Monday, April 2, 2012

Pink Slime and Meat Glue - The Battle Rages On


Well, I hope you've had dinner, and if you live in Iowa, you already know what I'm going to talk about. A battle is raging here and in other states where beef cattle are raised and processed. It's over a filler product used in beef processing called "lean finely textured beef" (LFTB) or "pink slime". It's an interesting byproduct of the beef processing business that has been around for decades. It has been eaten by millions of Americans and has been declared safe by the USDA for human consumption. It is so safe that the USDA did not even see a reason to require labeling of beef products that contained the LFTB. Then in 2008 a documentary was released called "Food, Inc" that exposed the manufacturing processes involved in creating "pink slime". They also pointed out that 70% of all preformed hamburger patties sold in the US contained the "pink slime" aka LFTB. These patties are served in school cafeterias, fast food restaurants and sold grocery stores. We've been eating them by the ton and we been none the wiser or worse off for it...or have we? It is a realistic question to consider when you know something of the process in which "pink slime" is created.
It begins at the processing plant where the beef is rendered down to its constituent parts for packaging and sale to the public. What is left from this process is called the trimmings. It contains bits of fat, meat, gristle and whatever is left on the floor and cutting tables of the processing plants including e. coli bacteria and other micro-organisms. These are the same items that in the past got sold to pet food companies. Now though, these trimming are placed in large centrifuges and spun at high rates of speed, separating the meat from the fat and gristle. What you are left with is very heavily tenderized and lean bits of beef that are very much like a paste. This beef then has to be rendered fit for human consumption and so it is mixed with water and ammonia to kill the bugs that remain. The ammonia is then "washed out" and the "pink slime" is ready to be added to ground beef for the production of pre-formed patties and the hamburger you might buy at the grocery store meat counter.



The concern is the ammonia. Does it all get washed out? The answer is, apparently not. Traces have been found in many samples, but not in amounts that are believed dangerous to humans.

The other concern is an economic one on the other side of the table. Millions of people work in meat processing plants across the mid-west and south. Millions of dollars are invested by stock holders through 401k's and so forth. The industry leaders are telling us that if "pink slime" is banned or abandoned by the meat buying public, the meat processors will have to shut down production. Millions of dollars will be lost and millions more will be unemployed. So you can see, this has become quite a problem where none existed before. What to do, what to do.

What do you want to do about it?

The other item that has not been in the news as much is "meat glue". That got your attention didn't it? Yes, there is such a thing as "meat glue". What do they use it for you ask? They use it to glue meat together you silly rabbit. They will take bits and pieces of choice and prime cuts of meat left over from processing and sprinkle them with a chemical called Transglutaminase. It gets rubbed into the remainders, formed in to a steak sized roll and wrapped in plastic. After a period of time (overnight?), the "meat roll" is unwrapped and sliced into steaks for sale to the public. If the meat scraps were beef tenderloin, it is sold as beef tenderloin and so on. This is perfectly legal because Transglutaminase has also been deemed safe by the USDA. Please look at the meat below. It is at once delicious and also well glued.
Both of these meat processing practices have been going on for decades. They are just now getting publicity in the media. I have heard of no one dying from "pink slime" poisoning or "meat glue" overdoses and yet these practices bother me now that I know about them. How do these economically driven practices really effect us? We are a meat eating nation and the beef industry carries a lot of clout. Would they tell us if consuming these items was having a deleterious effect on us or our offspring? The money alone that is involved is enough to create silence of those that are suppose to be the watchdogs over these matters. Perhaps labeling is the answer. Let the public vote with their pocketbook. Even so, if these practices are halted, there will be many without jobs as plants close. This is unfortunate. What would you do? Cynically speaking, I tend to think that once government confirms that something is safe or dangerous or a health hazard, then the opposite must be true.