A reader sent us the contents of a Better Business Bureau complaint filed against Taco Bell. It describes how a customer tried repeatedly to find out what grade beef Taco Bell uses in its food, and how nobody at the company was able or willing to provide an answer. Not surprisingly, the BBB complaint also went unanswered. Let’s just hope they’re not sourcing their beef from forklift cattle, which is like downer cattle but has odd prong-shaped bruises on the side.
Here’s the actual BBB complain that went unanswered by Taco Bell:
About 3 weeks ago i called the 800# asking what grade of beef they use. All they could tell me was usda approved. I called 4 times and got the same, twice i left my # and was told a nutritionalist would call me back….no call ever came. I next e mailed corp with the same question. I was answered by a Sandy Shakelford telline me:I have located a phone number contact in which you can inquire about our meat. Taco Bell Corporation 949-863-4500 and ask for the QA Department. I called a total of three times first got a prompt telling me to put in MY voice mail # to get my messages. Next i was transfered to a recording telling of bad cheese both plain and mixed and to throw them out and call in for a credit. Third was disconected. 4th i got a voice mailbox in the Quality control dept. i think his name was Steve…Again i left my question and # and again no call back. On Feb 27 i e mailed Sandy telling her what my phone experiance was and had not got an answer to my question…That was 10 days ago and again no contact from Sandy nor Taco Bell. Side note the web sight says contact us call 1800 TACO BELL when its actually 800 TACO BEL….The companys resistance to answer my question tells me what i was told by a friend that worked there that they use poor yet usda approved beef could be true.
(Thanks to Moe!)
(Photo: karlfrankowski)
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@spinachdip:
Let me get this straight…. you are comparing US slaughterhouse conditions to mexican ones? LOL! I’ll take my chances with US slaughterhouse conditions thankyou very much! Because no matter how bad the US ones are…. the mexican ones MUST be worse!
The raw ground beef from which is found to be contaminated with e-coli a/k/a cow shit and can’t be sold as is or you will get sick and possibly die is sent to another processing plant for cooked meat only. That meat is then presumably subjected to high heat to try and kill the bacteria and then it is shipped off to the dog food plant and Taco Bell. And if they screw up, you have an outbreak and recall.
And what is up with the recording to throw away “bad cheese”. What bad cheese. Were they going to tell anyone about that or only those who call that number get this information. They do sell packaged Taco Bell cheese in the supermarkets. It would be nice if people knew what cheese was bad.
And USDA inspected means the same as FDA approved. Absolutely nothing. Actually it means that if enough people get sick and die we will investigate … maybe… and issue a recall …maybe.
I am a bit of an extremist but I have had food poisoning and I will tell you death is welcome. It is like living in hell. No flu or any non chronic illness that you would regularly experience comes close.
@forgottenpassword: Whatever it is, it’s probably better than what’s used in public school lunches.
Authentic tacos from Mexico, I don’t know.
[www.snopes.com]
“In the USA meat is not graded on a scale
represented by letters, so one would never see crates of meat labeled
Grade D (or any other letter grade).”
As long as the cows have gone to Bovine University, I’m happy.
@GothGirl:
Still the only restaurant where I can get full on $2.
It’s not beef
They just put Mexicans into a meat grinder. True story.
Wait, you eat at Taco Bell, and now you care about the quality of meat?
Really?
Ok……..
I always thought they just changed the extrusion template and added a different color to the soy based mix to make each ingredient…green for lettuce, orange for cheese, brown for “beef”
Here is a link to some info about beef grading and what it means. The prime, select etc. refer to the tenderness and fat content and the letter grades refer to the age of the beef with A being the youngest.
[en.wikibooks.org]
Everyone knows it’s circus animals, but at 2:00am after clubbin who cares.
Taco Bell beef isn’t really beef. It is space whale. Tasty, unethically farmed, space whale.
[en.wikipedia.org]
[www.imdb.com]
@el_smurfo: Sounds like we’re set, then, from how amazing I keep hearing soy is supposed to be! By eating at Taco Bell every day, I shall live to be 200.
It sucks that Taco Bell wasn’t very helpful or good at answering phone calls.
However… who cares what grade beef it is when it’s ground beef? Of course you use the lower grade beef for grinding – that’s because no one will be able to tell whether or not the meat was tender once it’s been completely decimated.
I’ve eaten Taco Bell a few times and back in college it used to be okay, but now I usually get about halfway through and get so disgusted I can’t finish. I can’t put my finger on it but there is something about it that makes me nauseous after a few bites. I would have to be starving with no other options to choke down Taco Bell these days.
@forgottenpassword: Well, the conventional wisdom is that food safety standards in Mexico, all things being equal, are worse than in the US, and it’s my understanding that sanitary and safety standards in US meatpacking plants have improved since Fast Food Nation came out.
Buuuut, the FDA is overextended and underfunded, and I’m not sure if its oversight has any teeth, and clearly, plenty of tainted meat has left US packing plants. Plus, meat’s nation of origin is simply irrelevant if you factor in the different types of farms and plants. A mega-plant that ships out frozen patties is probably going to have sketchier meat, than say, a butcher who picks his own meats and has a hand grinder.
Which is to say, comparing meat by countries is kinda stupid.
It’s powdered…that’s all that matters.
I can only assume the OP mistakenly thinks that the grading system is a measure of health safety. Otherwise, I can’t really see anyone going through all this effort just to figure out what the fat/taste content of the ground beef is. You could find out about either of those easier just by looking at the nutritional information or actually taking a bite. It’s not even necessary you swallow. Just chew a few times.
Having worked at Taco Bell for a year not too long ago, I’d be much more concerned about the way the meat is heated than what the quality is.
The various kinds of meat served at Taco Bell basically come frozen in sealed plastic bags and is submerged for around 30 minutes in a machine that keeps water hot in order to heat the meat (and nacho cheese) to serving temperature (it is then placed in a metal pan on a steam table for use in assembling various menu items). The store I worked at never cleaned out the water machine (they just changed the water once a week), so the inside of the machine was completely coated with a layer of gunk from occasional bags that would get punctured before or while heating in the machine. I was one of the few employees at the store who would immediately throw away entire bags of meat that had become punctured, exposing the meat to the filthy water, as I found it personally disgusting.
I also wonder if the grade of plastic used for the meat is safe for exposure to hot water, as I’ve read that some aren’t.
Taco Bell beef is mostly made of fat, skin and arteries. Take a close look at the beef next time and you can identify it by the flatness of the pink stuff and the fat is the white chewy stuff.
#1 If you’re eating at tacobell in the first place you obviously don’t care all that much about your health
#2 If tacobell were to answer his question and tell him what grade of beef they use would he even know what the hell they were talking about.
#3 Dude it’s tacobell who the hell cares.
Ground meat is not “graded” like whole muscle cut meat is. So long as it comes from an inspected facility, either USDA or a State Inspected facility, it is permitted for consumption. What is required is the percentage fat/lean ratio. This is at least true on retail ground co-mingled. It may not be required on non-retail co-mingled.
they put so little meat inside the taco (under all the lettuce & cheese), that I doubt you could classify a taco bell taco as a meat product!
Its the “burger fur” you have to watch out for!
A guy I knew used to get sick every time he ate beef at Taco Bell.
When he asked what it really was, the employee said it was oatmeal.
This made sense, since he was allergic to oatmeal.
It’s mostly snouts and entrails.
(Homer: Mmmm, snouts.)
@Corydon:
If the age of the cow is what gives it a lower letter grade than the lower the letter grade, the higher the risk of the cow or steer having mad cow disease.
It’s the oldest cattle that have & spread it, plus that they use mechanical separation to remove all the meat from the bones also means the possibility of spinal tissue in the ground beef.
It’s in the brain & spinal tissue where the prions that cause mad cow or Creutzfeldt Jakob disease reside.
@spinachdip: … and it’s my understanding that sanitary and safety standards in US meatpacking plants have improved since Fast Food Nation came out.
I am not so sure about that. There have been 33 million pounds of e-coli tainted meat recalled in 2007. Compare that to 156,235 pounds in 2006. Something is going on that is causing this rise in contaminated meat. You have young children who ate the meat with kidney failure destined for a lifetime of dialysis and certain early death. A 69 cent taco isn’t worth that.
Ignorance is bliss, and tastes good
@forgottenpassword: If you’d ever actually been to Mexico, and eaten tacos at ANY of the stands in Mexico City, you’d never dream of consuming the ground dog offal that’s sold at Taco Hell.
Side note the web sight says contact us call 1800 TACO BELL when its actually 800 TACO BEL
So? A lot of places do that – they spell something with their phone number even if it causes an extra digit. It does not affect your ability to call.
What’s next? Complaining that a mexican pizza isn’t really how they eat pizza in Mexico?
@HunterZ: I would assume that the plastic is safe. I am old enough to remember heating up chipped beef and Chicken ala King the same way before microwaves were common.
I had a friend who worked at taco bell. He said the bags came marked “Grade F, but edible”.
@Coder4Life:
Instead of Grade D, don’t you mean “degraded?”
RDAC:
“I had a friend who worked at taco bell. He said the bags came marked “Grade F, but edible”
Nice try but there is no such thing as Grade F beef. Or Grade D, C, B, or A. Either you or your friend made that up.
[www.snopes.com]
Someone told me that the meat at Taco Bell is actually about 70% soy. If that’s true, then I feel a bit better…
I have worked at a Taco Bell. Don’t ever eat there.
Ever.
And here I thought my .89 for a taco was buying me the highest quality meat that money can buy…all .89 cents worth.
@ceejeemcbeegee (AKA!): Can you elaborate? There have been a few comments so far from people that say they worked there, and never to eat there, but don’t go any further than that.
Is it really any different than what goes on in the back room of just about every restaurant? Explain.
Ugh. I spent a little bit in high school working there.
NOTHING WAS MARKED GRADE XYZBBQOMFGWTF. It just said “ground beef”. I do remember someone who worked there saying something about a ‘filler’ (oatmeal/soy were frequently spoken of) but no one ever confirmed/denied.
The steak is real steak, just low grade/quality, but still approved.
As far as quality goes, everything is pretty fresh/good quality, except the meat was frozen (precooked) in bags (and the meat was heated/recooked in said bags). The water from said boilers were rarely cleaned, and sometimes there would be holes in the bags of meat to be boiled (shipping/handling/opening?) and the gross nasty water would get into the meat.
I threw out the meat that had been infiltrated by the gross nasty water, and I was yelled at. I never had meat duty again.
Sorry, didn’t realize I went off on semi-unrelated tangent.
This’ll teach me to proof read. Insert sentence about boiling the meat in the bags.
This is ridiculous. “Grades” of beef don’t exist. Beef passes or fails USDA inspection…it doesn’t pass with flying colors, or barely squeak by. USDA testing is for safety, not quality.
Beef producers can pay extra to have their beef graded for quality (again, not a safety measure).
Taco Bell meat may be low quality in terms of fat content, and where it comes from in the cow, but by no means is it any less safe than any other beef.
@Jottle: Nice try, but Taco Bell’s beef doesn’t come in cans. It comes in pre-prepared bags that are ready to heat and add to the steam tables.
I believe it is textured vegetable protein or Beef TVP. Not real meat
@InfiniTrent: Here’s a link to back up what I just said. Snopes looked into it.
[www.snopes.com]
WTF – raise your hand if you thought Taco Bell was selling high quality beef at .69 for a taco. Now those of you that raised your hand, please take the walk of shame. Of course they use the cheapest beef (if you can call it that) they can find. It’s the only way they could sell you that combo meal for $2.99 and still be in business.
Sheeze, this is news?
Taco Bell’s meat is made from locally harvested groundhogs – here is indisputable proof:
[www.phonelosers.org]
One time in highschool (when I was an avid taco bell eater), we went to Taco Bell after a track meet. I was famished and ordered quite a bit.
The store was out of hot sauce, and I found that I could barely stomach their food un-slathered in multiple packets of sauce. Apparently, I was just a fan of their sauce, and didn’t have a clue as to what their food ‘tasted’ like. Pretty much stopped eating there after that.
bsalamon: Based on the grammar and spelling in the article, I don’t think they could have read it.
InfiniTrent: Grades of Beef are here.
Nice try, though.
@Mr. Gunn: Read your own link – those grades (as I already said) are grades of quality, not of safety.
The questions always rotate around the safety/fitness for consumption of Taco Bell meat. There’s no danger at all.
they used grade d meat at my old college’s cafeteria. basically dogfood but people approved.