18 May 2012 The fallout from the ‘pink slime’ saga
Beef Products Inc, the maker of the beef product dubbed “pink slime” by critics announced this week that it was laying off 86 employees from its corporate office in South Dakota, citing what it called the misinformation campaign about a product that is both safe and widely used.
It has said it took a “substantial” financial hit after social media exploded with concerns over the product and an online petition sought its removal from school menus. The company said earlier this month that it was closing three plants in Iowa, Kansas and Texas, resulting in 650 lost jobs. Read more about the fallout of this shocking saga…
New York Times spreads the ‘pink slime’ blame over Jamie Oliver
It’s not often that British chef Jamie Oliver makes the op-ed page of the New York Times. But he did on Sunday.
Under the headline “What If it Weren’t Called Pink Slime?” Jamie is pictured mimicking the addition of ammonia to one of America’s favourite foods – hamburg (mince to you and me).
Yesterday the NYT reported that “The first casualties of the hamburger ingredient contemptuously dubbed ‘pink slime’ will likely not be anyone who eats it but rather the workers who make it.”
The manufacturer, Beef Products Inc is to close three of its four plants and lay off about 650 workers by May 25.
Yet, said the Times, the ingredient is safe, nutritious and inexpensive. It won’t do anyone any harm – and it even may even do good: It lowers the fat content of a hamburger. Its industry name, rather than pink slime is “lean finely textured beef”, LFTB for short. It uses tiny amounts of ammonia to kill off pathogens.
So what cost the 650 men their jobs?
“Partly it was the power of negative branding. Partly it was the power of the media, ” said the Times…..
The Drum: Read more
The winners from “Pink Slime” scare are … Australian?
We predicted that the unscientific, hysterical calls to remove finely textured beef–tarred as “pink slime” in the media — would result in higher hamburger prices and no benefits to food safety or sustainability. The early results of the scare, as reported by Reuters, back us up.
Without lean finely textured beef, or LFTB, the price of manually recovered lean beef trimmings have skyrocketed while the price of fatty trimmings (the raw ingredients for LFTB) have plummeted. As a result of the scare, 650 American workers have been laid off and US beef imports from Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay have skyrocketed.
So what are Americans seeing at the supermarket? Retail ground beef prices hit a record high in March. Taking the equivalent of 1.5 million head of cattle out of the food supply won’t help ease that strain. (Not using LFTB wastes the equivalent of 1.5 million cows’ worth of beef over the course of a year.)
It’s also a divine irony that one of the prophets of the local-food movement, Mark Bittman, helped fuel the “pink slime” scare. Now, instead of consuming more meat from each US-raised animal, Americans will get more of their ground beef from the Southern Hemisphere. When elitist food myths face off, it’s survival of the smuggest.
Food snobs may think that LFTB was the “lowest common denominator” (to quote Marion Nestle), but the evidence suggests that mindlessly bashing food processors isn’t helpful. Americans want their ground beef and buy it in spite of the scare. Unfortunately, they’ll have to pay more for it — while hundreds of other Americans have already lost their jobs.
Comment by The Center for Consumer Freedom
The LFTB Challenge
As I read the headlines “Meat glue: Move over ‘pink slime,’ some beef stuck together with transglutaminase”, I was struck by how the exposés on the meat industry’s “dirty little secrets” have become highly formatted. They aren’t likely to stop until the meat industry stops being such an easy target.
What bothers me most about this latest round of articles is that the media is claiming victory on the LFTB issue and proudly reports the closing of three processing plants and the removal of LFTB from restaurant menus. It’s like the collective media has carved a notch in its belt and is now moving on to its next victim. Presumably, meat glue will be the next notch in the belt. Then what will be next issue after that?
Are we supposed to applaud their public relations victory, accept defeat and stand by as businesses and jobs are lost — all in the name of some hypothetical consumer benefit?….
Comment by James Marsden is Kansas State University Regent’s Distinguished Professor of Food Safety: Read more