too.
Taco bell is Americas favorite enema!
Just what we need, more dollars wasted on stupid tort!! Don’t like it? Don’t eat it. People really need to get a life.
herbivore,
Yeah it does suck when the rest of the world doesn’t conform to your hippie ideas and you actually have to take the effort to order a beef taco without beef
In response to Herbivore:
That would be “awesome,” except, you realize that the refried beans you’re asking for as a substitute most likely contain animal fat, correct?
Ironically, the non-meat part is probably healthier than the meat they use.
Still like the tacos, though.
January 24, 2011 at 11:36 pm
—————————
Oh please. That ‘logic’ (if you don’t want it, don’t buy it) is BS here; if a product is advertised as being one thing, and turns out it’s another, that is deception, end of story.
It has nothing to do with whether you choose to eat it or not, it has to do with DISCLOSING what you’re really selling so consumers CAN make the choice to eat it or not. I thought it was real, 100% ground beef. If I had known it wasn’t, I would never have eaten it the rare 4 times in my life that I probably have. The lawsuit is not about it not being meat, it’s about them claiming that it is.
The guy “Miles” in the article is quoted saying “It’s junk. I wouldn’t eat it.”
…and I’d like to say that’s the beauty of a Free Market system.
Simply put, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it.
No need to pull a lawsuit – If this guy wants money, he needs to get a job so he can afford the expensive restaurants he can’t afford right now that serve “real beef.”
Awesome, now if only they would take ALL the beef dead cow body grossness out competely I wouldn’t have to say “no meat, sub bean” every time!