Pink Slime

Pink Slime. Sounds gross and kinda weird when you first hear it. You definitely aren't thinking about eating it. However, you most likely already have! It's been around since 2001 but didn't really become noticed until the beginning of this year. So what is pink slime???

"Pink slime is beef trimmings. It is made from waste trimmings that are simmered at a low heat until the fat separates from the muscle. It is run through a machine to separate the fat and muscle then it is sent through pipes where it is sprayed with ammonia before being packaged into meat bricks. The bricks are then frozen and sent to grocery stores where it is added to most ground beef as a filler."

Yummy huh!?  Pink slime a.k.a. "soylent pink" was in approximately 70 percent of ground beef sold in U.S. supermarkets as of March 2012. As pink slime became known to consumers, controversy and concern over health and sanitation issues became huge. The USDA had approved the use of "pink slime" in 2001 and allows that "beef that contains up to 15 percent of pink slime can be labeled as "100% ground beef." So, who was using and selling pink slime? Well, just about everyone! Safeway, Krogers, Stop and Shop, Target, Hy-Vee, Market Basket, Walmart, Jewel-Osco, and Carr's just to name a few. Fast food restaurants such as Burger King, Taco Bell, and McDonald's all had used it. McDonald's even took the process overseas to their locations in China.

It was also in many school lunches across the US. Parents started petitioning to the USDA to have pink slime removed from their children's school lunches. The USDA responded by stating that the U.S. National School Lunch Program will allow school districts to decided whether they want to purchase beef with pink slime or not. The problem here is that most school districts purchase their beef straight from the USDA and have no idea what there getting. Several cities and states opt-ed out immediately- Miami, New York, Boston, D.C., and Anchorage to name a few. North Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa continue to use pink slime today. The USDA reported earlier this year that they plan on purchasing 7 billion pounds of pink slime just for school lunches. 

So.....the final question is....what's in your beef???