Posted on 05/10/2012 6:22:54 PM PDT by thecodont
The American Meat Institute is striking back at reports that “meat glue,” a binding agent often used to patch together pieces of beef and other protein, is unsafe and unnatural.
In an occasionally touchy conference call Thursday, the trade group said that the USDA considers such substances to be safe and requires its presence to be noted on retail labels. The product, however, isn’t always disclosed when it’s served at restaurants and other food service outlets, experts said.
But using the binding substance to weave together high-quality cuts such as filet mignon with lower-priced meat such as chuck steak is “patently illegal,” said Mark D. Dopp, the institute’s general counsel.
Such "Frankenstein" meat would be easily discernible to diners and not condoned by the industry, he said.
Not long after the “pink slime” outcry and the reemergence of mad cow disease, concerns about meat glue have the industry back on defense.
California state Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) recently called on the USDA to investigate such products, including options made by Fibrimex and Ajinomoto North America.
Ajinomoto uses transglutaminate, a “ubiquitous enzyme found in nature, basically every animal, in our tissues, in plants, trees and vegetables,” the company's Senior Vice President Brendan Naulty said on the conference call. Besides its meat applications, it is also used in products such as bread, yogurt and imitation crab.
Fibrimex uses fibrinogen and thrombin proteins, which company representative Christiaan Penning said was “designed by nature … but used in a more intelligent way.”
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
True, and if I am paying $5.00 a pound for 93% lean ground beef, it better be ground beef and not a bunch of filler. Its fraud to pawn off ammonia and scraps and charge $5.00 a pound for it!
LOL!
Call it what it is, scrapple, sausage, etc. and gelatin and all the people go yum yum.
This is the liberal push to vilify meat just like they did to smokes.
I made chili today and two packages of ground beef in teh freezer. One was ground sirloin 10% fat ant the other was the 93% lean. The sirloin tastes better. I had made hamburgers with the 93% lean a few weeks back and they just didn’t taste right, the texture was off, too. Too fine, almost mealy.
Try ordering a steak at the restaurant and asking for ammonia to put on it. Wonder if they would look at you funny?
Not sure when they decided to make ammonia part of the food groups. We stopped eating at fast food burger joints a couple of years ago because the burgers tasted like crap. Now, we know why. Glad to see them stop.
Pink slime is only ground beef carried to an extreme. What you get isn’t “ammoniated” any more than the cookies that are commercially baked with ammonium bicarbonate leavening. (Whose practical use is pretty much restricted to tightly controlled commercial baking processes. Home ovens don’t always succeed in driving out the ammonia and the result comes out as nasty as you’d think.)
As for me, I’d like to know where I could buy myself some packages of pink slime. Seems to me it would make a wicked meatball.
I can remember as a kid we went to some friends of our parents. And the guy was so proud to show my dad his new herd. He was taking a chance on this new breed called Black Angus. That was a long time ago.
We don’t buy commercial cookies either. Most have trans fats up the wahoo in them. I make them from scratch. Better anyway. That way I can reduce the salt a bit if I want or lower the fat a little.
In the past sixty years, we've regulated the heck out of just about every phase of the food stream - from farming to transport to storage and preparation. There are certification courses for food handlers, in person health inspection visits, etc, and yet, with all this regulation, the overall risk has remained unchanged. It's still a one in six chance.
Literally trillions of dollars down the drain for zero net change.
Isn't it a bit insane to continue to try the same methods, year after year after year and end up with the same results, yet somehow expect something different?
I understand what you're saying - if it wasn't for the USDA and their regulations, there would be more risk in the system. The flip side of that is that people would be less trusting of their food, and would treat it differently, and the overall risk wouldn't change, as it hasn't changed, even with all these strict regulations.
Instead, people trust expiration dates even if they see food stored or handled improperly, and not so shockingly, they get sick from it. They see servers and cooks with poor sanitary methods, but there's an inspection sign out front, so it'll be just fine - then they get sick. The regulation has served to only prevent people from exercising their own common sense, and has resulted in the same net effect.
Actually, I'm taking into account how people act. With strict regulation comes strict methods of how to game the system, and that's exactly what people do.
To take a more practical example, look at mutual funds today. People will invest in them, not knowing at all what they are investing in, or how it is managed, simply because they trust regulators to keep everything on the up and up. And year after year, more and more people are having every penny of their savings stolen because they are trusting the regulations, and ignoring any form of common sense.
If you put a lottery machine right next to a slot machine, and ask people which has a more likely chance of giving a payoff, people will point to the state lottery time and time again - it's more regulated, it's run by the state, it of course must have better odds. If you ask them which has a higher 'rake' or taking for the house - the overhead of the game, they'll again say that the lottery is better. It's state run, they wouldn't rip us off.
Tons of accidents happen each year because people trust a stop sign to actually stop traffic, or walk out into the street because a walk sign says it's ok to go, without even looking to see that oncoming car which was running the yellow.
When you assure people that someone else is looking after their risk, any common sense goes out the window. And that's why, after sixty years of ever increasing regulation and strict guidelines, the end results of food borne illness is still the same - a one in six chance of it happening to any American each and every year.
I did, in high school. I thought those days were over. Maybe not.
I don’t like trying to chew on the pieces of artery that I find in it. Kind of chewy and tough. I find more of that type of stuff in the 93% lean. Weird.
Neat. What state?
I was driving through western Oklahoma and saw a lot of Black Angus. Years ago they raised mostly white faced Hereford.
Believe my father said Angus were hardier and had fewer health problems. I had one of the best sirloin steaks I’ve ever had in Woodward, Oklahoma.
For me, a complete and efficient use of the animal would include moving some of it to pet food. I don’t want to consume lungs, eyes, brains, hearts etc, liver and kidneys, maybe.
I don’t know what goes into pink slime or meat glue but I know I can enjoy a piece of meat without them. That’s the way I want it. I’ll pay for it that way.
Do not substitute elmer’s glue if yur out of transglutaminase enzymes at home.
Michigan
I should clarify that he probably meant new to him. I remember him saying that he had been reading up on them for a couple of years and decided to take a chance.
I don’t know what goes into pink slime or meat glue but I know I can enjoy a piece of meat without them. That’s the way I want it. I’ll pay for it that way.
Pick up a cookbook from 50+ years ago and you'll find (under the "Meats" section) information on how to deal with "variety meats" (also known as "offal" -- the lungs, tripe, kidneys, etc.). I'm thinking specifically of Rombauer's The Joy of Cooking in its 1975 and 1943 editions.
Eating seemed to be done more in moderation then. Thumb through these cookbooks and find recipes for croquettes, gelatin salads, light sandwiches, etc. Today food seems to be presented in extreme religious terms, either monastic or decadent, nothing in between.
But those modest meals of the past DID deal with the less mentionable parts of the beast and thought nothing of it. How is scrapple made? Aren't sausage casings made from intestines? Isn't gelatin made from boiled bones?
I can still remember when the grocery store would sell soup bones cheap, and unusable bones and other meat refuse were made available for pets. Now people are trying to get their pets on vegetarian diets!
So now, ironically, along with "whole foods" and organic produce, we also have genetically modified plants and engineered foodstuffs that are extruded and sprayed with flavor and baked to a crisp texture. Yummy.
I think the nation's mental attitude towards food is swinging between wild extremes. People are either dieting or are stuffing their faces until they become morbidly obese. The local bus line has installed extra-wide seats on its coaches to accommodate ample bottoms.
Sounds familiar. I don’t know how many he had but they were beautiful looking.
I agree with you on all counts. I’d rather pay the higher price for the higher quality.
My mother’s father raised them, along with some cotton and wheat. I’m old enough to remember that `polled’ (no horns) Herefords were a big thing. I used to watch the hands de-horn and castrate the cattle. Man, that was a mess.
One day I took a shortcut through a field owned by a big Hereford bull and he made it clear I was trespassing. It turned quickly into a “Run Forrest Run!” deal & I cleared the barb fence without about a foot to spare.
But I believe the Herefords had problems with pink-eye and their eyes generally, and sunburn. Someone else probably could explain better why they switched to Angus.
I can remember driving along those red dirt roads, just a kid, and seeing a half-dozen or more coyotes hung up on wire. I suppose that was to warn the others off. Today they’d probably gig ranchers for doing that.
And we wore onions on our belts ... I’m starting to sound like Old Man Simpson, so off to bed.
He probably ended up doing well. In what state was that?
” I know I can enjoy a piece of meat without them. That’s the way I want it. I’ll pay for it that way.”
That’s all good. As long as products are honestly labelled, you can pay more for the more premium cuts and etc.
But I don’t think the meat companies are “bad” for using all of the cow.
Michigan
What was the onion for?
I have been to countries with an unregulated food supply. You will get sick. When we fly people to some of these places, the company I work for spends a lot of money to either bring food with them or find a supplier who will guarantee that the food is safe. Even then, the latter is a big risk and there was a coworker who spent time a hospital.
Simply put, if there is no consequences, no one will do it. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars testing our products. The company wouldn't spend a dime if we didn't have to.
The kosher meat industry has such high standards and polices itself so well the USDA doesn’t even bother them.
The historical origin of Soylent wafers?
Out of three handy cookie packages I picked up and looked at, one has zero trans fat, one does not say (probably also has none, because of modern listing requirements), and one (dollar store cheap) shows trans fat at a tiny fraction of the total. A far cry from the Crisco cookies of old.
Nothing but free-range meat glue for me. ;-)
So, the USDA has its own James Hansen, it appears.
Ultimately it’s no worse than a more glamorously molded form of Spam. Any chef who can produce a convincing faux steak has an art form in its own right.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.