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What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

• tptacek 8y ago
  Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.
  • msla 8y ago
    > Why is this supposed to upset me? So someone can upsell you on ground beef "With No Pink Slime"!
  • tedunangst 8y ago
    But what about meat glue???
    • darkpuma 8y ago
      Seems fine if it's labeled, but seems borderline fraudulent if it's not.
  • PakG1 8y ago
    I guess people are worried about uneducated and poor who don't or can't think about the difference. For example, where fast food chains previously might be unhealthy but still OK, this might tip the scales closer towards not OK. If you're knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision and also can afford to take the time to grind your own meat, people probably aren't worried about you.
    • jeffdavis 8y ago
      What are the bad consequences of this "pink slime"? Is it worse for you than a ribeye steak? What makes it not OK?
      • Pharmakon 8y ago
        It is much higher in fat, and much lower in protein than meat. It also contains pulverized bone, nerve tissue and more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat This puree includes bone, bone marrow, skin, nerves, blood vessels, and the scraps of meat remaining on the bones. The resulting product is a blend primarily consisting of tissues not generally considered meat along with a much smaller amount of actual meat (muscle tissue). Of course the final product depends on how it’s processed. A lot of the time the stuff is centrifuged to remove fat, in which case it’s used as filler. If you’ve ever eaten a cheap chicken nugget and tasted something off, that’s what it is. So nutrition aside it’s disgusting, and is generally only found in heavily processed foods with a ton of salt and sugar in them; nothing less will make it palatable. You’re never going to find the stuff in any food that isn’t terrible for you. If you have concerns about prion diseases like BSE then it’s also a concern, since the processing is unlikely to destroy prions.
        • zdragnar 8y ago
          I don't think that's what this is. In fact, the particular product in question is leaner than ground beef, and added to ground beef to get it qualified as "lean". If it's not in the posted article, it's in the linked article (which I cited in my original comment).
          • Pharmakon 8y ago
            As I said, A lot of the time the stuff is centrifuged to remove fat, in which case it’s used as filler. It’s the same product, it’s just processed more, but it’s taken off the carcass the same way, and you still get to enjoy that lovely spinal cord. Colloquially the full fat product is “white slime” and the centrifuged and ammoniated product is “pink slime”.
            • hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
              It is not the same product, at all. The linked Wikipedia article that you posted quotes the USDA regulations which are clear that mechanically separated beef is not permitted for human consumption. On the contrary, "pink slime", or lean finely textured beef, is made from the scraps and leftovers of (non-mechanically separated) beef, and is put into ground beef for humans.
    • eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
      I don't think it even has anything to do with being uneducated or poor, although they will likely be hit the hardest because they cannot shop at the fancy organic markets / Whole Foods where this sort of business practice is not even considered. I should be able to shop at a normal grocery store and know what I'm purchasing, regardless of wealth or education level.
  • trumped 8y ago
    if you're picky about any of your food, you have to do everything yourself because corporations don't care, and most people don't have time to do that (and the poor can't afford it)... here is one more example: https://abcnews.go.com/US/fake-fish-experts-mislabeling-seafood-real-problem/story?id=13706266 https://abcnews.go.com/US/fake-fish-experts-mislabeling-seaf...
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • Pharmakon 8y ago
    If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own. A lot of people lack the education to know that many more lack the time, energy and money to make it work. I guess the answer why this should upset you is that it shouldn’t, unless you’re troubled by empathy as many of us are.
    • sp332 8y ago
      It's still beef though. If I'm getting a burger at a McDonald's or something, this is fine.
      • Pharmakon 8y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat#Safety_and_regulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat#... Concerns were raised again when the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic, commonly known as "mad cow disease", occurred in the United Kingdom in 1986. Since bits of the spinal cord (the part most likely to be carrying the BSE prion)[4][5] often got mixed in with the rest of the meat, products using mechanically separated meat taken from the carcasses of bovines were at higher risk for transmitting BSE to humans. Given how resilient prions are I’d be pretty damned wary of eating purées of nerve tissue.
        • Zarel 8y ago
          Your link also says that, as of 2004, the USDA considers mechanically separated beef prohibited for use in human food. So I'm guessing that means the "pink slime" this article is talking about is something else?
          • Pharmakon 8y ago
            No, it’s the same product that has undergone additional steps to make it legal to serve to humans. The critical step is typically the application of ammonia, and less often, citric acid. Often the product is defatted prior to this step, but the only legal distinction is the use of a germicidal agent.
  • NoblePublius 8y ago
    The issue here is that the government doesn’t force food makers to distinguish a whole muscle ground into mince from 100,000 scraps soaked in Mr. Clean in a pressure cooker.
    • rdlecler1 8y ago
      They sure would so your argument sort of breaks down here because while you are implying they’re soaking this in Mr Clean that’s not what’s happening.
      • NoblePublius 8y ago
        It’s ammonia. Mr Clean is ammonia.
  • josho 8y ago
    > find a butcher you trust, or grind your own. Or you could not allow meat scraps to be called ground beef and trust all ground beef that you buy. For context this meat wasn’t waste it was used for other products. But by allowing it to be called ground beef it is now more valuable.
    • shawnz 8y ago
      > For context this meat wasn’t waste it was used for other products. It was used for other products, like ground beef.
  • wheels 8y ago
    It's totally reasonable to eat meat and still have qualms about its labeling. This is about processed meat being sold as ground beef. I eat both processed meat and ground beef, but they're not the same thing and don't have the same culinary or nutritional value. (Though, you're right that the "slime" label is obnoxious -- at least for anyone who eats, say, hot dogs or bologna.)
  • uiri 8y ago
    I'm mostly concerned about the ammonia used during the process. The ammonia is used to kill off germs due to contamination. Maybe we should just throw away contaminated animal by-product.
    • burfog 8y ago
      The intentional mislabeling bothers me most, but yeah I'm not so fond of ammonia. In the human body, ammonia is a lot like alcohol and carbon dioxide: it is a poison that we are well-equipped to remove. Well, sort of. Just as people with lung trouble have problems removing carbon dioxide, people with kidney trouble have problems removing ammonia. What about people with kidney trouble? Perhaps they deserve a warning label.
      • nate_meurer 8y ago
        As a vegetarian myself, I wouldn't dare make excuses for the beef industry, but your argument here is pretty fucking weak. At the high end, LFTB contains about as much ammonia as a lot of commercial bread, and about half of what's in hard cheese. The increase this causes in your body is just noise compared to what comes from your natural protein metabolism. Google for "lftb ammonia ppm" for some numbers. So no, please, let's not start slapping ammonia warnings on all of our food.
      • phonypc 8y ago
        That's a strange way of thinking about CO2. It's more like water than alcohol, in that it's essential to life.
    • nate_meurer 8y ago
      No need for concern. High estimates for ammonia residues in LFTB are around 400 ppm. A healthy serving will net you tens of milligrams of extra ammonia. In scientific terms that's approximately jack shit. Your body gets rid of many times that amount every time you urinate. A lot more if you're athletic or eat a high protein diet.
  • jdietrich 8y ago
    >Why is this supposed to upset me? The factor that dominates our conversations about food - social class. We have a set of reflexive attitudes about food that are largely uncorrelated with health, nutrition or the environment, but are strongly correlated with the social class of who eats what. Advanced meat recovery is the ultimate in nose-to-tail eating, allowing us to make use of almost every gram of edible meat on a carcass. If we're going to keep eating meat, we should celebrate advanced meat recovery in the same way that foodies celebrate unfashionable cuts or offal meat. We don't, because recovered meat is cheap and therefore has negative signalling value. The kind of people who buy grass-fed organic beef would never dream of knowingly eating "pink slime" or mechanically separated chicken, despite the obvious environmental and animal welfare case for eating perfectly good meat that would otherwise go to waste. Lean finely textured beef is no less nutritious than any other kind of lean beef, because it is lean beef. There are possibly legitimate safety concerns about the use of ammonium hydroxide in the processing of lean finely textured beef, but it's widely used elsewhere in the US food industry and readily substituted by citric acid in this application. If you're concerned about health, then argue about ammonium hydroxide, not about modern techniques to get more meat from every carcass. (Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian for environmental reasons)
    • cageface 8y ago
      We have a set of reflexive attitudes about food that are largely uncorrelated with health, nutrition or the environment, but are strongly correlated with the social class of who eats what. I wish this point was brought up more in nutrition discussions. Most of these recent fad diets like keto, paleo, and carnivore are beyond the means of most people in the world. So even if we accept, for the sake of argument (which I don't), that they have nutritional advantages there should be a giant asterisk at the end of the argument.
      • nightski 8y ago
        keto a fad diet? It's been around since the 1920s...
        • 8y ago
  • eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    Because I depend on the USDA to ensure product safety and transparency. If anyone wants to buy pink slime, go for it, but I should at least be able to know what I'm buying. This is fraud, and it's aided by the government.
  • contravariant 8y ago
    Well, using the whole animal isn't really the controversial part. In fact that's more or less why ground meat exists. However you can't just ground pure trimmings as that wouldn't be particularly nice to eat, you need some good meat in there as well. The 'pink slime' described here seems to be some process that separates out additional fat using centrifuges in order to make something that fits the official standards for ground beef without the need to add any good meat. It's highly debatable meat that's been that extensively processed should still be considered ground meat.
  • tootie 8y ago
    We should applaud it really. It means more meat from fewer animals. Beef production is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • adrr 8y ago
    Because when I buy ground beef, I want ground beef. I don't want mechanically separated slime. It is false advertising to call it ground beef. It is as dishonest as putting horse meat into ground beef and calling it 100% ground beef even if people couldn't tell the difference.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • coldtea 8y ago
    >If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own. Yeah, god forbid food standards agencies get picky themselves about what's in our food, or at least reserve the traditional names of meats for non traditionally produced / sourced foodstuff.
  • cwyers 8y ago
    This is why I haaaaaaaaate the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwL5G5HbGA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwL5G5HbGA Except for the part where the kids totally no sell his smug act and he just stands there dumbstruck. Those chicken trimmings are... chicken. Human history is the history of us figuring out how to extract more edible bits from the animal than our jaws can along (that's how we got soup, among a lot of other things). The idea that we should only eat the most presentable primal cuts of the animal is bizarre and weird to me.
    • scotty79 8y ago
      Besides, it all start with killing animal and digging into its corpse. I don't see any high horse to be sat on.
    • jacobolus 8y ago
      LOL. Nice work kids. Where does that guy think soup stock, sausages, etc. come from? In any event, according to web sleuthing typical chicken patties/nuggets are not made from mechanically separated chicken, which instead mostly goes into bologna, hot dogs, and the like.
    • dawnerd 8y ago
      Find it kind of funny too that some of the same people that find pink slime, chicken nuggets disgusting are the same people that will suck meat off ribs and eat the bone marrow like its butter.
  • barrkel 8y ago
    That's not how mass markets work, though. This act actually removes poor people's choices. In the search for efficiency, the market for X bifurcates into two extremes: the cheapest thing that can be called X, and the boutique specialist X. If you live in a poor to middling area, the chances are you only have the cheapest X available to you. Never mind about boutique X being more expensive - it's probably in a completely different part of town. If you have a car, you might be able to make a trip to where they have boutique X - but you might not even have time. (I know that's the biggest limitation on me visiting a butcher - it needs to be something really special.) If the cheapest X that can be called X has its quality bar raised, then industry can focus on meeting that bar efficiently. And if you lower the bar, then everyone who's making something slightly higher quality will start losing business, until everything is shit. This applies not just to beef, but bread, restaurants, clothes, consumer goods, etc. The effect is especially pernicious in areas where branding isn't prevalent. It's for reasons like this that AOC/DOP/PDO etc. exist in Europe, for example - otherwise you'd get random cheese factories trying to sell their wax shavings as Parmesan. IMO it would be fine to sell "pink slime" as a separate category of meat product, just not as ground beef. I grew up poor - at times, we were vegetarian not by choice, but because meat was too expensive. We never fell back to cheap hamburgers of dubious origin and low meat %. That's why this act removes poor people's choice.
  • open-source-ux 8y ago
    I think of it more in terms of cheap vs more expensive cuts of meat. I think it's important to signal this on the packaging. In the UK, the process being discussed in this thread is labelled 'mechanically recovered meat' (MRM) on food packaging. For food producers, MRM is much cheaper than other meat which is why you'll often find it used in cheap burgers and ready meals. Many consumers might never look at the ingredients or even know what MRM is. For me, it's still important not to subsume the different processes under one label of ground beef because they are not the same.
    • smileypete 8y ago
      I think it's about the right approach, though there's been some push-back from industry lately, as they want 'low pressure' MSM to be categorised the same as normal meat: https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff76960d03e7f57eac39f https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff76960d03e7f57eac3... I can see why they want the 'low pressure' stuff to be differentiated, but it still needs to be indentified in some way on the ingredients list.
    • GordonS 8y ago
      I don't think the pink slime being discussed here is MRM, in the sense that it's not removed mechanically (even if lots of machinery and processing is used after the fact). In the UK, I don't think we have the equivalent of this pink slime, or at least I've never heard of it. Ground beef in the UK is generally labelled as "beef mince" or "steak mince", where "steak mince" is minced beef produced by mincing whole cuts (such as flank), and "beef mince" can also contain minced trimmings, and generally has a higher fat content. I have no problem buying either of these. Indeed, sometimes you want a higher fat content, such as when making burgers. Thr pink slime in the article seems to be something inbetween MRM and trimmings, and I would have a problem with buying it.
  • jakobegger 8y ago
    I recently saw that they now offer ground beef with less fat at our local supermarket. I assumed that they just put less of the fatty bits inside. Now, I don't live in the US, and I don't know what regulations in Europe say about ground beef, but it does make me hesitate: I absolutely wouldn't have bought the meat if I knew they added pink slime to it to make it less fatty. I'd just buy the fatty ground beef instead. The problem is not that it shouldn't be allowed -- it just shouldn't pretend to be something it's not. I literally did not know that the pre-packaged ground meat is different from the ground meat you get at the butcher.
    • adrr 8y ago
      Europe doesn’t allow pink slime. Any meat product requiring it to be disinfected because of potential fecal contamination will not fly in EU.
    • mbrodersen 8y ago
      Europe (and Australia) have much higher food standards than the US.
  • bjoli 8y ago
    I am fascinated with your ability to be contrarian! But are you really sure you can't understand why it should upset you? We generalise a large part of your understanding of the world down to words. When someone (in this case UDSA) redefines ground beef to mean something else that you find icky, of yourself you are upset. I do think this is a problem since redefining foodstuffs will eventually lead to people distrusting the whole industry. Ground beef should be parts of beef that have been ground down. Not slabs of defatted chemically treated leftovers. It is a redefinition of a phrase that is directly misleading to customers. I am all for eating everything from dead animals, if we are to continue eating them. People are fricking squeamish.
• jonnycoder 8y ago
  I use trimmings from deer and elk meat that I harvest and butcher myself and grind into ground meat. Only difference is those animals are much leaner with little fat and I don’t use a centrifuge with ammonia. If you like burgers and such, I highly recommend grinding your own chuck or nicer cuts of beef.
  • cimmanom 8y ago
    This isn’t just ground chuck. That’s the whole point.
    • jonnycoder 8y ago
      No, ground chuck != ground beef. I do wish it was common to buy actual ground chuck though.
      • cimmanom 8y ago
        How is ground chuck not ground beef? Chuck is a cut. You can also get it cubed - it makes great stew meat.
• zdragnar 8y ago
  I think the article linked in the posted one does a better job explaining what's "news" about this: https://newfoodeconomy.org/bpi-pink-slime-ground-beef-usda-reclassifed/ https://newfoodeconomy.org/bpi-pink-slime-ground-beef-usda-r... > Since 1994, the government’s stance has been clear. Lean finely textured beef (LFTB) has been a “qualified component” of hamburger, meaning it can be included in ground beef without being independently disclosed. But it could not itself be called ground beef, suggesting that, in the eyes of regulators it was something else—a padding or additive, but not the real deal. ... > That effort culminated in 2018, when BPI, citing advancements to its process, formally asked FSIS to consider whether its product might just be called “ground beef.” > “It was an extensive review that took well over six months and included consumer reviews, nutritional panels, tours of the plant where agency folks could get a first-hand look at the process and understand what we are doing at BPI,” Nick Ross, BPI’s vice president of engineering, told Beef Magazine, a trade publication that covers the cattle industry.
  • sverige 8y ago
    I'm surprised quartz was willing to call it pink slime in the headline. That cost Disney/ABC a lot of money. ABC didn't coin the term, incidentally. It was coined by a regulator at the FDA some years earlier.
  • dang 8y ago
    Ok, we've changed the URL to that from https://qz.com/1552580/the-us-government-has-redefined-pink-slime-as-ground-beef/ https://qz.com/1552580/the-us-government-has-redefined-pink-.... Thanks!
    • joe_the_user 8y ago
      I'm sorry, the languaging in this re-linking sounds like so much like industry shilling. "That product is then sterilized with a strong puff of ammonia gas to kill pathogens, as beef trimmings are especially susceptible to contamination." With an elaborate explanation for each "terrible sounding" detail (what is this "puff" exactly, etc). ... except the sum total of the "terrible sounding" stuff is actually distinctly unappealing imo and only by stringing things across elaborate, carefully couched discussions is it plausible-seeming that this is "ground beef". Basically, pink slime is highly processed leavings of beef that cannot be used except by putting it through more or less a blender and a chemistry lab. That fact leaves many consumers nervous when this is revealed. And this ruling isn't about whether you can produce this stuff but rather whether you have to tell people about it. Most people would like to know. You can judge the ruling based on that.
• hopefulengineer 8y ago
  should be noted that ABC had to settle with the company behind "pink slime" and paid $177 million out of pocket, with their insurers paying a larger amount as well[1] the cost of fake news [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-pink-slime-defamation-suit-20170810-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-pink-slime-defama...
• pmarreck 8y ago
  https://impossiblefoods.com https://impossiblefoods.com I’m just going to leave the future right here
  • newnewpdro 8y ago
    More heavily-processed industrial food products, yum!
    • pmarreck 8y ago
      FFS, this gives the people what they want without imprisoning and killing cows for food. Maybe have some evidence that it’s unhealthy before you bullshit a negativity next time
      • x43b 8y ago
        Significant number of carbs and has added sugar, sounds less nutritious than hamburger to me.
        • heyjudy 8y ago
          Upton Sinclair effect right here. Let's keep supporting a major source of climate change, obesity, antibiotic resistance, animal cruelty and heart disease because you want a hamburger... nothing else is good enough for you, focus on the negatives, discard all of the positives.
          • pmarreck 8y ago
            Yeah, I cannot fathom our downvotes either
        • pmarreck 8y ago
          Also sounds less captive-bolt-pistol’y to me. And less greenhouse-gassy https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/11/301794415/gassy-cows-are-warming-the-planet-and-theyre-here-to-stay https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/11/301794415/ga... I’ll take the negatives to have the positives, in this case, and I don’t see how anyone else ethically, rationally, wouldn’t. And I kinda already know they will succeed, so there’s that
• kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Mass market hot dogs are just pink slime too. So now they can be ground beef.
• newnewpdro 8y ago
  PSA: your grocery store butcher will grind up a steak of your choosing for you at no cost, you only need to ask. I didn't know people bought pre-ground beef until moving out of my parents' home. Growing up, whenever we went shopping, my mother would start at the meat department, pick out a cheap steak, and ask the butcher to grind it up. We'd return for it later before heading to the cashier. I thought this was the standard operating procedure, as well as eating home-cooked hamburgers bloody rare.
  • leetcrew 8y ago
    no, you just have parents that care about food.
    • Latty 8y ago
      And are wealthy enough to make this choice. I can't speak for the US, so maybe it is different, but here in the UK even the cheapest steak will set you back far more per kilo than minced beef.
      • newnewpdro 8y ago
        Wealthy is not how I'd describe my parents; a construction worker with a stay at home housewife and three kids. There are often steaks for sale on the refrigerated shelves adjacent to the butcher counter/case. Maybe that's not so common in the UK? The supermarkets here regularly have meat wrapped in clear plastic and carrying bright orange stickers on clearance, it's what happens to the case-resident stuff when new stock arrives. My mother would familiarize herself with the schedule of deliveries at the stores she frequented. She knew when and where she could get the freshest stuff for special occasions, as well as when things went on sale to make room for the new meat, keeping our freeezer full of staples. I don't think it requires wealth so much as it requires some care and effort. These are the kinds of duties a traditional housewife would take on, but I don't personally find it particularly difficult to chat up the butcher and do more or less the same thing as a bachelor.
  • cimmanom 8y ago
• Meekro 8y ago
  The "pink slime" story is mostly fake news. ABC News coined the term, and later paid $177 million to settle a lawsuit over it. It was the largest defamation settlement in the history of the United States. The story took on a life of its own, though. This image[1] became synonymous with "pink slime" (and still appears in a Google image search for the term) even though nobody knows where the image came from. Didn't stop The Young Turks (among others) from associating it with McDonalds, though. [1] https://janrssor.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pinkslime.jpg https://janrssor.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pinkslime.jpg
  • sp332 8y ago
    I was super disappointed with Jamie Oliver's protest video against pink slime. He threw animal bits into a blender or something, and then put the result into a washing machine with a bunch of ammonia. I like the guy in general but this was awful.
    • wolco 8y ago
      That's the process. Bits of meat with ammonia going around in circles.
      • sp332 8y ago
        No. They spray a mist of ammonia over the meat to disinfect it. It's not an ingredient.
        • chii 8y ago
          But does the end product contain ammonia? If it does, then it's an ingredient.
          • sjwright 8y ago
            If you let your steak dry before cooking, do you list the airborne dust and bacteria as ingredients?
• hskaw 8y ago
  Pink slime is banned from human consumption in the European Union.
  • jeffdavis 8y ago
    Why? Sincere question. Is it unhealthy or not nutritious?
    • Symbiote 8y ago
      I'm not sure why the EU bans it, but Canada bans it because of the ammonia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime (see some of the references)
      • tootie 8y ago
        Surely it can be sanitized with something else. Radiation or whatever.
        • gruez 8y ago
          It can, but it would probably make it too expensive compared to the real stuff. They're already going through a lot of steps to make the slime as it is.
    • myspy 8y ago
      In the EU it is required to write on the packaging that „pink slime“ is included but more importantly it‘s not allowed to use these pieces of bone and meat (but only that of cattle) in any produce due to BSE. Another problem is that ammonia is not a good choice for this. Either the stuff stinks after ammonia or E.coli bacteria ratios are too high in the produce.
    • jdietrich 8y ago
      Centrifugally reclaiming meat from fat is perfectly legal in the EU, because it's a safe process. The EU does restrict the use of ammonium hydroxide, which is widely used in the US as an antimicrobial and acidity regulating food additive.
• StillBored 8y ago
  Are these articles a bit misleading about the "trimmings"? My understanding is that a large part of the controversy is because its not little pieces of "meat" its basically the garbage, tendons, pieces of skin, bits of bone, etc. Sure some of it has meat attached, but the difficulty separating the meat bits from the rest is what requires the intensive liquefaction process. The fact that it happens to liquefy some of the normally inedible parts as well is just a bonus.
  • Pharmakon 8y ago
    Generally speaking when everything has been taken off the carcass, including parts used for animal feed, the remains are blasted by high pressure water. The resulting tissue, much of it membranes and other fascia are then collected and processed. It is as you say, not really meat, it’s mostly a collagen slurry. In the cases of turkey and chicken the term used is “mechanically separated.” You can find that term on any Slim-Jim.
    • zdragnar 8y ago
      This isn't about mechanically separated chicken or turkey, it's about "Lean finely textured beef (LFTB)", which is actually leaner than the ground meat that it gets mixed in with.
      • Pharmakon 8y ago
        ...Which is the same product, centrifuged and ammoniated.
        • KAMSPioneer 8y ago
          LFTB is not made from mechanically separated meat. It is made from normal boneless beef trimmings. As has been pointed out in response to numerous such claims all over this thread. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/documents/meat-industry-and-government-records https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/documents/meat-... (look on page 26)
• stevebmark 8y ago
  This makes me want to eat pink slime more, sounds like it's just entirely healthy rendered fat that ignorant Americans think is unhealthy so they remove it from the cuts, losing flavor and nutrients. I didn't realize "pink slime" was the discarded healthier, flavorful cuts of meat.
  • crooked-v 8y ago
    "Pink slime" is made of the very last bits of meat and collagen remaining on the bones, mechanically scraped off and then put through a centrifuge to remove fat, extruded as thin tubes that are processed with ammonia or citric acid to kill off bacteria, then finely ground and compressed into blocks for shipping. It's only a "flavorful cut" if you consider your "flavorful cuts" to include "whatever remnants can be scraped off the spinal column after every bit of non-mechanical butchering is finished".
• porphyrogene 8y ago
  Former butcher turned coder here. If this concerns you just find a meat counter that grinds their meats in-house. It is an incredibly easy thing to do and it is very economical as whole sealed sub-primals keep for much longer than ground beef, which begins to oxidize and change color much more quickly than it goes bad. That means you have to grind new beef about every other day even if it isn't selling. We used to take the unsold ground beef and freeze it before it oxidized too much for people who wanted to stock their freezer.
• brandonmenc 8y ago
  Pretty sure I saw this quote here a while back: "When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect. Do it in a factory and all of the sudden it is gross."
  • warent 8y ago
    It's not surprising that we can make anything sound however we want by stripping away the context. Let's try adding it back in. "When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect. Do it in a factory [producing a collagen/cartilage slurry cleansed with ammonia; to maximize profits], and all of the sudden it is gross."
    • tantalor 8y ago
      To be the fair, the profit incentive goes to economics, which is what "use all of the animal" is really all about. The opposite of "use all the animal" is "take the skin/prize, burn the rest" ie wasteful.
    • cc439 8y ago
      Producing a collagen/cartilage slurry is also known as making a broth or a stew.
  • Dylan16807 8y ago
    The gross part isn't using all the animal. Go ahead and make sausage. The issue is pretending a low grade of meat is a higher grade.
  • alephx 8y ago
    Yes, but then they probably use the trimmings to make cord, other materials, if not feed it to the dogs. Trimmings and their processing sounds disgusting, of dubious nutritional value and untransparent in how it is hidden from customers. And this is coming from an avid kidney pie and liver taco eater.
• supportlocal4h 8y ago
  For those who don't have a personal butcher, you might be interested to know... Many state and county fairs include a livestock show. Often the exhibited animals are auctioned off at the end of the show. The animals are raised and exhibited by youth (4H, FFA, etc). The proceeds go to the (child) owner of the animal. At our county fair, bidding starts at about $3/# on the hoof. They generally weigh between 1100# and 1500#. Butchers present at the auction take your order on exactly how you want it cut. The seller will show up on your doorstep with it cut, wrapped, and frozen. No charge beyond the bid price. Seller takes care of everything. Cost above market price is tax deductible. Some of the best beef money can buy. Can help fund college. Swine, lamb, goat, etc might also be available at a show near you. If a whole beef is too much, go in with a group. A group of 4 can end up with 100+# each for less than $1000 a piece. If this doesn't describe a livestock show near you, shop around. If none of this sounds like your cup of tea, forget I said anything.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • lifeformed 8y ago
    Interesting. Do you know what percentage of the animal is edible meat?
    • supportlocal4h 8y ago
      Carcass yield for beef is around 63%. A 1200# steer will dress out around 750#. Minus bones takes you down to about 500#. $4/# on the hoof gets you $9.60/# hamburger. And $9.60/# ribeye.
  • chadcmulligan 8y ago
    When I was young my parents used to buy a side of beef and freeze it, I imagine you can still do this. A side of beef is what it says - the left or right side of the animal, cut up and ready for freezing. Used to be the cheapest way to buy meat. That was in the days of beef for every night time meal, and corned beef sandwiches for lunch, sausages for breakfast :-). The bones used to be soaked for hours to get all the goodness out of them and make stock. I dont know if this is much different from the reclaimed meat - apart from the ammonia I suppose. Even now I make stock regularly and get all the yummy left over bits in the pot.
• JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  I wonder if cases of tainted beef are going to go up now because it will be harder to keep this stuff clean.
• HocusLocus 8y ago
  misfolded proteins be very afraid be very afraid be very afraid
  • heyjudy 8y ago
    Don't worry, by the time people find out we gave them Mad Cow in 40-50 years, we can stack up all the extra profits in a Caribbean bank and be sipping margaritas with small grains of salt served by hula girls on a whole fleet of yachts.
    • crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      BTW what is the average time CJD or BSE sets in humans? Do you have a study to point at that would show some sort of timeframe?
  • KAMSPioneer 8y ago
    LFTB doesn't carry a higher risk of BSE or other prion diseases than normal ground beef. You're likely referring to concerns often levied at mechanically-separated meats, which is orthogonal to the product discussed here. LFTB is made from normal, boneless beef trimmings.
• hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Posting this snopes link at the top level, because there is a lot of misinformation in these comments: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/legal-separation/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/legal-separation/ Lean finely textured beef (what is called "pink slime" in the main article) is NOT the same thing, nor it is a further refinement, of mechanically separated meat. Mechanically separated beef, which increases dangers of "mad cow disease" because it can cause neural tissue to be included in the final product, is not allowed for human consumption in the US.
• deleted 8y ago
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• tantalor 8y ago
  Ironic that this comes as beef & milk suppliers are complaining about "impossible burgers" simulated meat and almond "milk" stealing their precious terminology.
  • cc439 8y ago
    Ironic that this comment comes in response to an article about a slightly-more-than-normal processed meat product in support of hyper processed replacements for generally lightly processed meat and dairy products.
    • tantalor 8y ago
      Almond milk is not hyper processed. You can make it by hand.
• elchief 8y ago
  You should probably just grind your own meat at this point
• coldtea 8y ago
  If an industry lobby pushes enough, a state "food standards" organization will call anything food. After all, they don't start with a "let's not divert from regular wholesome food" as a mission statement. So why not allow all kinds of crap as food, as long as they are barely edible and with no obvious side effects? Worked fine since the 50s in the US, and the quality of the food the average american eats (and their health) keeps improving... /s
• heyjudy 8y ago
  Wow. About 30 years ago, my now departed grandmother was at her favorite Italian grocery store comparing sirloin to ground sirloin and noticed a price difference. She asked the butcher about the truth of what was in the ground sirloin. "We couldn't sell it at that price without adding things to it." From then on, she bought only sirloin steaks and ground her own at home. In the absence of sensible government regulations and enforcement, cut-throat capitalism drives individuals and corporations to cut corners and keep cutting more corners until Bhopal or Mad Cow Disease happen. Disclaimer: I don't eat animals.
• rdlecler1 8y ago
  Couldn’t this be solved by grading the ground beef?
• CivBase 8y ago
  If the article's description of how "pink slime" is made is accurate, I think calling it "ground beef" is a bit disingenuous. It's still "beef", but I think most people would agree that the term "ground beef" implies that the product was created by grinding up raw cuts of beef. "Separated beef" or "lean finely textured beef" or even just "lean beef" all seem like more appropriate names. I think using "pink slime" as an aditive for ground beef should be fine as long as it is disclosed by the seller. Actually calling it "ground beef" is a step too far, though. Next we'll start calling pizza a vegetable. Wait no.
• onetimemanytime 8y ago
  I thought this was artificial meat or something. Just fatty parts have their fat removed. Processed yeah but so what, a lot of what we eat is processed.
• anonyz8956 8y ago
  I want to add a comment too. from z
• SeriousM 8y ago
  I don't care. And you know why? I'M VEGAN.
  • Ensorceled 8y ago
    There has to be room amongst the woke for the awakening. You’re not helping.
  • ionised 8y ago
    You cared enough to post about it.
• alkonaut 8y ago
  Idea: stop worrying about what part of the animal it is, and worry about the important things like whether it got growth hormones, antibiotics for growth and so on. Don’t buy beef (or other meat) that did.
• TheTruth321 8y ago
  And I wake up happy to be a vegetarian ... F@ck the USDA.
• Grue3 8y ago
  This seems like optimal usage of resources, reusing the unneeded parts of the dead animal to create something edible. This should be celebrated, and it's something humanity has done for centuries.
  • jakobegger 8y ago
    And its totally fine if people use the fatty trimmings to make sausage, like we've been doing for centuries. It's not okay if we process the fatty trimmings, heat them, centrifuge them, and then add them to ground beef to lower the fat content to make it look like the product was made from better bits of the animal. Using more of the animal is a good thing, but misleading customers is not the way to do that.
• rubyfan 8y ago
  Gross. I can’t wait for Impossible Burger to hit the grocery store.
  • phyzome 8y ago
    I tried some the other day. It tasted precisely like a shitty fast-food burger. Which is to say... ground meat with "lean finely textured beef" mixed in. Impossible Burger tastes the same as that product, and is made via just as industrial a process, so don't switch on those accounts. You want to stop eating meat? That's a perfectly fine reason! But switching because of LFTB would be pretty silly.
• diogenescynic 8y ago
  Making America great again... right...
• gdubs 8y ago
  This conversation shows that plenty of people are uncomfortable with a food process like this. Many of you point out that food is complex, and people are irrational to be squeamish about this particular process. But how about this? Maybe people wouldn’t eat so much meat if they were more aware of the process behind it? And maybe, given how detrimental meat production had been to the environment, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. So, rather than protecting people by hiding the truth behind the processes that are behind the food they eat, we should be more transparent. If that means we go back to small farms, local butcheries — something people have been comfortable with for centuries — it would of course raise the cost of meat. But If we hope to address climate change, that absolutely needs to happen.
  • sexyflanders 8y ago
    >So, rather than protecting people by hiding the truth behind the processes that are behind the food they eat, we should be more transparent. I agree, but in order to be transparent the ingredients and processes would need to be disclosed (ideally on the packaging) and this news seems a step further in the opposite direction.
  • therealforsen 8y ago
    The funny part of it to me is the cognitive dissonance of people who both believe that a change of less than 1 degree in global mean temperature over a century will destroy the Earth, but also that we'll be terraforming Mars by then.
• stevespang 8y ago
  Anyone who eats this will probably get prion disease
• snambi 8y ago
  The solution is to stop eating processed food. thats all.
• lurquer 8y ago
  "Whipped Beef" sounds tastier. That's what I'd call it... or maybe "Creamed Beef" or "Beef Pudding". With a good food photographer, I'm sure you could make a cup of 'pink slime' look tasty. Indeed, look at a typical close-up photo of Jello-Pudding... creamy, silky, scrumptious. That it's made out of horse hooves doesn't even cross one's mind.
• mbrodersen 8y ago
  A friend of mine (Seattle/US) was blown away by the quality of beef here in Australia compared with the US. That is what higher food standards give you.
  • longhairedhippy 8y ago
    As a counter-anecdote, my friend from Australia was blown away at the quality of beef in the US. I'm not saying either person is right or wrong, however it does seem to be somewhat subjective.