The case reminds me of the infamous “pink slime”affair, which I wrote about in “The Pink Slime Debacle: Is Anyone To Blame?” That also involved deceptive naming, but from the opposite angle: an all-meat filler used by Taco Bell was given a name by a USDA official that was guaranteed to horrify the public once it was publicized. The stuff was in fact all meat despite being pink and slimy, though labeling the food containing it “100% beef” could be fairly called deceitful.

In that 2012 ethics event, I sympathized with the food industry, writing,

“[Pink slime] is virtually fat-free beef that begins as slaughterhouse trimmings, is then heated and spun in a centrifuge to separate tiny particles of meat from fat, and subjected to a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria. Then it was mixed with ground beef. The process sounded unappetizing, and the nickname, coined in an e-mail by a USDA official, made it seem especially disgusting. The internet and social media got a hold of it, and the next thing you know, there were petitions and outrage. And the net result…jobs lost, beef made more expensive, no improvement in taste or health—a complete loss….Most processed food can be made to seem disgusting,  especially anything to do with meat. So is a lot of food preparation. The public won’t take the time to distinguish between genuinely unhealthy foods and those that just involve processing that isn’t suitable for the squeamish, so they go overboard on the random targets of attention-seeking, half-cocked activists, and often the government and regulators follow the hysteria. This is the tragedy of DDT; this is Alar; this is cyclamates. Industries are destroyed that don’t deserve to be; lives are ruined, and the public health isn’t improved.”

I don’t have any sympathy for McDonald’s, however. They deserve a suit today.