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'Pink slime' maker suspends some plant operations
AP ^ | 3/26/12 | BETSY BLANEY

Posted on 03/27/2012 6:52:52 AM PDT by EBH

Craig Letch, director of food quality and assurance for Beef Products Inc., declined to discuss financial details but said 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 U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided school districts may stop using it, and some retail chains have pulled products containing it from their shelves.

"...We feel like when people can start to understand the truth and reality then our business will come back," he said. "It's 100 percent beef."

The lower-cost ingredient is made from fatty bits of meat left over from other cuts. The bits are heated and spun to remove most of the fat. The lean mix then is compressed into blocks for use in ground meat. The product is exposed to ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella.

The result is a product that is as much as 97 percent lean beef, Letch said.

"At a time when so many Americans struggle to put a healthy, nutritious meal on their family's dinner table, the unfounded mischaracterization of Lean Finely Textured Beef as 'pink slime' is unconscionable," Barry Carpenter, chief executive officer of the National Meat Association, said in a Monday statement. ...

...Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who has campaigned against the filler's use, praised "people power" for getting it removed from so many products.

"I hope the U.S. government is also listening because it's partly responsible for lying to the public for allowing this cheap, low-quality meat filler to be used for so long without having to legally state its presence on packaging," Oliver said in an email statement provided to The Associated Press.

(Excerpt) Read more at rr.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: pinkslime
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To: EBH

Pink slime, and their quality control is by Letch? Is their CEO named “Roddy Killian Carrion”, by chance?


21 posted on 03/27/2012 8:02:11 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy ("We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." -- Hillary Clinton)
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To: CodeToad

After hearing about the pink slime I bought a meat grinder.

I won’t buy hamburger meat again.


22 posted on 03/27/2012 8:07:20 AM PDT by Elderberry
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To: EBH
I think it's time to re-make this movie.

Green Slime [1968] => Pink Slime [2012]

Where you don't eat the pink slime, it eats you!

Green Slime

23 posted on 03/27/2012 8:20:12 AM PDT by sjmjax (Politicans are like bananas - they start out green, turn yellow, then rot.)
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To: Elderberry

“After hearing about the pink slime I bought a meat grinder.

I won’t buy hamburger meat again.”

Not a bad way to go at all. Nothing beats fresh ground beef from fresh cuts of beef.

Our local Safeways will custom grind beef from meat you buy in their store. We wait until chuck goes on sale and have them grind it for us. Talking with store employees that work in the meat department, they do the exact same thing themselves.

Meat ground this way can be cooked ultra rare, say for grilled burgers, without fear of e coli because germs grow on the outside of fresh meat, not the inside. The problem with ground beef of course is that when it is ground, the surface germs get mixed up quite nicely throughout the whole ground beef product where they incubate if the ground meat isn’t properly handled.

Fast food restaurants “solve” the problem by cooking their hamburger patties into little disk-shaped pieces of coal, removing all flavor, all juiciness, and a great deal of the nutrition.

With fresh, custom ground meat, one can make truly yummy and nutritious burgers at home.


24 posted on 03/27/2012 8:35:52 AM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: CaptainPhilFan
I thought the pink slime was made into chicken nuggets...? Is this another pink slime?

I generally avoided McDonald's hamburgers. If I wanted fast food Wendy's and Burger King were always better. However there was just something in the McNuggets that made me crave them. Then a few months ago I saw the stories about the chicken flavored pink slime and lost the craving.

Basically both take the bones from which other cuts of meat have been removed and then strip them chemically and mechanically. I think I'll pass. Even at best it would be like taking the scraps of carrots, mincing and bleaching them to the consistency of baby food and then trying to sell that as carrots. I'll stick to the real food.

25 posted on 03/27/2012 9:01:06 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (You only have three billion heartbeats in a lifetime.How many does the government claim as its own?)
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To: BfloGuy

low-cost ground beef isn’t harmless, it’s repulsive.


26 posted on 03/27/2012 9:06:39 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand (obamacare is an oxymoron.)
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To: WinMod70
They could take a clue from...

...and turn that pink slime into... "pink lemonade"!

27 posted on 03/27/2012 9:09:46 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand (obamacare is an oxymoron.)
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To: Elderberry

Not a bad option. I an lucky enough to have a local butcher that makes their own and I know what goes in it.


28 posted on 03/27/2012 9:23:52 AM PDT by CodeToad (I'm so right-wing if I lifted my left leg I'd go into a spin.)
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To: CodeToad

Actually McDonalds no longer uses pink slime...

Now go have a hamburger! It is better than the one’s they serve your kids in school.


29 posted on 03/27/2012 10:07:19 AM PDT by EBH (God Humbles Nations, Leaders, and Peoples before He uses them for His Purpose)
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To: the invisib1e hand
low-cost ground beef isn’t harmless, it’s repulsive.

Repulsive and harmless are not mutually exclusive traits. The Pontiac Aztec was repulsive, but was relatively harmless as cars go.

30 posted on 03/27/2012 2:26:01 PM PDT by BfloGuy (The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.)
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To: BfloGuy

noted.


31 posted on 03/27/2012 2:33:46 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand (obamacare is an oxymoron.)
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