OT/ Vegetarians object to McD's fries

[Guest guest]

Hi,

 

I heard an interview with an Indian hindu representative on the radio

this morning concerning a law suit about McDonalds using animal products

in cooking chips. As a vegetarian, I too feel annoyed that many shops in

Australia

sell hot chips cooked in vegetable oil but that have been pre-processed

using

animal fat. Here are two articles about the McDonalds protests (India and

USA)

 

Marguerite

 

## McDonald's raided in Hindu protest

 

Items compiled from Tribune news services

http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,SAV-0105060383,FF.

html

May 6, 2001

NEW DELHI, INDIA -- Hindu activists charged into a McDonald's restaurant in

a Bombay suburb, smashing furniture and lights to protest the use of beef

flavoring in the chain's French fries in the United States.

 

Restaurant customers fled as members of the Bajrang Dal raided the

restaurant Friday in Thane, but there were no reports of injuries, police

said. In southern Bombay, another McDonald's was surrounded by demonstrators

from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party who shouted slogans and smeared cow

dung.

 

McDonald's says it does not use any animal extracts in its French fries in

India, where the cow is considered sacred by most Hindus. But it confirmed

it uses some beef flavoring, though not beef fat, in its American fries.

 

The protests were touched off by front-page newspaper reports about a

lawsuit filed in Seattle on Tuesday.

 

An Indian-American lawyer accused McDonald's of using beef fat in the

preparation of French fries more than a decade after it said it would cook

its fries in vegetable oil.

 

Most of India's Hindus are vegetarians.

*************************************

 

##The chips are down at McDonald's

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001171350,00.html

 

BY JAMES BONE

 

Hindus are outraged that fries were meat flavoured

 

McDONALD’S, the fast food giant facing a lawsuit from outraged Hindus, has

apologised to all religious and secular vegetarians for failing to make

clear that beef flavouring is added to its chips in America.

When a Seattle lawyer representing two Hindus and one non-Hindu vegetarian

who ate McDonald’s “French fries” launched the action earlier this month, it

provoked uproar in India where Hindus revere the cow as sacred.

 

Harish Bharti, who is handling the case without pay, said that one million

Hindus and 15 million vegetarians should get damages for “emotional

distress” for eating beef-tainted chips in the United States.

 

“This is a pure fight for dharma, which means right,” Mr Bharti said. “That

is what it’s all about: to save a culture and to save a religion from these

people.”

 

McDonald’s, which operates 28,000 restaurants in 120 countries, announced in

1990 that it was switching from beef tallow to “100 per cent vegetable oil”

for frying chips at its outlets in the United States. Vegetarian customers

were appalled to learn that McDonald’s American chips still contained beef

flavouring added during processing.

 

The company says that no beef or pork flavouring is used in potatoes sold in

Britain or India or in predominantly Muslim countries in Southeast Asia, the

Middle East and Africa where large numbers of people are vegetarian for

religious reasons.

 

“The situation is different in the United Kingdom,” Amanda Pierce, a company

spokesman, said. “In the United Kingdom we do not add any flavourings to our

French fries at any stage of the process. They are 100 per cent potato

cooked in 100 per cent vegetable oil.”

 

The company says that the much-publicised change to vegetable oil was “for

nutritional reasons, to offer customers a cholesterol-free menu item” and

insists that it complied with US regulations when it described the beef

additive as “natural flavour”.

 

But many American Hindus who had eaten what they thought were beef-free

chips were shocked to read an article in the India West newspaper last month

headlined: “Where’s the beef? It’s in your French fries”.

 

The newspaper learnt about the secret ingredient from Hitesh Shah, a Los

Angeles software engineer and strict vegetarian who had sent an e-mail

inquiry to McDonald’s. The reply from a customer service representative said

that the company used “a minuscule amount of beef flavouring as an

ingredient in the raw product”.

 

In India restaurant windows were smashed and cow dung smeared on statues of

Ronald McDonald. Hindu nationalists called for the fast-food chain to be

expelled.

 

Lige Weill, executive director of the Vegetarian Awareness Network, said his

group had tried to alert the media to the beef content of McDonald’s chips

in 1997 after the company admitted that its “natural flavour” came from an

“animal source”. It was he who put Mr Bharti in touch with the Vegetarian

Legal Action Network formed by students at George Washington University,

which helped him to prepare the lawsuit.

 

McDonald’s, while insisting that it never claimed that the chips served in

its American restaurants were vegetarian, says in a statement on its

website: “Because it is our policy to communicate to customers, we regret if

customers felt that the information we provided was not complete enough to

meet their needs. If there was confusion, we apologise.”