Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Taco meat filling

I wasn't going to comment on Taco Bell's "beef" tacos, which turn out, according to a lawsuit filed recently, to be only 36% actual beef with the rest of the "taco meat filling" being, well, fillers. I mean, okay, so their "beef" tacos are actually only beef-FLAVORED tacos. Is that surprising? And do I care, really, given that I live two blocks from a real taqueria where I can get *real* tacos where they slice the meat off a big hunk of real beef right in front of my eyes? If there's any surprise, it's that Taco Bell's "taco meat filling" has sufficient beef in it that beef comes first in the ingredient list.

So color me bored... until Taco Hell releases this statement:

'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.' Greg Creed President and Chief Concept Officer Taco Bell Corp
What the fuck?! Let me get this straight. People are reporting the allegations of a lawsuit... a genuine news story... and this dumb fuck is threatening to sue them over it? And why am I calling him a dumb fuck? Well, it's simple. He just turned a simple lawsuit, one of undoubtedly thousands filed against Taco Bell every year, into a 1st Amendment issue. Someone starts threatening to sue folks for reporting the news, that gets my feathers ruffled, yo.

So that's what turned it from a "Yawwwwn!" food quality story that I had no intention of covering to a First Amendment story that's got my attention. Because when some dumb fuck corporate fat cat tries to bully the news media into not covering a genuine news story about a lawsuit against his company, that's a genuine *story*, yo, and Mr. Greg Creed just made it one where before there wasn't.

-- Badtux the Censorship-sniffin' Penguin

BTW, can Taco Bell sue over allegations made in a court of law? No. The whole *point* of the court of law is to determine whether the allegations are true or not. You can file a lawsuit alleging that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim Nigerian in a court of law and there's fuck all that Obama can do other than file a motion for dismissal based upon lack of evidence. He can't sue the people reporting on the lawsuit either because of that whole 1st Amendment thingy. In short, if Mr. Creed had consulted his attorney rather than jerked his knee, he would have realized that he's making an idiot out of himself with these nonsense threats. But then, you don't get to be CEO of a major corporation nowadays by being the brightest bulb in the chandelier, you get there by being the most venal, back-stabbing sales lizard on the planet...

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. My cruel side says that anyone stupid enough to eat at Taco Hell deserves the slow poisoning they get. Can't we speed things up a bit and slip fatal doses of strychnine into, say, every 100th meal item at T.B. and certain other schlock chains? That would bring us to the plutocrats' goal of cutting the human population by half, and if we wiped out enough of the stupid people in a hurry, it might prevent the long, slow collapse into starvation and serfdom that's coming. (You probably know the history of labour shortages in Europe caused by the Black Plague and how that led to rising ages and the development of a middle class.)

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  3. My friend says she prefers Taco Bell to our local Mighty Taco because TB uses real cheez in their imitation taco tacos. My preference was for Mighty Taco because they always have kickass commercials,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s63YovrlcgA

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