Blog for all health-conscious: Fooducate Blog - The Pink Slime Saga

Friday, 20 July 2012

Fooducate Blog - The Pink Slime Saga – Epilogue

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 05:02 AM PDT

Pink Slime Closeup

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You may remember several months ago, nutrition headlines were all pink. What started as a petition by a Houston mommy blogger, to get a highly processed meat by-product out of her daughter’s school lunch, led to the great pink slime pullout from all major supermarkets.

Pink slime, or by its industry name Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), is made of beef trimmings that instead of being thrown away, are processed and turn into what look likes ground beef. The problem is that the trimming are usually very dirty (outer parts of the animal) and have a higher chance of contamination. So they are cleaned with ammonia…

Due to a campaign that went viral, and media attention to the pink slime meme, the companies manufacturing pink slime lost almost all their clients overnight and went bankrupt. One of the companies had a bittersweet ending this week, when it was picked up for a pittance by meat and food processing empire Cargill.

President of the Cargill Value Added Meats Food Service business Mary Thompson said: "This is a strategic acquisition that complements our existing beef production and distribution infrastructure and better positions us to meet our goals for both short-term and long-term profitable growth." read more…

The 250 employees will keep their jobs, according to Cargill. Will the processing plant be converted to manufacturing something else? Or is pink slime going to make a comeback someday?

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