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 e

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.