What's the latest info on the "pink slime" in beef controversy?

Don’t have a link but I read an article saying that a good number of the factories that are producing it have closed and that the FDA is considering banning it from school lunch meats.

@janbb Here’s a link for you. It says Beef Products Inc has shut three of its four plants that produce pink slime (or “finely textured lean beef” as the manufacturer prefers to call it).

A lot of people have lost their jobs, and processing plants are shutting down all due to mass hysteria. There is NOTHING unsafe about the process. Nothing.

I don’t think the problem is that its not safe it’s just people don’t want to eat the mechanically reclaimed crap that’s left on the carcas when the butcher has finished that’s been washed in ammonia and pretend it’s ground beef steak.

Much ado over nothing @Lightlyseared. We’ve been eating it for years and no one complained.

@Dutchess_III you may have been eating it for years. I have not. Pink slime aint considered safe for human consumption in the UK. But the problem is that companys using the stuff misled consumers. If you buy 100% beef steak you expect to get 100% beef steak not 85% beef steak and 15% disinfected meat that previously was considered only fit for pet food. The fact it won’t kill you doesn’t mean it was right to sell people the stuff with out telling them exactly what it was.

I haven’t been eating it for years. Except for my once a year Mc Donald’s burger.
I watch my butcher put a chuck roast in the grinder and it comes out the spout all ground up. He wraps it in white paper and hands it to me. No pink slime in my meat. It might be “safe” but I’m not paying money for it, and I’m not eating it.

The latest update @john65pennington is that due to overwhelming consumer feedback, national grocery chains such as Wal-mart, Kroger, Safeway, Target, SuperValu, Food Lion (and more each day) are no longer selling ‘pink slime’ filled ground beef. Here’s one quick read article with the latest info.

As of right now, many fast food chains that were selling beef with ‘pink slime’ are dumping it due to bad press. So far the largest hold out is the National School Lunch Program. They are now saying it will be up to each district to chose whether to buy ‘filler’ beef or not.

SpatzieLover…....thanks. Good info.

@Dutchess_III

It totally baffles me that an intelligent person such as yourself can read the paragraphs quoted below and continue to assert so positively that there is nothing unsafe about this stuff. The New York Times definitely disagrees and cites records of both E-coli and Salmonella found numerous times in spite of the ammoniating process. and this is over a period of several years, not just one or two isolated incidents.

If you’re going to keep vouching for the safety of this stuff, you should be prepared to back it up with something more definitive than capital letters. Stating that there is NOTHING wrong with it is misleading. There is PLENTY WRONG with it on multiple levels INCLUDING safety.

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QUOTE:
But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays. In July, school lunch officials temporarily banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers. Presented by The Times with the school lunch test results, top department officials said they were not aware of what their colleagues in the lunch program had been finding for years

@All

For anyone interested, the full article can be found at the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Is pink slime the same as mechanically recovered meat?

@basstrom188 it looks like it’s mechanically recovered meat unfit for human consupmtion that is then washed in amonia to remove harmfull bacteria.