Consumers cannot expect boneless chicken wings to actually be free of bones, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting claims by a restaurant patron who suffered serious medical complications from getting a bone stuck in his throat.
Michael Berkheimer was dining with his wife and friends at a wing joint in Hamilton, Ohio, and had ordered the usual — boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce — when he felt a bite-size piece of meat go down the wrong way. Three days later, feverish and unable to keep food down, Berkeimer went to the emergency room, where a doctor discovered a long, thin bone that had torn his esophagus and caused an infection.
…
In a 4-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said Thursday that “boneless wings” refers to a cooking style, and that Berkheimer should’ve been on guard against bones since it’s common knowledge that chickens have bones. The high court sided with lower courts that had dismissed Berkheimer’s suit.
Buffalo wings aren’t made from real Buffalo, either. Hell, most Buffalo can’t even fly.
I hope you’re joking. Otherwise, you’re why boneless chicken wings can still have bones. 💀
Like the Hamburger, it has nothing to do with what’s in the food, but rather where they came from originally.
Oh yes, the Boneless region of France
If they don’t come from the Boneless region, they’re just sparkling nuggets.
I hope you’re joking.
They literally implied that some buffalo can fly.
Don’t get me started on Rocky Mountain Oysters
Where’s the shell? Idiots evolved it away or something?
Oh sure. Next you’ll be telling me squid can’t fly.
Sorry, but you and others are just falling - with style!
Nope. We fly. We come with our own jet engine.
They are boneless however.
Yep, no bones. Just chitin. Terrifying chitin.
Did the restaurant just screw up the order, or was this some process deficiency with the deboner?
yes, customer got boned at a restaurant and in court
I don’t know what the boneless tender machine looks like, but no process is 100% effective, so it’s entirely possible for a bit of bone to make it through. Usually, that’s acceptable, because you find it while chewing and remove it. In this case, it was a dangerously-shaped piece of bone, and it ended up in his respiratory system and caused significant illness.
Honestly, I’m not sure that he has a case, since it really is acceptable for some bone to be present. That it ended up poorly for him isn’t really the company’s fault.
In an ideal system, his medical costs would be covered by universal healthcare, and he wouldn’t have to worry about paying bills or losing his job while out sick through no fault of his own. He shouldn’t need to sue for those costs. (And if he’s just looking for a payday lawsuit, then fuck that guy and his lawyer.)
The bone was nearly 1.5 inches long. It wasn’t just a bit of bone. It was basically the size of some bone-in wings.
Boneless chicken isn’t just deboned, it’s shredded and mashed. Since it’s basically manufacturing chicken, there is a guaranteed nonzero margin of error. It’s the correct ruling, there’s no way any company could guarantee the complete absence of bones that were mixed in with the ingredients. I’m more surprised this doesn’t happen more often.
there’s no way any company could guarantee the complete absence of bones that were mixed in with the ingredients.
And this is acceptable to you? Perhaps corporations shouldn’t be permitted to sell a product if they cannot guarantee that it won’t kill an otherwise healthy, allergy-free person.
Radical thought, I know…
This is a perfectly avoidable problem. But profits are more important than human lives, so nope. They’ll continue throwing every little scrap onto a blender to make sure they’re squeezing every cent out of their miserable factory farmed chicken
I’m not exaggerating when I saw literally every product has an acceptable percentage of defecting products that can make it to shelves before it’s not okay. There isn’t a product in the world that has a 0% risk. It’s just something you need to accept and negotiate on how many defective products are acceptable.
You’re so capital-brained that you can’t even grasp the concept of regulations to mitigate risk until it’s essentially zero. This isn’t some impossible task, you just think corporations’ profit margins are more important than human lives. That’s truly what it comes down to.
There isn’t a product in the world that has a 0% risk.
That’s fucking absurd.
We were talking about bones in boneless chicken wings. When’s the last time you heard of that happening in any context? Do you anticipate hearing another story about it ever again in your life?
That’s fucking absurd
I noticed that you didn’t happen to name any…
It’s literally the same thing as the McDonald’s hot coffee thing.
“Everyone knows coffee is hot so it’s her fault” right?
Well no, turns out the case was a lot more nuanced than that, and she 100% deserved to win.
You think you made a point because no matter what product I name, you can come up with some creatively stupid way that a human could theoretically hurt themselves with it. All that says is that you’re a creative person. Congrats.
A child probably got killed or maimed cleaning the deboning machines in the slaughterhouse, and we can’t have that affecting profits!
deboner
That’s what I call my estrogen pills
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It would be trivial and inexpensive to use an x-ray to check for bones and fragments.
I’m going to need a lot more details before this stops sounding like the craziest idea I’ve heard all month.
X-ray machines are extremely common in industrial inspection processes. https://www.cassel-inspection.com/x-ray-inspection-machine
X-ray would be ideal to spot bone because there’s huge contrast. That’s why you get an x-ray for bones, opposed to an MRI which would be used for soft tissues.
Sure, verifying chicken is deboned before it leaves the factory makes more sense than installing x-ray machines at every pizzeria.
I never proposed doing it at every pizzeria. Production facilities where they make boneless wings in bulk. A human might not even be involved.
But yeah, if the human leaves a bone in the chicken, they’re doing their job wrong…
Boneless chicken wings did come from a chicken with bones in it,
Sure but then someone prepared the chicken and decided that the outcome can be described as boneless. Personally, I would also expect the bones to have been removed.
You can debone chicken without turning it into pink slime.
I’d rather expect it to be made from another part of the chicken in the style of wings.
What is the difference between chicken nuggets and boneless wings? The article mentions that boneless wings are ‘of course’ breast meat.
I wonder if they’d have agreed that nuggets can have bones too?
One of the justices literally writes about that. In this article.
“The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t,” Justice Michael P. Donnelly wrote in dissent.
Ah! I didn’t get that far. I must have gotten lost in the ads or missed the ‘read more’ and thought that the article was finished
Ads are compromising journalism
Usually a boneless wing is a chunk of meat, with identifiable meat fibers and such. Just a breaded and fried chunk of breast. Whereas chicken nuggets are usually made from ground chicken, often molded into a few different shapes.
So they’re allowed to call them wings when it is chicken breast?
Oh boy. Wait until you learn that drumsticks are passed off as “wings” too!
Interesting thanks!
And just to mention further, nuggets ground chicken meat often contain bones, tendons, nerves, fat, and other chicken junk.
Now I will mention that McDonald’s and Wendy’s and other fast food places claim their nuggets are only made of chicken meat. Your mileage may vary. Nuggets are like hotdogs.
To be clear, “meat” is 99% of what’s not bones. Tendons, skin, fat, nerves… All that is meat. If they don’t mention which cut, assume it’s “all”.
I don’t really think that’s bad. If you’re going to breed animals, you might as well use it to it’s full extend for human consumption.
Your definition of meat is in a very gray area of definition. In fact, by most definitions I could say yours is incorrect. Either by stating that since bone is edible, it is also meat. Or that meat is considered only what is inside the skin. Or by saying that is isn’t meat since it’s not muscle. Or by saying that animals aren’t the only things that have meat.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meat-products-sell-them-legally-in-england
Muscles, connective tissue, collagen, fat… All that is meat. It also includes internal organs such as feet, intestines, lungs…
Please now show me your legal definition, the only one that matters in this case.
“Legal” definition changes by every country. The US, for instance has two different levels for what constitutes “meat” depending on how its obtained. Normal cuts of meat, which does not include organs or a lot of other things, and the “mechanically separated meat” which does include those things. This varies even more on a state level in some cases.
Long story short, your legal definition is only good for your country you provide it from (UK, in your case) and it doesn’t mean jack shit anywhere else.
Nuggets do have bones, but being ground up to a paste, you won’t notice them.
Wait a second. You’re telling me that “nutrient paste” a la every dystopian sci-fi novel, tastes like chicken nuggies???
Why the fuck is anyone complaining about nutrient paste? Gimme nutrient paste!
Jamie Oliver tries to get kids to hate chicken nuggets. Jamie Oliver discovers that it’s pretty hard to get kids to hate chicken nuggets.
If only they’d fried Soylent Green in breadcrumbs.
So just like all those “unlimited” phone plans with limits, “free” trials that require a credit card number and “lifetime” warranties that expire after a few years? Cool. Cool cool cool…
Would this logic extend to products labeled “alcohol-free”?
“Everyone knows beer has alcohol in it.”
Everyone knows Kinder Surprise eggs have a surprise inside. And show me anyone who can swallow that accidentally btw.
I’d be more worried about a product claiming it has no peanuts in it now.
Just wait until you hear about “synthetic” motor oil.
(It’s been made from regular petroleum sources for a long time. It was argued in court that “synthetic” refers to a certain level of quality, not that it’s actually built synthetically from something other than oil out of the ground.)
Anything less than 0.5%abv, I think. (Unless, non-alcoholic is classed different)
I wouldn’t know about US regulations. Just annoyed by laws which allow corporations to more or less straight up lie, be they in my country or not.
I’m pretty sure alc-free here in Finland is at most like 0.1%, low-alc (as in not counted as a regulated alcoholic beverage in regards to laws) is anything 2.9% and under.
I think part of it is that you honestly can’t say anything is “x” free. As long as the company has done due diligence and there is as little as possible then I’m ok with it.
If it’s used as a get out of jail card for bad practice then I’m against it.
Especially with alcohol. Anything with sugar will have at least a tiny amount of it ferment into alcohol. This is also why 0% BAC driving laws are nonsense.
That said, 0.1% might be perfectly reasonable over 0.5%.
True. The suffix -free has had so much liberal (not the party) use that when manufacturers use it, it now just means there isn’t enough for most people to detect/respond to it.
Now if someone none the wiser with an allergy or particularly strong sensitivity to something were to try that something, they get a trip to the ER.
About the limits in the US. Meandering through a store during a heat wave, I saw that the upper limit appears to be half a percent. Meaning you still could get buzzed ,just would be peeing more; a lot more.
https://oneclubsober.com/beer-articles/can-you-buy-non-alcoholic-beer-under-21/
Sounds like the same logic ought to be extended to the Ohio Supreme Court. Might come in handy at the federal level, too.
“Everyone knows the court has corruption in it”
this is pressing political issues THAT ACTUALLY FUCKING MATTER RAHHHHHHH
I don’t know why but it reminds me of an American friend I had who couldn’t beleive we didn’t have limits on the amount maggots/maggots eggs allowed in fruit juice.
They refused to drink any fruit juice here until it had to be explained to them that the reason that there’s no acceptable limit on maggots/maggots eggs in our fruit juice is because ANY amount of maggot is over the acceptable amount.
Not their fault of course. We only know what we’re used to.
That doesn’t sound right. How can you guarantee zero fly/fruit fly eggs in something like orange juice with pulp. Fly eggs are tiny and can be found on fresh fruit skins even on the trees. Certain juices preclude the kind of filtration that could be used to achieve 100% fruit fly egg removal. I don’t know anything about European food regulations, but from a practical perspective it seems impossible to guarantee ZERO fruit fly egg contamination. Especially considering Europe tends to be more flexible with insects in food than the US such as Casu martzu.
I suspect if there really is no max insect parts limit, there is a procedural requirement that ensures contamination is kept low.
Well, thats because I never said its provably 100% free. No wonder it didn’t sound right.
I said no detectable level is acceptable.
We can detect single eggs. But they’re not putting the whole juice supply under the microscope, one slide at a time. So, it seems you’re saying “we don’t check”.
The Ohio Supreme Court’s decision to allow chicken wings advertised as ‘boneless’ to contain bones warrants an examination of the principles underlying voluntary exchanges and the protection of consumer rights. When individuals engage in transactions, the terms and descriptions presented are expected to be accurate, fostering trust and informed decision-making. An advertisement promising ‘boneless’ wings that includes bones disrupts this trust, introducing an element of deception.
For a marketplace to function effectively, it is essential that representations made in the course of business transactions are truthful. Consumers rely on these representations to make choices that align with their preferences and expectations. If these expectations are systematically violated, the very foundation of voluntary exchange is compromised.
Thus, the court’s role in addressing such issues is to ensure that the transactional environment remains transparent and honest. By upholding standards against misleading advertisements, the court helps maintain the integrity of voluntary exchanges, allowing individuals to engage in transactions free from coercion and deceit.
You have the right to spend money and consume! What other rights could you possibly want, poor person?
/s
Yeah another reason why conservatives are shit at governing. Always making terrible decisions because there is no critical thinking involved.
You can’t expect the new car you purchased to be new.
Alas that is true.
That’s fucking ridiculous though I think it’s perfectly fair for s restaurant not to be ultimately liable. This case feels like a gimmie to Perdue/Tyson to dodge any accountability for their bargin bin meat farming operations.
More lies from the saucy nugs
At least Wendy’s is honest.
So boneless wings can have bones… But do boned wings still have to have bones? I am a boneless wing enjoyer and I hate bone wings. Why waste all that effort eating around the bones when you can just not?
Boneless “wings” aren’t actually wings. They are cubes of white meat.
And almond milk isn’t actually milked from almond tiddies
And wait until you learn about baby oil
And almond milk isn’t actually milked from almond tiddies
And if you had asked why anyone would go through the effort of milking a cow when almond milk exists, I’d give you a similar answer: they are different things.
Don’t care, it’s still the superior chicken nugget form factor because it’s delicious and less tedious to deal with. I doubt boned chicken wings are 100% pure shenanigan-free meat anyway. Tbf, even if someone shows me reputable scientific sources saying boned wing meat is a zillion times more healthy or something, boneless chicken is far too good to give up.
If I order boneless wings, and I get bones, I’m getting my fucking money back and not eating at that establishment ever again.
Not full bones, though. Just shards of bone that can seriously injure you
Slavery is freedom. War is peace. Boneless pizza can now have bones.
I want to go where the pizzalo roam
