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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There is very little meat in these gym mats…
Welcome to Taco Bell – Now serving “Eight Belles”
@youbastid: Where to begin? This was 1991, so things may have changed. For starters, I’m not surprised about the USDA meat lawsuit. The meat is positively unidentifiable. And the fact that TB refuses to name it’s contents is quite alarming.
Next, it comes in large plastic bags, just ready to be “cooked”. By cooked, I mean poured into steam/hot water heated chafing dishes. Oftentimes we would find casings or live bugs in the bag. We were told to just pick them out.
Now lets talk about the tacos… things like the sour cream or cheese (at that time) didn’t need to be refrigerated for some strange reason. Plus, sour cream caulking gun was rarely, if ever, washed. Once empty we would load it up with more Sour Cream. So towards the end could be 4 week old never refrigerated sour cream with the new near the top. You might get an urge to clean the nozzle off with rag. But the only rags we had were table rags. I got written off because I dared to clean out the gun with clean paper towels. My manager was peeved because I didn’t use a dish rag, and my protestation that that rag had been wiping down counters fell on deaf ears.
I’ve worked in several restaurants, and TB was BY FAR the dirtiest, most unsanitary one of them all.
Who cares? It’s DELICIOUS!
@ceejeemcbeegee (AKA!):
Did you ever have guac/sour cream fights? they were the best :-X
@nerdette314159: Ha! That’s when I learned I was allergic to avocados! Or maybe just rancid, unrefrigerated, guacamole.
@Isabelle15:
Guess you didn’t finish logic class. Just because they recalled more tainted meat doesn’t mean there was more tainted meat. It just means they were paying attention more.
And another thing, ground beef with e-coli isn’t tainted meat. E-coli lives in the intestine, it helps with digestion. If you grind up an entire animal, sometimes intestines are part of “the entire animal”, so the e-coli gets spread throughout. That’s why you’re supposed to cook ground meats to a certain temperature.
Lastly, who goes looking for the quality of the meat at Taco Bell? Tacos are 79 cents. Figure it out yourself, Sherlock.
@cheviot: thanks for the information
Grade E? That’s not a “failing grade” like a school report card – it describes only the animal’s age. Grade E beef comes from animals over 8 years old (picture, if you will, that ‘Bossy’ had a long and well-cared-for life). The meat might be very tough served as a steak, but quite adequate as ground beef.
The beef quality grades are Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter and Canner. Quality grading is voluntary, not all carcasses are quality graded.
@Greasy Thumb Guzik: Except that any animal carcass graded as 30 months of age or older must have the backbone removed whole. Thus, no CJD.
Beef at Taco Bell? That’s impossible.
A friend who used to work there once told me it was Grade D, meaning it was mixed with oats as filler. Still perfectly fine for human consumption, just not 100% meat.
Eh, I love Taco Bell anyway.
I love how idiot after idiot here has left uneducated, uninformed comment after people have quoted chapter and verse from the USDA about the grading system. Tards.
whatever is not allowed for human consumption, then move that bar up one above that and there you go.
Do yourself and everyone around you and don’t eat that garbage. Problem solved.
Comment on Do You Know What Grade Of Beef Taco Bell Uses? Do They? Does Anyone?
Used to work at BPI, a supplier to Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell.
What BPI does is take the scraps from packing plants, and refine the beef
off of them. They wind up with a product that is 98% lean beef. This
allows the fast food chain to take lower grade ground beef, 85% or so, and
add the BPI product to boost it’s flavor and quality. The BPI beef is
cheap, but it really is great quality.
–
Using Opera’s revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
I wouldn’t write back to someone who wrote me a letter with no grammar, spelling, syntax or common sense either.
I worked at Taco Bell, 1995-1996. The beef came in as a slush in a sealed plastic bag, pre-seasoned. At least the “Taco Bell” brand beef did. We heated the bags in a deep fat fryer that had water in it instead of oil.
We never “cooked” anything at that resturaunt. Everything was premade or powdered. Beans were dehydrated and reconstituted.
The only thing fried in he store were the taco salad shells and the cinnimon desert crisps. They did that in the morning and had the frier turned off before we opened for business.
That place was grease free and clean. You could eat off the floors there. not like “Jack in the Box” where you took your life in your hands eating there.
when i worked there in 1994 it was labelled ‘D’ which actually refers to the estimated age of the animal it came from
[meat.tamu.edu]
classification D: 72-96 months
also, i stopped eating the ground beef there when i was on the ‘steam line’ [hot food prep] and poured out a ‘fresh’ bag of ground beef into the pan and found a nearly intact [but hairless, fortunately] cow’s ear
I just don’t see the point in wanting to know this information. It’s Taco Bell. You’re not going to find filet mignon on the menu.
It’s not meat. Why anyone would eat at Taco Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never been that hardup and I’ve known poor. I’d stand in the yucky government cheese line before queueing up at the Taco Hell.
Some dog foods are actually grade B meat…
Taco Bell uses beef?
Taco Bell uses beef? I thought it was some genetically mutated soy monster or something. What about the giant rats?
I should note that Taco Bell is one of the fast food joints I have never became sick from eating at. About a decade ago, I would consistently get sick from eating at Burger King. The same holds true for Wendy’s in recent years. I do not eat at either place.
My brother worked at a Taco Bell for a summer back in high school. The Beef came in bags labeled “Taco Meat”. The word “Beef” did not appear on any part of the packaging.
Also, you don’t want to know what the “green sauce” is either
Side note, it’s spelled web “site” and 800 TACO BELL and 800 TACO BEL are the same damn thing when you dial them.
Here is a fact for ya. You can eat almost anything! Even poisons in small amounts. Your body processes protein without concerns of it’s origin. I grew up in a country home. After watching my parents both cook and eat Souse Meat (aka head cheese [en.wikipedia.org] ) I think you can eat anything. I have eaten quiet a long list of animals and animal parts.
This is ridiculous. This jackass is eating at Taco Bell. He obviously doesn’t have that “descerning of a pallet” anyway. Its a 1$ for a 1/2lb. What quality do you really think you are getting for that price.
@oncewascool: An even longer list when you consider that you’re just not told what goes into most meats and foods, processed or not, because it doesn’t matter (unless you need Kosher). People make assumptions that it’s some sort of pure meat, like it’s an element in the periodic table, completely forgetting the fact that a living creature, which is composed of all manner of nasty, was ground up for their tacos. I love it when people get grossed out seeing animals eat raw entrails, and I think, “that was my hamburger yesterday.”
Confectioners glaze is my favorite, used in candy and medication.
I always thought USDA used letter grades for Lean Maturity(Color and Texture of meat).
@tdarkdz: Whoops, for got the important part. Lean Maturity of the Carcass
[www.ams.usda.gov]
*forgot
Mmmm. Kibbles and Snouts…
@Jottle:
Taco Bell must have just started getting meat in cans, it used to be big plastic steamer bags.
What a stupid question about the grade of beef for hamburger/taco meat. Research what hamburger is. Its scraps of all grades mixed with a certain percentage of fat.
Its like asking what grade of meat hot dogs are made of, because pig snout doesn’t have a grade.
@Metropolis: Rep points for you (if this site were to ever allow them). LOL.
@forgottenpassword: Ive eaten from several roadside taco stands in Mexico with no problems. Fast food places on the other hand… not so lucky. It’s not the quality of the meat, it’s how the meat is handled. Since taco stands in Mexico don’t have the best refrigeration systems, they keep just enough on hand and have a high turnover. I’ll take a taco stand or taco truck over T-Bell any day.
Grade B,C,D,and E meat is all fine to eat. The further down the alphabet the older the cow. In fact, in Spain, the best meat comes from older cows that have worked all of their lives. Unfortunately, cows here are just as lazy as many people eating them. It’s not like Grade E meat is dropped on the slaughter house floor and mixed with bleach or anything…
I actually worked at taco bell for a little while. The beef that they use for most of their items comes in bags and is heated up in hot water. Very clearly marked on every bag was Grade B Beef. It ain’t Grade a but i still loves me some taco bell.
Taco Bell – “we will no longer be serving tacos, the animal we were using to make it is now extinct”
Mike – “COW!!?!
Consumerist – “PIG!!?!”
Bell – “Noooo think smaller, more legs…”
Stick to the stuff they can’t (easily) mess up, dairy and beans =/ or just don’t eat there if you don’t like it. its not like taco bell is the forced diet of the world.
better than paying $8 on a failing economy for a “healthy” meal.
It’s amazing to see how many people are so ignorant. Ignorance itself I don’t have a problem with, but self-righteous ignorance rubs me the wrong way.
As other people have stated, there is no “Grade D.” There are maturity classifications that use the letters A, B, C, D, and E, but they merely refer to the age of the animal. Unless you plan on only eating ground veal for your tacos, you sure as heck don’t want “A” meat. Regarding the actual QUALITY, there has never been any sort of letter-grading system in the United States for the quality of safety of meat, and everything is classified via the well-known Prime/Choice/Select/etc system.
There is no “Grade D but edible,” and if you repeat that BS to make yourself seem superior for being a vegetarian or for not eating at Taco Bell, you can kindly go suck on a lemon.
@nerdette314159: “Meat Duty” is just wrong on so many levels…
One small nitpick. The USDA does use one and only one ‘letter’ grade, and that’s “A”, for “Approved for human consumption” (which is then broken down into Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter, and Canner.) Anything less is declared unfit for human consumption and does not get graded. Taco Bell, for their steak, uses USDA Grade A Standard in their steak products, Grade A Commercial in their ground beef products. Not the best, but better than McDonald’s (which uses 100% pure ground beef, Utility grade.)
What the hell is the deal, consumerist?
HELLO! ITS NOT APRIL FOOLS!
These prank news stories you keep posting are bullshit:
Taco Bell doesn’t use Grade D beef because there is no such thing (see http://www.snopes.com)
And the taser story is also a clever fake from snopes.
Get on the ball, dudes. You’ve been duped TWICE today.
I worked at Pizza Hut in 1997 when Yum Brands was called Tricon (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell). We got a bag of Taco Bell beef off the truck one day to make Taco Pizzas (for ourselves). Stamped on the bag…. Grade D.
“Taco Bell doesn’t use Grade D beef because there is no such thing (see http://www.snopes.com)
And the taser story is also a clever fake from snopes.”
Snopes is not always right. I saw the Tom Green dressed as hitler episode on mtv the one and only time it aired. Tryed to find it the other day and was directed to an inaccurate snopes entry.
@SpdRacer:
Ah, there’s so little meat in most of their stuff, what’s it matter?