In June 2026, a claim spread that McDonald's lost a lawsuit against the TV chef Jamie Oliver, who — according to posts — proved that the fast food chain's food was "unfit for human consumption" because it was "highly toxic." The claim is unproven.
Snopes previously
investigated a variation of this claim in 2018. We found then and now that Oliver said in a 2011
TV program that beef trimmings used for a product he called "pink slime" were "not fit for human consumption." We found no evidence that he specifically called McDonald's food "unfit for human consumption" or "toxic," as the posts suggested.
The American Meat Institute, a trade association that represents processors of meat and poultry,
said in 2012 that beef trimmings used to make "pink slime," which it calls Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, were edible.
However, because we could not access a full version of the "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" episode where Oliver discussed "pink slime" to see if he specifically mentioned McDonald's, we leave this claim unrated.
Snopes will update this report if, or when, additional information surfaces. We contacted Oliver and McDonald's to ask whether Oliver has ever called the fast food chain's food "unfit for human consumption" or "toxic" or whether McDonald's ever lost a lawsuit involving Oliver and are waiting for responses.
In June 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that McDonald's lost a lawsuit against the TV chef Jamie Oliver. Posts claimed the fast food chain sued Oliver after he proved its food was "unfit for human consumption" because it was "highly toxic."
The claim was most popular on Facebook, where one user suggested Oliver's alleged commentary on McDonald's food related to its hamburgers. The user wrote:
McDonald's loses lawsuit against chef Jamie Oliver, who proved that the food they sell is unfit for human consumption because it is highly toxic.
Chef Jamie Oliver won a lawsuit against the world's largest fast-food chain.
Oliver demonstrates how hamburgers are made.
According to Oliver, fatty cuts of meat are "washed" with ammonium hydroxide and then used to fill the hamburger patties. Even before this process, the TV presenter says, this meat was unfit for human consumption.
Oliver, a radical activist chef taking on the food industry, says:
"We are talking about meat that is sold as dog food and then served to humans. Aside from the quality of the meat, ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health." Oliver calls it "the pink slime process."
Similar claims also circulated on X (archived), Instagram (archived) and LinkedIn (archived). Snopes readers contacted us about the claim.
The claim contained three parts: that McDonald's sued Oliver, that Oliver made the comments about "pink slime" and that Oliver's alleged comments were specifically about McDonald's.
We found no evidence in online searches (archived, archived, archived) that McDonald's ever lost a lawsuit involving Oliver. AFP Fact Check reported in December 2021 that Oliver had never taken legal action against McDonald's.
According to an excerpt of a 2011 episode of his program "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," Oliver said that the meat used to produce a specific type of beef product that the celebrity chef called "pink slime" was "not fit for human consumption."
McDonalds reportedly ceased using "pink slime," which is also known as Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, in their food in 2011, as we noted in 2018 when we fact-checked a previous version of this claim. Oliver did not mention McDonald's specifically in excerpts of the 2011 episode of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" that Snopes reviewed.
However, because we could not access a full version of the "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" episode in question to see if it mentioned McDonald's, we leave this claim unrated.
Snopes contacted Oliver and McDonald's to ask whether McDonald's ever lost a lawsuit involving Oliver, whether Oliver had ever proved McDonald's food was "unfit for human consumption" or "toxic" and to ask whether McDonald's used Select Lean Beef Trimmings in 2026. We await replies to our queries.
Oliver's allegations
In the first episode of the second season of his program "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," in which Oliver attempted to reform school lunches and fight obesity in the U.S., the celebrity chef held a demonstration where he showed children and adults where on a cow different cuts of meat came from.
According to a segment of the episode that an internet user uploaded to video platform Dailymotion in 2017, after spray-painting prices on a live cow to show where various cuts were found, Oliver then addressed what happened to the remainder of the animal.
He said (time code 2:40), "The public loved seeing that, that, equalling a steak. They never for a minute thought I would clear all the meat and cuts away and introduce them to a new world of food. It's called pink slime."
Oliver added (time code 2:53), "When you've broken down a whole beast, you're left with trimmings. You know, in my industry, we call those trimmings [BLEEP], 'Get rid of the [BLEEP]."
Speaking to a crowd of people, Oliver described the trimmings used for "pink slime" as (time code 03:33) "not fit for human consumption."
Oliver went on to say that processing plants took trimmings that were "not fit for human consumption," separated the meat from the fat, killed harmful bacteria using ammonium hydroxide and sold the end product, which he called "pink slime," as human-grade food. Ammonium hydroxide is a watery solution that can be used to regulate acidity in food or in hair dye or cosmetics.
In an excerpt from the program included in a 2012 CBS report, Oliver said (time code 00:32), "We're taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs, and after this process we can give it to humans."
(Snopes could not locate a complete video of the "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" episode in question. The clips we have found online appeared genuine and did not indicate any signs of possible manipulation.)
FDA says ammonium hydroxide 'generally safe'
Around 11 months after Oliver's episode discussing "pink slime" aired, the American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle issued a statement to say that Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings was "a safe, wholesome and nutritious form of beef" that helped prevent food waste by utilizing trimmings that would otherwise go to waste.
The institute is a trade association that represents processors of meat and poultry.
Boyle's statement said, similarly to Oliver's demonstration, that processing Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings involved first separating the meat from the fat and using "food grade ammonium hydroxide gas" to destroy bacteria before blending the product into foods like ground beef.
However, he denied claims that the trimmings used to create Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings were not edible. The statement said:
Some recent media reports created a troubling and inaccurate picture, particularly in their use of the colloquial term 'pink slime.' The fact is, BLBT is beef. The beef trimmings that are used to make BLBT are absolutely edible. In fact, no process can somehow make an inedible meat edible; it's impossible. In reality, the BLBT production process simply removes fat and makes the remaining beef more lean and suited to a variety of beef products that satisfy consumers' desire for leaner foods.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates ammonium hydroxide use in food, says the ingredient is "generally recognized as safe." This was also the case when we last reported on these claims in 2018.
In sum ...
While Oliver did call the cuts of meat used for Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings "not fit for human consumption" and claimed (time code 00:59) the product was "admitted to being in at least 70% of ground beef products" in a 2011 program, the episode excerpts Snopes reviewed did not show him specifically accusing McDonald's of using the product or calling the fast food chain's products toxic.
McDonald's said in a 2013 statement it had not used Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings in its products since 2011.
We found no evidence that McDonald's had lost a lawsuit involving Oliver since then. Given the prominence of McDonald's and Oliver, such a lawsuit would have been widely reported by reputable sources. That was not the case.
While the FDA generally recognizes ammonium hydroxide, which is used to process Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, as safe, reporting by the publication Food Safety News claimed that fast food giants like McDonalds, Taco Bell and Burger King had all stopped using the product by January 2012.
Both ABC, which broadcast Oliver's program, and Oliver himself have faced lawsuits over their coverage of the product.
ABC settled out of court in 2017 in a $1.9 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Beef Products Inc., a producer of Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, over Oliver's program and other stories the network had reported about the product in March and April 2012.
A man who Beef Products Inc. laid off after negative press heavily affected the company's sales sued Oliver, ABC and other defendants in 2012. He dropped the case in 2013.
Snopes' archives contributed to this report.
