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Nati Harnik / AP file
A sample of lean finely textured beef, also known as 'pink slime,' is displayed at the Beef Products Inc. plant in South Sioux City, Neb., where the product is made. USDA officials say several meat producers have asked to indicate use of the product on package labels.
As consumers clamor for more transparency about the beef product dubbed “pink slime,” federal agriculture officials have agreed to allow several meat producers to list the stuff on package labels.
That means grocery shoppers soon could know whether some packages of ground beef contain the ammonia-treated meat that has been at the heart of a controversy that has shuttered plants, scuttled jobs and sparked uproar over the contents of the nation’s hamburgers.
Dirk Fillpot, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food safety branch, said Tuesday he could not identify the firms that sought labeling changes, or even say how many were involved. He only confirmed that the agency has received voluntary requests from beef firms to change their labels to indicate it contains lean finely textured beef, or LFTB.
“We’ve determined that such requests will be approved,” Fillpot said.
At least one big beef maker, Cargill Inc., said that firm officials had requested the labeling changes, in part to address the groundswell of consumer concerns.
“Voluntary labeling is one of the options we are looking at, although no final decision has been made to do this,” said Mike Martin, a Cargill spokesman. “We will also be working with our customers to gather their input to collectively reach mutually acceptable options.”
One advocate who helped launched the controversy said it’s about time consumers' wishes were considered.
“If the product had been labeled from the start, I doubt we’d see anything like the consumer backlash that the media has stirred up in the past few weeks,” said Bettina Elias Siegel, author of the blog “The Lunch Tray,” which helped force agriculture officials to allow schools to opt out of using the beef byproduct in school lunches.
At the heart of the controversy has been the use of an estimated 700 million to 800 million pounds of LFTB, which is added to about 10 billion pounds of ground beef consumed in the U.S. each year, according to the American Meat Institute.
It consists of lean beef carcass trimmings, which have been separated from fat and treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill harmful bacteria such as E. coli O157 and salmonella, before being ground, compressed into blocks and quick-frozen. Cargill treats LFTB differently, using citric acid to change the acidity of the beef to make it inhospitable to pathogens.
Beef Products Inc., the South Dakota firm whose founder, Eldon Roth, created and patented the ammonia process, provided msnbc.com with records that they said showed that raising the pH of the beef from about 5.7, its natural level, to a pH of 8.5 reduces E. coli to undetectable levels.
But the product was dubbed “pink slime” in a 2002 email by a USDA microbiologist who found it distasteful. Concern was raised again recently when celebrity chef Jamie Oliver campaigned against the product being served in school lunches.
Combined with Siegel's quest to get the product out of schools, the current controversy led big U.S. supermarkets, including Safeway Inc., Kroger Co. and Supervalu Inc. to pledge to stop using the products.
It forced BPI to halt production at some of its plants last week, and this week forced another processor, AFA Foods, into bankruptcy.
That’s despite protests from governors of beef-producing states who say the LFTB has been maligned, and top food safety experts, who say that BPI’s product is safe.
“I think their process was validated pretty well,” said Gary Acuff, a microbiologist and director of the Center for Food Safety for Texas A&M college of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Some experts, such as Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and a professor at the University of Minnesota, say LFTB may actually make ground beef a little better.
“If 750,000,000 pounds of relatively safe protein is going into hamburger, it’s got to beat having the same amount of raw product going in,” Osterholm said in an email to msnbc.com.
Much of the contention in scientific circles has centered on whether the ammonia-treated product should actually be considered meat, or whether it should be considered and identified as an additive, said Randall K. Phebus, a professor of food safety and defense at the Food Science Institute at Kansas State University.
Others have urged that labeling products with LFTB should be mandatory. It's not clear whether voluntary measures would provide consumers with adequate information, because some companies might choose to label their products while others would not, some experts suggested. The USDA agreement was first reported on the meat industry online site Meatingplace.com.
Fillpot, of the USDA, said he couldn’t discuss whether the agency was considering making it a requirement. Beef producers who received USDA approval could start changing the labels immediately, agency officials said.
Industry and government leaders have an obligation to help families make informed choices, said Arthur Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and a contributor to msnbc.com.
"If consumers want to know information about the food they or their children eat, then manufacturers and grocers ought to find ways to get that information to them," he said, noting it could come through labels, websites, toll-free numbers, pamphlets or even signs at stores. "I believe there is a fundamental right to know all you wish to know about what you eat."
The solution to current crisis will require extraordinary levels of transparency, noted both Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer, and Doug Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University. Both have urged BPI and others to be as public as possible with their processes, even posting data online that describe how food is processed, produced and handled and the results of safety tests.
On Tuesday, BPI officials appeared to agree with at least part of that, saying that the voluntary labeling change could help rehabilitate the industry’s beleaguered image.
“[It] will be an important first step in restoring consumer confidence in their ground beef,” BPI spokesman Craig Letch wrote in an email to msnbc.com.
Taste tests consistently show that consumers prefer hamburger that contains BPI’s treated product, Letch added.
“We feel this development will allow more customers to provide options to consumers and pave the way for BPI’s lean beef to reestablish its place in the market.”
Related stories:
'Pink slime' panic grows online: Are we overreacting?
McDonald's drops use of gooey 'pink slime' in hamburger meat
Leave a Comment:
Have anyone heard about some type of glue they put meat together, by combining a solution to make the meat look bigger?
the high end ground beef, the stuff i buy 93% lean or 97% lean doesn't have room for that stuff, too fatty. and where i buy it i watch the guy grind up the meat when i buy it so i know it comes from primal cuts not that "stuff" but my real question is for people who have issue with this, do you eat hotdogs?
"Pink slime" exists so that the makers of low cost beef products can claim their product is 100% beef, as to suggest the product contains no fillers. Accept that a 5lb box of beef patties that sells for $4.99 must either contain vegetable-based fillers, such as soy, or in the case of those labeled 100% beef, pink slime.
Two certainties here. The beef industry is going to raise prices on ground beef and tell you that the higher prices are due to not being able to use the LFTB filler. The LFTB filler is going to find its way back into food products some way or another and probably already has. End result, we pay more $$$ and they make more $$$.
i love me some pink slime!
I've worked as a Supervisor in processed foods and it is a cut throat industry. Oh the corners cut, yet the quality is superior, as they say. Resigned from a position when Wal-Mart didn't want the product due to e-coli concerns........the company decides to put a different Julian date on it and ship it out........I said no I wasn't going to release that product and resigned..........$$$$$$, not people, ethics, morals in this country. GREED.
I worked at BPI in South Sioux City, NE for a month as a QA Supervisor and the owner was a major ass. Hope he loses his ass in this crap.
Also, frozen patties in a package?? Yum.....almost 40% fillers. Like 19.99% of LFTB and 19.99% of head meat and cheek meat was allowed. This is allowed to pass as hamburger?? Yummy...........almost 40% of junk in your frozen burgers!!!!
Fire up the grill........all this talk is making me hungry for eating some sh$t.
This was written about and exposed in a great new book–
"THE DEVIL'S BANKER" by Gary Van Haas on Amazon-com
Check it out ifyou want to know the truth what's really going on!
People are silly. ALL FOODS have something that would disgust you, how it's made, where/what it's from, how it's stored etc. The rule you should follow is did you like this particular food item 5 minutes ago before you read an article about it? Then stop the insanity! lol I love hamburger, it's my favorite meat, if it's labeled with "pink slime" or not will not make a difference to me and it shouldn't to you.
People are now concerned with it being served in the schools. I bet a majority of these "concerned" parents don't cook home cooked meals. They use boxed items and call it good.
Simple fix from your butcher.
Watch the ads. Find roasts or steaks that are on sale...London broil=ground round, top sirloin steaks=ground sirloin, boneless chuck or x-rib roasts=ground chuck. Value packs or buy one/get one free will save you lots of money. Pick out or have your butcher cut or pick out a fresh package and have him or her grind it for you! Why pay $2.99-$6.99 a pound for pre packaged when you can get a value pack of london broil for as little as $1.99 lb or a x-rib roast for as little as $2.49 lb.? Way cheaper than buying pre packaged ground beef and no slime. Take it home and pack it up in 1# packages and freeze it or have the butcher do this for you. Most professional meat shops don't charge extra for this. Never buy meat from a store that doesn't have a team of professional meat cutters available at all times that can give you the proper service you deserve and pay for. Also be sure to shop in a clean and sanitary store that cuts the meat on the premises. If your store doesn't have enough help...have a talk with the store manager and tell him or her that you expect better service. Get to know your butcher so that you can telephone your order and save time.
Maybe the USDA should regulate more. That way you and I will never be able to create a startup competitor to the current meat producers. Try starting a business today. Your biggest road blocks are not from competitors, Walmart or Wall Street. You'll find the biggest road blocks are from the FDA, USDA, Department of Labor, Department of Revenue, Fema, etc. This is the truth and the Government road blocks are getting bigger. It's going to be hard to progress going down the current path. Our kids will most likely always work for someone else.
If you don't want to eat pink slime then you definately don't want to eat sausage. Sausage is the parts you woulnd't even COOK to eat if you had the animal whole. They grind up the HEAD, (treat it with ammonia, just like LFTB) and stuff it in an intestine, and you LOVE it.
This is why I don't eat hotdogs or sausage, I know what is in it. Yes, I know the stuff that is in the fat that I cut off my steak is technically BEEF, but the reason I cut it off is I DON'T WANT TO EAT IT.
I don't know about pink slime, but I would like to see requirements to label foods containing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) , Why not tell us what we're buying so we can make an informed choice? It is because the companies that promote this poison don't want us to know.
GMOs are going to turn out to be one of the most ill-begotten experiments on humans ever contrived.
Our elected officials are putting the brakes on small time farmers who raise Non-GMO meats and produce. They don't have the money to lobby like the big boys.
I agree, I would rather eat NON-GMO products, raise my own produce but not allowed to have any type of livestock. Go figure. . .
I hadn't heard of this. But I don't eat ground beef. It sounds disgusting though. That it is basically scraped from the floor and treated with chemicals just so they can sell more products and make more money is horrifying. It's pretty much dog food.
Label it and put in on the shelf, let consumers decided. If the cost is cheaper, people (me included) will eat beef with it. We've been eating it for over 10 years.
To be honest I'm more worry about the antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals that are used to make the beef, poultry, pork grow bigger and fatter.
And what about all the genetic engineering that's going on with our entire food source?
Pink Slime Is and Was animal feed. It should be Kept as animal feed. In the year 2000 some bright exec. decided they could make more money feeding it to people. What's next? Maybe some tasty human scraps added for flavor? Get real-don't eat this stuff. And if your store sells it, find another that doesn't.
Ammonia in your beef? This isn't even dog food. (if you care about your dog). Hey-a lot of chickens are cooled in Clorine and it Does get into the meat. The USDA need to get real. I would advise going to their site and letting Them know that we will Not stand for adulerated food.
the truth is that the meat inspectors found that they couldn't contaminate the test samples like they had been doing to regular beef samples due to the treatment so they started calling it pink slime to contaminate the name
Is this a conspiracy to get people to eat vegetarian? The meat industry under attack for producing and selling a product they can not put on a label. Maybe the meat industrial complex is destroying it's own products. Consumers are stupid so says the industry, they are misinformed so says the meat industry, we ain't buying and your losing money and we are stupid. Interesting. Any more questions why government needs more oversight not less. Who is going to pay our long term medical bills from poisoned meat or eventually the bacteria that learns to survive the process? The bug that learns to eat pink slime will more than likely enjoy eating you.
best think is to grind your own beef. I always wondered what is all that liquid that filled up the pan when cooking store bought mince meat. No i grind my own or go to farmers market. what a difference. And taste of course is way better. you can get a grinder attachment to regular Kitchen aid mixer and it works well. Next think is to do my own sausage.