Ingredients of 100% beefburger:
30 grams flaked or ground beef shin (including gristle,
sinew and fat)
16 grams beef mince (including heart, tongue and more fat).
10 grams mechanically recovered meat (MRM) obtained by stripping the remains of the
carcass and grinding the bits into a fine slurry.
20 grams water.
2 grams salt and spices .
1 gram monosodium glutamate and colouring .
5 grams polyphosphates and preservatives .
"[the meat industry] relies upon. pharmaceuticals to
ensure that animals reach the slaughterhouse alive; kills them in conditions where hygiene
standards resemble a poorly maintained public lavatory and then relies upon chemicals to
make the finished product look and taste edible."
-Mark Gold, Living Without Cruelty
A RECENT SURVEY SHOWED that one in four burgers on sale in the EEC contain residues of banned growth-promoting hormones. Beef cattle are routinely dosed with low-level antibiotics and in recent years they have been fed slaughterhouse by-products. Waste from the carcasses of cattle, sheep, pigs and hens have been recycled into the feed, both of their own species and that of each others. Cattle and sheep are herbivores, they are not scavengers and have little defence against viral infection from food. The effect of this unnatural diet has been the transfer of viruses from one species to another. BSE is a virus in cattle that attacks the brain and causes dementia, it is invariably fatal and it is closely related to sheep scrapie and the human brain disorder Creutzfield Jakob Disease.
BSE is 'unusually resistant to heat and the normal sterilisation
process'. The BSE virus will have entered the human food chain via milk and beef products
(including beefburgers). It will however be several years before the effect on human
health is known, as the virus lies dormant for long periods before the brain disease
appears.
Even without the fear of BSE, the beefburger is high in salt and saturated fat, chemical
flavourings, colourings and preservatives - it contains virtually no roughage. The
beefburger is a recipe for heart attack, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity and
constipation. Meanwhile the hygiene standards in 90 per cent of British slaughterhouses
are so low that they are considered unfit to export meat to any other country.
Don't Eat At McDonalds
Every minute 13,000 people worldwide eat identical
products at McDonalds. McDonalds are not responding to consumer demand, on the contrary
they are controlling the market. For every pound spent in McDonalds 5p goes directly to
their advertising budget. The Big Mac is portrayed as a cheap cheerful convenient food.
Yet can anyone describe a tasteless burger in a 'rubber' bun as their ideal meal?
Rainforests
The burger chains are notorious for their involvement in the
deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest. Enormous tracts of forest are cleared and the
land is ranched for beef. In America it is impossible to prove where McDonald's beef
originates from but it is widely believed that they are a major purchaser of Central
American beef. McDonalds threaten legal proceedings against anyone daring to suggest they
are responsible for rainforest destruction .
Dishonest
McDonalds have been the subject of court cases themselves - in
Britain as a result of their abuse of child labour and in America for a dishonest
advertising campaign which tried to portray their food as healthy! In the words of the
Texas Attorney General "McDonalds food is as a whole, not nutritious. The intent and
result of the current (advertising) campaign is to deceive customers into believing the
opposite".
Slaughter
The beef served in Britain's burger chains is largely
domestically supplied - this is no reason to feel appeased the suffering of the farm
animal is immense; the cattle market transportation to slaughter and the slaughter process
itself are a well documented nightmare for these the beautiful and docile animals.
'Humane' slaughter is a myth. A Consultant Pathologist writing in Meat Magazine (Nov 1986)
described how the captive bolt method used to pre-stun cattle often doesn't work; "It
is a horrifying fact that approximately one third of the cattle shot in this way are not
stunned, but stand grievously wounded and fully conscious while the pistol is
re-loaded."
Low Pay
McDonalds employ over half a million people throughout the world the
majority are part time or casual workers. Conditions are bad, pay is low and trade unions
are ruthlessly suppressed. In Britain McDonalds are proud to say that they do not know of
a single trade union member working for them or their own suppliers. In San Francisco
McDonalds used lie detectors when hiring staff, employees were asked whether they or
others they knew had union sympathies!
McDonalds is an affront to human dignity and to the welfare of animals - the food is an insult to your stomach.
Veggies,
180 Mansfield Road,
Nottingham.
UK.