Want A Little History With That Pink Slime?
UPDATE: For those of you just tuning in, I wrote a second PS blog entry. You can read it here. Also, a kind reader, Travis Arp, corrected a mistake I made in this entry. You can read that in the first comment below.
“Pink Slime” made the headlines of my local newspaper this morning (said paper being the Des Moines Register, that’s not surprising; the Register, even in its current scaled-down version, still covers news of interest to agriculture).
The point of the story, versions of which appeared in most major newspapers, is that pink slime’s days are apparently numbered. Food activists have succeeded in forcing grocery stores and restaurants to stop selling the stuff. As a result, beef prices will likely rise.
Whereever does this historian begin in making sense of the Pink Slime Propaganda campaign? (Maybe the better question is: Where should I end this rant?? There’s so much I can say . . . .)
First a word about PS: It’s beef, people. Plain ol’ beef. It’s created by using a deboning process that removes every last morsel of flesh from beef carcasses. During the cutting, slivers and bits of bone end up with the beef, but those are reduced to mush in the processing that follows.
Second, a bit of history. The Wikipedia entry for PS and most newspaper reports create the impression that PS dates to the 1980s. Wrong.
In the BEEF industry, its use dates back to the mid-1970s, although poultry and fish processors were already using the technique. Beef packers began using in the in mid-seventies because, at the time, all meat prices, but especially beef, were in the stratosphere. A host of factors pushed those prices up (you can read all about this in Chapter Five of my forthcoming — 2013 — book Meat: An American History), including a global food famine, inflation, rising fuel costs, unemployment, etc.
Meatpackers were having a tough time turning out meat products at a price consumers would pay. Consumers were outraged; they organized boycotts; the White House imposed price controls. Etc. (Five years of research for this new book taught me one thing: American consumers demand cheap food, and especially cheap meat, and when they don’t get it, there’s hell to pay.)
So pushed by consumers on one side, and soaring costs on the other, meatpackers asked for, and got, permission from the USDA to use a “mechanical deboning” process that allowed them scrape meat off carcasses so that what had been waste could be eaten. (*1)
I gather from the Wiki entry and other reports that in the 1990s, a guy named Eldon Roth, who also founded Beef Products, Inc., the nasty, evil company that makes the stuff (yes, I’m being sarcastic) developed a method of sterilizing deboned beef. I’m assuming the timing was not a coincidence: In 1993, there was an outbreak of e. coli-related illnesses (and a few deaths) caused by eating fast food burgers. (*2)
Food activists object to PS on two grounds (no pun intended):
First, they argue that this is not real beef but is being passed off as such. They’re wrong. It’s beef. If you’ve eaten a hamburger in the U. S. at anytime since the mid-1970s, you’ve eaten PS.
Second, they object to the use of ammonia to sterilize the meat.
In the words of a couple of critics:
According to Marion Nestle:
“If this is acceptable to people, it essentially means it’s OK to eat the kind of stuff we put into pet food,” she said. “Culturally we don’t eat byproducts of human food production. It’s not in our culture. Other cultures do. We don’t.”
And Jamie Oliver:
“I hope the U.S. government is also listening because it’s partly responsible for lying to the public for allowing this cheap, low-quality meat filler to be used for so long without having to legally state its presence on packaging”. (*3)
I’m all for food safety, but in this case, the reaction is irrational. If PS were unsafe, we’d have learned that, oh, about 35 years ago. Really. There’s nothing unsafe about this. The reaction is also simply wrong. This is meat. It’s not “byproduct.” It’s BEEF.
The real problem, as near as I can tell, is that many food activists simply don’t understand how meat is manufactured; don’t understand how demanding average consumers are (see above about boycotts, etc.), and how difficult it is for meatpackers to make a profit on beef in particular.
The only reason companies like IBP or Tyson or Cargill earn a profit on beef is that they control the materials from farm to grocery store; they run highly efficient packing plants; they produce in huge volume; and they subsidize FRESH beef by also making “value added” products. (Think microwavable pizzas with beef, or cans of chili con carne.) It’s incredibly difficult to make a profit on FRESH meat in general and beef in particular.
You get my point: Pink Slime isn’t unsafe. You may not like its appearance, but unsafeness (is that a word) does not follow from unpleasant appearance. (LOTS of things in life are unpleasant to look at, but it doesn’t follow that they’re unsafe. Think, oh, I dunno: giving birth? Slaughtering an animal?)
What I find most interesting about the PS uproar is how much, alas, it resembles the prohibitionist movement of a century ago: Fear-mongering. Half truths. Appeals to emotion rather than fact and reason.
Don’t get me wrong: I agree with the food activists on many points. Many. What I object to is the, how shall I put it? — tone of hysteria attached to their work. The self-righteous “we don’t like it and therefore it’s bad and screw the truth and facts” tone of their approach.
Again, I side with the pro-food group more than I don’t. But in this case, they’re engaged in a witch hunt, creating unnecessary fear and alarm, doing an industry a great disservice, and, yes, if the deboning process is banned, beef prices will like go up. It’ll be the equivalent of culling a hell of a lot of cattle from the nation’s herd.
They sound so much like prohibitionists that it scares the hell out of me. Where, I wonder, will their fear-mongering and disregard for fact and reason lead?
________________
*1. At the time, Ralph Nader and Michael Jacobsen of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (if you’ve read my beer book, you KNOW what a fan I am of MJ and the CSPI…) objected to the process, filing complaints with the USDA and FDA. (I’m being sarcastic about MJ and the CSPI. I do NOT like scolds, food or otherwise.)
*2. The e. coli episode was caused by meat that had not been cooked at a temperature high enough to kill bacteria. The outbreak began when people ate hamburgers from Jack In the Box, a fast food chain in the northwest, and then expanded when primary carriers made contact with others. Sadly, many of the infected were kids, and when they went to daycare, they infected other kids. If I remember right, one child died.
*3. Both quotes from “Pink Slime Maker Suspends Some Plant Operations.”
40 Responses to “Want A Little History With That Pink Slime?”
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Ha! I wondered when you were going to weigh in on this pink slim dealWith History of course
You’re right. Ecologically (and ethically) meat production for constantly growing population is such a strech, that abandoning perfectly edible and nutritious food product purely for esthetic reasons is wasting in criminal proportions.
Certainly some of this issue is due to media hype. I think if most people take a moment to think about “pink slime” and then think “hot dog” they would be a little more at ease. I think what is most upsetting to people is that when they go to the supermarket and buy ground round they are still believing that what they are getting are a couple types of muscle (often chuck, hanger or skirt) plainly and simply cut and run thru a meat grinder. That’s it. Nothing else.It’s not a matter of whether it is healthy or unhealthy for you. It’s a matter of honesty. The industry goes to great length (and expense) to force the FDA from requiring such labeling information.To me this is not much different from taking various scraps of beef and using transglutaminase (aka “meat glue”) and forming them into an object and trying to sell that to me as a rib eye steak. I guess in Ms. Ogle’s world that is ok, after all it’s still BEEF.In fact it is fraud. And so is not informing consumers that their ground round some beef product not found in nature added to their pack of hamburger meat.So I’m with Jamie Oliver on this. Just be honest. Don’t we all believe honesty is the best policy?
I’m not sure how much dishonesty is involved, and clearly that’s a point in itself. I’ve never bought packages of ground beef that were made from the stuff, so I don’t know what’s on the labels.I will say, however, that as another commenter pointed out, hot dogs, to name the main example, often contain just about everything but meat, but that doesn’t seem to bother people. As for the other point: I don’t think I was equating a rib eye steak sold as “beef” when it contains others ingredients, such as meat glue, with PS. PS is what it is: the scrapings off the bone. Period. If there’s muscle and “glue” involved, that just doesn’t bother me. The stuff’s not toxic. It’s worth noting (heh, maybe!) that McRibs that McDs sells are processed pork bits pressed into a rib-shaped configuration. I’ve never had one of those either, but, hey, it’s still pork.I agree that honesty is better than not, which is why I’m bothered when people like Nestle equate PS with “dog food.” Or with “byproducts” that humans, in her words, “don’t eat.” That’s what’s false.
I didn’t get into the whole ‘what shall we do about meat” question — but it seems just OBVIOUS to me that if we Americans would eat meat the way much of the rest of the world does — as a side or an accompaniment — we could certainly go far to solving a lot of problems re. the meat supply chain.
Fighting the hysterics I see. Keep up the good work!
What is stopping the beef industry from suing Jamie Oliver like it did Oprah Winfrey?
Opray Winfrey won!
The Oprah case was interesting: by the time it landed in court, it had morphed into a free speech case (which, in my opinion, was what it should have been), and the courtroom proceedings had nothing at all to do with meat or meat safety, only free speech and intent.
Delia -Nothing is stopping the beef industry from suing Jamie Oliver.If they did though, they would end up with the same result as their suit against Oprah so I am pretty sure they wouldn’t even think about trying.
Maureen – My point regarding the faux ribeye is that most folks would agree that if they are buying a “beef food product” labeled as a ribeye steak they are fully expecting that is what they will be getting. Anything other than that cut of meat that a butcher would carve from the appropriate part of the cow is not technically a ribeye steak.If a company wants to take other parts of a cow (or other animal or whatever) and grind, mold, extruder, frappe, squeeze, form, whatever and use meat glue to shape it into an item that to the untrained eye is identical in appearance to a ribeye steak can they technically sell that as a ribeye steak? Can they legally sell that as a ribeye steak? Can they morally/ethically sell that as a ribeye steak?Technically – no they cannot.Legally – good question and I do not know exactly what the law says in that regard. Unfortunately, too many of these sorts of regulations and labeling requirements are essentially industry driven. Meaning they are bought and paid for by corporate lobbying of pliant politicians. So while I am not certain as to exactly what the law requires in this case I would not be at all surprised if it would, in fact, be legal – at least in some areas for a faux ribeye to be labeled simply as a ribeye.Morally/ethically – I don’t think it is moral/ethical to sell a meat glue factory molded beef product labeled simply as a “ribeye” and sold alongside real ribeye steaks in the meat counter of my supermarket. But then I believe in honesty and truth in labeling. Other’s may (and in fact do) believe differently.Thus, in the cae of “pink slime” I’m not disagreeing that it is edible and probably no more harmful that any other factory farmed meat product.McDonalds is quite within their rights to sell an item such as McRibs and it is important to note that they do not even try to portray that molded meat product as actually being pork baby back ribs or such. And, to their credit, they honestly provide a listing of its contents: Pork, water, salt, dextrose, preservatives (BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid).I just agree with Jamie Oliver that if “pink slime” it is used as an additive to ground round/hamburger (or any other food product) then the purveyor should either voluntarily disclose that fact or the FDA should require such labeling.
The same thing that led to the Texas cattlemen’s association losing their case against Winfrey: free speech. It would probably be impossible to prove damage, at least not of the kind that would justify denying Oliver his right to free speech.
I agree: if the package says “ribeye” then, sure, people should get ribeye. But hamburger has always fallen into a weird category because — it’s ground meat from various sources. I wonder if you and I are unintentionally talking past each other because of semantics?? Eg, the stuff that’s in “deboned” PS comes right off the bone: cartilege (spelling?) and all. Whatever is left. In MY mind, that’s all beef. It’s meat. But I can see that if someone thinks “meat” or “beef” ought to be ONLY tissue, then that’s a different matter. There’s nothing toxic or unhealthy about eating ALL of the carcass. Again, one example I used in one of my two blog entries was the age-old method of extracting all the protein: put the carcass/bones in a pot of water and cook several hours. EVERYTHING is going to end up in that pot and provide good nutrition.That’s what I’m thinking about when I think of PS: instead of cooking it long hours, packers are simply using a faster, less expensive mechanical process to achieve the same goal.For myself, what’s wrong with that. But, yes, if someone thinks “hamburger” or beef should be only tissue, then, yes, there’s a problem. I keep saying tissue. Tissue and muscle. So I suspect that part of the point of contention among many people trying to attack or defend PS is what they regard as “good” meat. But I also want to repeat what I said in my second blog entry: To call this stuff “byproducts,” or equated it with dogfood is simply a lie.
Hamburger has a specific definition according to the FDA:PART 319–DEFINITIONS AND STANDARDS OF IDENTITY OR COMPOSITION–Table of Contents Subpart B–Raw Meat Products Sec. 319.15 Miscellaneous beef products. (a) Chopped beef, ground beef. “Chopped Beef” or “Ground Beef” shall consist of chopped fresh and/or frozen beef with or without seasoning and without the addition of beef fat as such, shall not contain more than 30 percent fat, and shall not contain added water, phosphates, binders, or extenders. When beef cheek meat (trimmed beef cheeks) is used in the preparation of chopped or ground beef, the amount of such cheek meat shall be limited to 25 percent; and if in excess of natural proportions, its presence shall be declared on the label, in the ingredient statement required by Sec. 317.2 of this subchapter, if any, and otherwise contiguous to the name of the product. (b) Hamburger. “Hamburger” shall consist of chopped fresh and/or frozen beef with or without the addition of beef fat as such and/or seasoning, shall not contain more than 30 percent fat, and shall not contain added water, phosphates, binders, or extenders. Beef cheek meat (trimmed beef cheeks) may be used in the preparation of hamburger only in accordance with the conditions prescribed in paragraph (a) of this section.******As I said earlier most people are likely assuming that when they buy hamburger/ground round that it consists of meat taken from a few locations of a cow then cut cubed and ground. Further I think most people understand and expect that some types of hamburger/ground round may have fat added in order to adjust the fat percentage to suit particular needs – most people probably do not want to use 93% lean when they grill burgers.I think what concerns people when they hear about “pink slime” is whether it is something a traditional butcher can make or is this another example of an advanced technological process used to create a foodstuff.In other words – can the butcher at my local supermarket, given a side of beef make “pink slime”. I think it is pretty clear the answer is a big fat NO!Can the butcher at my local supermarket, given a side of beef, cut that side into various parts/pieces some of which will be ground into hamburger/ground round? Of course they can. They do that every single day.The simple fact of the matter is that “pink slime”, while I agree that it is “beef”, is the result of an advanced food processing process technology and is not something that should be added to food without disclosing that fact.I’m not advocating for the ban of the production and use of “pink slime”. I believe that making use of as much of a killed animal (in food products or otheerwise) as possible is a good thing. I’m just advocating for honesty and disclosure regarding the labeling of the food products I buy.
Your butcher could make “pink slime” if he so chose. But it would not be cost effective for him to do so. Certain cuts of meat (different steaks, different roasts, ribs, etc.) are cut from different parts of a cow. The fatty parts are trimmed off and ground as hamburger. (Hamburger does NOT come from a particular part of the cow as do the other cuts mentioned above.) Some of this fatty area is too fat to qualify for hamburger, so it is trimmed off. BPI found a way to economically get rid of this excess fat and make an even more lean hamburger product. This is mixed in with other hamburger at different amounts to get different percentages of lean/fat. This process is no different than taking scraps from the roast area and the T-bone steak area and grinding them together to make hamburger. Yes, it is spritzed with a small amount of ammonia gas since this part is what was on the outside of the carcass and therefore could have been exposed to things that could cause e-coli. This dissipates as the meat is further processed (frozen) and then further diluted when mixed with the other hamburger, so very little reaches the consumer. I would imagine that any that was left in the meat would further dissipate when cooked. I have no problem eating hamburger containing LFTB—actually, I prefer it. Without LFTB, the price of beef will go way up!
I wonder then if there’s going to be a secondary backlash… If the prices go way up, then the average consumer (as opposed to the keyboard commandos who probably rarely eat ground beef anyway) might make demands on the industry again?But I agree with you on the tone of hysteria. It’s clouding a lot of discussion at this time in history as well. And that’s not new, it’s rhyming with the past ones.
“If PS were unsafe, we’d have learned that, oh, about 35 years ago”Yeah, right, just like we made the connection between a certain sugar substitiute’s prevalence in all sorts of foods and obesity rates back in the early 1980s. Nice try.
As an occasional meat (including beef) consumer, I also demand honesty in packaging. When Ogle mentions Beef is Beef. That’s all semantics. Beef merely refers to “cow”. Thus one could also list the skin as beef as well, but most consumers don’t expect they’d be getting skin when they are picking up a package of “beef”. If I am looking for ground beef to make a hamburger at home, I expect when I pick up a package of ground beef MEAT, that it contain ground meat — taken by most consumers to mean ground muscle, conventionally taken from the described cuts as illustrated in most butcher’s cuts diagrams. I DON’T expect it to contain any other ingredients (skin, fat pieces, bone) that have been pre-processed. If you want to sell beef that has the pink slime, then say so…so that we consumers know what we are paying for. The rest of us can then opt to pay for “beef” with slime…or “beef” without slime. The history of what she provides is great, but it totally misses the point as far as I’m concerned.
I really like the post…puts into a good perspective that many people don’t think about. LFTB, however, is not a mechanically deboned product, and mechanically deboning is outlawed in the beef industry. It is a process that is quite common in poultry products and has been commonly mixed up with the LFTB process. LFTB is made with just fatty trimmings (about 75% fat). There are no bones associated with the trim used for the process and BPI melts away fat and centrifuges to separate the lean. Mechanically deboned products, on the other hand, mashes bone/lean/fat through screens which essentially sifts off the bone. Due to the BSE outbreaks, mechanical separation of beef was banned to keep bone residue out of fresh beef.Enjoyed the post though, just wanted to add that clarification! Thanks for the good info!
Good writing overall, but I’m a bit surprised you addressed the history without mentioning the USDA microbiologist who coined the term “pink slime” in 2002, or his fellow USDA scientist, who’s also spoken out about this not being “meat.” It seems your history is incomplete if it focuses on the food activists reacting to the science, and not the source of the science itself.This paragraph in particular seems a bit glib: “First, they argue that this is not real beef but is being passed off as such. They’re wrong. It’s beef. If you’ve eaten a hamburger in the U. S. at anytime since the mid-1970s, you’ve eaten PS.”The question is not whether this is beef, defined as a meat product coming from a cow, but whether it is beef, defined as something as nutritionally good as a ground cut of meat. If this were the same as normal meat, it would not have % limits on how much can be included with normal meat. If it were the same as normal meat, it would not require ammonia treatment (with dubious effectiveness) to make it safe for humans to consume. If we have indeed been consuming it since the ’70s, that doesn’t decrease the outrage, it increases it. The problems the current US population has with eating, weight, and many associated disorders makes it critical we get accurate nutritional information.The aforementioned USDA microbiologists believe it is not meat as such. Gerald Zirnstein, who first used the term “pink slime” in an internal email in 2002 – not a hysteria-inciting media context, but a conversation with fellow USDA coworkers – said calling it meat was fraud. This is a scientist who worked in meat plants, speaking after touring a meat plant, stating unequivocally that he didn’t “consider the stuff to be ground beef.” He did not want his children eating it.Carl Custer, another USDA microbiologist, said the term used in the USDA before pink slime was “soylent pink.” He said it was “more like Jell-O than hamburger, plus it’s treated with ammonia, an additive that is not declared anywhere.” His description of how the waste trimmings were simmered, spun, treated with ammonia, and then bricked and sent to meat packaging plants to be mixed with normal ground beef is chilling. Custer’s explained it pretty clearly: “We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent. My main objection was that it was not meat.”
Why is it used as a filler? Why can’t it be purchased separately? The companies that produce it say. “It’s just beef”, but they call it Lean Finely Textured Beef. Why is that?
HeavyG: Thanks for all that input. I appreciate it!Yes, labeling is important, and okay, let’s change the labeling! However: believe it or not, the “industry” isn’t the only or often even the most important force behind USDA and FDA labeling. Over the past 20 years, “consumer activist” groups like CSPI have become true power players in deciding what gets labeled how.But all labeling decisions are unbelievable political, plus both the FDA and USDA have roles in labeling, and that only complicates the matter since both agencies have their own internal politics and own agendas.That’s why “honesty in labeling” is absurdly hard to pull off. If anything needs to be overhauled here, it’s not the meat industry but the USDA and FDA. Bare minimum, their conflicting roles in food should be sorted out and overlapping eliminated. One thing I learned from researching the book is that food politics w/in federal bureaucracies are insane. Like a Kafka novel gone haywire.BUT: the same holds true for critics and supporters. Both “sides” in this discussion are prone to playing fast/loose w/the facts.
Elian, thanks for taking time to comment. Someone on Twitter said much the same thing, only using cigarettes as the example.I don’t see how we can compare artificial sweeteners or cigarettes to what comes off an animal carcass. The artificial sweeteners, which date back to the 1950s (and were first pulled from grocery stores then because of fears they’d cause cancer) are, well, artificial. They’re manufactured in a laboratory. PS, in contrast, is stuff from a bovine carcass.
Heh. My own captcha system just tried to tell me I’m spam.
As in anything that can be even remotely deemed political there are always opposing sides. The important difference is that groups such as the CSPI are not lobbying to hide information from consumers.Honesty in labeling is only hard to achieve when industry (any industry) has something they want to hide due to fears that consumers may react in ways that are detrimental to their bottom line if they are required to disclose that “Substance X” is contained in “Products A, B, C, etc.”Pink slime is the perfect example of that.Had the industry been more forthcoming about that product decades ago and how it is made and in what foods it was being used perhaps they wouldn’t be suffering the backlash they are now experiencing. Or maybe the product would have never been widely accepted in the first place. Hard to say at this point.It is also hard to say whether the current furor/backlash will continue. Even though one of the main producers of “pink slime” declared bankruptcy Monday other manufacturers remain and most people have short memory/attention spans.My guess is that “pink slime” will remain an ingredient in some low-end factory made beef patties but I’ll bet it’s inclusion in supermarket “raw hamburger/ground round/etc.” will not see a revival.
HeavyG: did you see the paper this morning (April 5)? I gather the USDA will allow manufacturers to add their own labeling (which, frankly, is a bit wierd, but hey!)As for the CSPI: That ranks as my least favorite organization. I have zero respect for the folks there. Too much fear-mongering, playing fast/loose with facts, etc. One thing I want to do, just as soon as I get five minutes to spare, is read the meat trade journals from the 1990s to see how the process and its possibilities were first portrayed. Now to me, as a historian, THAT is the interesting part.
I appreciate your candid and rational approach to this issue. Your argument makes a lot of sense. Imports will increase to meet the demand for lean beef to replace domestic production. Instead of using our resources wisely and supporting our American farmers and ranchers, farmers in Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay and Brazil will be the beneficiaries.
Maureen – I did hear the news and my reaction was – what a cop out by the USDA!Voluntary labeling has always been an option and from a few articles I read this morning it does not appear that a majority of the manufacturers of that product will even participate in such labeling.I gather that given the uproar the USDA felt they had to take some sort of action and letting BPI sound as if they are concerned about helping inform consumers was all they could do.Politically, I’m sure the USDA cannot (at this time anyway) mandate labeling of products containing “pink slime” but felt they had to do…something. Whether this issue “has legs” and may result in mandatory labeling down the road…well, I’m not holding my breath.CSPI is not one of my favorite groups but I am glad they exist in order to provide a counterpoint to industry efforts and control over the marketplace and government regulation. Personally, I don’t think they play any looser with facts or engage in fear mongering any more or less than the corporate interest groups with which they may be on the opposite of an issue.I too would be interested in reading the about atmosphere surrounding the early years of the development and entry into the food chain of the product we’ve all come to know and love
I’ll be periodically checking back with your blog to see what you may have found.Thanks for the discussion.Cheers!
LTFB makes it possible to enrich fatty trimmings from fat cattle to mix lean hamburger. The lean hamburger is ofter sourced from older cattle and bulls after their reproductive life. Since the number of cattle being slaughtered in the USA is unlikely to increase, the lack of LTFB will mean that the American consumer will be competing more with the third world for beef.
Maureen – in case you haven’t already seen this I thought you would be interested:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
All I have to say after reading half of this trash talk is you eat the ammonia treated meat with steroids, gross amounts of antibiotics in these sick animals who are maltreated and abused and i promise you sooner or later you and yours WILL pay for it through your karma (usually the result of poor health).ME? I know better !
From the 2009 NY Times article linked by “HeavyG:”[...] The Food and Drug Administration signed off on the use of ammonia, concluding it was safe when used as a processing agent in foods. This year, a top official with the U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said, “It eliminates E. coli to the same degree as if you cooked the product.”Carl S. Custer, a former U.S.D.A. microbiologist, said he and other scientists were concerned that the department had approved the treated beef for sale without obtaining independent validation of the potential safety risk. Another department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef “pink slime” in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”One of the toughest hurdles for Beef Products was the Agricultural Marketing Service, the U.S.D.A. division that buys food for school lunches. Officials cited complaints about the odor, and wrote in a 2002 memorandum that they had “to determine if the addition of ammonia to the product is in the best interest to A.M.S. from a quality standpoint.”“It is our contention,” the memo added, “that product should be labeled accordingly.”Represented by Dennis R. Johnson, a top lawyer and lobbyist for the meat industry, Beef Products prevailed on the question of whether ammonia should be listed as an ingredient, arguing that the government had just decided against requiring another company to list a chemical used in treating poultry.School lunch officials said they ultimately agreed to use the treated meat because it shaved about 3 cents off the cost of making a pound of ground beef. [...]
I think you make a lot of valid points in your article. The only thing that worries me is the use of ammonia. Of course, if it was going to hurt me immediately, that would have been, as you said, about 35 years ago. But does anyone know what the long-term effects are of exposure, internally, to small amounts of ammonia? Are those effects increased or decreased with the meat being cooked?
Susan, the ammonia is not and never has been a health risk. If you eat onions, for example, you’re eating ammonia. If you eat “organic” beef, you’re eating ammonia. If you eat almost any kind of pre-made “factory” baked good, you’re eating ammonia. If you eat cheese, you’re eating ammonia.
Like you, I too have an incredible amount of ranting to do.
For starters, it is fascinating to me how you appear to sympathize with the difficulties companies like Tyson and Cargill have, let alone those in making profit (” The only reason companies like IBP or Tyson or Cargill earn a profit on beef is that they control the materials from farm to grocery store; they run highly efficient packing plants; they produce in huge volume…”). The two are extremely powerful multi-billion dollar companies, and two of the biggest meat producers in the US. One is a Fortune 500 company and, according to CNN, the other would be if it were public.
I have other responses to your article, like this efficiency you talk about. Efficiency in the business world of meat, of course, means the industrialization of meat production, which has been deemed by the United Nations as the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, above that of even transportation (but I’m not sure if you belong in the “climate change is a conspiracy” category, so perhaps this is not an issue). Also, industrialized meat producers like Tyson and Cargill have committed some of the most atrocious environmental offenses with almost no trace of penalization.
You say that consumers have little understanding of how meat is manufactured; I must ask, what understanding of it do you have? Have you any idea of the plethora of grossly inhumane animal welfare abuses committed in the meat industry? I consider myself a historian as well. So I would suggest that if you insist on presenting yourself as a credible historian that the next time you jump to defend meat-packing giants like Tyson or Cargill you take a look at their history of dispicable animal abuse cases. The fact that “they control the materials from farm to grocery store” means that many who depend on industrial agriculture as a way of life are victims of virtual debt slavery to these companies. And consumers get duped for the sake of profit, with low-quality products like pink slime.
On the question of whether or not it’s beef, here’s where I stand. You seem to argue that it is a harmless way to use every part of the animal in a cost-effective and ethical way. Fine. But have you wondered why only 15% of the stuff is allowed in ground beef? Why not more? This points to nothing else but the fact that it is, indeed, a filler. Fine, it is beef. But how do you like the smell or taste of ammonia on its own? Tell me if this is crazy, but common sense would tell me that I am not comfortable with my food being processed with ammonia. Your defense is that it is used in other industrial food products, that it is contained even in organic meat. Other industrial food products are no standard of quality as far as I’m concerned. Ammonia is a naturally occurring compound in many living things, but I would not trust meat companies or the studies they themselves have paid for to tell me at what capacity it is safe to supplement this naturally occuring compound in our bodies through consuming meat. Furthermore, there have been reports in the New York Times of packages of pink slime reaching retailers who sent them back, because they could not stand the overbearing smell of what was clearly ammonia. Would you call this an “irrational” reaction as well?
Finally, why the use of ammonia in the first place? Because industrial practices are, as you say, extremely efficient, to the point that live animals are mechanically processed at rates quicker than ever before for the sake of increasing profits, and that speed means error is a given. Parts of the animal that are more likely to contain E. Coli (and nowadays, that is most of it, because animals often stand in their own waste in crowded and unsanitary conditions that scientists have been warning for years could lead to dangerous outbreaks of foodbourne illnesses) that end up being processed can infect entire batches of meat, hence the need for industry to protect itself by using the ammonia. The E. Coli outbreaks you point to were no doubt made possible because of the industrialization and “efficiency” of these profit- and quantity-driven companies you seem to be on the side of.
You say, “It’s beef, people.” It seems that no one on the side of pink slime has much else to say besides phrases like this–”Dude, it’s beef” or “Beef is Beef”. As the beef industry has a powerful lobbying group, it’s no coincidence that politicians have become involved, like Texan Governor Rick Perry, who has been adamant in his defense of pink slime. In fact, according to ABC Iowa Governor Branstad, who arranged a tour of a pink slime producing plant for Perry, received $150,000 from BPI in campaign contributions in 2010. The media campaign brought on by the beef and meat industries in response to the pink slime outrage by Americans must have been a costly one, especially for these poor meat companies, which, as you have depicted, have had to succumb to the demands of American consumers for cheap products and whose profits have therefore suffered.
But that is the only point of yours I actually agree with, that Americans have demanded and have indeed gotten cheap meat–cheap in every meaning of the word. But this is inevitable, because Americans have such an appetite for meat–we consume more of it than any other country. We also spend the least amount of our income on food as compared to the rest of the world. Finally, we are, as I’m sure you know, the fattest and probably unhealthiest country in the developed world. While you may see no connection between these, common sense would again tell me differently. Pink slime is only the tip of the iceberg of what I see as nothing less than the perversion of our meat industry. Sounds less like “plain ol’ beef” to me. Sounds like plain ol’ bullshit.
Thanks for your comments, Deniz. I appreciate the time you took to read the post and to comment.
I would love to hear a response.
Deniz, based on your comments, I gather that you read into this blog entry something that was not intended (and, as near as I can tell, isn’t there), which means, alas, that you’ve made up your mind what I think (and not just about pink slime!).
For example, I wasn’t “defending” packers/processors. I was pointing out that they behave in a particular way in order to create a particular product at a price that consumers will pay. My intent was to enrich the historical context for Pink Slime.
But you read it as a defense of packers/processors — and from that arrived at a collection of other conclusions (not least of which is that I’m not a “real” historian because I didn’t write a screed that meshed with your view) all of which added up to, in your mind, as bullshit.
So. I doubt there’s anything I could add would affect/change/alter/enhance your understanding of what I wrote. But I thank you for your comments and hope you’ll stop by again. (If nothing else, I’m clearly a cheap, easy target, and, hey!, you can have some cheap, easy fun at my expense.)
[...] see my initial posts about Pink Slime here and [...]