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What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

newfoodeconomy.org

81–90 of 320 posts

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#81
post #3

Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.

>Why is this supposed to upset me? The factor that dominates our conversations about food - social class. We have a set of reflexive attitudes about food that are largely uncorrelated with health, nutrition or the environment, but are strongly correlated with the social class of who eats what. Advanced meat recovery is the ultimate in nose-to-tail eating, allowing us to make use of almost every gram of edible meat on…

Is this what it has come to? Accusing of classism the people upset that food labeling regulations are getting slowly dismantled?

Please consider that using the whole animal is a different thing to labeling the resulting product however they want.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#82
post #14

The "pink slime" story is mostly fake news. ABC News coined the term, and later paid $177 million to settle a lawsuit over it. It was the largest defamation settlement in the history of the United States. The story took on a life of its own, though. This image[1] became synonymous with "pink slime" (and still appears in a Google image search for the term) even though nobody knows where the image came from. Didn't sto…

> mostly fake news

Except people generally were rightfully surprised to learn the basic product they thought they understood contained some modern industrial cost-saving additive.

If that's not news, I don't know what is.

> defamation settlement

There's no evidence ABC were acting with malice or their story was untrue. A settlement just means they wanted out of the argument.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize the HackerNews guidelines disallow comments that begin with "Did you even read the article?!", but I have to wonder if that prohibition applies to comments that themselves post a link that directly contradicts what is being argued. That exact link you posted states: > USDA regulations for procurement of frozen fresh ground beef products state that "Beef that is mechanically separated from bone with automati…

Dude.. you're commenting on an article right now that changes that rule. BPI uses AMR to recover the scraps. You can now call it ground beef. That's what we're all talking about it. That's what the article is about.

> BPI uses AMR to recover the scraps. You can now call it ground beef. That's what we're all talking about it. That's what the article is about.

No, that's not what we're all talking about. From the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_meat_recovery article that you posted:

> Although some sources claim AMR systems use ammonia (or anhydrous ammonia, ammonia hydroxide, etc.) to treat the meat, this appears to be due to confusion between AMR and the production of lean finely textured beef (LFTB, commonly referred to as pink slime).[citation needed] LFTB is in fact treated with ammonia,[4] and so is substantially more restricted than most AMR products.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#85
post #78
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still beef though. If I'm getting a burger at a McDonald's or something, this is fine.

It’s not ground beef. There is no grinder grinding up chunks of meat which is the definition of ground beef. It’s mechanically separated meat and should be called that not ground beef.

You're not the first person in this thread to claim that it's "mechanically separated". Do you have a source for this?

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#86
post #77

Pretty sure I saw this quote here a while back: "When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect. Do it in a factory and all of the sudden it is gross."

It's not surprising that we can make anything sound however we want by stripping away the context. Let's try adding it back in. "When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect. Do it in a factory [producing a collagen/cartilage slurry cleansed with ammonia; to maximize profits], and all of the sudden it is gross."

To be the fair, the profit incentive goes to economics, which is what "use all of the animal" is really all about.

The opposite of "use all the animal" is "take the skin/prize, burn the rest" ie wasteful.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#89
post #85
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not ground beef. There is no grinder grinding up chunks of meat which is the definition of ground beef. It’s mechanically separated meat and should be called that not ground beef.

You're not the first person in this thread to claim that it's "mechanically separated". Do you have a source for this?

Straight from the producers of pink slime.

http://www.beefusa.org/CMDocs/BeefUSA/Resources/AMI%20Fact%2...

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#90
post #24
post #3

Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.

> find a butcher you trust, or grind your own. Or you could not allow meat scraps to be called ground beef and trust all ground beef that you buy. For context this meat wasn’t waste it was used for other products. But by allowing it to be called ground beef it is now more valuable.

> For context this meat wasn’t waste it was used for other products.

It was used for other products, like ground beef.

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