It’s one thing for fast food companies to dangle cartoon characters in front of kids to pitch junk food. That practice arguably amounts to deceptive advertising, but don’t expect a legal crackdown on it anytime soon. But what about falsely claiming your product is something that it isn’t? According to a class-action lawsuit filed yesterday by an Alabama law firm, Taco Bell is doing just that with its “seasoned beef” products. Evidently, what Taco Bell identifies as “seasoned beef” has so many binders and extenders that it fails the minimum USDA labeling requirements for beef products (via ABC News). The suit claims that the law firms’ tests showed that Taco Bell’s “meat mixture” contains less that 35 percent beef. The suit isn’t seeking monetary damages, just that Taco Bell stop calling its concoction “beef.”

All of this calls to mind the the great “pink slime” debacle — the revelation that a huge portion of U.S. “hamburger meat” contains an ammonia-treated beef filler that turned out not to have the antiseptic properties its maker claimed. At the time, many fast food chains quickly claimed that pink slime made up just a small percentage of their ground-beef mixes. Taco Bell never commented on whether it was using the stuff. The company’s official ingredient list for “seasoned beef” doesn’t include “ammonia-treated puréed beef trimmings,” though the notorious product theoretically could be present under the rubric of “beef.” For the record, here’s the official ingredient list for Taco Bell’s “seasoned beef”:

Beef, Water, Seasoning [Isolated Oat Product, Salt, Chili Pepper, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Oats (Wheat), Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Spices, Maltodextrin, Soybean Oil (Anti-Dusting Agent), Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Caramel Color, Cocoa Powder (Processed With Alkali), Silicon Dioxide, Natural Flavors, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Smoke Flavor], Salt, Sodium Phosphate