15 Mar 2012 US: The ‘pink slime’ furore
Battalions of American food police have been up in arms of late over ‘pink slime’, aka lean finely textured beef (LFTB), which given its horrible moniker by two former USDA scientists, turned whistle-blowers, who claim that it was approved for consumption for political reasons despite safety concerns. LFTB is commonly used as a meat filler in products such as sausages, burgers and ground beef.
In the latest hoo-hah over LFTB, more than 170 000 people have signed a petition to ban the product in US school lunches following earlier claims by the microbiologists, Gerald Zirnstein and Colin Custer, that they were overruled by USDA bosses after warning about the use of ‘pink slime’, a term Zirnstein coined.
“We originally called it soylent pink,” said Carl Custer. “We looked at the product, and we objected to it because it used connective tissue instead of muscle. It was simply not nutrionally equivalent (to ground beef). My main objection was that it was not meat.”
The pin
k goo first gained mainstream attention when British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver focused an episode of his show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” on the product that is used as a ground beef filler.
During the episode, Oliver reported 70 percent of ground beef in the United States contains the ammonium hydroxide-treated ground meat that bears a striking resemblance to strawberry fro-yo.
[The photo, left, is much used for articles on the topic, but is said by the producer not to be LFTB].
“Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs and after this process, we can give it to humans,” said Oliver.
Food safety concerns surrounding its use in beef products have come as a result of a “gross-misunderstanding” stemming from sensationalised media coverage, a leading producer, Beef Products Inc (BPI), has claimed.
While the FDA and the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) both consider ammonium hydroxide as GRAS, McDonald’s has since announced that it discontinued the use of what calls “select beef trimmings (SLBT)”. Taco Bell and Burger King have reportedly also discontinued use of BPI’s product.
American Meat Institute president, Patrick Boyle, has said: “Boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT) is a safe, wholesome and nutritious form of beef that is made by separating lean beef from fat… Some recent media reports created a troubling and inaccurate picture, particularly in their use of the colloquial term ‘pink slime.’ …In reality, the BLBT production process simply removes fat and makes the remaining beef more lean and suited to a variety of beef products that satisfy consumers’ desire for leaner foods.”
In addition, Boyle notes that BLBT is a sustainable product, because it recovers meat that would otherwise not be used, and defended the use of ammonia hydroxide gas to kill E. coli, as a “commonly used” process to destroy bacteria in many foods.
“Producing BLBT ensures that lean, nutritious, safe beef is not wasted in a world where red meat protein supplies are decreasing while global demand is increasing as population and income increases,” he said.
Foodie villain of the week
So what’s wrong with boneless lean beef trimmings? In the real world: Nothing, which is why the FDA treats it as what it is; namely, ground beef. Of course, if “foodie world” is so worked up about it, surely something is wrong…. Click on the link above to read more from ConsumerFreedom.com
‘Pink slime’ critics fight ammonia-treated meat
“Pink slime” just went from a simmer to a boil. In less than a week earlier this month, the stomach-turning epithet for ammonia-treated ground beef filler suddenly became a potent rallying cry by activists fighting to ban the product from supermarket shelves and school lunch trays. Though the term has been used pejoratively for at least several years, it wasn’t until last week that social media suddenly exploded with worry and an online petition seeking its ouster from schools lit up, quickly garnering hundreds of thousands of supporters…. Click on the link above to read more from USA Today
Herewith two opinion editorials – first this commentary by
The ‘pink slime’ furore of recent days is typical of foodie visceral reaction and fails all tests of logic and good sense.
In fact, it is typical of the mental direction too many in our nation have taken these days that their individual knee-jerk reaction should be put above truth or good sense. Personally, I’m glad consumers want to reconnect with their food. Sometimes, I tend to think their reactions are generally on target, even if we ‘aggies’ don’t like it. Yet it saddens me they so often flame out over things like ‘pink slime’ without even searching for the truth.
The truth is that lean finely textured beef (LFTB), the product reportedly dubbed ‘pink slime’ by Gerald Zirnstein, a former USDA microbiologist, is primarily a ground beef product.
The manufacturer, South-Dakota based Beef Products Incorporated, says it begins as a mixture of beef trimmings that is roughly half fat and half lean. It is finely ground and then spun in a centrifuge to remove most of the fat – BPI says the final mixture is 95% lean.
When I worked in meat markets we did this work by hand before grinding. BPI made it mechanical.
So here’s the first point of logic: At this point in our evaluation it is no different than any other ground beef product. Any presence of E. coli or Salmonella would be the same as in all ground beef, which is to say well distributed throughout the product.
In fact, that is the problem with all ground, uncooked beef products. Unlike whole roasts or steaks where such pathogens are contained on the outside and easily killed by cooking heat, with ground products they are spread throughout the insides of the product and must be thoroughly heated internally to be killed.
That is solid scientific theory and every case I have been able to find in which E. coli or salmonella has caused illness has been the result of undercooking a ground product.
BPI’s product, then, simply trades mechanical “trimming” of the ground beef product for hand trimming by humans, which was the only the way it could be done for many, many years.
My next question then: Is it safer to let humans handle all that meat? Isn’t that where we get many other food-borne illnesses such as hepatitis?
I suggest it is not safer and at the very least the two processes are equivalent.
Nonetheless, at this point let’s just say the only valid difference between what I’m going to dub AOGB (all other ground beef) and BPI’s LFTB is the size of grind.
But there is one difference….. Read the full article
Secondly, this commentary by Andy Bellatti, MS, RD, on Food Safety News, is a Seattle-based dietitian who approaches nutrition from a whole-foods, plant-centric framework.
As you have probably heard by now, the food scandal “du jour” has to do with “pink slime”, also known as mechanically-separated meat (or, when made by Beef Products Inc., “Boneless Beef Lean Trimmings”).
This ammonia-treated scrap meat – the same one some fast food giants recently phased out – has been widely used since the early 1990s, is reportedly present in 70 percent of all ground beef products, and is a staple in school cafeterias (seven million pounds (!) are expected to be served in school lunches across the country over the next few months).
The story essentially writes itself. When fast food companies, infamous for cutting corners at any cost, turn their noses up at a questionably safe ingredient that ends up on the lunch trays of schoolchildren, headlines are to be expected – and rightfully so.
The meat industry has responded via a new website: the awkwardly-titled Pink Slime Is A Myth (I have yet to comprehend how something real and tangible can be labelled a myth)….. Read the full article