Pink Slime Newsletter

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Pink Slime and Ammonia: Two Main Ingredients in Some Ground Beef

Photo:( jamieoliver.com)

We are certainly not opposed to eating meat, but here’s one more reason to buy organic and “grass fed”. When you buy ground beef from many grocery stores in the United States today, or eat a fast food burger, you might be eating this stuff.

“Ten years ago, the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called ‘trimmings’ that were sold primarily as pet food. No more. Now, Beef Products Inc. of South Dakota transforms trimmings into something they call ‘boneless lean beef.’ Factories liquefy theses trimmings and use a spinning centrifuge to separate the sinews and fats from the meat, leaving a mash that has been described as ‘pink slime.’ It is then frozen into small squares and sold as a low-cost additive to hamburger.” Besides being low quality factory fed meat, the product is treated with ammonia in a toxic attempt to kill pathogens.

Beef Products Inc. produces more than 7 million pounds of the mash weekly, making it the world’s largest manufacturer of this frozen product. “BPI explains that its product is mixed into most of the ground beef sold in the United States at major fast-food restaurants, supermarkets, and school lunch programs.” But that’s not the entire problem, when you turn garbage bits of animal carcasses into “pink slime” to sell as a food product, there’s an issue with pathogens, such as E. coli.

Original tests came back showing that the pink slime was rampant with harmful bacteria. It should have been decided not to sell right then, but Beef Products Inc. cleverly started disinfecting the slime with ammonia and convinced the FDA to allow them to list it as a “processing ingredient” so that we wouldn’t know we were eating ammonia.

For more information on this disgusting subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshlnRWnf30 Jamie Oliver Video

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/pinkslime-ammonia-ground-beef.htm 12 March 2012.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/03/05/pink-slime-still-menu Pink Slime “It’s What for Lunch in U.S. Schools.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/14/1074084/-Let-them-eat-slime

http://news.goldseek.com/SFG/1331659825.php

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-bellatti/pink-slime_b_1342559.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1