Do You Eat Pink Slime?

Do you ever wonder what is in that ground beef hamburger that you ordered from McDonalds?  Or what was part of your kids' meat loaf at their school lunch?  Did you ever stop to think that it could be "pink slime"?  No, I didn't make this concept up (you all know how I feel about McDonalds and school lunches!).  Pink slime is in more foods than you think, and you might be eating some for lunch today.

What is Pink Slime?
Pink slime, also known as lean finely textured beef (LFTB) or boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT) is a beef-based food additive that may be added to ground beef and beef-based processed meats as an inexpensive filler.  It consists of finely ground beef scraps and connective tissue which have been mechanically removed from the fat. The recovered material is processed, heated, and treated with ammonia gas or citric acid to kill E. coli, salmonella, and other bacteria. It is finely ground, compressed into blocks and flash frozen for use as an additive to beef products. The term "pink slime" was coined in 2002 by Gerald Zirnstein, who at that time was a microbiologist for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service.

The additive itself cannot legally be sold directly to consumers, but can constitute up to 15% of ground beef without additional labeling, and can also be added to other meat products such as beef-based processed meats.  Prior to the invention of the disinfection process, beef scraps could only be sold as pet food or as an ingredient for cooking oil.

Widespread public attention was drawn to the product in March 2012 by a series of reports at ABC News, which reported at that time that 70 percent of ground beef sold in U.S. supermarkets contained pink slime.  Subsequently, many grocery stores and supermarkets, including the nation's three largest chains, announced that they would no longer sell products containing the additive.  Manufacturer Beef Products Inc. (BPI) and meat industry organizations have countered the public concern by stating that the additive is in fact beef, and have begun using the slogan "beef is beef".


Is Pink Slime Bad For You?
Well, to be perfectly honest, there is absolutley no research that statistically proves pink slime can cause adverse health affects.  That being said, knowing that it is contained in foods that are commonly consumed on a daily basis in the United States is making consumers uneasy. This seems like a new wave of consumer enlightenment, these days more and more people want to know exactly what is contained in their food.  I don't blame them, I am one of them!

On The Other Hand...
Some food safety advocates say this pink slime critisism is overblown. The term 'pink slime' is unappetizing ... but perhaps not more so than other things that are routinely part of hamburger, states an attorney with the food safety program of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

In an interview Thursday the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the pink slime brouhaha was "a little bit of a tempest in a teapot, once you recognize what else goes in burger." Things such as head meat, cheek meat, edible lean organ meats (the heart and other internal organs), as well as weasand -- raw esophagus.  Head meat trimmings are particularly in wide use, according to the Center, in a range of burger products -- ground beef, hamburger, pure-beef patties, regular beef patties.

The nonprofit center, a consumer advocacy group, does not believe pink slime poses a safety concern. What officials there are looking at is whether the stuff in pink slime is nutritionally less useful or less digestible, which the agency had plans to sample and test it.


Naturally, the American Meat Institute doesn't see a safety problem with the product, either.  The institute's president, J. Patrick Boyle, said in a statement on the website: 

"To make the product, beef companies use beef trimmings, the small cuts of beef that remain when larger cuts are trimmed down. These trimmings are USDA inspected, wholesome cuts of beef that contain both fat and lean and are nearly impossible to separate using a knife. When these trimmings are processed, the process separates the fat away and the end result is nutritious, lean beef. It’s a process similar to separating cream from milk."

Not As Bad As It Sounds?
The meat industry has been trying to raise awareness of other foods that contain ammonia, in response to what it has characterized as an unfair attack on a safe and healthy product.

"Ammonia's not an unusual product to find added to food," Gary Acuff, director of Texas A&M University's Center for Food Safety, told a recent press conference hosted by Beef Products Inc. "We use ammonia in all kinds of foods in the food industry."

Even in turning milk to cheese, a tiny amount of ammonium hydroxide is added to a starter dairy culture to reduce the culture's acidity and encourage cheese cultures to grow.  Actually, ammonia was cleared by U.S. health officials nearly 40 years ago and is used in making many foods. Related compounds have a role in baked goods and chocolate products.

How Can You Aviod Pink Slime?
I absolutely understand the want, and in some cases need, to stay away from pink slime, and there is a very easy way to do this.  Any empolyee in the meat department of your local grocery store can tell you if the ground meat you are buying contains any pink slime.