I've been seeing a lot of distorted information about "pink slime" recently. I was directly involved with a lot of research regarding this process and BPI when I was in grad school. While Louie's Finer Meats has never used (and never will use) this type of product, there is a place for this product and I feel obligated to defend the meat industry against falsehoods. The fact is that this is a good source of safe, nutritious protein. In a world where people are going to sleep hungry and even in a wealthy country like we have, people are getting pinched by increasing food prices, it is immoral and wasteful to NOT use this technology if it exists. Removing this product from the food supply will increase beef prices for all of us and will be wasteful. By separating fat from lean meat, they are also able to use the fat for other non-food byproducts such as biodiesel.

 Nearly all Americans have eaten this product since it was blended into ground beef blends for nearly all fast-food restaurants, school lunch programs, and more until recently when McDonald's and others stopped using it because of the controversy. I ate this product frequently during our research, and continued to eat at fast-food restaurants knowing that this was an ingredient. I know that BPI is a company that does more than most companies regarding food safety, technology, and innovations. It's a shame that good people will lose their jobs over this. I correctly predicted that one day the public would react negatively to this. I'm glad that I didn't take a job with BPI (they were aggressively trying to recruit people with good paying jobs). 

 Here's two industry articles about the controversy:

 Popular and social media in renewed ire over industry use of recognized safe intervention  

By Michael Fielding on 3/8/2012 - Meatingplace

 The always attention-grabbing “your kids are in danger” cry has thrust back into the national conversation about the use of lean, finely textured beef (LFTB) – colloquially known as “pink slime.”

McDonald’s and Burger King have stopped buying from Dakota Dunes, S.D.-based Beef Products Inc. (BPI) over relentless pressure by the public and the media to not use one of its products that is added to ground beef. Now the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is the latest target of bloggers and activists, one of whom has created an online petition at for-profit website change.org.

Even ABC aired a report Wednesday, linking former Undersecretary of Agriculture JoAnn Smith to BPI’s board of directors.

The latest dust-up began Monday, when the online journal The Daily reported that the Agricultural Marketing Service plans to purchase 7 million pounds of product from BPI “in the coming months.”

Carl Custer, one of the two former USDA microbiologists quoted in The Daily, alleged that the product isn’t muscle but rather connective tissue. But connective tissue isn't red. Any redness (or pink, in this case) is associated with myoglobin — meaning it's of muscle origin.

“We actually have equipment in place specifically designed to remove any sinew, cartilage, or connective tissue that may come in with raw materials, just like the companies that take trim and produce ground beef,” Rich Jochum, BPI’s corporate administrator told Meatingplace. “Our finished product is typically 94 percent lean.”

The latest criticism comes as new USDA standards have quadrupled the amount of testing required for both boneless beef and finished product. New rules for supplying commodity ground beef to federal nutrition programs – 78 percent of which goes to the National School Lunch Program – through the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service went into effect July 2010.

LFTB is permissible in the school lunch program, although the product must have at least one scientifically validated intervention that proves a 3-log pathogen reduction, as LFTB could come from external carcass trim and sometimes has a higher microbial load potential.

But for all the yuck factor, the industry is concerned that the public pressure may eliminate a cost-effective, safe protein source that makes use of trim that is otherwise lost are warranted.

“We use ammonium hydroxide, which we believe is the most effective food safety intervention available based upon our research,” Jochum said.

The choke-hold could cripple Beef Products Inc., which uses a proprietary process that relies on ammonium hydroxide gas to raise the naturally occurring levels of ammonium hydroxide in the beef. That in turn increases the meat’s pH to eliminate pathogens. The company has already had to reduce its hours of operation.  

Ammonium hydroxide isn’t the only intervention used in producing LFTB. Cargill uses citric acid, just one of several alternatives to treat what it calls finely textured beef (FTB) to reduce the pathogen load.

These lean products are included in approximately 70 percent of all ground beef products.

"Given the increasing demand for animal protein products by people around the world hungry for them, together with a decreasing global supply, not using this lean beef for human consumption would be wrong for a variety of reasons," Cargill spokesman Mike Martin told Meatingplace.

“If FTB were not used in ground beef, more muscle meat would be used, further straining an already limited supply,” Martin said, estimating that 1.5 million more head of cattle would need to be harvested annually to provide enough beef to equate to the volume of FTB produced in the U.S.

To make the product, meat companies use USDA-inspected beef trimmings that contain both fat and lean and are nearly impossible to separate using a knife. The trimmings are then simmered at low heat to separate the fat from the muscle. Food-grade ammonium hydroxide – also commonly used as a direct food additive in baked goods, cheeses and chocolates – is just one process.

The product is later blended into foods like ground beef. “Producing LFTB ensures that lean, nutritious, safe beef is not wasted in a world where red meat protein supplies are decreasing while global demand is increasing as population and income increases,” said American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle.

 Meat industry counters boneless lean beef critics

MeatPoultry.com, March 8, 2012 by Meat&Poultry Staff

 WASHINGTON, and DAKOTA DUNES, SD – Meat industry stakeholders are speaking out against negative reports surrounding the use of boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT) in the food supply.

 Beef Products Inc. has come under fire for a process it developed that uses the compound ammonium hydroxide to rid the trimmings of foodborne pathogens such as E. coli. McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell reportedly stopped using lean beef trimmings treated with ammonium hydroxide.

 But the Food and Drug Administration designated ammonium hydroxide as "generally recognized as safe" for use in food by the Food and Drug Administration in 1974. In addition to use in beef trimmings, ammonium hydroxide has been used as a leavening agent in baked foods. In 2001, the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service approved the use of ammonium hydroxide as a food safety tool.

 "At Beef Products, Inc., we produce lean beef from trim. Trim is the meat and fat that is trimmed away when beef is cut into steaks and roasts. This lean beef is used in hamburger, sausage, ground beef, and as a valuable ingredient in many other foods," the company said in a statement.

 "We use a natural compound – called ammonium hydroxide, which is widely used in the processing of numerous foods, such as baked goods, cheeses, gelatins, chocolate, caramels, and puddings – to slightly increase the pH level in beef and improve its safety," the statement continued.

 The American Meat Institute weighed in on the subject, saying recent media reports had created an inaccurate impression of boneless lean beef trimmings by calling it "pink slime".

 "The fact is, BLBT is beef," said J. Patrick Boyle, president of AMI. "The beef trimmings that are used to make BLBT are absolutely edible.

 "In fact, no process can somehow make an inedible meat edible; it's impossible," he added. "In reality, the BLBT production process simply removes fat and makes the remaining beef more lean and suited to a variety of beef products that satisfy consumers’ desire for leaner foods."

Boyle went on to say that that boneless lean beef trimmings are a sustainable product because the process makes use of lean meat that would otherwise be thrown away.

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