Does McD Use Adam’s Rib for Its McSandwich?

Letter to Romans: McDonald’s popular “McRib” always tasted good to me yet it never captured the meaty pork feel I’d expect. A recent class action alleged as much. The fast-food giant was the one surprised when the false advertising case just survived a motion to dismiss …

That, of course, doesn’t mean the presiding judge on October 30^th ruled McD has been deceiving anyone. It just means the complaint in Le et al v McDonal’s Corps No. 1:25-c -15609 alleged enough “facts” to remain alive for now … the class hasn’t even been certified yet, nor has discovery been conducted in Chicago to determine the real facts that could go to a jury. The alleged facts basically maintain the sandwich name, coupled with the mouth-watering ads mislead us reasonable consumers into believing they bought & bit into a pork rib that could break a tooth. Instead, the complaint says, the rib-like guts of the sandwich contain more of a processed patty that consists of “shoulder, heart, tripe or stomach”. McDonald’s conceded from the get go that its McRib is made mostly of pork shoulder that’s chopped, seasoned & shaped to look like a pork rib. But it strongly denies “heart or tripe” are included or that any reasonable person would think they were biting into an unprocessed pork rib, as if God had taken Adam’s rib & put it in a McRib.

Since its birth in 1981 to compliment McDonald’s ever popular McNuggets, the McRib has inspired similar questions about its ingredients, but it doesn’t appear any lawsuit has ever gone to a jury trial. Yet, in her ruling, Circuit Court Judge April Perry found that the plaintiffs’ view of the McD ads & labeling were “not unreasonable or fanciful.” There you go. So, we may finally (one day) get a judgement as to whether the mere naming of a product that suggests a style of food can be actionable for also impliedly representing its main ingredient. What will discovery reveal, e.g., of McD’s own exhaustive marketing research on consumer expectations & perceptions? BTW: Is the McNuggets a whole piece of chicken taken from Eve’s breast or also chopped up, ground & seasoned chicken parts from “Old MacDonald's Farm’s Finest?”

Davd Soul