Pink Slime Meat

Pink Slime Meat, Although many fast-food chains, including McDonald’s, have said they are pulling the infamous “pink slime” from their hamburgers, school districts across the country are still serving it to kids. McDonald’s and other fast-food chains had been using scrape and waste — muscle and connective tissue normally used in dog food, in their hamburgers.

Pink slime is bits of meat and muscle salvaged from slaughterhouse floors that are treated with a pink chemical to kill any dangerous pathogens. According to an earlier report by msnbc.com, the unappetizing pink goo is widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It’s regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as “generally recognized as safe.”

The USDA has been purchasing the “pink slime” for years, using the product as a filler.

School cafeterias nationwide receive part of the ground beef they serve from the USDA. It purchases 7 million pounds of that same waste meat product, which will be sent to schools all over the country.

“We don’t know which districts are receiving what meat, and this meat isn’t labeled to show pink slime. They don’t have to under federal law,” said Bettina Siegal, of TheLunchTray.com. Siegal has started a petition seeking to ban the ammonia-based waste from school menus. As of Thursday, the petition had received over 4,000 signatures.

The USDA’s continued purchase of pink slime for school lunches was first reported Monday by TheDaily.com, which spoke to two former microbiologists at the Food Safety Inspection Service.

Pink Slime Hamburger

Pink Slime Hamburger, McDonald’s, the world’s leading fast food chain, announced that it has stopped using ammonia-treated beef in its hamburger products.

British tabloid Daily Mail recently reported that McDonald’s made the move as a response to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s campaign against the use of technically discarded beef cuts treated with ammonium hydroxide, which he called “pink slime.”

But the company denied that its decision was influenced by Oliver’s campaign, according to msnbc.com.

In a statement, McDonald’s said it has stopped using what the company called “select lean beef trimmings” in its hamburgers since the beginning of last year.

“At the beginning of 2011, we made a decision to discontinue the use of ammonia-treated beef in our hamburgers. This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year,” McDonald’s said.

“This decision was a result of our efforts to align our global standards of how we source beef around the world. We are always reviewing and evolving our standards to ensure we continue to serve safe, high-quality food to our consumers,” it added.

Oliver, who stars in his own television show “Food Revolution,” has been campaigning to get school cafeterias and fast food chains in the United States to stop using “pink slime.”

In an episode, he demonstrated how he imagined the pink goo is formed.

“They take all these trimmings, all the stuff that you pay to get taken away. They put it into a centrifuge and they spin it. Now what does that do? It separates the fat from the meat. And then you end up with stuff like this,” he said in the episode, showing bits of meat.

“To me as a chef and a food lover, this is shocking… The key ingredient to the process is ammonia. We’re gonna wash these lean bits of beef that we’ve spun around there with an ammonia and water solution… That kills the E. Coli and salmonella and any other pathogens.

“And then they drain it, and then mince it.”

The use of ammonia-treated beef has been approved by the US Department of Agriculture, saying that it is “generally recognized as safe.” Oliver claims that the “pink slime” is currently in 70% of US beef.