OT Surgery prices.

- M
- Malcom "Mal" Reynolds
  
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posted
11 years ago

Fri, Apr 27, 2012 2:57 AM

sure, they could just sell the pink slime as hamburger helper

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- Ed Pawlowski
  
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posted
11 years ago

Fri, Apr 27, 2012 3:25 AM

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slime, also known as lean finely textured beef (LFTB) [2] and boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT)[3], is a beef-based food additive that may be added to ground beef and beef-based processed meats as an inexpensive filler.[4][5] It consists of finely ground beef scraps, sinew, fat, and connective tissue which have been mechanically removed in a heated centrifuge at 100°F (38°C)[6] from the fat into liquid fat and a protein paste.[7][8] The recovered material is then processed, heated, and treated with ammonia gas[1] or citric acid to kill E. coli, salmonella, and other bacteria. It is finely ground, compressed into blocks and flash frozen for use as an additive to beef products.[9][10] The term pink slime was coined in 2002 by Gerald Zirnstein, who at that time was a microbiologist for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service,[7] but some state officials have objected to the nickname, saying that "lean, finely textured beef is the proper name."[11]

In the United States, the additive itself cannot legally be sold directly to consumers, but can constitute up to 15% of ground beef without additional labeling,[9] and can also be added to other meat products such as beef-based processed meats.[9] Prior to the invention of the disinfection process, beef scraps could only be sold as pet food or as an ingredient for cooking oil.[4]

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that's not all! See, the problem when you turn garbage bits of animal carcasses into "pink slime" to sell as a food product is that there's an issue with pathogens, such as E. coli. And when samples of the pink slime were tested, the tests came back showing that the slime was rampant with harmful bacteria. Now, one might think that the best idea would be to decide not to sell pink slime to feed to humans, but there's no money in that, is there? So BPI cleverly started disinfecting the slime with ammonia. And convinced the FDA to allow them to list it as a "processing ingredient" so that we wouldn't know we were eating ammonia.

We're eating garbage, people. Literally -- garbage that's been "cleaned up" with ammonia and sold to us mixed with ground beef, shrink wrapped for convenience at our local megamart.

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- Kurt Ullman
  
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posted
11 years ago

Fri, Apr 27, 2012 12:30 PM

Okay, the OP was something about cooking, and I missed that as link to boiling off the fat. We aren't eating ammonia as it was long gone before being added. BTW: If we decided not to sell beef because of e. coli there would be a whole lot more stuff not on sale. The temporary addition of something that only increased the pH and killed the nasties should be touted as a good thing.

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- Malcom "Mal" Reynolds
  
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posted
11 years ago

Wed, May 2, 2012 7:07 AM