Pink Slime

[lindag]

I remember years ago hearing a warning (can't remember where it came from) to never buy ground beef in the supermarket that was packaged in the tube....supposedly it was an inferior product.

Linda

[qrn]

For burgers I go to the "used meat"section of the store and buy a marked down suitable looking chunk of beef,that has a suitable amount of fat in it and hand grind it with a very,very old hand grinder with 3/8"holes in the plate,

I grind it into a pan and hit it with some fresh ground pepper and a bit of salt ,and re run it thru and then form into burgers, since its very course ,it makes a great burger

Bud

[GlowingGhoul]

Rotuts, start here:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=public+school+districts+that+confiscates+home-made+lunches&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC

Here's an explanation of what happened: http://appliedrationality.blogspot.com/2012/02/tempest-in-lunch-box.html

That's hardly an explanation of what happened, but a snarky, sarcastic interpretation filled with quite a few assumptions. Rationality can be neither liberal nor conservative, so that site's claim to rational thinking from a "liberal perspective" is utterly absurd.

Perusing the latest information from a variety of sources now seems to indicate this was the action of an individual teacher, who, dissatisifed with the quality of the child's lunch, put a school lunch tray, chicken nuggets and all, in front of her. That teacher has since resigned. Whether or not usurping a parents choice of what to feed their child was school policy is not clear, as there are officials from the school who won't comment, but I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing any schools trying to implement such a policy in the near future.

So, as is often the case, the truth lay in between the extremes.

[TheTInCook]

I remember years ago hearing a warning (can't remember where it came from) to never buy ground beef in the supermarket that was packaged in the tube....supposedly it was an inferior product.

Linda

It ain't the packaging. Food service gets ground meat packed in tubes aka chubs routinely.

I picked up a tube of Smart and Final house brand ground meat (First Street?) from a tube the other day for making jaozi and pot stickers. Now it is on the fatty side, but that suited my purpose just fine.

[kryptos1]

Thank god for local farmers we buy meat from! We are the wierd parents that send our kiddo to day care with his own lunch.....just never liked what they served which is mostly fried stuff reheated in an oven.

Edited March 15, 2012 by kryptos1 (log)

[GlorifiedRice]

Just another reason to buy your own meat and a meat grinder

[rotuts]

social media in action:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/usda-will-offer-schools-choice-on-beef-purchases-amid-pink-slime-fears-official-says/2012/03/15/gIQATV98DS_story.html

but what will the school districts do?

[gdenby]

I'm sorry. I'm a despicable person. BUT, I have to point out yet another source of protein for a hungry planet.

http://io9.com/5813229/scientist-claims-to-have-made-an-edible-steak-out-of-human-feces-huh

[Norm Matthews]

Sorry if this is a repeat of what someone else has already said, but USDA 100% BEEF does not mean it has to be 100% MEAT. However I doubt so many objections to pink slime would exist if it were called 100% beef filler instead. It just does not sound so objectionable that way, but it is still the same thing.

[tikidoc]

Sorry if this is a repeat of what someone else has already said, but USDA 100% BEEF does not mean it has to be 100% MEAT. However I doubt so many objections to pink slime would exist if it were called 100% beef filler instead. It just does not sound so objectionable that way, but it is still the same thing.

Not so interested in eating something labeled "beef filler" either. The problem is that no labeling is required and it should be. I don't object to them selling the stuff, I object to them selling the stuff as ground beef. Just as they have to label poultry injected with a brine solution, they should have to label ground beef with this filler in it. It is not ground beef, it is centrifuged beef.

[annabelle]

Even worse, tikidoc, I learned yesterday that it is centrifuged at 100F. The is nothing like optimal temperatures for bacterial growth and thus the need to add ammonia. For our own good!

[gfweb]

Wonder what the Mad Cow risk is with this stuff? "Trimmings" might well include nerve tissue.

[rotuts]

As I mentioned before:

A long time ago the NYTimes at the 'Mad Cow Scare' mentioned this sort of processing.

If a 'Mad Cow' got into this, it would not be able to be 'tracked' and it would be in a large pool of 'processed meat'.

good luck at Taco Bell. As tasty as they are, that would be the first place for this issue.

Perhaps they have given up on 'this meat'

[Norm Matthews]

Sorry if this is a repeat of what someone else has already said, but USDA 100% BEEF does not mean it has to be 100% MEAT. However I doubt so many objections to pink slime would exist if it were called 100% beef filler instead. It just does not sound so objectionable that way, but it is still the same thing.

Not so interested in eating something labeled "beef filler" either. The problem is that no labeling is required and it should be. I don't object to them selling the stuff, I object to them selling the stuff as ground beef. Just as they have to label poultry injected with a brine solution, they should have to label ground beef with this filler in it. It is not ground beef, it is centrifuged beef.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was OK. I think it is gross that the USDA thinks it is OK to label something as 100% beef and still allow anything from a cow to be called beef. It does not have to be meat. And the other statement I made was meant to say that whoever thought it would be OK to call it 'pink slime" should never, ever be given a job with any PR firm.

Edited March 15, 2012 by Norm Matthews (log)

[annabelle]

I believe it was some microbiologists who labeled "pink slime". There is not much danger of any of them going into Public Relations.

gfweb: I thought that Mad Cow hadn't been found in the US? I may be mistaken, but I thought it was only in the UK. The prions will gitcha if'n ya don't watch out!

[IndyRob]

I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was OK. I think it is gross that the USDA thinks it is OK to label something as 100% beef and still allow anything from a cow to be called beef. It does not have to be meat. And the other statement I made was meant to say that whoever thought it would be OK to call it 'pink slime" should never, ever be given a job with any PR firm.

But it's not 'anything from a cow'. Note that the centrifuge is used to remove fat from beef trimmings - leaving what? Beef. No two ways around that.

And if there was a labeling requirement, it would probably read "Contains boneless lean beef trimmings".

The only thing I find potentially controversial is that ammonia is used as a food safety instrument. But it appears to work as.... (from the above link)

Food safety experts in 2011 acknowledged the role of such processes in protecting the United States’ food supply against events such as the European E. coli outbreak.[5]

Okay, so it's safe, but it's an inferior product, right?

On December 24th, 2011, McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell announced they would discontinue the use of BPI products in their food.[6][4]

Has anyone noticed a difference? I haven't. Anyone care to claim that they're awesome now?

[rotuts]

Ah ....

but When will they discontinue it?

have they said?

2018?

now Pork trimmings in that Sausage Egg Muffin?

until i hear differently:

delicious!

Edited March 15, 2012 by rotuts (log)

[IndyRob]

Ah ....

but When will they discontinue it?

have they said?

I'm not going to go to the effort to find their actual press release. But...

When McDonald's and other fast-food chains announced last month that "pink slime" was no longer being used in their burgers, some thought that the product, beef trimmings treated partly with ammonium hydroxide, had disappeared from the nation's food supply.... (and then on to the school thing).

[andiesenji]

The story on a local CBS affiliate (KCal 9) stated that much of the material that goes into the pink slime consists of ligaments and connective tissue.

The "expert" that was interviewed indicated that the content of this material may be free of fat, which adds to the "lean" category, but in turn the stuff has very little nutritive value.

In the past this stuff was sold cheaply to pet food manufacturers and ground up to add "bulk" to "wet" or canned and "soft" pet foods, not to add calories or other nutritive components.

Cheap is cheap. In my opinion this is no different from the practice of grinding cheap fish products and forming them to produce fake "crab" meat.

I've been grinding my own meats for years, I think I began back in the early '80s when there was a recall of contaminated beef.

I just want to know what I'm consuming and know that I am getting exactly what I pay for, not a cheaper "imitation" product.

Edited March 16, 2012 by andiesenji (log)

[IndyRob]

The story on a local CBS affiliate (KCal 9) stated that much of the material that goes into the pink slime consists of ligaments and connective tissue.

In looking for a link for my previous post I found a lot of lazy reporting. Including the one I finally linked.

Ligaments and connective tissues? Really? Won't 80% of eG members immediatley think "Well, that calls for braising.", rather than "Aiieeee! Ligaments! Tendons!"?

But I sincerely doubt that ligaments and tendons are included (beyond incidental quantities). They're not even pink.

The "expert" that was interviewed indicated that the content of this material may be free of fat, which adds to the "lean" category, but in turn the stuff has very little nutritive value.

That's quite a vague term to use. The "expert" could have used calories, sodium, vitamin A, B , C, etc. It obviously would be useful to know in what way the product was founf to be nutritionally defficient.

In the past this stuff was sold cheaply to pet food manufacturers and ground up to add "bulk" to "wet" or canned and "soft" pet foods, not to add calories or other nutritive components.

I have to be careful here, but do we not have a food culture in the U.S. that has benefited greatly from lesser cuts of meat that were left for the folks in a state of servitude?

Cheap is cheap. In my opinion this is no different from the practice of grinding cheap fish products and forming them to produce fake "crab" meat.

Well, that borders on deceit. But the labeling requirements are there. Sirimi is fake. It;s a fish sold as imitation crab. But cutting little bits of crab up is cutting little bits of crab up. Making a crab cake out of that is not fraud, it's frugal.

I've been grinding my own meats for years, I think I began back in the early '80s when there was a recall of contaminated beef.

I just want to know what I'm consuming and know that I am getting exactly what I pay for, not a cheaper "imitation" product.

You could have been grinding contaminated beef regardless. A little ammonium hydroxide could have kept you safer.

[gfweb]

I believe it was some microbiologists who labeled "pink slime". There is not much danger of any of them going into Public Relations.

gfweb: I thought that Mad Cow hadn't been found in the US? I may be mistaken, but I thought it was only in the UK. The prions will gitcha if'n ya don't watch out!

That's right, but we still don't know where US patients with Creutzfeld-Jacob got their prions. At least in theory a cow could have subclinical MC disease, ie look fine, and go to slaughter and end up transmitting disease. Good butchering practice is pointless if pink slime is added to meat.

[annabelle]

Thanks, that's what I thought.

If I recall correctly, the fear of MC was from the practice of feeding, well the pink slime, to cattle in their feed, was it not? In the UK, I believe there was a fear also of cross-contamination with sheep, as well.

[gfweb]

Yup. The sheep form of MCD is called scrapie. I was taught that they were different things, but I'm not sure prion taxonomy is all that accurate.

[annabelle]

I don't believe it is. It was all still pretty new when I was learning about it. Anything that crosses the blood-brain barrier is bad, bad stuff, though.

[gfweb]

Best thing about prions is that pigs don't seem to get them. So we have that going for us. Bacon and sausage are safe