Secret of the Slime

If you've been on Facebook in the past month, chances are you've laid eyes on this lovely piece of photography:

 

Is that Strawberry Icéd Cream, you might be asking? Or perhaps freshly mixed pink Play-Doh (TM)? No. Consumer, meet Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), also more perjoratively known as "Pink Slime". There's a good possibility you've ingested bucketloads of this stuff; In your Big Macs, in your hot dogs, and in your Pizza Pepperoni. I'll give you a moment to puke your guts out. If you're anything like me, you're revolted by the photo. The very thought of Pink Slime dribbling into your open mouth like the chocolate from the opening scenes of "Willy Wonka" makes your skin crawl. Surely, such a decrepit substance must pose a grave risk to all humankind.

 

Thankfully, we have our very best activists on the case. Bettina Siegel, Human Rights Vanguard Extraordinaire, began a petition on Change.org to combat the existential threats posed by "Pink Slime". It’s caused quite a stir so far, and has garnered over 200,000 signatures at this time. Ms. Siegel is kind enough to first enlighten us as to the nature of the beast:

 

"'Pink slime' is the term used for a mixture of beef scraps and connective tissue...that is treated with ammonia hydroxide to remove pathogens like salmonella and E coli. These so-called "Lean Beef Trimmings," are produced by Beef Products, Inc."

 

Right on the money. In more detail, Pink Slime is the product of a process using heat and centrifugal force to remove the trace portions of meat left on a bone after the primal cuts are trimmed. Those bits and pieces are collected, treated with ammonia hydroxide to kill harmful bacteria, and condensed into the sludge we know and love. That sludge is later used by various food companies as an additive and filler in their own meat products, which we gobble up greedily in our daily lives.

 

Ms. Siegel has a vision of a world without Pink Slime. In her Manifesto, she boldly declares:

 

"Government and industry records obtained by The New York Times in 2009 showed that 'in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.' Even apart from safety concerns, it is simply wrong to feed our children connective tissues and beef scraps that were, in the past, destined for use in pet food and rendering and were not considered fit for human consumption."

 

Sounds cut-and-dry, right? Not so fast. There are two sides to every story, and so far the public has been pretty cruel to the meat industry on this one. Let's think about this critically for a moment.

 

LFTB is found across the food spectrum, from fast food to livestock feed to School Lunches, and has been produced and eaten the same way for over 40 years. Millions of tons of LFTB are processed, exported and consumed every year. If LFTB were truly as disease-riddled and dangerous as Ms. Siegel would like us to believe, then E. Coli and Salmonella would be FAR more widespread. Beef Products Incorporated, the main producer of LFTP, actually has a perfect record; No LFTB they have produced and sold on the market has ever been connected to any cases of E. Coli or Salmonella. In my opinion, the fact that "since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times" in BPI's pre-shipped LFTB is more of a sign of the quality of their inspection process rather than the grave risk that LFTB poses.

 

Another charge not fully touched on by Ms. Siegel (but hounded by others) is the Ammonia Hydroxide de-contamination process. In this process, a puff of Ammonia Hydroxide is sprayed onto a batch of LFTB for one second. This process is used not just on LFTB but many other foods as well, such as Cheese and Bread, and has never proven a health hazard to humans when said foods are consumed. While Ammonia is indeed gross, the leftover ratio of Ammonia to Food is approximately 500 parts per Million (which is an astronomically low amount, as far as ratios go). Small price to pay for what has been shown to be an pretty effective guarantee against E. Coli and Salmonella.

 

With these things in mind, I think we can dissect Ms. Siegel’s final statement with more impunity.  When Ms. Siegel claims "it is simply wrong to feed our children connective tissues and beef scraps that were...destined for use in pet food and rendering and were not considered fit for human consumption", we can see what's really going on here. If this isn't about taste (I guarantee you never picked out your McDonald's patty as anything other than 'beef'), safety (like we discussed, BPI has a perfect safety record), or nutrition (LFTB is no less beefier than Top Sirloin, just not all nicely put together), then what is this about?

 

Simply put: Pickiness, I suppose.

 

Calling Ms. Siegel "picky", in all honesty, is probably oversimplifying her sentiment. After all, I think Pink Slime looks pretty nasty as well. All I can think to say is that it's a status thing, perhaps...as in, "Do we REALLY want OUR kids to eat this crap?".

 

Unfortunately, this sentiment has had an unpleasant impact on quite a few people's lives; BPI has been forced to shutter 3 factories and cut hundreds of jobs. Ever since the first "Pink Slime" photos began to surface on Social Media back in March, the orders for LFTB have shrunk drastically as the public demand has plummeted. The American Meat Institute has stood in solidarity with BPI during this crisis, and defended the production of LFTB as such:

 

"All types of lean finely textured beef are sustainable products because they recover lean

meat that would otherwise be wasted. The beef industry is proud to produce beef products

that maximize as much lean meat as possible from the cattle we raise. It’s the right thing to do

and it ensures that our products remain as affordable as we can make them while helping to

feed America and the world. If this beef is not used in fresh ground beef products,

approximately 1.5 million additional head of cattle would need to be harvested annually to

make up the difference, which is not a good use of natural resources, or modern technology, in

a world where red meat consumption is rising and available supply is declining."

 

A very good point. Meat that would otherwise be tossed in the garbage is conserved by the process of creating LFTB, which in turn means far less cattle need to be slaughtered. Last time I checked, "conservation" was a huge media buzzword; maybe when only used in conjunction with "electricity" and "environment", though...

 

So there's my shtick, for the most part. Although I acknowledge that I think LFTB is pretty gross looking and I'd rather not eat it, I think certain people take the sentiment too far. Some consumers just don't care whether their Whopper is made with a real cut of beef or a nice LFTB patty, and I think it's kind of harsh that businesses like BPI have been made to suffer for the pickiness of what is, in a actuality, a minority of consumers. Will people like Ms. Siegel complain when meat prices go up as LFTB is filtered out of the market? They'd better be silent as the friggin grave.

 

My proposed solution to said issue? To begin with, I don’t even think this issue should be politicized…but it will be anyway. Perhaps we could take the Democrat approach, and create a zillion committees and laws on Pink Slime to waste everyone’s time and money…conversely, we could take the Republican approach and give BPI a massively over-inflated contract to provide Pink Slop to all Public School cafeterias…OR…we could take the Libertarian approach. How about manufacturers just include LFTB on the label of a product, and consumers can choose for themselves? Someone who truly cares will be free to purchase the $20-per-pound LFTB-free ground beef, while those less discerning can just settle for the low-brow $7-per-pound LFTB-filled ground beef that tastes exactly the same and also poses no health risks. At the same time, how about de-federalizing the insanely bloated Public School System and allowing more freedom to individual districts and taxpayers to select what their children eat at school?

 

On a final note, I think this issue also represents a deeper problem that our modern society faces: How Social Media fosters "awareness” without actually "informing”.

 

In my opinion, Slimegate and the Kony2012 craze are both very similar situations. Kony2012 was a massive awareness campaign (I’m sure you all remember) designed to “make Kony famous”, that is, to raise awareness of Joseph Kony and the horrendous antics of the Lord’s Resistance Army. There were Youtube videos, Facebook groups, t-shirts, and more. Thusly, most of America did indeed become “aware” of Joseph Kony. However, how many people have actually taken the time to understand the deep cultural, historical and ethnic roots that the Kony Conflict has? Not very many, I can assure you. People certainly have become “aware”, but that doesn’t necessarily make them “informed”, and in my humble opinion, uninformed action could potentially be worse than choosing to do nothing (of course, I would hope that people could inform themselves and then take judicious action accordingly).  Similarly, it sounds to me that folks like Ms. Siegel are causing the Internet Rabble to thrash about based on awareness of an unpleasant pink substance, without actually informing those involved of the story behind the story.