Pink Slime

[Red Baron Farms]

Heh. Sure, in the same sense that putting an aerodynamic cowling on a 10 mpg hummer is economical and environmentally healthy.

Bingo! We have a winner. I liked your whole post actually. But don't be fooled into thinking this is the only way to produce low cost beef. It actually is possible to produce beef of higher quality that is even more than sustainable, actually regenerative, that is lower cost from the producers side without resorting to pink slime. But you got the main point right. Pink slime is analogous to slapping an aerodynamic cowling on a 10 mpg hummer. Brilliant observation. Of course the mods have declared we shouldn't talk too much about the hummer in this thread, only the cowling. It is what it is.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here's where the USDA 15% limit comes from:

School Lunches

USDA does not buy LFTB but allows ground beef suppliers to include LFTB in ground beef, up to 15% by volume. In 2011, USDA bought 117 million pounds of ground beef that included 7.2 million pounds (about 6.2%) LFTB.28 According to USDA’s Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, schools buy about 60% of their beef through USDA.2

I will have to check further to find the regulation I recall reading.

 

[Matthew Cline]

From the lawsuit:

V. Defendants Intentionally Maligned BPI and LFTB by Describing LFTB as “Pink Slime”

166. One of the centerpieces to Defendants’ disinformation campaign was to refer to, describe and characterize LFTB as “pink slime.” Defendants used the phrase over 135 times during the campaign in various forums—ABC broadcasts, ABC online reports, Twitter, and Facebook. Defendants’ description of LFTB as “pink slime” is false, and the implication of the description is also false. Defendants used the phrase “pink slime” to imply that LFTB was not beef, but instead was an unsafe, unhealthy substance.

Seems to me that calling it "pink slime" was:

1) Meant to convey the disgust felt by those using the term.

2) They wanted a short phrase to call it, rather than an acronym. Like how a lot of the press said "swine flu" instead of "H1N1".

That doesn't seem like something that would be illegal. But then, IANAL, and what I have learned about defamation law from Popehat is about regular defamation laws rather than food defamation laws.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the lawsuit:



Seems to me that calling it "pink slime" was:

1) Meant to convey the disgust felt by those using the term.

2) They wanted a short phrase to call it, rather than an acronym. Like how a lot of the press said "swine flu" instead of "H1N1".

That doesn't seem like something that would be illegal. But then, IANAL, and what I have learned about defamation law from Popehat is about regular defamation laws rather than food defamation laws.

The term was coined by scientist at the FDA who objected to approval of the stuff without labeling. From Wiki:

The term "pink slime", a reference to the product's "distinctive look,"[41] was coined in 2002 by Zirnstein in an internal FSIS e-mail.[18][30][42]

I would think the First Amendment allows the news media to repeat the term. But I'm not a legal expert.

 

[Joey McGee]

Other than news reports the process fails to adequately kill the extra burden of microorganisms

False. No one has ever gotten sick, no contaminated product has ever left the factory. You have misread and misrepresented the news stories. Give it another try.

no one in the thread is arguing about safety of the product.

This thread is about all claims to do with pink slime, and many in the public sphere are of the opinion that it is unsafe. See Nancy Donley's statements about this product. And her story. And her responses to the trolls that said she is a shill.

My argument is purely about labeling. I don't like the texture of burger with LFTB in it and I'd like to know which burger to avoid.

Actually your argument includes claims that there is hide in the burger and that the USDA was paid off with a board seat so they would lie to the public, which you interestingly will not retract or address.

 

[Joey McGee]

Heh. Sure, in the same sense that putting an aerodynamic cowling on a 10 mpg hummer is economical and environmentally healthy.

That is not a correct or coherent statement and has no basis in fact as an analogy.

From an economic and environmental standpoint, beef is a resource-extravagant luxury food even compared to other farmed proteins. It's economical only because many of its production costs are externalities. The whole industry, as currently practiced, is unsustainable. That's why I'm curious but not fussed about pink slime. In the long run (which I predict will be shorter than most people would expect) it's irrelevant. Maybe more additives will help more Americans give the stuff up sooner.

This statement was even more irrellevant and did not address the fact that the product is identical in molecular structure to normal ground beef. It is in fact a derail, an attempt to change the subject.

Cheap beef is pretty yummy, I admit, and apparently safer cardiac-health-wise than it's reputed to be. But, unsustainable. That means (if like most people your definition of unsustainable is something like "vaguely bad in a way that I can ignore") it's going to end.

So you're arguing now about sustainability... this product prevents 1.5 million cows from having to exist. You're digging a hole.

I'm familiar with a lot of particulate materials. The general rule is that the smaller the particles, the more they tend to clump together. A bowl of dry 10X sugar will hold the impression of a spoon; a bowl of dry granulated sugar won't. Whole almonds and chopped almonds don't clump; ground almonds do. Wet pebbles don't clump. Wet sand does. Wet rock dust does even more.

So you're admitting that a finer texture changes the texture but not the molecular makeup, thanks.

That's why I was curious about why the smaller beef bits hold together less. That's very unusual, the opposite of what I'd expect, and I'd like to know the reason for it. If you don't know, fine.

It sticks together different. Not the same. In another manner. Too different from a regular burger. etc etc. Not "doesn't stick together at all" This is a red herring. A joke really.

Playing gotcha! again are we?

 

[Joey McGee]

lots of parts of the cow that are still all beef are not allowed to be labeled as part of the cow they are not.

This is a lie, this is personal belief based on no evidence.

LFTB is not ground chuck. So why should it be OK to grind it in the burger without telling the consumer?

Because it is the exact same meat from the exact same areas in the cow, simply processed differently, and the USDA is not in the business of pandering to nitpickers.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

many in the public sphere are of the opinion that it is unsafe.

I'd be one of those claiming the whole industrial food system is fundamentally unsafe by it's very structure and methods alone.

But to be fair, I have no reason to believe that pink slime, disgusting though it may be, is any more unsafe than the rest.

 

[Joey McGee]

We're arguing about the difference between separating muscle meat with a knife or a centrifuge. Nothing more. No one here can even come close to disputing that.

 

[Joey McGee]

I'd be one of those claiming the whole industrial food system is fundamentally unsafe by it's very structure and methods alone.

But to be fair, I have no reason to believe that pink slime, disgusting though it may be, is any more unsafe than the rest.

I think if anyone cares about this subject they should read everything Nancy Donley has said about this product, find out why she is relevant, and then come back.

 

[Joey McGee]

From the lawsuit:



Seems to me that calling it "pink slime" was:

1) Meant to convey the disgust felt by those using the term.

2) They wanted a short phrase to call it, rather than an acronym. Like how a lot of the press said "swine flu" instead of "H1N1".

That doesn't seem like something that would be illegal. But then, IANAL, and what I have learned about defamation law from Popehat is about regular defamation laws rather than food defamation laws.

The malicious intent is proven by their lies, repeated refusals to include an alternative viewpoint when contacted by the company and food experts after the first airing, repeated refusals to include the science-based statements supported by the USDA and the independent experts. When you couple all of that with the repeated use of the offensive term, THEN you can prove it was part of a greedy smear job... which they have done.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I think if anyone cares about this subject they should read everything Nancy Donley has said about this product, find out why she is relevant, and then come back.

So ironic that she is President of STOP Foodborne Illness, an organization bent upon insuring foodborne illness continues unabated! And maybe even contributed to the increased the risk of foodborne illness! So ironic she lost her own 6-year-old son, Alex, from E. coli O157:H7 poisoning in 1993.

E. coli O157:H7 being a creation of the industrial food system. Yet she is bent upon insuring the regulations of food production are so strict that it is nearly impossible for non industrial food producers to exist, insuring everyone is at risk for similar tragedies.

Now that's activism!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

False. No one has ever gotten sick, no contaminated product has ever left the factory. You have misread and misrepresented the news stories. Give it another try. This thread is about all claims to do with pink slime, and many in the public sphere are of the opinion that it is unsafe. See Nancy Donley's statements about this product. And her story. And her responses to the trolls that said she is a shill.Actually your argument includes claims that there is hide in the burger and that the USDA was paid off with a board seat so they would lie to the public, which you interestingly will not retract or address.

You need to read up on the problem with e-coli in burger and the report on the problem rather than just the company propaganda.

We've been over all this but you just keep repeating yourself.

Contamination persisted after the LFTB was processed. Some correction was made with no follow up testing. And people won't get infected as long as the burger is well cooked.

But your claim no one has ever gotten sick, tell that to this woman:

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Yum, how appetizing.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together. The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.

Within weeks of the Cargill outbreak in 2007, U.S.D.A. officials swept across the country, conducting spot checks at 224 meat plants to assess their efforts to combat E. coli. Although inspectors had been monitoring these plants all along, officials found serious problems at 55 that were failing to follow their own safety plans. ... In the end, though, the agency accepted Cargill’s proposal to increase its scrutiny of suppliers.

Re Nancy Donley, woman who, if we take her word for it, is on a mission after her child died from e-coli. She visits a BFI Plant and becomes a spokesperson.

I have personally visited their plant and the categorization of calling their product “pink slime” is completely false and incendiary.

I fail to see anything supporting her expertise and lack of being paid off or fooled.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

We're arguing about the difference between separating muscle meat with a knife or a centrifuge. Nothing more. No one here can even come close to disputing that.

The only person lying here is you.

That is not the difference between pink slime and the rest of the burger. That is simply how they take the fat out of all that connective tissue so they can use this filler to make burger lower in fat.

 

[Joey McGee]

So ironic that she is President of STOP Foodborne Illness, an organization bent upon insuring foodborne illness continues unabated! And maybe even contributed to the increased the risk of foodborne illness! So ironic she lost her own 6-year-old son, Alex, from E. coli O157:H7 poisoning in 1993.

A hysterical and unhinged statement lacking evidence and any attempt at due diligence. So Shocked at the content.

E. coli O157:H7 being a creation of the industrial food system.

CT Thread section... you are not in it.

Yet she is bent upon insuring the regulations of food production are so strict that it is nearly impossible for non industrial food producers to exist, insuring everyone is at risk for similar tragedies.

Wow so you are aware of the Alex Jones show and the FOTL movement or are similarly afflicted with similar delusions.

Now that's activism!

Wake up bro

 

[Red Baron Farms]

A hysterical and unhinged statement lacking evidence and any attempt at due diligence. So Shocked at the content.

Tell me you were seriously not aware that all strains of E. coli O157are significantly higher in feedlots and almost non existent in pasture, (unless an animal was in a confined feedlot for a time got contaminated then was later put on pasture)

Further that particular E. coli O157:H7 variant is a recent mutation that picked up the shiga-like toxin through a Transduction from a prophage. Recent as in AFTER antibiotics became to be used in feedlots. Since it does have a response to antibiotics and those shiga-like toxins are actually released by giving antibiotics.

Yeah you guessed it. It becomes deadlier when you try and treat it with certain antibiotics.

It is a product of CAFOs every bit as much as Mad Cow was.

That is not a conspiracy theory. That is the result of crowding hundreds and even thousands of animal in a confined space eating a diet they never evolved to eat, living in their own filth, and given subtherapeutic antibiotics. A perfect environment to create a breeding ground for disease. You couldn't devise a more dangerous way to raise beef.

 

[Myriad]

That is not a correct or coherent statement and has no basis in fact as an analogy.

That's odd, everyone else understood it just fine. And it's completely accurate. If anything, it understates the economic and ecological inefficiency of beef relative to other farmed proteins. National Academy of Sciences journal article saying so.

This statement was even more irrellevant and did not address the fact that the product is identical in molecular structure to normal ground beef. It is in fact a derail, an attempt to change the subject.

You are the one who raised the issue, by claiming that being "economically and environmentally healthy" is a point in favor of pink slime. If it's relevant enough for you to make the claim, it's relevant that the claim is absurd. Beef is an environmentally and ecologically extravagant (that is to say, wasteful) luxury product, by a factor more than comparable to using a 10 mpg Hummer H2 to drive to work.

The Hummer uses three to four times more resources than a typical economy car, per mile. Beef uses six times more reactive nitrogen (the environmental raw material for protein synthesis, which in US agriculture is provided mostly via the Haber process using fossil fuels), per calorie, than typical other farmed proteins. Here's that National Academy of Sciences paper again.

Now, use pink slime to make it a few percent more efficient... that's a whole lot like using an aerodynamic cowling to make the Hummer a few percent more efficient. It's putting lipstick on a pig cow.

So you're arguing now about sustainability... this product prevents 1.5 million cows from having to exist. You're digging a hole.

I'd have to dig a pretty deep one to find enough petroleum to keep beef production anywhere near current levels over the next decade or two. I'm hoping the plans underway to bring back buffalo will provide a sustainable substitute.

So you're admitting that a finer texture changes the texture but not the molecular makeup, thanks.

It sticks together different. Not the same. In another manner. Too different from a regular burger. etc etc. Not "doesn't stick together at all" This is a red herring. A joke really.

Playing gotcha! again are we?

I understand that you still don't know why the finer beef particles stick together less, that being completely atypical for finer particles.

Like I already said, it's okay that you don't know that. It's probably a deep scientific mystery that only a well-equipped materials science lab could even begin to address. It's not necessary to pretend I asked a different question so you can pretend to have given an answer.

 

[angrysoba]

Pink Slime? Ewwww!

That sounds horrible. I am definitely only going to eat organic burgers and preferably veggie burgers because killing animals for food is indefensible. And yucky!


I hope all people who defend pink slime feel ashamed of their behaviour!

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I'd have to dig a pretty deep one to find enough petroleum to keep beef production anywhere near current levels over the next decade or two. I'm hoping the plans underway to bring back buffalo will provide a sustainable substitute.

I agreed 100% with you Myriad....I especially loved the lipstick on a pig cow analogy.

However, this part is wrong. A carefully crafted lie put out by the industrial meat industry to make people think that they have to put up with the crap industry produces or else go without.

It simply isn't true. You can grow MORE meat by eliminating the wasteful use of petroleum in animal production. Cows have 4 legs, let them use them. They will gladly walk over to a fresh pasture and harvest process and digest all the food they need for free. There is no reason we need to spend petroleum making haber process nitrogen to grow grains that need planted, flooded with pesticides and ferts, harvested, dried, stored shipped to a cow that is boxed in a pen so he cant move, then cleaning up the huge piles of manure so they can be processed and shipped back to the grain fields! .

CAFO's are somewhere around ~3-4 times higher yields of meat per acre than traditional animal husbandry(with a huge carbon footprint). But modern grazing systems are ~5+ times higher yields per acre than traditional animal husbandry(with a negative carbon footprint). That means modern intensive grazing systems are actually MORE yields per acre WITHOUT wasting all that petroleum.

 

[Joey McGee]

Tell me you were seriously not aware that all strains of E. coli O157are significantly higher in feedlots and almost non existent in pasture, (unless an animal was in a confined feedlot for a time got contaminated then was later put on pasture)

Further that particular E. coli O157:H7 variant is a recent mutation that picked up the shiga-like toxin through a Transduction from a prophage. Recent as in AFTER antibiotics became to be used in feedlots. Since it does have a response to antibiotics and those shiga-like toxins are actually released by giving antibiotics.

Yeah you guessed it. It becomes deadlier when you try and treat it with certain antibiotics.

It is a product of CAFOs every bit as much as Mad Cow was.

That is not a conspiracy theory. That is the result of crowding hundreds and even thousands of animal in a confined space eating a diet they never evolved to eat, living in their own filth, and given subtherapeutic antibiotics. A perfect environment to create a breeding ground for disease. You couldn't devise a more dangerous way to raise beef.

Even if I accept all of this babble, it has nothing to do with lean finely textured beef, or anything we are talking about. Sure is interesting that you cant stay on topic.