"Pink Slime" Beef Manufacturer Suspends Production
By Anthony Todd in Food on Mar 27, 2012 3:20PM
Looks like that old combination of media coverage and public outrage has finally made an impact. Beef Products, Inc., the manufacturer of the ammonia-treated beef colloquially known as pink slime, has suspended production at three of its four plants while it re-evaluates its business strategy.
In case you missed the back story, McDonald's announced that they'd stop using the ammonia-treated beef scraps in their hamburgers earlier this year, after public objections about the product's safety. The USDA was still going to buy it for school lunches, and the beef industry tried to defend its use. But, after many media outlets pointed out the contradiction between President Obama's new healthy lunch initiatives and the use of such a dubious product, the USDA announced they would take steps to inform school districts which ground beef contained the product. Supermarket chains all over the country dropped the stuff.
A Beef Products, Inc., spokesman told the Associated Press that "business has taken a “substantial” hit since social media exploded with worry over the ammonia-treated filler and an online petition seeking its ouster from schools drew hundreds of thousands of supporters." The three plants are closed for sixty days (and employees are still being paid) while the company decides what to do.
Watch for the inevitable strike back, as beef industry experts blitz the media trying to convince everyone that this product is totally safe, natural and healthy. There is already a website, Beefisbeef.com, filled with articles and posts about the safety of the product. It's a masterpiece of marketing spin, starting with the name - in an industry often challenged by safety issues, is "Beef is Beef" really a great message? It is reminiscent of the USDA deputy undersecretary who, during the approval process for the product, supposedly said "It's pink, therefore it's meat."
BeefisBeef cites a bunch of different media sources, many of which link back to the beef industry or their experts. It includes such pieces of non-information as: "Ammonia is essential for life. This naturally occurring substance is found in virtually all life forms, from plants to animals to humans." So are many, many chemicals that aren't healthy when ingested - like chlorine. How about this: "Lean Beef Trimmings Have Similar Nutrition to 90% Lean Ground Beef." Just because two items of food have similar nutritional information doesn't mean they are the same: we could fortify a pile of wood shavings with protein powder and vitamin pills and engineer something with approximately the same nutritional content as ground beef. Given the national outcry over this stuff, they'll have to do better than that. We envision commercials with lots of multi-generational families eating sizzling hamburgers on porches at sunset.
In any case, we look forward to a robust debate over this product—even if it means that it remains in the food system. Anything that energizes the national discussion about food safety and makes people think about what they are eating is good for everyone.