It's perfectly legal to grind up and use any part of a cow and call it "ground beef." Same thing with chicken, except the feathers. When you buy any ground meat, you no longer have any control or clue exactly which parts of the animal were used. Lungs? Bladder? Snout? Eyeballs? Blood vessels? Yep - it can all be thrown into the grinder.

If you want more control over what animal parts you eat, purchase an intact piece of quality meat and have it ground in front of your eyes.

there is an article on abcnews, but the links get removed when comments are posted. just google "70 percent ground beef".

I can't confirm it, but it comes from a USDA whistleblower.

"What the 81," those "lazy parents" might be people who work full-time in order to be able to feed and house their family, and they have every right to expect that a school district will feed their children reasonably nutritious food.

TraceyS

Are you telling me that it isn't nearly as important for parents to feed their kids nutritious foods? Please, a parent can find 30 minutes to prepare something healthy. If not, then maybe he/she should give up guardianship to someone else that will.

"what the 81" Or, your kids could attend my district, which has banned home lunches due to "contraband" items such as products prepared where nuts (peanuts, etc) or wheat are prepared. There are too many allergens out there, so outside lunches aren't allowed. Plus the concerns over keeping items cold enough to pass USDA food safety guidelines; few lunch holders are really good enough to keep things at the proper temperature.

81, I see your point on preparing lunches, but there is no need to call people lazy because many buy school lunch. It is SUPPOSED to be nutritious and not pink s**t with who knows what in it and parents pay for real food and not that nasty crap. You can make your point without having to call parents who happen to buy lunches lazy when you have no clue why they are making that choice.

If the school touts the meal as nutritious and the USDA approves the food it should be nutritious and safe to eat. I don't buy school lunch for my kids often at all because they don't like what it served there...it isn't very good...but there is no need to call names.

This is just one more reason I am really, really glad I'm a vegetarian. Ick and disgusting.

@ TTmadison

Your statement is mostly false. First of all, a beef animal does not have a "snout" so that's not in ground beef. Second: USDA considers lung to be "inedible" so it goes mostly to pet treats and food. It is illegal to put lung into human grade meat of any kind. Third: after the vitreous humor (inner fluid) is removed from the eyeball, its really just an empty membranous sac. Because of this the time it takes to excise an eyeball from a skull, drain the fluid and toss it into a trim bin would negate any profit that a company would earn because they are using an employee to spend 4 minutes attaining what amounts to about 7 grams of tissue. Absolute waste of time and money. Fourth, most meat has blood vessels, its tissue, if it didn't how would blood and oxygen keep the cells alive? Buy any large chuck or bottom round roast and you will find blood vessels. Finally that is absolutely untrue that "waste meat" (or as it is actually called "trim" because its not "waste" but that doesn't get people as riled up, so where's the fun in that?) absolutely does not make up 70% of the ground beef in the country or the processing plants are being disgustingly inefficient. The majority of ground product comes from cull animals, i.e. older dairy cows that have declined in production, older range cows that have declined in birthing rates, roping steers, bulls, etc. These animals are perfectly safe to eat but due to their age the meat would be tough and have little fat and marbling so it is undesirable to the consumers, therefore they are put into ground product.

And yes, all of this is fact as I have a Bachelors degree in animal science and worked for years in a processing plant.

Bencer

That fact is made up, or perhaps the writer doesn't know how words work, but more likely that just enrages people so more page views. As the blog that TTMadison is directing you to it says "70% of the ground meat in the US CONTAINS mechanically separated product". As most people with a 6th grade education can tell you this absolutely does NOT mean 70% of it IS mechanically separated product.

81...Here in NC, we had a parent send their child to school with a turkey and cheese sandwich, bag of chips, banana, and juice. TPTB took it from her and gave her processed chicken nuggets and a bill for her parents.

Just take the soylent pink they serve and move along!!! Nothing to see here.

I would not send my child to any school that took away my child's lunch. I'd pull her or him out so fast and start home schooling. There are always home school parents around who will take another child in to teach.

This product is nothing more than a money maker for the meat industry, they could care less as long as the USDA allows it. Maybe the USDA management should be forced to eat it every day , then perhaps they'd change their attitude. This is only a part of the non essential crap in our food supply to enhance profits.

New York nutritionist and msnbc.com contributor Elisa Zied (@elisazied ) said,"people have a right to know what exactly is in their food, so they can make a judgment whether to eat it or not," but shouldn't panic the meat was unsafe just because of the "yuk" factor. "Like with all food, this idea of pink slime in ground beef does speak to the fact that we need to mix up the foods we consume from all the basic food groups to minimize potentially harmful ingredients and maximize nutrient intake," said Zied

We can mix "end trails" up with a bunch lettuce...and then drown it all in "Ranch" dressing to get rid of the flavor, but it will still be just S#!% coverd salad... "I can take a crap, put it in a box, and throw a gaurantee on it"...lol. How much are we going to let these people get away with? The ones that are suppose to be looking out for our "best interests". Start Stocking Your Ammo...Let's Take Back Our Rights

So which one of you fine upstanding citizens told the FDA that you wanted "Tongues, Tails and Touch holes" ground up into your home made Italian meatball mix?.....................I know I didn't. So who's saying it's acceptable? The Meat Industry; their lackeys in Congress; their accountants while inspecting the efficiency of the meat packing plants and finding these "TRIMMINGS" on the floor and decide to grind them up into YOUR hamburger because it will save the company millions in not only disposal costs but add to the profits!

Boycott hamburger and grind your own fresh from the products you buy so YOU know what's going into it! BOYCOTT CHAIN STORE HAMBURGER AND BOYCOTT FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS UNTIL THEY CAN PROVE IT'S OUT OF THEIR PRODUCT!

Waldo-

What's wrong with tongues and tails? Plenty of people I know eat tongues and tails. They're just muscle. Clearly you've never eaten at a Basque restaurant. Oxtail soup is delicious and you should try it sometime. Their pickled tongue I'm not partial to, but that's mostly because its pickled, give me a lingua taco any day. Also, what is a "touch hole"? Nowhere in my farm animal anatomy or meat science or food safety textbooks have I ever seen the word. Nor have I heard it spoken or written in the beef industry. I would like to know.

@ getreal

Go ahead and run that by the majority of HAMBURG purchasers and see what they say. If I wanted tongue and tail I would purchase tongue and tail. We don't want or EXPECT tongue or tail we expect fresh ground muscle from the beef cow mixed with what butchers always added to hamburg, beef fat, to add flavor and enhance cooking. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm over 60 and I know the physiology of the domestic beef cow as well as anyone out there and what can be consumed and what shouldn't be consumed. If I ask for FRESH HAMBURG That's exactly what I should get with my hard earned dollars. Not a "Slight of Hand" pulled on me and millions of others by the Beef Industry through their Puppets in the FDA!

Waldo,

You didn't answer my question. Also, in what anatomy book does it say tongue and tail aren't muscle? And even skeletal muscle at that. Not smooth muscle, not cardiac muscle, but skeletal muscle. Granted theyre not muscles used simply for posture such as a ribeye or tenderloin, but there is no difference really between the muscle of the tongue and the mucles in the chuck.

Waldo-

And I'm sorry that consumers such as yourself may think that tongue and tails somehow don't contain muscle and therefore shouldn't be in your product. Fact is your incorrect and its not a conspiracy by beef producers, its just ignorance on the part of the consumer.

To be fair though, while some tongue may find its way into ground beef, the majority is going to areas where they enjoy eating tongue. Often exported or sent to areas where they have high immigrant populations. Same goes for tail. These items can bring a higher price in those markets than they can in ground product.

@ getreal

I reread my post over a couple of times but I failed to notice where I said tongue or tail DIDN'T contain muscle. Would you enlighten me? As far as the culinary "delights" of tongue and tail might be enjoyed by many I do know that tongue has a completely different texture than the other large muscle groups found on the beef cow. As far as the tail goes, it would be fine if someone in the meat packing plant wants to expend the time to METICULOUSLY trim the small amounts of meat from the tail to add to the thousands of pounds of hamburg produced daily in a plant, I would think his boss may have a problem with the time expended. I do, though, have a problem with them grinding the whole tail into my hamburg and spraying the product with a type of ammonia.

Waldo-

"We don't want or EXPECT tongue or tail we expect fresh ground muscle from the beef cow..." That's where you said it. If you're saying "I don't want A, I want B" you're implying that A and B are two different things.

Tongue is of a different texture, but when it is ground you can't tell. The proportion to other meat combined with the grinding into small pieces makes the difference in texture impossible to detect (same goes for the connective tissue). That is why people weren't upset about this earlier, most had no idea there are some tendons in the ground beef, because they couldn't tell. Funny how no one's ever upset but connective tissue in chicken wings.... Anyway the tails are put into a centrifuge to remove the meat from the bone, hence where the term "mechanically separated" comes into play. The ammonia part, well ammonia won't hurt you in that level (we're talking a few parts per billion, I assume I ingest that much cleaning a dusty horse stall) but if that offends you, so be it. You say you're 60+ so obviously it hasn't killed you.

You might say we can't tell, but I can tell. And you can have my share of the ammonia too if you like......

You could try what I do, buy ground chuck. It's ground in the store and it's nothing but chuck. A little more expensive and doesn't keep as long, buy what you need then cook it.

The only thing I use ground beef for is spaghetti sauce.

If you say so

"I don't mind eels

except as meals

and the way they feels."........... Ogden Nash

To each his own! :)

Some people eat rotten milk called yogurt.

Or dried potatoes, which taste rotten.

I wonder-

I agree. If you don't like it, don't eat it and don't worry about what everyone else is doing. And "Zoo" is definately top 10 for books. Love it

Thats why the big corporations got all the little guys stomped out so they can feed their garbage to the sheep funny what greed can do

If it's not good enough for Mcdonalds than it's not good enough for me

Why would the meat producers think we would like meat scraped up off the floor?

Anyone notice how they focus on safety and ignore nutritional value?

81, my mother used to let me pick what I wanted to take to school as a lunch, when I wanted to take one which I usually didn't. Sometimes I'd pick a plain old lunch meat sandwich or even, gasp, two pieces of bread with only Miracle Whip on it. She did this to make sure I was happy and willing to eat a lunch, period. To say she should have given me up for adoption because she raised 4kids alone and worked from dawn til dusk is retarded. She didn't have the option of organic everything cause it was the 90's and we were dirt poor but guess what I went outside and exercised and never had a single health problem. I love my mother, she loves me, and you are an ignorant troll. That is all...

whoo-pee we have a mini flame war! let's see how long this will last!

Where's Waldo, read the story again, it's the USDA not the FDA that regulates the beef industry, just shows how strong the beef industry is.

That's one for Bencr, the actual facts are:

Researchers say that 70 percent of ground beef found in supermarkets contains the cheap filler.

So, this pink slime does not accounts for 70 percent of all ground beef consumed in the U.S. It is found in 70% of ground beef. Would be interesting to know what the actual percentage is.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/health/2012/03/09/pink-slime-in-70-percent-ground-beef-reports-says/#ixzz1ooh3lvuL

Hmmm....not yum.....

What is next as 'filler' in USDA-approved human food: Soylent Green??

Or are grandpa's gelatinous fingernails considered "food" product too....

I'm surprised that some enterprising company hasn't tried brand marketing a "Soylent" product line yet. This day & age are ready for it.

Soylent Green, Yellow, Blue (for aquarians), Pink (fund raising possibilities). It truly is scraping the bottom of the barrel to think that offal scraps from the abbatoir floor have been found to yield additional profit and that someone discovered a way to "sanitize" these scraps thus making them "edible" (dare I say that word). At this rate we will soon be eating our dead.

Why do I get the feeling that those who say pink slime is fit for human consumption are people who make enough money to not have to eat it.

Read 'Soylent Green'.

Pink slime is processsed scrap made from cartilage, bone tissue, marrow, pieces of unidentified carcass leftovers and such. It is treated with a poisonous toxic agent that partially digests it into a less offensive material that is not chewable,but is digestible. Then it is mixed with low grade meat as a filler and served to the unsuspecting..... sounds okay to me. But then I liked Navy chow.

I think I read up to 15% added to 70% of the ground beef on the market. My guess is the factory packed ground beef at Walmart falls into the 70% containing it... We purchase our meat at an old fashioned grocery store that has still has its own meat cutting section and grinds its own ground beef. Doesn't last as long but it seems fresher, seems to have a little more flavor too.

MakesMeWonder: The big corporations did not stomp out the little guys. Shoppers made choices to give their money to the big corps and quit going to the little guys. People willing to support big box stores (w/ frequent poor ethical choices but lower prices) over the little guys have caused the small businesses to close.

So the consensus here is everyone wants only pure ground beef made from steak-quality meat from young, prime cattle, with no preservatives or anti-bacterial additives, meaning it must be sold within a week of kill, and special handling to prevent any possibility of contamination. And of course you are not willing to pay a penny more a pound for it.

Chemistry lesson for the day: Ammonia (from ammonium hydroxide, ammonium alginate, or ammonium sulfate, or just plain straight ammonia) is part of your body's nitrogen cycle and is essential to your life. You couldn't make amino acids without it and your body produces it too.

While high concentrations of ammonia, such as is found in cleaners, can be an irritant and may cause burns on contact and irritate the mucous membranes, a lethal dose of ammonia would require the ingestion of huge quantities beyond what is reasonably possible. On the other hand pure ammonium hydroxide in its concentrated form is a strong base and may cause severe burns upon contact or inhalation. That being said, large quantities of ammonia are not in our foods (you would know it if they were from a simple smell test). Besides as I mentioned, ammonia is essential to your life in small doses. If you can't smell it, it is in the safe and good for you range.

@ radagast

Truth lesson for the day! Do what your mother and father (hopefully) taught you! Tell the Truth!

If I wanted ANY type of ammonia product sprayed on my store "Fresh" hamburger I would certainly ask for it to enrich my dietary requirements. In this case the meat industry is pulling a fast one while the consumer is bilked again. Who in their right mind goes to the store expecting that upwards of 30% or more, of the "product" in their "fresh" hamburger purchase is chemically sprayed sinew and other cow parts? The answer is millions of us DON'T want it in there regardless of how "Safe" the INDUSTRY RUN FDA says it is. I would imagine that the chemically cleaned Butt Hole of a beef cow is as clean as a whistle but who wants to eat it? You can have my portion, thank you.............

Waldo-

Again you are incorrect. Many people enjoy the intestines of animals (although not "butt hole" as you so eloquently put it, as that is skin and peels off but large intestines contain the same materials). Ever hear of chittling? Sausage casing? Many people eat these things happily and with no health issues whatsoever coming of it. Just because you think something is yucky doesn't mean it will hurt you. And again, let's everyone say it together "it isn't a government conspiracy". Settle down. Stress hurts your body.

................I thought we were on the subject of Hamburg?

Here ya go Getreal, figure this secret code out and I'll give ya a thousand bucks:

iruehf v9ueh 9rg ijef iqsjfjnwdempk ewj uwe ewuuhewuh9wuef ywey774rh n iuh iau js fuhd iuhef uhd iuhud uhd iu uhqweiuhui4hownwoeiucoac jdnfowuefojn w e oiuewfd9iue9d98.......

Waldo-

you were inviting someone to eat a "cleaned butthole", which, again, is not in hamburger. I was just mentioning that many people eat similar things, and also tail and tongue. And also I'm sorry about that stroke you just had. That is unfortunate. No need to be hostile. (Also, I'm pretty well set with money, thanks. Turns out farmers are doing ok ;)

Oh, and also just for a fun aside as you are very concerned about ammonia. Are you aware that meat in stores is sprayed with carbon monoxide to help it "bloom"? Also bad for a human in extremely high concentrations and harmless in small ones. If you look past the unnatural color it produces.

I don't mind the ammonia, it's the microbes (dead or whatever) that get scraped up off the floor and the fact that they are selling us inferior meat.

Symptoms of ammonium hydroxide exposure:

That is one of the most far fetched conspiracies I have heard in a while! Selling treated scrap meat for profits is actually to help pad the Dr's pocket... so are all the Dr's giving all of the processors a cut to continue the cycle? Wow.

@ navy patriot - If you eat large quantities of "pure" Ammonium Hydroxide, that will happen. The same or worse things will happen with large quantities of any base, including the active ingredients in things like Maalox, Gaviscon, or just about any antacid.

For those who claim this this is lungs, and intestines, this is not true. It is the meat from fatty cuttings of the beef that you normally purchase ... with the fat removed by processing. The ammonium hydroxide protects the meat from bacteria growth. To call this a filler or additive is not accurate, since it is beef.

If the GOVERNMENT biologist called this "ultra lean trimmings" instead of "pink slime", we would be demanding this product in our ground beef.

Thank you Roger,

For that matter, even oxygen at a large quantity (2 bar pressure) is deadly poisonous.

If people didn't have exposure to using Ammonium as a household cleaner, nobody would have cared. However, now it's a poison in their minds and you can't convince them otherwise.

The funny thing is, we specifically USE Ammonium as a household cleaner BECAUSE it's non-toxic. And the amount of Ammonium you ingest after cleaning your knives and cutting boards with it, is way more than the amount you'll ever ingest by eating "Pink slime".

And it's still copiously used by the rest of the food industry. It's just because Jamie Oliver created a (VERY factually incorrect) fuss about THIS usage, in order to further his own career, that people are now all up in a tizzy.

Sigh.

Would you rather eat "pure" meat loaded with e-Coli and salmonella? Beef is made from the flesh of a dead animal. Animals start to decompose the second they die. The natural antibiotic mechanisms that kill microorganisms in a living animal cease. Do any of you outraged consumers know how to stop this process without any additives? People have been eating this stuff for years with no ill effects till a few publicity-hounds got a hold of the story and created this hysteria to draw attention to themselves.

Americans need to grow up. They want pure, sanitary food neatly wrapped in styrofoam and plastic that will keep for weeks on a shelf or in a refrigerator and have not a clue what that entails. Grab your gun and go into the woods and kill a wild animal to eat (they are usually loaded with parasites) or get used to having additives in your food.

We're talking about ground beef here. Soylent Pink .... the other pink meat.

Unless of course they make a salami sandwich.

There is nothing apparently unsafe about this "meat," it is just ground and scraped and treated with a high pH solution to kill potential bacteria that live in and on all meat. The name could stand a re-branding though! If people don't like it then they can stop eating meat altogether, but I doubt very much if this stiff is any danger at all.

well and schools now tell you that you cannot pack certain things for your kids. our school here you can't bring baked goods, etc. so while they serve horrible lunches for kids, they are trying to dictate the healthy food you pack yourself for your children.

That's just stupid. Guidelines are one thing, but actually preventing you from sending your kid to school with some nice home made biscuits?!

radagast, you forgot the beans and the lard to go with the biscuits. I think that's what Laura and Mary, and Billy Colman took in their dinner pails.

Biscuits-3969445, I know that you can't bring home baked good for class parties and school activities, due to who-knows-what allergens (peanut butter) and proper food production (cat hair), but I sincerely doubt that home baked goods are banned by a school from a student's lunch, unless they were moldy.

Nope, home baked goods could have anything in them, are not inspected, etc. It is common to only allow pre-packaged, in plastic, factory made food items in schools now. And no hamsters for a class pet!

I pack my kids' lunches everyday (no pink slime!). Our school has no restrictions or rules about home-packed lunches (except the common sense suggestion that only healthy food be sent in). The only restrictions have to do with food eaten in classrooms that have allergic kids in them (no nuts). But that only affects their snack, not their lunch. I just put the nut stuff with lunch instead.

In our district the children are not allowed to bring anything containing nuts or peanuts into the school.

Not sure who mentioned the salami, but they have a really good point... If you eat bologna, salami or hotdogs I am pretty sure the hamburger 85/15 ratio of meat / slime is still better for you than the other three... I am personally a fan of the scrap meat going into the bologna and salami, so that when you buy the better quality meat it really is still better quality. No one ever buys bologna thinking it is good quality meat.

Remember how congress declared pizza as a vegetable? Yeah... no surprise that they continue to want to poison the children of this country. More medical care, so their portfolio grows as they invest in pharmaceutical companies, and leave people in debt for decades, so they can collect the investments made from credit card companies and banks.

Correct me if I'm wrong here S-Man, but isn't the White House and the Senate controlled by Democrats? Or do you mean that they don't know about it and that's why they haven't stopped it.

S-Man you have serious issues. Can you put your political agenda aside long enough to stay on topic without politicizing the article?

Ok, I"m not a republican but how do you blame the Republicans for everything, yes they have done their share but the Dems record of stupid things is just as long.

S-man

So "the republicans and 1%", is that indicating that ALL republicans are the enemy, but democrats are inherently good people, as long as they aren't adept enough at business to make X amount of money? What an interesting thought. What about the poorest 1% of republicans? Does being at the bottom of the pay scale in their party make them good people? Or does it not work that way? Sort of like that idea of "doesn't matter how good a person you are, if you aren't baptized you're going to hell"? I hear this statement a lot here. Oddly enough the article typically has nothing to do with politics. "This terrible movie made it to the top of the box office!? Its because all the money is controlled by THE REPUBLICANS!!!" "THIS TERRIBLE MOVIE MADE IT TO THE TOP OF THE BOX OFFICE?! It's because the 1% wants to keep everyone dumb so they can take over the world and eat your children like suckling pigs!!!!"

Also, how do you figure that their children aren't eating school cafeteria food? Are republicans not allowed in cafeterias anymore? or do we ask for their parent's voter ID at the lunch counter and the republican kids go left to feast on exotic delicacies while the poor democrat's kids go right to work a sweatshop for the 30 minutes and eat cat food? What an odd school district your child attends, might I suggest changing?

while u may be wise in some ways old man u r also ignorant in others. or in denial..... it seems as you are old and republican u have much time , money , and mental energy invested in this system hence your adamant defense ( all the farmers i know work outside all day and not troll on the internet BTW) but the fact is that both parties are controlled by the same shadow group and the chemicals we eat may not kill us but are bad for us. free radicals added to our cancer balance sheet every day. but here comes the good part....its not real :) none of this in the visible world exists, its just representations of pure abstract thought and all that money you made, and all those wars you supported, and all those chemicals you sprayed on food and then justified sell knowing it was going to hungry people means naught except for the lesson you gained from it. which i hope is a good one brother

pretty sure the democrats are running the USDA at the moment.

Didn't the article say that the USDA made the switch to allow this stuff in 2009? Last time I checked, the Democrats controlled both the White House and Congress then...

Before anyone makes claims about what political parties do...check out who gets most of the donations from the big business interests mentioned above...it's the Democrats.

This is one of the dumbest threads on this board. Obama, Bush and Congress have absolutely nothing to do with this. The USDA is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy headed by a figurehead Secretary who controls its operations to the same extent that the Queen of England sets British Rail schedules.

Everyone who buys prepared food from a grocery store is consuming anti-bacterial additives in minute quantities. The notion that people from certain social classes are somehow immune to e-coli and salmonella and consume non-treated food products is just plain stupid.

Then don't google "McDonald's pink slime" or "Taco Bell pink slime". You'll REALLY want to hurl. There's one article which has a picture of this "product" being manufactured. It looks like a tube of Pepto-Bismol-colored bologna. Ewwww!

dman---did you know that picture attached to that story is MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN?? Its not even beef....can you say McNugget??

Hey 'Vege Hater": This technique WAS being used to conserve every part of the animal, and I agree it should.

Only they used to be feeding this to the dogs. Welcome to the New World.

TCS

I have no problem with using the entire animal, but I thought hot dogs and dog/cat food was made with the scraps. Now to find out that kids are eating it...shudder

All you haters out there get with it or get back to your veggie burgers you wimps.

By "haters" you must mean people with common sense. Or maybe you mean people that haven't been poisoned by over processed food and whose mind is functioning well enough not to use vindictive made up adjectives.

Enjoy your soylent pink.

I like a good steak as much as the next carnivore, but this stuff is just plain NASTY! Fit for animal feed but not for humans...

I mainly take issue with this being the stuff that's scraped off the floor. Seriously, food inspectors? The five second rule for a potato chip or grape in one's own home is one thing, but who knows how long that crap was lying on the slaughterhouse floor!

It is technically safe, if unsavory. You can put all sorts of things into foods, but if you sterilize it after, it's ok - at least as far as science goes. Good lesson there - I trust cows more than I trust chemists.

Back to basics and common sense, and not just scientifically acceptable thresholds of bacteria, etc. I'm glad this is all coming to light, I wonder what else we don't know, huh?

Dman,

LOL do you think congressmen eat HAMBURGER?

They bring in imported Kobe and Argentinian beef ;)

Ha...funny people like you are still paying and will keep payin..lol Thanks I enjoy it...

Wow would love to see the source on that 20% comment....

How is it the kids' fault if the parents are illegal? You sound like a bitter person. I hope your kid eats something disgusting and you can keep your smug attitude when people say they don't care about your child.

Even here in CA, where there is a big problem with illegal immigrants, the figure isn't anywhere close to 20%. Before the recession started it was 1 in 11, and it's probably lower now since a lot of illegals have returned to their home countries.

Wow, 20 percent?! Really?! By golly-goo, what a number! It's so mind-boggling and big! One would almost think that such a big giant percentage could have only come from out your REAR!

I normally abhor ad hominem attacks, but in this case I must relent: you are a paranoid moron.

Are 1/5 of your neighbors illegal? ... I would hate to be one of your neighbors (I imagine they are all nice normal people), just seems like Tom Hanks "The 'Burbs" sort of persecution coming out of your place! "Their Soc Sec cards are fake, I tell you, fake!"

It is hard to reach meat like in a chickens backbone, etc.

This stuff might be more healthy (besides the ammonia) because it contains bone meal and cartilage, both nutritional foods that were never been overlooked by humans for two million years, except for the last 50 or so.

When you eat the chicken, eat the cartilage and some of the soft bone. Natural Glucosamine, Bone Marrow and Calcium. All good for you, especially good for the joints.

Americans are such spoiled little Pu****s. My family butchers our beef by ourselves. Shoot the cow in the head, chain around the rear ankle, hoist her up with the front end loader and slit that throat! Hard work, indeed! If you don't want pink slime, don't eat Micky D's and Taco Bell.

On the other hand, I think we have a right to know that the ground beef we eat is treated with ammonia.

Quick question, in what way does a chicken's activity level effect sanitation procedures in a processing plant? Same goes for grassfed beef? How does that change anything at all about this?

I believe many factory farms handle their own slaughtering and meat processing. Free-range livestock is likely slaughtered in a different environment than these Ford-like assembly lines of meat. It's just a guess, though.

There's nothing as tasty as grassfed, local beef, or free-range chicken. I just wish I could afford that. Unfortunately most of us are resigned to eating whatever they decide to put into the ground beef we have to buy at Walmart since we don't have the resources for the better stuff.

Oh, and getreal, it isn't about the sanitation procedures in the processing plant. If you choose to buy the kinds of meat moongoddess suggested, then you can be pretty certain it doesn't contain the chemical additives and hormones that the typical packaged meat at the store has. Plus, it probably hasn't been processed in a plant at all.

Actually Angie, if you think nothing is better than grassfed beef, you've never had cornfed beef. No comparison!

How do you naturally and with no added chemicals "maintain" fresh fruits and veggies "when they aren't in demand"? Also if you want a peach that's fresh off the tree, you have to go to the tree in the 3 week harvest period. Also, don't attempt to acquire more than 3 or 4 as naturally ripe flies by quite quickly, so take them home ripe and in the next two days they will be long past. All of these things are attainable but incredibly inconvenient. Honestly people, use your head. Most things are, in fact, not a governemnt consipracy and most companies don't make a profit by poisoning their consumers.

I don't understand your fantasy -- It's never been that hard to get a nice juicy peach for weeks in the season.

That was 20 years ago though. IF not some corporate manipulation how do you explain this ? Or were you too young to remember Peaches

"It has never been...20 years ago". Slight contradiction. Anyway, as you said that was weeks in season. Exactly what I said. The reason you used to be able to get ripe fruit in your store is because it was just that, seasonal. Now consumers want all of the options all year long which means the produce must be harvested before it is fully ripe so that it can be stored for later or shipped over long distances. Also it depends heavily on your proximity to the growing area for that crop. When I moved from the southwest (the area is the larges producer of winter produce the US) to the south I was horrified by the poor quality of their produce because that area is all cotton, feedcorn and soybeans. Therefore everything was either harvested before it was ready to get there not looking terrible, or was harvested on time and looked like garbage by the time it got there. Your best option if you want fully ripe, in season produce you have to buy it in season in your area. For most that's extremely difficult.

Also, its much less "corporate manipulation" and more "demand from consumers". If no one was buying off-season, out of area vegetables and fruit then companies surely wouldn't spend the money to ship it in.

You missed my point, getreal...there is only one commodity which maintains itself (and at its own expense, mind you) when not in demand, just think about it. As for the juicy peaches (or tasty tomatoes, if you prefer) they are a nightmare to an efficient, urbanized produce department. They don't hold up on the floor, they weep, they seep, they get spots, they draw flies. They would require near-constant turnover of small quantities from out of cold storage, and frequent shipping as well. Consequently, the efficient produce manager prefers produce with high cellulose-, low water- and sugar-content, qualities which give it durability, shippability and longer shelf life. A little ethylene gas makes it LOOK perfect! He would not stock sweet juicy peaches, as they would cut into his department's profit margin. These simple considerations are ECONOMICALLY valid all the way up the food chain. It is only the old-school farmer, and the long-suffering consumer, who feel differently. Unfortunately they meet only at the roadside fruit stand.

anyone who looks into what is in their food already knows about this and has known for years. it's not about who "blew the whistle" it's about people ignoring what they put in their mouth.