The Heavy hand of Government Regulation yanks food from your mouth

[Dave]

>>THANK GOD!
>>The pictures that accompany this article are really disgusting.
>>

May 07, 2012
3 plants that made 'pink slime' ground beef to close
By Michael Winter, USA TODAY
http://content.usatoday.com/communit...p#.T6h4iL_Y3fY

Three plants in Iowa, Kansas and Texas that made the ground beef product disparaged by critics as "pink slime" are closing permanently because of plummeting sales over concerns about the ingredients, the South Dakota-based manufacturer has announced.

Beef Product Inc. says 650 workers in Amarillo, Texas; Garden City, Kansas; and Waterloo, Iowa, will lose their jobs May 25, KCAU-TV reports. In late March, the company suspended production of its lean finely textured beef, a filler made from chemically treated trimmings that is mixed with fattier beef, at the three plants.

In a statement, the company said it was attempting "to rebuild markets following the unfounded and misguided attacks" and was "making significant progress in setting the record straight."

"We continue to stand by our lean beef as 100% wholesome, safe and nutritious, and we will continue to defend Beef Products, Inc. against the mischaracterized and irresponsible misrepresentations that led us to take these actions," said spokesman Rich Jochum, urging consumers to visit the website BeefIsBeef.

U.S. regulators approved the process about 20 years ago. The "pink slime" controversy erupted on social media in March when critics said the beef trimmings, which are treated with ammonia hydroxide to kill bacteria, are not labeled on packages of 100% beef as an additive.

The beef industry has been bracing for the fallout from the controversy.

Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad called the plant closure "a sad day for the state," declaring, "The fact that a false, misleading smear campaign can destroy a company's reputation overnight should disturb us all," the Des Moines Register reports.

He expressed hope that consumers would "learn about this safe, healthy and lean food" and would " understand what a great product lean, finely textured beef truly is."

>>Dave says: I need an airbag! QUICK!

[moi621]

Pink Slime

Okay, don't ban it.
Give it another name.
But, tell me if my ground meat is truly only ground meat or otherwise processed with fillers.
Like my grove stand style, never frozen Orange Juice with the unmentioned flavor packets.

If you opt to save some bucks purchasing safe,, meat products with otherwise processed fillers, that is FREEDOM. I would expect the package to be labeled the filler has been processed with ammonia and any other items I would not consume.


It is criminal not to announce anything added to ground meat or fresh orange juice.
The food industry has been playing the same game since before Upton Sinclair. The bring regulation on themselves.
Like Stock Market reform, how many times do we witness the same game all over again.

Moi
FREEDOM

[Riverwind]

So are you saying regulations are good?

River

[moi621]

Honest and true labeling is good.
Then, "Buyer Beware". Because an informed choice can be made.
Agree?


& FREEDOM

[Dave]

So are you saying regulations are good?

River

No. There was no regulation involved.
There was public pressure and that put the "pink slime" business "out of business" (a rhyming, rhythmic rune, how clever)

Do you see the satire of the heavy hand of regulation for those who would see the heavy hand of regulation everywhere?

T'was beauty that killed the beastly slime. The beauty of public rose up with sharp words and clever opinion to slay the flayed meat disinfected by ammonia and processed into cheap profits.
I, personally, was thrilled by such an outcome.

Added: This was not pate' or filet for the rich and powerful. Perish the thought over drawn butter and lobster. This was hamburger assisted with pink slime for the poorest and least fortunate. In this, the people won.

[transward]

I think a large part of this whole story is simply hysteria. There have been no disease outbreaks associated with the product. Take away the name "pink slime" and exactly what is wrong with it. After the major primals are cut from a beef carcase there remains several pounds of meat on the bones. It is not economical to remove it by hand. In years past they were used to make stock, but today they try to recover it. Its's called mechanically separated meat. (they do it to turkeys too) The meat is blasted off the bones with ultra high pressure water then filtered out , pressed, sanitized with ammonia, and then sold.

I have used the product. We go it through government commodities and donated surplus programs. By itself it is rather nasty. I would not use is alone in anything. It has a unpleasant consistency and not much meat flavor. But mixed 1 part to three or four of regular ground beef, I could make delicious meat loaf or taco filling. And it is not filler in the sense of Textured Vegetable Protein, It is real beef, just very finely ground. Trying to cook 400 meals a day with mostly donated food, it was quite welcome. Yes it uses some bits and pieces we don't usually eat, but muscle tissue is muscle tissue whether in the tenderloin or tongue. And a lot of food is treated with deadly poisons at some point int their processing. The tortilla you make tacos out of is made with corn treated with deadly corrosive lye, which makes the vitamins therein available for digestion. (Which kept Central Americans from developing beri-beri )

We enter this year with the lowest stock of beef cattle in years as a result of the drought in Texas and Oklahoma which has forced ranchers to sell of their stock they couldn't afford to feed. This has kept the price of beef low as these herds were sold off and converted to beef. But this year beef prices are going up dramatically. I think it makes sense to use as much of the critters as possible.

Transward

[IEunuch]

A few notes:

1) I love how the headline takes an opportunity to bash the govt, when in fact absolutely nothing in the article shows that the government had anything whatsoever to do with those plants closing.

2) I'm kinda glad to be Canadian, as to the best of my knowledge 'pink slime' has never been legally allowed to be used in human food. (Food Canada will not allow ammonia to be used in ground beef or meats. This applies to both foods produced in this country, and foods imported to it.)

3) For all those who enjoy the occasional spicy tuna roll, keep an eye out for the next controversy. 'Tuna scrape.' Essentially the same kind of meat as pink slime, only with no added ammonia, and no cooking. Guess what kind of health issues that stuff can and has caused. Yum.

[Riverwind]

Have no fear they will figure out another way to come at you sideways, with or without regulations, its what they do.

River

[Dave]

A few notes:

1) I love how the headline takes an opportunity to bash the govt, when in fact absolutely nothing in the article shows that the government had anything whatsoever to do with those plants closing.

2) I'm kinda glad to be Canadian, as to the best of my knowledge 'pink slime' has never been legally allowed to be used in human food. (Food Canada will not allow ammonia to be used in ground beef or meats. This applies to both foods produced in this country, and foods imported to it.)

3) For all those who enjoy the occasional spicy tuna roll, keep an eye out for the next controversy. 'Tuna scrape.' Essentially the same kind of meat as pink slime, only with no added ammonia, and no cooking. Guess what kind of health issues that stuff can and has caused. Yum.

#1 - I was visited by one of my distant cousins who believes the black UN helicopters are after him to take his "whatevers" away. This relative laments he cannot own grenades and nuclear weapons and has conspiracy theories about everything. He afraid he's going to lose the right to eat meat because cows fart. For him, daylight savings time is a commie plot. I offered to grill him a big steak but he asked that it cut into small pieces as his dentures fit badly. He never drank fluoridated water. It's so sad to see the "stricken" try to function in the real world and not laugh in their faces. Or openly mock them to their faces.
(You can ask me to behave but I guarantee that you won't even know when the knife hits your back)

#3) being allergic to fish, my bowels quiver with anal seepage at the thoughts of "Tuna Scrape"...
I run not in fear but necessity.

[Riverwind]

Maybe you could grind up those stakes and dare I say it, add some pink slime I am sure he wont mind.

River

[DeaconBlues]

#1 - I was visited by one of my distant cousins who believes ... For him, daylight savings time is a commie plot. I offered to grill him a big steak but he asked that it cut into small pieces as his dentures fit badly. He never drank fluoridated water. It's so sad to see the "stricken" try to function in the real world and not laugh in their faces. Or openly mock them to their faces...

You know, Abe Lincoln said something like "People everywhere are about as happy as they want to be..." or something like that, I might not have the words just right. My point being that your distant cousin, like everyone else, is about as happy as he wants to be. Everyone has some sort of "Don Quixote" complex in their personality, most of us do not go around attacking windmills, or wearing aluminum foil helmets, or seeing "UN black helicopters, or running from UFO's and space aliens, or or or.... Most of us control our thinking and supress the "inner Don Quixote" and we get to lead the lives of normalcy that we prefer. But there are some who I believe will never be happy with a boring "normal" life, they HAVE to fight "dragons" and if there are only windmills around then "woe betide the windmill," some drama queens just have to fight the "CIA black ops" team that is persuing them, some just have to see a "government conspiracy" everywhere. Odd thing, now-a-days the paranoia du jour seems to be a government conspiracy, but it used to be Senator McCarthy telling us there was a commie under every bed and in every closet.

Like old Abe Lincoln says, people are about as happy as they want to be, and some people just cannot be happy unless they are miserable and being persued by space aliens and hiding from the assassins sent from the White House... And like General Jack D. Ripper, they never drank floridated water.

[Elizabeth]

I think a large part of this whole story is simply hysteria. There have been no disease outbreaks associated with the product. Take away the name "pink slime" and exactly what is wrong with it. After the major primals are cut from a beef carcase there remains several pounds of meat on the bones. It is not economical to remove it by hand. In years past they were used to make stock, but today they try to recover it. Its's called mechanically separated meat. (they do it to turkeys too) The meat is blasted off the bones with ultra high pressure water then filtered out , pressed, sanitized with ammonia, and then sold.

I have used the product. We go it through government commodities and donated surplus programs. By itself it is rather nasty. I would not use is alone in anything. It has a unpleasant consistency and not much meat flavor. But mixed 1 part to three or four of regular ground beef, I could make delicious meat loaf or taco filling. And it is not filler in the sense of Textured Vegetable Protein, It is real beef, just very finely ground. Trying to cook 400 meals a day with mostly donated food, it was quite welcome. Yes it uses some bits and pieces we don't usually eat, but muscle tissue is muscle tissue whether in the tenderloin or tongue. And a lot of food is treated with deadly poisons at some point int their processing. The tortilla you make tacos out of is made with corn treated with deadly corrosive lye, which makes the vitamins therein available for digestion. (Which kept Central Americans from developing beri-beri )

We enter this year with the lowest stock of beef cattle in years as a result of the drought in Texas and Oklahoma which has forced ranchers to sell of their stock they couldn't afford to feed. This has kept the price of beef low as these herds were sold off and converted to beef. But this year beef prices are going up dramatically. I think it makes sense to use as much of the critters as possible.

Transward

There are a lot of things that are safe to eat, that are disgusting and people don't want to eat. I have to admit, I wondered what was going on when in the 90's cooking hamburgers and on the top side this gross disgusting slime builds up as it cooks. I now know this is the pink slime. It's food that otherwise would have been pet food because humans don't want to eat the trimmings. What people are mad about is being lied to about what was in their food. And given the choice, people don't want to eat meat treated with chemicals because it's been contaminated. It's the same reason we don't put treated waste water back into the potable water source, even though it's technically safe to drink.

Given the choice, which we did not have because of secrecy, people choose not to eat contaminated food that has been cleaned.

Elizabeth

[Cainanite]

This reminds me of the old controversy about irradiated food. I don't know where we ended up on that.

It was a process by which foods could be briefly exposed to the equivalent of a strong burst of sunshine. It was effective at killing almost all the harmful bacteria, made our foods last longer on the shelf and reduced the risk of salmonella poisoning, and a host of other things that were bad for us.

Unfortunately, because of the negative association with "RADIATION" ( Imagine that word said in a booming and ominously reverberating voice.) people cried out against it. A lot of places actually banned the process.

This pink slime business reminds me of that, because we still don't actually know what is good for us to eat. Simply put, we'd prefer to eat food with a 10% volume of rat feces in it, if we can comfortably assert that it is "all natural".

I doubt it, but it could be that "pink slime" is a better source of protein, and healthier for us to eat. We'll never know now. The stigma has been created.

I'm neither for it, or against it, but I am rather glad I live in Canada, where it isn't a current issue.

[transward]

. And given the choice, people don't want to eat meat treated with chemicals because it's been contaminated. It's the same reason we don't put treated waste water back into the potable water source, even though it's technically safe to drink.

Given the choice, which we did not have because of secrecy, people choose not to eat contaminated food that has been cleaned.

Elizabeth

If you want to avoid this particular chemical you are going to have to eliminate practically all foods except natural foods in their whole state. Ammonia is widely used in food production. It's used in a vast array of products. http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources...ood_Production

A: The list of foods in which ammonium hydroxide is used as a direct food additive is extensive and includes baked goods, cheeses, chocolates, other confectionery (e.g., caramel), and puddings. Ammonium hydroxide is also used as an antimicrobial agent in meat products.

Ammonia in other forms (e.g., ammonium sulfate, ammonium alginate) is used in condiments, relishes, soy protein concentrates/isolates, snack foods, jams and jellies, and non-alcoholic beverages.

The World Health Organization has listed hundreds of food types that may be processed using ammonium hydroxide when used in accordance with good manufacturing practices. These include dairy products, confections, fruits and vegetables, baked goods, breakfast cereals, eggs, fish, beverages such as sports drinks and beer, and meats.

Given the choice, which we did not have because of secrecy, people choose not to eat contaminated food that has been cleaned.

I hate to tell you but almost everything you eat falls in that category. Vegetables which are grown outdoors where the deer and the antelope poop are washed and soaked in an antimicrobial solution to kill e.coli. (The recent outbreaks attributed to bagged greens and cantaloupe show it's not always 100% effective.) Grains and imported fruits are fumigated with poison gases to kill bugs riding along. Spices are irradiated for the same reason. Apples and tomatoes are ripened in ethylene oxide. Chickens are soaked in the same chemical as beef to kill salmonella. The very water you drink is filtered and treated with chlorine a deadly poison. The list goes on and on. Without all these our food supply would be like a third world country's where you can't drink the water or eat the vegetables without contracting tourista.

I think this campaign ultimately has little to do with pink slime. It is a stealth attact by the PETA types against eating meat itself.

Transward

[Elizabeth]

If you want to avoid this particular chemical you are going to have to eliminate practically all foods except natural foods in their whole state. Ammonia is widely used in food production. It's used in a vast array of products. http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources...ood_Production




I hate to tell you but almost everything you eat falls in that category. Vegetables which are grown outdoors where the deer and the antelope poop are washed and soaked in an antimicrobial solution to kill e.coli. (The recent outbreaks attributed to bagged greens and cantaloupe show it's not always 100% effective.) Grains and imported fruits are fumigated with poison gases to kill bugs riding along. Spices are irradiated for the same reason. Apples and tomatoes are ripened in ethylene oxide. Chickens are soaked in the same chemical as beef to kill salmonella. The very water you drink is filtered and treated with chlorine a deadly poison. The list goes on and on. Without all these our food supply would be like a third world country's where you can't drink the water or eat the vegetables without contracting tourista.

I think this campaign ultimately has little to do with pink slime. It is a stealth attact by the PETA types against eating meat itself.

Transward

I think perhaps you have confused my statement about what I think is going on, as an endorsement of blackballing a perfectly good source of lean meat. I am not. I am saying that people have a disgust level that they either can not or do not want to overcome. I think my example of treated water is right on the mark. It is perfectly safe to drink and in fact is returned to our rivers and streams. However, people are disgusted by the fact that it at one time had feces and other contaminates in it.

I am not a germaphobe at all. I don't have a problem eating food that has been in the fridge for a week. I just microwave the hell out it to make sure everything is dead that might harm me and then eat it. However, given the choice, I prefer trimmed beef that has never been contaminated. That is why aged beef costs more, because they have to cut away more meat on the outside that has become contaminated in the aging process.

Elizabeth