‘Pink Slime’ Furor Means Disaster for U.S. Meat Innovator

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/-pink-slime-furor-means-disaster-for-u-s-meat-innovator.html

by tshtf • 14 years ago

38 62 14 years ago

alanh2• 14 years ago

Cry me a freakin’ river. People are right to be grossed out and offended that this was being fed to their kids across the nation. And we’re supposed to ignore any potential concerns over quality just because some poor, rich “innovator” is struggling now that the truth is out?

Please.

This article reeks of PR — even using much of the same language that BPI does on its own website, pinkslimeisamyth.com / beefisbeef.com. For example, “puffs of ammonia hydroxide.” Puffs? Does that sound like a very technical or descriptive term an actual journalist would independently come up with?

mc323• 14 years ago

I have no sympathy for them either.

People have the right to know what they are getting in a package. If they are ok with scraps so be it. Just label things properly.

Besides, these scraps used to be sold to pet food manufacturers. It's not as though there is no market for it. So maybe a pound of ground meat goes up by 2% to recoup the 2% scraps they can't put in (altho it should be less than 2% increase since the scraps weren't free).

What we actually need is better USDA truth in labeling laws. Such that natural should actually mean something and such that Kobe beef actually means something.

As much as these MFGs have a right to sell this to people, consumers have the equivalent right to know what they are being sold without having to deal with obfuscation and deceit.

If dairy producers watered down their milk, they would be sued for fraud.

In the wine industry blending can be illegal, for example if you blend a cheap grape with an expensive grape and pretend it's all the dear grape. You have to label properly. That's all people ask for. Proper labeling --which I think should also include provenance information, but that's another matter.

alanh2• 14 years ago

> What we actually need is better USDA truth in labeling laws. Such that natural should actually mean something and such that Kobe beef actually means something.

Agreed. Personal pet peeve (this one is FDA, not USDA): Drinks can be labeled as “with no artificial colors or flavors” and yet contain any amount of artificial sweeteners. Only to Uncle Sam is it obvious ‘sweet’ is not a flavor, I suppose.

dubya• 14 years ago

There's a precedent with "Wyngz" (http://askfsis.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1450), which are chicken wing shaped but contain no actual wing. They just need a name catchier than "Pink Slime".

Zikes• 14 years ago

The fact is that there is currently no actual health or safety concern about this "pink slime", and the only reason for the outcry is an emotional reaction to what it looks like before it's mixed with the ground beef.

I would wager that many of them would have an equally emotionally charged reaction to seeing the butchering and separation process for the rest of the beef they eat, but would forego campaigning against it because it's the same beef they've always eaten, and that makes it more "real" or "authentic".

When it comes down to it, any process for turning an animal into edible meat is gross and offensive.

AndyNemmity3• 14 years ago

"the only reason for the outcry is an emotional reaction to what it looks like before it's mixed with the ground beef."

Not true. The reason for a lot of people is the expectation that food is minimally processed. When I buy I steak, I have an expectation that it is literally a cut out of a cow.

This expectation is far larger in Europe than in the US, however it's the same expectation.

I buy a meat product, I am getting a natural thing. The only reason it wasn't an issue before is no one knew. There was no proper labeling.

So simply label things as they are with all the processed parts. Then you will know if there is a real issue with the public.

The refusal to label things is because there will be an outrage, and if people want to refuse to eat pink slime out of their own concerns, that is there choice.

I don't get the minimization of this. You act like this isn't a reasonable choice, it is.

You can choose a different direction, but there should be explicit labeling so we all have that choice.

morestuff2• 14 years ago

If there are no actual health or safety concerns about pink slime, why can't they sell it direct? Why can it only be used as 15% filler?

Can I sell 20 authentic iPhones from 17 real ones reassembled with 3 counterfeits?

joezydeco2• 14 years ago

"Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, whose state is home to a BPI plant, is seeking a congressional investigation of what he calls a “smear campaign” against BPI."

Look, it's a lot simpler than that. It had nothing to do with the idea of mechanically separated meat (wait until they learn about McNuggets!)

A lot of parents quickly got exposed to the concept of beef being treated with ammonia. All the science reports in the world can prove it's effective and safe, but you can't erase that mental image in their heads that (food + poison) = bad. The mindset of a parent is just different from that of a food processing executive.

bmj2• 14 years ago

The issue is that people really don't want to know how their food is produced (remember the ol' adage about sausages and laws?). As soon as they learn what industrial-scale food production looks like, they begin to turn their noses. Did these parents really think that the hamburger a school was serving its kids was composed of anything more than the scraps from the proverbial butcher's floor?

As far as science proving things "safe and effective," this is a sliding scale, no? There have been plenty of things once declared safe and effective that ultimately were discovered to be not so safe and effective (particularly when the science comes from someone sympathetic to the cause).

wpietri4• 14 years ago

That's not quite it. People pretty clearly do want to know. And they would like to believe their food is produced in a way that seems wholesome to them. So yes, I think parents did think that school hamburgers were of roughly the same quality that they'd get if they decided to make it at home.

Hoewver, I think that people a) like things to be cheap, and b) are too lazy to look into things in detail. That worked to the advantage of the meat producers for a while.

But this country has a history of panics around food, and there's been a trend for decades in the direction of less processing. So I'm not going to shed many tears for these folks. What they did may have been innovative when they started, but they shouldn't have expected it to continue happily forever.

jballanc2• 14 years ago

Heh...just wait until the world learns what gives Brie it's distinctive flavor.

ramy_d• 14 years ago

Hah, just read it. Same deal, no one cares until kids start eating it I guess.

cracell2• 14 years ago

Looking at the wikipedia article on Brie and I'm confused as to what you are referring to. You just mean the mold?

joshuahedlund• 14 years ago

I thought I read somewhere that the ammonia made the meat smell bad, so they tried using less, which wasn't enough to kill the E. coli or salmonella or whatever and led to some outbreaks. There's a lot of hyperbole going both ways, but I don't blame people for not wanting to be caught between the tradeoffs of smelly ammonia and sickening E. coli. (Unless of course I've got something inaccurate.)

joezydeco2• 14 years ago

Remember that the processors also tried sterilization via gamma radiation to prevent E. coli and botulism and other nasties. That was met with just as much resistance due to image-vs-science. The meat wouldn't be any more radioactive than the food coming out of your microwave, but just saying "radiation" did it in.

stan_rogers• 14 years ago

Did nobody else here grow up with ammonia cookies[1]? (Almost everything I can find online now is about the peppermint variety, which I didn't much care for. I loved the lemon sort as a kid.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_cookie

freiheit• 14 years ago

I remember an old german anise cookie recipe my grandmother used to make, but had to stop when she couldn't find hartshorn (ammonium carbonate) anymore. I don't recall much ammonia smell or taste in the final cookie.

protomyth• 14 years ago

Well, these parents should avoid ice cream also.

// ice cream plants are not the safest work site

joejohnson2• 14 years ago

This piece is ridiculous! They repeatedly claim that the outrage against Pink Slime is undeserved, citing the fact that the substance hasn't been linked to any reported cases of food-borne illness. Why does that matter? It's disgusting nonetheless. Once large numbers of consumers became very aware of this process, people quickly decided that they would rather not have something so disgusting in their food.

mistercow3• 14 years ago

It is disgusting, but then, so is the concept of peeling off an animal's skin, grinding up its tissues, and eating the result. What's weird to me about the pink slime thing is the inconsistency. Meat is gross. You can ignore that and enjoy your hamburger, or accept it and become a vegetarian.

debacle• 14 years ago

As they say, there's no accounting for taste.

joejohnson2• 14 years ago

I have seen a dead chicken or fish be prepared and cooked before me. This process is not that gross, and I still had an apetite to eat afterward. I think that a lot of people who consume meat are aware that they are eating dead animals, and they have an idea in their minds about how those animals look when they're killed. When the consumers start to learn that the actual meat-manufacturing processing is a lot more disgusting, they will probably revolt (at least some).

Eventually, I predict many more people will demand better meat-handling standards, or more people will become vegetarians. It is clear that informed consumers dislike the current methods imposed by the meat industry.

wpietri4• 14 years ago

One grossness doesn't justify another. Any 10-year-old can tell you how weird and gross sex is. But you're still allowed to say, "Honey, I'll pass on the scat play, thanks."

That's especially true when the grossness is concealed from you via PR and corporate BS. Dog meat is probably not different nutritionally from hamburger. Heck, it could be better. But if McDonald's "fortified" their hamburgers with 5% Lassie, people would still be rightfully pissed.

sophacles2• 14 years ago

I think the parent is pushing an agenda for vegetarianism by presenting a false dilemma. There are all sorts of choices and places and ways of looking at things other than meat is gross so either be ignorant or a vegetarian.

I have killed and eaten (and enjoyed) my own meat. It is not a big deal. I am not ignoring anything about some "fact of gross", I am aware of what is done, I just don't mind. The animal had a decent life, and I get a good meal in exchange (see below).

However, knowing how most meat from the store is processed, how the animals are raised, and how many gross things they feed the animals and treat the product with, has drasitcally changed my meat habits. I still eat and enjoy meat where I know the animal in question, or at least know the animal in abstract (e.g. am aware that it's source is a humane farm), and it is processed in a skilled rather than industrial way. This leads to more meat expense, and less meat eating, but in no way means I will be a vegetarian.

sophacles2• 14 years ago

You will like what they tell you to like for their profit. You are not a person, you are a consumer, and thus must consume what they can produce, because they are producers. When this system breaks down over trivialities like "human taste" and "personal preference", you destroy our democracy.

Or I think that's how the argument goes.

alttab3• 14 years ago

I'm here to assume you are being sarcastic!

rbanffy2• 14 years ago

> It's disgusting nonetheless.

Trust me. It's probably the least disgusting part of the process of killing a cow and putting parts of it on your plate. If people really became aware of how it happens, they'd not be mad about pink slimes - they'd become vegans.

And cows would go extinct in 50 years.

forgottenpaswrd• 14 years ago

Ohh, "innovations" that are based on truth not being exposed work not so well when information could not be so easily controlled, like with Internet.

I started buying eggs only from natural farms the day I started working for an egg "industrial plant". I suppose if people get to see how chicken live enclosed cage barely bigger than the animals they will think it twice about buying them.

In America you have Genetically modified food that you don't know is GM, and all kind of antibiotics and steroids on meat. So it seems that "out of sight, out of mind works"

molsongolden• 14 years ago

I haven't read too deeply about the process but I don't understand how so many people (including people on here on HN) can get so worked up and refer to this meat as "pink slime".

Have you ever trimmed a large cut of meat at home? There are always pieces of meat stuck in the fat that you can't easily get to. They warm up the trimmings then spin them to separate the meat from the fat.

That doesn't sound like pink slime or filler to me. It sounds like little pieces of meat that would otherwise be thrown away and wasted.

srl• 14 years ago

Which are then spritzed with ammonia. As said above, that's really the big issue here - people cannot stand the thought of "contaminants" in food they generally think of as relatively un-processed and healthy. And I sympathize (although I don't actually have much a problem with P.S. myself).

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

What's with the downvotes - molsongolden is right - if it's edible, why shouldn't it be available for those who don't care? But obviously, the fact that most people care will drive this company and this type of meat off the market.

I also don't get why people avoid GM crops - just because they were modified by humans doesn't make it worse. After all, we drive cars and use electronics that don't kill us at every move, right?

wpietri4• 14 years ago

Regarding GM crops, I'm generally for them. Almost all human food has been extensively modified genetically, albeit mainly through breeding and natural mutation, not gene transplantation. So I think a lot of people freaking out about GMOs have a false natural vs artificial thing going on.

However, I think people have reason to be cautious. Pretty much every new technology has a lot of surprises early on as people learn to manage it. Especially given that GM organisms generally can reproduce, it's totally plausible to me that we'll end up with at least one thalidomide or Chernobyl or cane toad or leaded gasoline sized problem for GM crops.

rbanffy2• 14 years ago

> most people care

I have a problem with those who "care", yet probably don't understand why it's better to treat the meat with ammonia than not treat it at all. They obviously realize that processed meat has less fat and this panic may very well raise the fat content of what kids eat.

And they'd be probably OK with cheese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet).

nutjob1232• 14 years ago

I think it is quite simple, consumers feel lied to. Beef marketing is heavily laced with imagery of farms, grass and cows grazing. Even going to a butcher and seeing him make the cut is quite understandable to a consumer. Seeing this un-natural process is a direct conflict with the marketing which has been imprinted upon beef consumers brains. Hence they feel lied too. Another thing to consider is that the fast growing, fresh/local/organic food industry is marketing directly against all kinds of food processing.

ronbo• 14 years ago

why are they in so much trouble? Seems like the market for alternative use proteins would use up this capacity. The dog and cat food market is huge, but has lower margins.

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

Well, people made up their minds - whatcha gonna do? Saying that it's unfair is a bit stupid. It's business...

However, stuff like this could really impact future advances in food production (which the world needs). I still don't get what's the BFD about avoiding GM products - I think it's one of the best things to happen to humanity (how many people didn't die from starvation and how inexpensive is food today - all because of GM crops).

Cloned meat receives the same treatment, when in reality it could be the next best thing for both people and nature...

alttab3• 14 years ago

GM crops, including "roundup-ready" Bt corn have been banned in France, Germany, and other countries. GM crops have been topics of studies that have linked GM food to organ failure, autism, and vitamin deficiency. The pesticides used along side these large, unnatural monoculture crops have been linked to colony collapse disorder and potentially the single driving factor in dying bee populations.

I'm not surprised to find a pro-GMO attitude on a technology site, but there are always two sides. Unfortunately on one you get fear mongering, but on the other you get propaganda from those that directly profit from you agreeing with them.

Links for the curious:

http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.as...

http://myrighttosafefood.blogspot.com/2009/04/germany-bans-m...

http://www.inquisitr.com/206612/honey-bees-dying-from-corn-i...

http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm

helipad• 14 years ago

I'm surprised the furore has suddenly taken place now. 'Pink slime' has been known about for some time.

Indeed, I remember Jamie Oliver's TV show in the US where he actually poured ammonia over meat that had been through a washing machine - yet suddenly the idea gains traction now? Interesting..

edj• 14 years ago

As a little bit of an aside, does anyone else find it infuriating when articles like this are thick with links that don't lead to the destinations you'd expect?

For example, about halfway through this article there's mention of a prize-winning New York Times article that popularized the phrase "pink slime". I'd like to read the article, so I clicked on the link... and got a stock ticker quote for [NYT]. I get that Bloomberg is in the financial news business, but come on! There's no footnote with the actual link and not even a title for me to search with. It's just bizarre.

dmckeon• 14 years ago

The NYT article is at: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=1&p...

and is mentioned in: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/the-pink-men...

nickler• 14 years ago

The factory farming debate is finally entering the mainstream mindset. It's a pandoras box of ugly truths that no one will be comfortable seeing inside.

I spent two years looking to find ways to innovate away from factory farming, and every solution seems to revolve around major market forces and changing consumer habits.

Disruption in this market looks to be, bottom up, coming from cottage/micro producers, and thus, slow. If someone can efficiently disrupt distribution away from grocery chains you'll see a major change in food consumption, in the success of more small, high quality producers. Look at high end wine as an indicator.

As a restaurateur/chef for many years this is a passion, but I can't see it getting fixed anytime soon, even with the gastro-activism we're starting to see now.

Any of you smart app builders looking to disrupt something mind crushingly difficult, look at food.

OpieCunningham• 14 years ago

“BPI’s product is no more or less safe than other parts of hamburger,” Marler said. “There’s a lot of scraps that get put into hamburger because that’s what the hell hamburger is.”

Um, no. A hamburger is ground beef underbelly or chuck. You can add lots of stuff - pink slime, soy protein, corn syrup, dried onion powder, MSG - but that stuff isn't hamburger, it's just what you've added.

zeruch• 14 years ago

While I audibly laughed at the idea that there is a "Meat Industry Hall of Fame" I am really finding it difficult to believe that there was somehow "innovation" here (I really think that word is overused, and in this case repulsively so).

Now I don't fault the guy for coming up with a method to separate meat from fat mechanically (itself not an act of villiany), but the end result is what it is...and calling it "lean finely textured beef" stretches well into absurdity, especially when you add the lack of clarity as to what an "ammonia puff" entails and its real impacts, the fallout once its in the public eye should not be surprising.

gdubs• 14 years ago

Although it was interesting to see the other side of this controversy, I have to agree with the folks here who felt it was too much like a PR piece. I don't know why, but every time the article mentioned the 'blogger', I detected a bit of disdain.

The standout point for me, from the Bloomberg article was that ammonia occurs naturally in beef. I don't know how much more appetizing it makes it, but it starts to sound a lot different than a ammonia of the household-cleaner variety.

What I don't understand is why, with all of the food-science being done on mass produced meat to make it smell like this, and feel like that, we even need to bother using animals in the first place. This recent piece by Mark Bittman on a new and improved fake-meat is pretty interesting in that regard: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/finally-fak...

The people here who talk about killing your own meat, and how people know that an animal died to get to their plate, and so on, I think, are perpetuating a false equivalence. The common perception, crafted by the food industry, is a cow on a placid farm that lives to a nice old age. A lot of money goes towards alleviating the image of thousands of sick, smelly cattle cramped into prison cells. (Full disclosure: I've become more and more of a vegetarian over time.)

So, besides moral issues related to suffering and health issues like increased resistance to antibiotics due to improper handling of waste at farms, there's also the issue of how much petroleum it takes to produce a calorie of beef (3 to 1 calories, or something similar if I remember correctly). And how toxic some of these farms are to the water supply. And how cow-released methane may be one of the main contributors to global warming. And so on.

But, I'm not really posting here to posit what some may consider to be fringe views regarding our food supply. What I found interesting about the article, and I'm guessing why it was posted here in the first place is that the Roth was a hacker. He came up with a brilliant solution to a problem. And, it would appear from the article that his technology is now under-fire because it makes for an easy target. Ammonia is the stuff you clean your counter with; you're not supposed to spray it on your hamburger.

I'm not a fan of ends-justify-the-means tactics, an after reading the article I do get the sense that people who would like to see reform in the food industry are using this as a way of raising public outcry. Shining a light on where our food comes from is good. But, unfortunately the outcome of this story will likely mean that an innovator is the loser and the industry at large will carry on just fine.

What would be great is to see Roth, or someone else with a hacker mentality set about transforming the industry into something more sustainable and less reliant on the farming of animals. The Bittman piece linked to above shows that it's possible for us to begin replacing at least some of our meat into non-animal varieties. Transforming a really old-school industry full of entrenched interests and out-dated – prehistoric – means of production should appeal to someone here, right?

Anyway, sorry for the long post – the subject is fascinating to me.

‘Pink Slime’ Furor Means Disaster for U.S. Meat Innovator

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