Non-Hysterical Commentary About Pink Slime

Worth reading: Yesterday's opinion section of the New York Times included this surprisingly even-handed, non-hysterical commentary about Pink Slime. Most of it is a re-hash of the recent frenzy, and the author ends with a call for better food labeling. I'm pleased to see the Times run this, of course, but even more pleased that the writer didn't lean on the usual hysterics. It's the most neutral comment I've seen anywhere, and as far as I'm concerned, in this case "neutral" equals progress.

Meat Glue? It's All Good, Folks

So back to something more interesting than writerly, insider-baseball crap. Like meat glue! Because what's not to like about something called "meat glue." Meat Glue (MG to you and me) is the new Pink Slime (PS). Just about the time the PS ruckus was dying down, enter MG to take its place. (*1) MG is a perfectly safe (when used correctly), 100% "natural" substance that chefs use to bind foodstuffs together. You can read an excellent introduction to the stuff here.

But in the minds and eyes of those who spend their days critiquing the contemporary food system, MG is yet another example of the way Big Corporations are ripping off consumers and tainting our food supply. ( Nor, I might add, is the  controversy about MG anything new.  MG first came under attack about a year ago, ironically just at the same time that Jamie Oliver first lit into PS).

Nothing could be further from the truth, but as I've learned over the past six years, "truth" is a flexible concept when it comes to critiques. (*2) MG is a legitimate culinary tool that takes advantage of the natural properties of natural products.

I could go on in this fashion, making the same points I've already made about PS (click the "Pink Slime" tag in the right sidebar for the blog entries I wrote about it). But I'd rather turn this blog entry over to the experts, namely people who make their living thinking, studying, reading, and writing about food science.

So let me direct your attention to two blogs that addressed the issue a year ago. First is this marvelous piece posted at Cooking Issues, a blog run by two guys affiliated with The French Culinary Institute.

The second piece aired a couple of weeks later at the blog operated by the late, and much missed, Chris Raines. (*3) Mercifully, his blog in all its wonder and glory is still available despite his death last December. In the piece, he, too, takes on the reality of meat glue. The video link in his blog entry is dead, but the piece to which he refers can be seen in its entirety in the blog entry at Cooking Issues.

These guys are experts and scientists, and I can add nothing to what they have to say except to reiterate a couple of points. As Chris noted:

It is interesting how people speak so positively about Turducken but are somehow “shocked” by the culinary tool that is TG.

Both blogs also emphasize the point that I made when I commented on PS a few weeks back: Meat glue is nothing more than another way to do two things: use every. last. bit. of the carcass.

Chris also makes a crucial point, one I make over and over in my meat book (which, yes, will see life eventually): Using meat glue is a way to give American consumers what they want: cheap meat. As Chris wrote:

Products made using “meat glue” might include “value brand” steaks (this is how $2/lb ‘filets’ are possible, folks), imitation crab, fish sticks, and others.

Never, and I mean NEVER, underestimate the American appetite for cheap, abundant food. There ain't no. way. in. hell. all those steakhouse chains can sell what they sell as cheaply as they do without a) mass production methods of feeding; b) tools like meat glue; and c) an insatiable demand for such stuff from the public.

If you don't like stuff like MG or PS, I repeat my advice: either stop eating meat (and, in the case of "glue," other foods as well; OR pony up serious money for stuff that doesn't use either (which will, in turn, likely lead you to eat less meat, or to eat meat as an accompaniment rather than a main dish).

My thanks to Jesse R. Bussard for reminding me about Chris' meat glue blog post.

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*1: Why, you may ask, have I not gotten to this sooner? Because I've been swamped to the max with a bunch of other, work-related matters (blogging being only one small part of my work), and because I was out of town when the story got hot and I still believe --- dinosaur that I am --- that vacations with family should be just that: vacations with family, rather than hanging with family and carrying on as if I were at home.

*2: This weekend I re-read James McWilliams' superb assessment of the "food critique," his book Just Food. Among the many points he makes is that much of the current food critique has less to do with food than with a loathing of corporations and globalization. In the name of that loathing, otherwise sensible people are willing to ignore facts and, worse, to ignore valuable tools that could be used to feed everyone, not just Americans with their mania for cheap food.

*3: I thought the world of Chris and am so glad I wrote this blog entry about him long before his death. (He died in a car accident.) Chris was the model of what I think of as the "new" intellectual, and I miss him and his work and his humor every day.

"Pink Slime" and Cognitive Bias; Or, How to Make Mountains of Molehills

Last year, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman published a book titled Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book has won awards and landed on bestseller lists and I recommend it. (It's not an easy read but it's worth the effort.) Kahneman looks at how we "think" and how our intuition and cognitive biases (and we all have them) shape how we think and how we respond to ideas and events In Chapter 13, he discusses the role of "risk" in our thinking, especially the way "biased reactions" and inaccurate  assessments of  risk can and do shape public policy. He cites the work of another scholar, Cass Sunstein, who argues that, as Kahneman puts it,

biased reactions to risks are an important source of erratic and misplaced priorities in public policy. Lawmakers and regulators may be overly responsive to the irrational concerns of citizens, both because of political sensitivity and because they are prone to the same cognitive biases as other citizens.

Kahneman describes what happens when the public's inability to calculate "risk" accurately fuels an irrational response to a relatively trivial matter. The passage is long but worth quoting in full.

[This] . . .  self-sustaining chain of events .  .  . may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by "availability entrepreneurs," individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news.

The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a "heinous cover-up." The issue become politically important because it is on everyone's mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment.

Kahneman cites two specific examples of cases where a minor episode blew up into a Very Big Deal and facts were ignored: the Love Canal episode of the late 1970s, and the "Alar scare" in 1989. In both cases, the facts did not support the dangers touted.

To which I would add the example of Pink Slime in 2012: Jamie Oliver describes salvaged beef scraps as dog food; a blogger demands that the USDA stop using said scraps and launches a petition; the media picks up the story; a media-savvy group of "availability entrepreneurs" fan the flames --- and a company ends up teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

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Quotes are from Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), p. 142.

In My Other Life --- I Talk, Not Write

Have I ever mentioned that I often talk about my work to others? I do. Anyway, thanks to Lean Finely-Textured Beef (Pink Slime to you and me), I've already done a couple of radio interviews about meat (nice because the book won't even be out until early 2013).

This one was with the always kind and thoughtful Ray Bowman.

This one early this morning for Q, a program that originates on CBC in Canada and is broadcast in the US via PRI.

Bill Maher Explains It All

AHA! Now I get it! Anyone who denounces Pink Slime is a "liberal," and anyone who doesn't is a "conservative."

So says Bill Maher. Speaking about two Republican governors who spoke out in support of BPI, Inc. and Pink Slime:

I think the Republican party is at war with common sense… I think Republicans live in a world now where whatever a liberal says, no matter how sensible, is automatically evil, wrong, and needs to be fought with the fervor of a starving racoon on crystalmeth.

So if I'm reading this him correctly, anyone who is opposed to PS is a "liberal." Those who aren't are, by default, conservatives.

So. Now I understand why some folks think that since I didn't issue an unequivocal condemnation of PS, it follows that I don't believe in global warming or the climate crisis. Because I'm a REPUBLICAN, stupid.

Okaaaay. Now I get it. Whew. So glad to have that little mystery cleared up.

Gotta go. Off to the county courthouse to correct the error on my voter registration card.

No Neutrality Allowed

The meat book is still about ten months away from publication, and already, thanks to Pink Slime, it's another version of the beer book. Not that I'm surprised. Disheartened, but not surprised.

Let me explain: When the beer book came out, I was criticized by many in the craft beer community because I had not written an all-out attack on the "big" brewers. Critics assumed that I MUST be on the big brewers' "side." (As if there were sides to be taken....) And, worse, that I'd been paid by a big brewer to write the book. (Nothing could have been further from the truth.)

I didn't write Ambitious Brew in order to "take sides." I wrote the book because I thought the history of beer in America would enrich my understanding of what it means to be an American. Period. End of story. It never occurred to me to "take sides."

So, too, the meat book: I wrote it because I didn't know anything about meat, its place in American society, how it's made or why. I spent researching the book, and, no surprise, I learned a great deal about meat and its place in American history and society.

When the Pink Slime uproar began, I thought that  knowledge could add to our understanding of Pink Slime. In my mind, the PS uproar smacked of conclusion-jumping and fear-mongering, and I hoped that if people had some facts, they might slow down and rethink the conclusions to which they'd jumped.

Silly me. (Stupid me?) The pro-PS crowd immediately concluded I was "one of them," and the anti-PS crowd concluded that I was a shill for Big Ag and Corporate America.

Neither is true --- but the food "debate" is so mired in hostility that neutrality is (apparently) not an option.

Live. Learn.