No, McDonald’s doesn’t put ‘aborted baby fetuses’ in its food

About 30 minutes into a 45-minute Facebook video is a stomach-turning claim that might put you off your French fries. 

"McDonald’s puts aborted baby fetuses in their food, this is not fake," a man can be heard saying. "This is real. Look at their additives. The same, it’s a sweetener."

 He goes on to call abortion "witchcraft" and "black magic" and "fallen angel technology," warning listeners that "you cannot ascend if you’re a cannibal."  

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McDonald’s did not respond to PolitiFact’s email asking about the claim. 

But we’ve previously looked into a similar claim that popular food companies are selling products with "aborted fetus cells" — and it’s wrong. 

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The upshot: There are biotechnology companies that use fetal stem cell research in food and pharmaceutical development, but none of these cells are actually found in food products available to consumers. 

We looked for credible reports of aborted fetuses — or aborted fetus cells — in McDonald’s food and found none. 

Rather, we discovered a 2017 fact-check by Snopes, which debunked a claim that a McDonald’s in Alabama had been outed for using aborted fetuses in its Chicken McNuggets, and an undated response from McDonald’s on the company’s website to a question posed by someone named Muhannad: "Are you using human’s meat in the food?" 

"No," McDonald’s said. "We do not have any human meat in our burgers. We would like to assure you that we only use 100% pure Halal beef and chicken in our food. That’s it!" 

In 2012, after an Oklahoma state senator introduced a bill banning the sale of "food or products which use aborted human fetuses," Gawker reached out to McDonalds and other companies about the question of whether aborted fetuses are used in their food.

Ashlee Yingling, then a company spokesperson, answered directly: "The answer is no," Yingling said. "McDonald’s does not use aborted human fetuses in its food." 

We rate this post False.