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16/12/2004 . Anat Roeh . Haaretz . Israel

McDonald's sued over corn nuggets fried with chicken

McDonald's faces a class action motion in Haifa for allegedly frying corn nuggets in the same oil used to fry chicken.

McDonald's may face a class-action lawsuit for allegedly frying corn nuggets in the same oil used to fry chicken.

In a lawsuit filed in the Haifa District Court yesterday, Na'ama Dotan sued McDonald's for NIS 5,000 on behalf of her 14-year-old vegetarian daughter. However, she also asked the court to recognize the suit as a class action on behalf of all vegetarians who have eaten McDonald's corn nuggets since the product was introduced four years ago. If the court accepts this request, the suit could be worth millions of shekels.

Dotan said in the suit that she bought corn nuggets from McDonald's for her daughter over a long period of time. They then learned that the product had been fried in the same oil as the chicken nuggets, and this discovery caused her daughter anguish, Dotan charged.

Dotan argued that McDonald's misled the vegetarian public by frying corn and chicken nuggets in the same oil. The corn nuggets are made by Tivall, which markets them in the media as "a light vegetarian meal," so vegetarians assumed that they were getting a strictly vegetarian product when they purchased these nuggets at McDonald's, she said.

McDonald's, she charged, received a vegetarian product and changed its nature without disclosing this to its vegetarian customers.

Moreover, Dotan argued, McDonald's thereby infringed on her daughter's autonomy, and that of other vegetarians, by belittling their choice of a vegetarian lifestyle.

Dotan said that McDonald's admitted that it uses the same oil to fry the corn and chicken products, but claimed in its defense that it did not label the corn nuggets as a vegetarian meal.

McDonald's has yet to respond to the allegations.

The Israeli chain opened in October 1993, and today has some 80 restaurants around the country. According to the suit, McDonald's sold three million orders of corn nuggets in the product's first year alone.