The FDA under Obama is just like medical care will be..... On Mar 10, 12:48 pm, Tommy News <[email protected]> wrote: > Will There Be “Pink Slime” in Your Child’s School Lunch? > By KJ DELL'ANTONIA > > “Pink Slime:” it’s tasty (well, probably not), nutritious (oops, not > that either) and cheap (got that right) and it’s probably found in a > hamburger near you. Most particularly, in the hamburger or > cheeseburger that almost certainly graced the lunch menu at your > child’s school this month. > > “Pink Slime” is the appetizing term for a ground-up amalgam of beef > scraps, cow connective tissues, and other beef trimmings, once useful > only for dog food and cooking oil, that are treated with ammonia to > kill pathogens and then added to stretch the use of “traditional” > ground beef (what most people once called simply “ground beef”). It’s > also known as “lean finely textured beef,” and it’s produced by a > single, rather profitable, company in the United States: Beef Products > Inc. > > As The Times described in 2009, faced with a glut of fat, connective > tissue and other once largely unsaleable remnants, the company’s > founder developed a process that turned those slaughterhouse > trimmings, which were more prone to contamination with E. coli and > salmonella, into desirable (to hamburger-makers) filler by compressing > them and exposing them to ammonia gas, killing the pathogens. > > The term “pink slime” came from one of two whistle-blowing former U.S. > Department of Agriculture scientists who are on a crusade against the > stuff, and particularly against its unlabeled inclusion in everything > from school lunches to, according to ABC News, up to 70 percent of all > supermarket ground beef. It’s “not nutritionally equivalent,” Carl S. > Custer told The Daily. This is “economic fraud,” Gerald Zirnstein told > ABC News. “It’s a cheap substitute.” > > After the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver went on a tirade against the > filler last year, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King decided to > stop padding their meat offerings with it. Still, the U.S.D.A. plans > to purchase 7 million pounds of it for use in school lunches over the > coming year — and whether yours is a community where school lunches > are prepared with loving care, or one where they’re more of a standard > production, if your children’s school uses the meat that the complex > federal and state bidding and supplying system procures, then the odds > that they’re serving “pink slime” are high. And they might never know > it. > > Once Beef Products settled on a method of processing the beef > trimmings that allowed them to be deemed fit for human consumption, it > turned its focus to lobbying. First, it prevailed on the question of > whether ammonia should be listed as an ingredient. Then, it turned its > attention to the labeling of the filler itself. “U.S.D.A. officials > with links to the beef industry labeled it meat,” said ABC News. “The > under secretary said, ‘it’s pink, therefore it’s meat,’ ” said Mr. > Custer. > > Maybe the use of the trimmings, ammonia and all, is just fine. After > all, as Rob Lyons wrote for the Huffington Post, “Getting every last > bit of meat off a carcass is a good thing, given the cost of rearing a > cow. Butchers and meat processors are proud of the fact that they use > everything but the moo.” As for the ammonia, it doesn’t sound > appealing, but if you question whether or not your family sometimes > consumes chemicals that it wouldn’t necessarily have occurred to you > to eat or drink, one read of Patrick Di Justo’s “What’s Inside: Tap > Water” from the March issue of Wired magazine should remind you > otherwise. > > But what’s really bothersome about this is that we, as consumers, as > school officials, and as parents, have no way of knowing if “pink > slime” or “lean finely textured ground beef” is on the menu for one > simple reason: paid corporate lobbyists convinced government officials > that we don’t need to know, and not, I suspect, because they had our > best interests at heart. Someone, somewhere, thought that we wouldn’t > buy a product labeled “ground beef, with added connective tissues, > fatty trimmings, and ammonia” — not for ourselves, and not for our > schools. > > More:http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/will-there-be-pink-slim... > > -- > Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. > Have a great day, > Tommy > > -- > Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. > Have a great day, > Tommy
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