What Exactly Is #PINK SLIME and How Much Do You Eat?

It’s been nicknamed “pink slime,” the USDA has purchased seven million pounds of it this year for inclusion in school lunches and whatnot, and – perhaps most disgusting of all – it may be a secret ingredient added to the ground beef you buy at the grocery store or that is in hamburgers at the local fast food restaurant you frequent.

The food additive – officially (and seriously) called “lean finely textured beef,” and which federal law allows to make up as much as 15 percent of ground beef – “is a mixture of leftover trimmings, sinew, and other beef parts culled from a cow once the expensive and more recognizable cuts of meat have been harvested and sent to a butcher,” reported the Blaze. “The collection of leftovers is spun in a centrifuge to remove excess fat, washed in a disinfecting solution and then minced for use in various applications.”

Shockingly, these micro-ground odds and ends that used to be shipped to dog food manufacturers may be in as much as 70 percent of what passes as ground beef in America.

The good news, according to ABC News, is that a public media blitz by “celebrity chef” Jamie Oliver exposing the use of the disgusting – but apparently safe – meat byproduct in the food service industry convinced America’s favorite burger place, McDonald’s, to stop adding pink slime to its beef (it had used the product in its hamburgers since 2004). Burger King and Taco Bell said they would also drop the product from their meat. (Watch this short segment from Oliver’s Food Revolution TV show.

The bad news is that other fast food companies, restaurants, and grocery stores have not been as willing to suspend the use of a product that cuts costs and increases their profits. As for the USDA, it has apparently been riding the pink slime gravy train for a while now. Last year alone the agency’s federal school lunch program used an estimated five and a half million pounds of the substance. This is the same program that First Lady Michelle Obama has taken under her wing to ensure that America’s school children are eating healthier lunches.

According to the New York Times, pink slime is the invention of a South Dakota company, Beef Products, Inc., that came up with a cost-effective way to help the USDA deal with the deadly E. coli outbreak that was giving American ground beef a bad name. The method was simple: inject the meat with ammonia.

The Times reported that the company “had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.”

USDA officials were so impressed by how effectively the company’s ammonia treatment killed germs in the meat that when the agency “began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.” That meant a rubber stamp for the company’s pink slime concoction, which “has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers,” noted the Times.

Unfortunately, since then E. coli and salmonella have been found “dozens of times in Beef Products meat,” the Times found, prompting the USDA to revoke the company’s exemption from testing and to launch a review of the company’s operations and research.

NOTE: Of course we take exception that the garbage turned into pink slime is appropriate for dogs. Why do you believe dogs are dying younger and younger with more and more cancers and other horrific disorders? Learn more awful truths about dog food
What's For Dinner? Doesn't your dog deserve much, much better?