Pink Slime: What’s Your Beef?

By Matt Furlane

Korean cuisine is among the healthiest food in the world, and Korean beef is arguably some of the best quality beef in the world because it doesn’t contain steroids or fillers. I think even Korean McDonald’s, which uses beef imported from Australia, tastes better than American McDonald’s because Australia has higher standards for making ground beef. But now, with the enforcement of the KORUS Free Trade Agreement this past March, more American beef will be coming to Korean markets. But is it really 100 percent beef? Is it likely to be harmful for those who consume it?

In April of 2011, famed English chef Jamie Oliver trotted out a live cow on the premiere episode of his new show “Food Revolution” in order to “get parents thinking, where does my food come from, and where does my children’s food come from?” As the cow stood broadside to the audience, Oliver spray painted prices on it representing how much each section of beef costs the consumer: shank – $30, round – $105, rib – $135, etc.

It gave parents and consumers a clear visual as to where cuts of beef in the supermarket come from. Once the cow is cut up, where do the leftovers and the beef parts closest to the cow’s intestinal wall go? In the USA, these meat leftovers are used to make hotdogs and pet food, or they end up in something the meat industry calls “pink slime”.

What is essentially the dirtiest, cheapest form of meat you can get from a cow is stripped down, thrown around and beaten down, and then, to kill any residual fecal matter to make it safe for eating, it gets mixed with ammonium hydroxide (NH₃(aq)) and turned into a form of processed ground meat, now famous as “pink slime”. ABC News describes the process this way:

“The low-grade trimmings used to produce lean, finely textured beef come from the parts of the cow most susceptible to contamination with E.coli, often close to the hide, which is highly exposed to fecal matter. But because of the treatment of the trimmings – after they have been simmered in low heat, separating fat and tissue using a centrifuge, they are sprayed with ammonia gas to kill germs – the USDA says it’s safe to eat.”

Pink slime goes into an enormous range of products, including hamburgers sold at places like McDonald’s. The USDA allows for the slime product to be mixed in with other forms of beef served at grocers and in schools without labeling. According to Oliver, it is present “in 70 percent of ground-beef products.” It was a stunning revelation. Oliver went on to say: “Everything about this process to me is about no respect for food, or people, or children.”

After just one year the responses to and corporate retractions of pink slime have been phenomenal. Five months after Jamie Oliver’s show aired, McDonald’s began removing ammonia-treated beef from its supply chain and announced on February 1, 2012 that it is no longer using pink slime in any of its products. Burger King has done the same. Even Taco Bell, whose beef has been notoriously suspect for years as being nothing but filler or dog food, has announced it will discontinue using “Lean Beef Trimmings.” Most notably, over the last month, large American retailers and grocers like Kroger Co., Stop and Shop, Safeway, Supervalu, Food Lion, and Walmart have said that they no longer carry any beef containing the ammonia-treated leftover beef trimmings.

More important for regular Americans is that the news coverage, social networking, and citizen-style reporting from people like school food advocate Bettina Siegels have helped lead school districts across America to start pulling pink slime out of school lunchroom cafeterias as quickly as possible.

On the website Change.org, Siegel now has a petition asking the USDA to completely ban all use of pink slime. Over 250,000 people have signed it.

As of March 26, Beef Products Inc., which is a company that makes pink slime, has suspended its operations for 60 days until further review. They blamed ABC news for “a gross misrepresentation of our products and our process”, which is quite amusing, since ABC asked former USDA scientists about pink slime. According to microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein, “It’s not fresh ground beef. It’s a cheap substitute added in.”

Despite a public relations counter-campaign by the beef industry involving former presidential candidate Rick Perry with the dumb slogan, “Dude, it’s beef”, and scientific “evidence” that pink slime is harmless, Americans have overwhelmingly said, “No”. And despite the success of Oliver’s “Food Revolution”, the pink slime story is just one chapter in a very long book about unlabeled, hidden, and questionable food processing methods and food poisoning in America. The United States used to have one of the best food supply chains in the world, delivering farm produce that was clean and healthy to markets, homes, and restaurants all over the country. But for the last 20 years, the number of cases of food-borne illnesses, and the number of deaths, has been rising. Botulism, Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and Hepatitis have all found their way into American food and sickened or killed people. Here’s a short list of food/meat related problems involving E.coli (O157:H7):

• In 1993, four people died when fast-food restaurant Jack In The Box served up hamburgers tainted with E. coli.
• In 1997, over 25 million pounds of ground beef was recalled by Hudson Food Company after E. coli was discovered.
• In 2000, 65 people were sickened and one died when beef containing E. coli from Excel meat packing was sold to Sizzler steakhouse.
• In 2002, nearly 80 people were sickened by E. coli-tainted ground beef produced by ConAgra and Emmpak Foods.
• In 2007, over 20 million pounds of ground beef were recalled because of E. coli contamination from the Topps Meat Company plant.
• In 2009, Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough was contaminated by E. coli from ground beef and 70 people were sickened.
• In 2011, Tyson Fresh meat recalled over 130,000 pounds of ground beef because of E. coli contamination.

Jamie Oliver, an Englishman, came to America, and, in the true spirit of America, started a real revolution that helped people. May the Queen of England knight him for his efforts. But despite his widespread success and generation of awareness, the darker side of business practices in the U.S., as well as the efforts of lobbyists to conceal the unsafe production of foods, is still going on today. The USDA must be held responsible in order to be effective. The pink slime food revolution must be just the first step in holding business leaders, politicians and corporations responsible for harming the public.

As free trade agreements continue to proliferate, it is becoming clear that global business is benefiting, but the effect on the public is uncertain. According to the office of the United States Trade Representative:

“The entry into force of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement on March 15, 2012 means countless new opportunities for U.S. exporters to sell more….agricultural products to Korean customers. … American beef volumes have increased by more than 120 percent in just a few years under the existing protocol – helping producers to regain much of the market share they lost earlier. Tariff eliminations on Korea’s existing 40 percent tariff will further boost beef exports, saving an estimated $1,300 per ton of beef imported to Korea – savings that would total $90 million annually for U.S. beef producers at current sales levels. “

This might be good news for some Americans, and as an American I want to see my country prosper, but not at the expense of hurting its own citizens and those around the world – especially here in Korea, where so much American beef will be shipped.

The views expressed in this article are those of the writer.