Business

After National Outcry, Schools to Be Given an Opt Out of Repugnant ‘Pink Slime’

WASHINGTON (AP/The Blaze) — Last week, The Blaze reported that the USDA bought 7 million pounds “lean finely textured beef,“ also known as ”pink slime,” for school lunches.

News of the purchase quickly circulated via social networking sites and there was a national outcry. In response to the backlash, school districts soon will be able to opt out of a common ammonia-treated ground beef filler.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that starting in the fall schools involved in the national school lunch program will have the option of avoiding the product.

Social Media Victory: Schools to Be Given a Pink Slime Opt OutWe can’t understand why they would want to.

Under the change, schools will be able to choose between 95 percent lean beef patties made with the product or less lean bulk ground beef without it. The change won’t kick in immediately because of existing contracts, according to a USDA official with knowledge of the decision.

Though the term “pink slime” has been used pejoratively for at least several years, it wasn’t until last week that social media suddenly exploded with worry and an online petition seeking its ouster from schools lit up, quickly garnering hundreds of thousands of supporters.

The low-cost ingredient is made from fatty bits of meat left over from other cuts. The bits are heated to about 100 F and spun to remove most of the fat. The lean mix then is compressed into blocks for use in ground meat. The product, made by South Dakota-based Beef Products Inc., also is exposed to “a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas” to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella.

The USDA source said that the agency believes the ammonia treatment is safe, but that it wanted to be transparent and that school districts wanted choices.

“School districts have made requests and school districts want, basically, choice,” the official said Wednesday evening. “And we respect that, they’re our customers.”

The USDA buys about a fifth of the food served in schools nationwide.

But the opt out doesn’t go far enough for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) who has asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to immediately ban the product from school lunches.

“The beef industry sent my office an email the other day describing pink slime as `wholesome and nutritious’ and said the process for manufacturing it is `similar to separating milk from cream.‘ I don’t think a highly processed slurry of meat scraps mixed with ammonia is what most families would think of as `wholesome and nutritious,’” Pingree said in a written statement.

Social Media Victory: Schools to Be Given a Pink Slime Opt OutJust wait until she finds out what Soylent Green is made of…

There are no precise numbers on how prevalent the product is, and it does not have to be labeled as an ingredient. Past estimates have ranged as high as 70 percent; one industry official estimates it is in at least half of the ground meat and burgers in the United States.

The product has been on the market for years, and federal regulators say it meets standards for food safety. But advocates for wholesome food have denounced the process as a potentially unsafe and unappetizing example of industrialized food production.

The phrase “pink slime,” coined by a federal microbiologist, has appeared in the media at least since a critical 2009 New York Times report. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has railed against it, and it made headlines after McDonald’s and other major chains last year discontinued their use of ammonia-treated beef.

But “pink slime” outrage appeared to reach new heights last week amid reports by The Daily and ABC News. The Daily piece dealt with the USDA’s purchase of meat that included “pink slime” for school lunches.

The story touched a nerve with Houston resident Bettina Siegel, whose blog “The Lunch Tray” focuses on kids’ food. On March 6, she started an online petition on Change.org asking Vilsack to “put an immediate end to the use of `pink slime‘ in our children’s school food.”

“When I put it up, I had this moment of embarrassment,” she said, “What if only 10 people sign this?”

No problem there. Supporters signed on fast. By Thursday morning, the electronic petition had more than 225,000 signatures. Organizers of Change.org said the explosive growth is rare among the roughly 10,000 petitions started there every month.

But why is “pink slime” striking a chord now?

Issues can to go from a simmer to an explosion when content with broad interest – such as like food safety – is picked up and disseminated by widely connected people, said Marc A. Smith, director of the Social Media Research Foundation. These people act like “broadcast hubs,” dispersing the information to different communities.

“What’s happening is that the channels whereby this flood can go down this hill have expanded,“ Smith said ”The more there are things like Twitter, the easier it is for these powder kegs to explode.”

In this case, Siegel thinks the added element of children’s school lunches could have set off this round.

“That’s what upset me. This idea that children are passively sitting in a lunch room eating what the government sees fit to feed them and McDonald’s has chosen not to use it, but the government is still feeding it to them,” she said. “That really got my ire.”

Social Media Victory: Schools to Be Given a Pink Slime Opt OutThe face of a kid who has just been told he’s having Beef Slurpee for lunch.

The USDA this year is contracted to buy 111.5 million pounds of ground beef for the National School Lunch Program. About 7 million pounds of that is from Beef Products Inc., though the pink product in question never accounts for more than 15 percent of a single serving of ground beef.

Beef Product Inc. stresses that its product is 100 percent lean beef and is approved by a series of industry experts. The company’s new website, pinkslimeisamyth.com, rebuts some common criticisms of the product (”Myth 4: Boneless lean beef trimmings are produced from inedible meat”).

The National Meat Association also has joined the fight, disputing claims that the product is made from “scraps destined for pet food” and other claims. The industry group also said that ammonium hydroxide is used in baked goods, puddings and other processed foods.

Association CEO Barry Carpenter, who has visited BPI plants and watched the process, said critics don’t seem to have the facts.

“It’s one of those things. It‘s the aesthetics of it that just gets people’s attention,” Carpenter said. “And in this case, it’s not even legitimate aesthetics of it. It’s a perception of what it is.”

 The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Comments (60)

1 2
  • elvisroy0000
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:58pm

    if you dont enjoy pink slim as much as i do dont eat it buy other beef or become a Vegetarian and die from the additives in canned Veggies 1 Salvation Army Red Kettles http://youtu.be/N2Cs5xrIIhI
    http://socyberty.com/politics/john-boehner-and-the-great-comprimisers/

    Report Post » elvisroy0000  
    • ScarletRose
      Posted on March 16, 2012 at 5:17am

      You are welcome to all the Ammonium Hydroxide Gas that Pink Slime can offer you – all to yourself. Enjoy!

      Report Post » ScarletRose  
  • Abraham Young
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:57pm

    Who the h___ needs a Department of Agriculture to tell local schools what they will and will not do? I say a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, are not governed by a distant bureaucrat who makes all their decisions for them.

    Centralized thinking monopolies have very poor decision making ability but insist on monopolizing everyone’s time and money.

    Report Post »  
    • cemerius
      Posted on March 16, 2012 at 8:39am

      Indeed!!! Abolish the Federal Education Department NOW!!!

      Report Post » cemerius  
  • RosePurple
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:48pm

    Scroll down on this site and they’ll list the stores that sell this product.
    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/where-you-can-get-pink-slime-free-beef/

    Report Post »  
  • MammalOne
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:38pm

    Where’s Michelle Obama on this one?

    Report Post » MammalOne  
  • mbean
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:59pm

    If this slime is a Federal Mandate for our kids, then it should also be a mandate for the White House Chef. I am sure Barack and Michelle would love to eat this every day.

    Report Post » mbean  
  • Ramv36
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:41pm

    Take heart, parents! Once the school takeover is complete and your kids live there full-time until they graduate, you’ll at least see them on the weekends, for one simple reason: Kids don’t iron, and those Brownshirts need to be kept pressed, and jackboots shined, otherwise the whole gig falls apart!

    Perhaps they’ll take instruction directly from Debbie Wasserman Sergeant Schultz…

    Report Post »  
  • SpankDaMonkey
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:32pm

    .
    After National Outcry, Schools to Be Given an Opt Out of Repugnant ‘Pink Slime’

    So how many “Teacher’s” are we gonna lose?……….

    Report Post » SpankDaMonkey  
  • Apple Bite
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:26pm

    If it’s so safe, why did they try to sneak it onto school lunch menus? They could help themselves by throughly explaining what it’s made of and what would be the reasoning behind the texture and such. This might be good enough for pets, but for humans, people like to know what it is they’re eating, example, don‘t serve ice cream if it’s made of breast milk…

    Report Post » Apple Bite  
    • Ramv36
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:03pm

      http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store

      HA, told you you’d make money with breast milk ice cream!

      Report Post »  
    • Livia
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:06pm

      I guess I have been eating that for years and just never knew it. The idea of it being treated with ammonia bothers me somewhat, but here in my town, the city is using ammonia to treat the water. It reeks when it comes out of the faucette but smeels more like bleach. Anyhow, it doesn’t bother me all that much, maybe I just got used to eating it. :o))

      As far as the “formula” that is fed to babies, well that makes me wonder if something in there is what’s causing so many mental issues with kids these days. Back in the 50‘s if the mother didn’t breast feed, it was either Pet or Carnation canned milk mixed with water and a little Karo syrup. Or if we were licky enough to get fresh milk right from the cow, the babies (in my family) were fed that.

      Report Post »  
    • Ramv36
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:06pm

      http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store

      See, I told you breast milk ice cream would be popular and profitable! Too bad we’ve already missed the boat.

      Report Post »  
  • Zen Patriot
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:20pm

    Uh, please explain to me why the Federal Government should have ANY say in what goes on in our STATE schools?

    Report Post »  
  • Ramv36
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:16pm

    “Breaking News: Pink Slime Replaced in school lunches by Congressionally-Approved vegetable (Pepperoni PIZZA)”

    Report Post »  
  • CROCK-HANDLER
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:11pm

    When i think about all the hamburgers I’ve eaten, ……Now i lay awake at night, yuk!

    Report Post »  
    • Ramv36
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:22pm

      Why, the slime is made from the same stuff a ground sirloin burger comes from.

      We don’t enjoy milk with breakfast but then gag when we have dinner made with a cream sauce. Literally no different.
      I bet the schools are still serving a much more disgusting product, hot dogs, regularly and happily.

      At least these kids get pink slime burgers that are actual meat. When I was in HS back in 98-02, our school arbitrarily went from meat burgers to pure SOY PATTIES, the health benefits of which were negated because we had to pile on the ketchup and salt to make it taste like anything.

      Soon our kids will all be good obedient little vegetarian nazis spending more time with their school ‘co-parents’ than their actual parents.

      Report Post »  
    • diamondlee
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 9:25pm

      i agree–years ago when the big macs came out –i used to love eating them–they were my favourite—then one day[[[true story]]] i bit on a piece of grissel from the berg and it just made me sick—i waited before ordering another big mac–same thing happened–i bit another Grissel—i stopped buying them and it has been years–and any other burg –if i hit grissel -sick–now i make my own with ground up steak–NOW– thanks to the [[food watchers]] i was eating this slime crap…get rid of it now… the fda is WRONG—its garbage and do not feed this crap to any child.–also when i bought ”ex-lean ground beef—and had grissel–fed it to the cats and never bought it from that place again….

      Report Post »  
    • orionreplay6607
      Posted on March 16, 2012 at 5:51am

      If you have a package of hot dogs in the fridge, and I don’t care what brand and at what price paid, the first ingredient is generally a “mechanically separated” meat of some sort. Did anyone question that? How many hot dogs have children eaten… our nation’s debt worth? Now we have mechanically separated burger too and suddenly panic in the streets? Sorry, I don’t get it.

      Report Post » orionreplay6607  
  • Mr.Fitnah
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:42pm

    Im never eating ground beef again unless I grind it myself.
    I will never eat fast food again it is over,
    I know they put this crap in MCds And Burgerking
    This garbage and any similar process must be made illegal. It is vile.

    Report Post » Mr.Fitnah  
    • momrules
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:58pm

      I feel just like you do. I am going to invest in a meat grinder. I love beef, I love tacos and hamburgers but from now on I’ll just make my own.

      Report Post »  
    • ThoreauHD
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:24pm

      The thought of having ground up nipples, anus, and brains with ammonia for flavor, is enough to make me do the same.

      Taco Bell doesn’t even qualify as meat. It’s meat “product”- whatever the hell that is. Apparently nobody knows what it is, because it‘s anal puree and carcinogen’s.

      Report Post » ThoreauHD  
    • Ramv36
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:29pm

      let‘s outlaw it’s abhorrent dairy equivalent, cream, as well.

      With all your support, we can make all milk with more than 0% fat and/or non-pasteurized a contraband product. Wait, weren’t we all up in arms a month ago about the feds making raw milk sales a crime?

      Are we SERIOUSLY upset about pink slime while still feeding our kids HOT DOGS that are made from the waste you have left after making pink slime? Use your heads, you‘re being manipulated to approve of this admin taking charge of your kid’s lives, and before you know it, the school will be the actual parent, and you’ll be the co-parent, and maybe you’ll get permission to see your kids on the weekends, like a joint-custody arrangement.

      Report Post »  
  • littlemule
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:36pm

    It’s a “Hot Dog” what’s the big deal?
    If you don‘t like it don’t rely on the gov to feed your kid.
    Make your kid a sack lunch
    heck put a bologna sandwich in it

    Report Post »  
    • Balpit
      Posted on March 17, 2012 at 2:27pm

      The school will confiscate the sack lunch…

      Report Post »  
  • ICEDRAGONNITE
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:34pm

    Is this MO’s new diet for American children?

    Report Post » ICEDRAGONNITE  
  • Ramv36
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:30pm

    You can get 225k signatures for a petition to ban a product that‘s probably healthier than most foods the majority of American’s eat…..but Keystone XL died, and no one cares our border patrol agents are getting murdered with guns WE illegally provided to the drug cartels.
    They want pink slime outlawed due to how it makes them ‘feel’, yet when parents can‘t even pack their own child’s lunch due to ‘health concerns’ they don’t care one bit about them.
    Is this a new trend: the amount of public interest on a topic is inverse proportional to it’s importance or relevance? The more banal, asinine, and inconsequential the story, the more people pay attention, yet when the story involves gov’t-wide corruption and murder, the response is ‘Eh, So what?’

    Is everyone in the whole damn country being drugged with valium or something? SLAPSLAPSLAP-ALARMALARM-WAKEUPWAKEUP!!!

    Report Post »  
  • Countrygirl1362
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:55pm

    Do you really trust the govt. to tell the truth and just label half the boxes slime the other half non-slime and they all be the same thing?

    Report Post »  
    • jmvsb
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:26pm

      Do you think Michelle Obama would eat this stuff?

      Report Post »  
  • Smokey_Bojangles
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:54pm

    Much ado about nothing.

    Report Post » Smokey_Bojangles  
  • copatriots
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:52pm

    Okay…….now that I’ve dealt with the initial disgust factor……

    I have a fundamental issue with the fact that the USDA considers schools their “customers”. From one guv agency to another………that might just be the problem.

    Report Post »  
    • 2theADDLED
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 8:15pm

      I didn’t know the USDA was in sales or marketing either.
      I thought they were supposed to be inspectors and quality control.

      Report Post »  
  • copatriots
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:42pm

    Eeeew just eeeeewwwwwww! And these idiots are telling children that school lunches are better than the lunch Mom packs for them.

    Dear Lord, please forgive us and heal our land!

    Report Post »  
  • Mark0331
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:32pm

    Went to Shop Rite in S. Jersey..the butcher made a point of printing sings saying they do not use Pink Slime..message is speading…wonder if the first wookie will come out against this…

    Report Post » Mark0331  
  • Slherweg
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:26pm

    How about we send all that beef to the White House, Congressional and state government kitchens. Let the politicians and bureaucrats eat it!

    Report Post »  
  • spirited
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:19pm

    Outlaw beef Mrs. Obama.
    ….Go on…., Try it.

    Oh, please???

    Oprah (rightfully) won in court.

    Report Post » spirited  
  • piper60
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:15pm

    Just put sponge Bob on it, and the rug rats will be screaming for it.

    Report Post » piper60  
    • Smokey_Bojangles
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:56pm

      Kids have no taste buds. I have a 22 year old that still eats like a 10 year old. Then again,everything tastes the same when it is drowned in Ketchup.

      Report Post » Smokey_Bojangles  
    • Exrepublisheep
      Posted on March 15, 2012 at 7:42pm

      Lol piper, lol…

      Report Post » Exrepublisheep  
  • SpeckledPup
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:12pm

    fell off our feet laughing so hard at Chuck riding the SOYLENT GREEN…. thanks!

    Report Post »  
  • searching for the Truth
    Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:10pm

    Yuk!

    Report Post »  
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