Posted on 03/29/2012 6:33:52 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
Hy-Vee Inc., after being pressured by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, announced Wednesday that its stores would continue to offer ground beef containing a controversial ground beef additive.
Producers call it "lean, finely textured beef," but it has become widely known as "pink slime."
Hy-Vee's announcement, revealed during a Wednesday afternoon press conference in Des Moines with Branstad and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, marks a quick reversal of the Iowa-based chain's stance last week to join several other grocery chains and drop products containing the additive.
"The governor called and expressed his concern," Ruth Comer, a Hy-Vee spokeswoman said in an interview. "We were already looking at what we might do to take care of customers, and the governor's voice certainly did factor into the feedback we were already receiving."
(Excerpt) Read more at omaha.com ...
They may call it lean textured beef, but who knows what the hell it is..
Hey, Navy! Do you know what this soylent green consists of?
I thought it was vegetables added to the beef to satisfy the veg-heads.
Why would a Governor do something like that? Does he have stock in pink slime?
“I don’t KNOW what’s in it - just shut up and eat your slime”
The triumph of raw emotion over reason.
ALL Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, ND, SD, MO, Southern MN, Western IL politicians are “Bought and Paid For” my “Big Ethonal(sp?) and “Big FOOD”.
Lots of packing houses in Iowa. IBP is based in Iowa.
And this is a non issue really. If you think this is bad, never see sausage being made.
About 10 years ago, I stopped liking drive-through hamburgers as much as I once did.
All of them. Carl’s Junior (Hardees I think elsewhere). McDonalds. BK. Even Wendy’s, which once seemed wonderful.
They just didn’t taste the same ... none were ever truly delicious any more. I still like them ok. Wendy’s can pull off pretty good burgers. In ‘n Out can put together a tasty sandwich. But not even they, taste like what you could cook in the backyard.
Why is that?
I wonder if all of them, changed to including the pink slime?
That and meat “extenders”. Soy products mostly. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to eat off the dollar menu.
Big Ethonol needs to go away. We need to stop subsidizing it and stop mandating it in the gas.
Whoever thought of the name ‘pink slime’ is a genius.
Could anything sound nastier?
But, it’s probably no worse than a lot of stuff we eat.
I asked for it at the grocery store, but they were out.
You know, I bet you’re right.
That would explain the “Angus” marketing.
None of the places want to say they’re offering special burgers which aren’t using meat extenders, so they say “100% Angus Beef” - to avoid saying: “these are the burgers without soy products and other extenders like we use in everything else”.
That’s gotta be it. And explains why the various Angus burgers are expensive.
Thanks.
Of course they don’t taste like ‘backyard burgers.’ But what’s in your backyard burgers? Do you really know.
Better just shut up and eat.
My wife buys range fed eggs, not cheap but when we go back to the store bought, quality doesn't seem to be there. Whether real or in our minds, don't know but she keeps buying the expensive eggs.
Actually it’s what’s referred to in the industry as “Bader meat”. It’s perfectly good and wholesome in it’s content and derivation.
A machine called a Bader or similar machine removes the remaining meat on the bones that cannot be removed by hand. It’s more finely textured because of the process that the machine uses (high pressure) to remove the remaining meat. A small percentage is added to regular ground product so that the texture is basically unchanged.
Frankly, this is much ado about nothing.
Agree.
I’ve been in the meat business for 30 years pal and I know what I’m talking about.
BTW you have been reported to the admin moderators.
Ask your butcher. Back during one of the tainted beef scares, the wife asked what’s what with the ground beef. Turned out we had it backwards. The stuff that looked like it was prepackaged was actually ground on premises.
This is reminiscent of ‘You don’t want to see them make sausage’ group.
It does prove how easy it is to ‘panic’ a group though.
Lets start calling coffee “Black Urine”, make it official and let all the ‘newscasters’ talk about it nightly.
Kind of like years back some one on the local news (DC area) kind of threw in (as a gag) a comment of an impending ‘toilet paper shortage’.
In less than a week, there was a toilet paper shortage as all the lemmings ran off and started scoffing up all the toilet paper they could find.
BTW, being a ‘Westpac Warrior’ back in the 50’s and 60’s no telling what kind of goodies the natives were selling us on the street corners or even what the USN was using to ‘stretch’ the commisary dollar and we ALL have pet names for different things.
When someone says “This tastes like $hI-”, I just reply, “having never (knowingly) eaten $hI-, I can not comment”.
-—Frankly, this is much ado about nothing.——
That’s what it sounds like to me. The only thing that concerns me is the processing with ammonia. What does that mean? How does it compare to other forms of chemical treatment of meat, or other foods?
I always loved that Jack-in-the-box commercial
where they are in a meeting with a chart of a
steer up on the wall and Jack asks them
“Now where is the angus?”
They took it down though, a shame.
“I’ve been in the meat business for 30 years pal and I know what I’m talking about” Then I guess YOU are part of the problem. By the way I am a Farm Boy from Central Iowa So I KNOW what I am talking about PAL! Oh and REPORT away.
You are, of course correct.
Thanks for your opinion.
This Iowan was VERY glad to see this. Rather than single-handedly try to prevent an out-of-control freight train from going off a cliff, Hy-Vee had understandably caved in to public pressure. That pressure started rolling and gained all its momentum out of sheer ignorance.
There's nothing wrong with "pink slime." It's 100% lean beef and it's a good value.
But, apparently, I'm in the minority even around here. To quote my fifth-grader when the earlier story came on the car radio, "Why is the governor talking about PINK SLIME?! THAT STUFF IS SOOOO DISGUSTINGLY GROSS!!!!" (which led to a discussion about what he thought he *knew* about the subject).
(I have no affiliation with the beef industry whatsoever, other than as a satisfied customer.)
If you’re such an expert, maybe your counter to someone else’s point should consist of more than namecalling. Unless you mean to imply that you’re an expert at namecalling?
As for myself, I’m glad I looked up what a Baader machine was, and I’m glad I’m not as prone to media induced hysteria as you seem to be.
It’s been used for some time as has citric acid as a bacteria suppressor.
It’s in miniscule quantities and dissipates shortly after application.
Very effective and I’ve never ever heard of anyone getting sick because of it.
They don’t salt the patties as much as they used to.
When it's outlawed (and can't you see that coming?,) the same people railing against it now will be furious that there's no cheaper packages of ground beef available.
Haha I agree, that commercial was classic.
The Jack near me, stopped selling the breakfast pita, not sure if anyone else actually liked those things, I sure did.
“They just didn’t taste the same ... Why is that?”
It’s because they now all cook their patties into little disk-shaped coal patties because they don’t have the confidence that their ground beef isn’t contaminated with e coli, and the only way to assure themselves that their food won’t kill their patrons is to incinerate it.
Go to Safeway and buy chuck on sale and have them grind it on the spot and you’ll have ground beef guaranteed to be safe and pure and fit to cook to rare perfection. If bone in chuck, be sure to get a center-cut piece, as the end cuts are mostly fat gristle and bone.
Pink slime.
Isn’t that another name for “code pink”?
Fascism is as fascism does. Governors have no business in trying to intimidate private retail operations into how they respond to consumer pressure.
BTW, for many, the issue isn’t necessarily whether pink slime is healthy or not, it’s an issue of labeling: knowing what a product contains, so that one can knowingly choose or avoid a particular product.
No JiBs here in Georgia.
Five Guys makes a pretty good burger though,
and you get LOTS of fries.
-—It’s been used for some time as has citric acid as a bacteria suppressor.
It’s in miniscule quantities and dissipates shortly after application.-—
Makes sense. It sounds like the media made a hash of the facts. Imagine that.
And, in this case, it's labelled "__% lean ground beef." That's enough for me. I might like to know where it came from but, apparently, even that's not important because the lack of it hasn't stopped me from buying it.
Any consumers who feel they need to know that some percentage of it went through a centrifuge to remove some fat or, exactly how it was treated to kill e-coli, should make their feelings known to the vendors.
Unfortunately, rather than go to such trouble, many consumers would rather their nanny-state legislators would do something (ANYTHING) to show they care about their constituents' well-being, regardless of the facts.
The sausage I buy doesn’t involve ammonia.
It does involve acid of some sort (citric or lactic), which is being used as a biocide. That is what sausage does.
Ammonia is used all over the place because it will raise the pH quickly, and dissipate.
How come “using all of the buffalo” is now considered a BAD thing by the media?
Terry Branstad, the pro-Pink Slime Candidate!
Yeah, I’d want THAT on my resume!
Continues the trend of Democrats becoming too dense to realize when something is a political loser anymore.
Correct.
May as well outlaw hot dogs too as the brown slurry that is injected into casings (we used to call it “edible diarrhea” when I worked in the plant) is far more disgusting to watch being processed than LFTB. Even the high end hot dogs.
That, however, doesn’t make them any less wholesome or nutritious or even tasty. Processing Pork, Beef, or Poultry is not a pretty business but it’s the nature of the beast(pun intended).
I see Branstad's statement as being pro-consumer, pro-jobs, pro-reason, anti-emotion and anti-ignorance.
But, sure, hopping on the anti-"pink slime" bandwagon is more popular among the common sheeple and much easier than trying to inject some logic into the conversation.
Terry Branstad is a Republican.
...except the loss of several hundred jobs.
And the loss of 900,000 pounds of "burger" per day from the market, thus driving up both the price of ground beef, and also increasing it's average fat content, since the slime is essentially free of fat.
Such a great "win" for "health conscious" consumers.
I've seen articles citing (shudder) Center for Science in the Public Interest, and even they say they are NOT concerned about FTLB; that that are much worse things in food to worry about!
The video clip "Pink Slime Chicken Nuggets Video" is from our Interesting Facts and Statistics Category.
Video Details: Meat processors can eek out a few more percent of profit from chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows by scraping the bones 100% clean of meat. This is done by machines, by passing bones leftover after the initial cutting through a high pressure sieve. Because it's crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially and dyed with artificial color. The resulting paste goes on to become the main ingredient in many of America's favorite mass-produced and processed meat-like foods and snacks: bologna, hot dogs, salami, pepperoni, Slim Jim-like jerkys, and of course chicken nuggets.
Several months ago the Internet got excited about “pink slime,” something the meat industry makes from leftover cow parts to get more meat out of cows. Videos like this one began circulating the web and getting mixed up with gross pictures like this one (which seems to actually be chicken nugget slime – as best I can tell, beef “pink slime” stole the name from chicken “pink slime,” which is actually slimy, whereas the beef “slime” just looks like solid little meat trimmings.)
“Unlike LFTB, many nuggets and cylinders are made with mechanically separated meat. Chicken, turkey, and pork carcasses, already picked clean of presentable cuts, are pushed through filtering machinery under high pressure, removing every last scrap of tissue. The resulting fragments are used in chicken nuggets, turkey and pork sausage, and many other processed meats.
Mechanically separated beef, unlike chicken, turkey, and pork, is no longer approved for human consumption, because of concerns that bovine spinal cord fluid could spread mad cow disease. The final bits of beef are recovered via other methods that, while highly mechanized, are less traumatic to the carcass, minimizing spinal fluid leakage. So if you’re averse to ingesting spinal fluid, beef-based pink slime is actually a better bet than chicken nuggets or hot dogs containing pork or poultry.”
So, is pink slime any worse than pink cylinders, yellow nuggets, brown breakfast sausage patties, or any number of mystery meat products? Probably not. And for what it's worth, it isn't even slimy.
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