4 ms·
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 t
by 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 agoIt's still beef though. If I'm getting a burger at a McDonald's or something, this is fine.
- Pharmakon 8y agohttps://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 agoYour 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 agoNo, 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.
- Zarel 8y agoAs far as I can tell, "mechanically separated meat" is meat that's been mechanically separated from bones by a grinding process. The prion fears are because some of the bone gets in, and some of the bone contains nerve tissue. The article says that pink slime is instead made from beef trimmings, which does not involve that grinding process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_meat_recovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_meat_recovery > The meat produced in this manner can contain no more than 150(±30) milligrams of calcium per 200 grams product, as calcium in such high concentrations in the product would be indicative of bone being mixed with the meat. Products that exceed the calcium content limit must instead be labeled "mechanically separated beef or pork" in the ingredients statement.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoYou keep posting this, but your own links are clear that this is false. Mechanically separated meat is not allowed for human consumption specifically because of the danger of potential-prion-containing nerve tissue entering the product. Importantly, these prions are extremely difficult to deactivate, and thus it wouldn't make sense to allow this to be served to humans, no matter what further processing happened. Here is a link from snopes that clarifies the difference: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/legal-separation/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/legal-separation/ > A meat product known as “boneless lean beef trimmings” (BLBT) or “lean finely textured beef,” pejoratively referred to as “pink slime,” is often confused with mechanically separated meat, although it is produced by a different process. In order to extract pricer lean beef from less valuable, fattier trimmings, centrifuges are used to separate the fat out of the meat trimmings, and the resulting lean beef is then squeezed through small tubes, where it is exposed to a small amount of ammonia gas, producing a pinkish substance. Unlike MSM, lean beef trimmings are legal for sale in the U.S., although they are mixed in with other meat products (usually ground beef) and generally do not comprise more than 25 percent of the final meat products purchased by end consumers.
- sp332 8y agoThe term “pink slime” is actually a derogatory one for all the little cuttings and “trim” that appear when cattle carcasses are being sliced up into steaks. Mechanically separated beef has been illegal in the USA since 2004 and I don't see that this ruling changes that. Please show me a source with this interpretation.
- adrr 8y agoIt’s not ground beef. There is no grinder grinding up chunks of meat which is the definition of ground beef. It’s mechanically separated meat and should be called that not ground beef.
- sp332 8y agoYou're not the first person in this thread to claim that it's "mechanically separated". Do you have a source for this?
- adrr 8y agoStraight from the producers of pink slime. http://www.beefusa.org/CMDocs/BeefUSA/Resources/AMI%20Fact%20Sheet%20LFTB.pdf http://www.beefusa.org/CMDocs/BeefUSA/Resources/AMI%20Fact%2...
- sp332 8y agoMechanically separated beef has a specific definition, and this is not that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat#Safety_and_regulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat#...