Pink Slime No Longer On Fast Food Menus
McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell will no longer be offering burgers made with a filler of low-grade beef treated with bacteria-killing ammonium hydroxide, known to its critics as “pink slime.”
The filler product, widely used in fast food and school lunch meals, garnered national attention earlier this year when chef and food activist Jamie Oliver denounced it on his show, "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, saying: "Basically we're taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs and after this process we can give it to humans."
Oliver was referring to the the method, developed by Beef Products Inc. (BFI) of Dakota Dunes, S.D., “of removing bits of beef from fatty carcass trimmings that had previously been sold for pet food or animal feed and then treating the beef with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria,” according to a story in the Argus Leader.
“We have never had an illness that’s been traced to us. That’s an unprecedented food safety record,” BFI’s founder Eldon Roth, said in the story.
Ammonium hydroxide is one of many chemicals used by the meat industry to kill pathogens at various stages of processing. While pink slime is high on the gross out factor, it serves a purpose, according to Nancy Donley who co-founded the consumer advocacy group STOP Foodborne Illness in 1993 after her child was fatally poisoned by a tainted fast food burger.
Vaccines for pathogens such as E.coli and Salmonella have been slow getting to market and many cattle producers have resisted taking the initiative of preventing bacteria from getting into their animals, Donley, who serves on a board that advises the Agriculture Department on food safety, told the Leader.
