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Where’s the fun in that? BPI settles with ABC in pink slime defamation case

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There’s no settlement details; both sides claim victory; lawyers get rich – pink slime and media are both disappointing.

4 T

BPI said: “We are extraordinarily pleased to have reached a settlement of our lawsuit against ABC and Jim Avila. While this has not been an easy road to travel, it was necessary to begin rectifying the harm we suffered as a result of what we believed to be biased and baseless reporting in 2012. Through this process, we have again established what we all know to be true about Lean Finely Textured Beef: it is beef, and is safe, wholesome, and nutritious. This agreement provides us with a strong foundation on which to grow the business, while allowing us to remain focused on achieving the vision of the Roth and BPI family.”  

ABC said, “ABC has reached an amicable resolution of its dispute with the makers of ‘lean finely textured beef.’ Throughout this case, we have maintained that our reports accurately presented the facts and views of knowledgeable people about this product. Although we have concluded that continued litigation of this case is not in the Company’s interests, we remain committed to the vigorous pursuit of truth and the consumer’s right to know about the products they purchase.”

This after three weeks of jury trial and testimony in a courtroom in South Dakota.

What can be learned?

Not much that isn’t already known.

People want to know about their food. Where it was grown, how, what’s been added and if it’s safe.

The N.Y. Times, as usual, gets that little bit right in a commentary in 2012, but wrongly thinks right-to-know is something new, that media amplification is something new because of shiny new toys, and offers no practical suggestions on what to do.

The term pink slime was coined in 2002 in an internal e-mail by a scientist at the Agriculture Department who felt it was not really ground beef. The term was first publicly reported in The Times in late 2009.

In April 2011, celebtard chef Jamie Oliver helped create a more publicly available pink slime yuck factor and by the end of 2011, McDonald’s and others had stopped using pink slime.

On March 7, 2012, ABC News recycled these bits, along with some interviews with two of the original USDA opponents of the process (primarily because it was a form of fraud, and not really just beef).

Industry and others responded the next day, and although the story had been around for several years, the response drove the pink slime story to gather media momentum – a story with legs.

BPI said pink slime was meat so consumers didn’t need to be informed, and everything was a gross misunderstanding. BPI blamed media and vowed to educate public. Others said “it’s pink so it’s meat” and that the language of pink slime was derogatory and needed to be changed. USDA said it was safe for schools but quickly decided that schools would be able to choose whatever beef they wanted, pushing decision-making in the absence of data or labels to the local PTA. An on-line petition was launched.

Sensing the media taint, additional retailers rushed to proclaim themselves free of the pink stuff.

BPI took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, the favored reading choice for pink slime aficionados, and four mid-west governors banded together to repeat the same erroneous messages during a media-show-and-tell at a BPI plant. Because political endorsements rarely work, and the story had spread to the key demographic of burger eaters, others sensed opportunity in the trashing of BPI. Wendy’s, Whole Foods, Costco, A&P, Publix and others launched their own media campaigns proclaiming they’ve never used the stuff and never would.

Guess they didn’t get their dude-it’s-beef T-shirts.

These well-intentioned messages only made things worse for the beef producers and processors they were intended to protect.

Here’s what can be learned for the next pink slime. And there will be lots more.

Lessons of pink slime

  • don’t fudge facts (not really 100% beef?)
  • facts are never enough, although facts are the underpinnings of journalism, ABC
  • changing the language is bad strategy (been tried with rBST, genetically engineered foods, doesn’t work)
  • telling people they need to be educated is arrogant, invalidates and trivializes people’s thoughts
  • don’t blame media for lousy communications
  • any farm, processor, retailer or restaurant can be held accountable for food production – and increasingly so with smartphones, facebook and new toys
  • real or just an accusation, consumers will rightly react based on the information available
  • amplification of messages through media is nothing new, especially if those messages support a pre-existing world-view
  • food is political but should be informed by data
  • data should be public
  • paucity of data about pink slime that is publicly available make statements like it’s safe, or it’s gross, difficult to quantify
  • relying on government validation builds suspicion rather than trust; if BPI has the safety data, make it public
  • what does right-to-know really mean? Do you want to say no?
  • if so, have public policy on how information is made public and why
  • choice is a fundamental value
  • what’s the best way to enable choice, for those who don’t want to eat pink slime or for those who care more about whether a food will make their kids barf?
  • proactive more than reactive; both are required, but any food provider should proudly proclaim – brag – about everything they do to enhance food safety.
  • perceived food safety is routinely marketed at retail; instead market real food safety so consumers actually have a choice and hold producers and processors – conventional, organic or otherwise – to a standard of honesty.
  • if restaurant inspection results can be displayed on a placard via a QR code read by smartphones when someone goes out for a meal, why not at the grocery store or school lunch?
  • link to web sites detailing how the food was produced, processed and safely handled, or whatever becomes the next theatrical production – or be held hostage

Oprah redux still; BPI sues others for pink slime defamation

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During the April 16, 1996 Oprah Winfrey show, the host stated she would stop eating hamburgers because of fears over BSE or mad cow disease and that she was shocked after a guest said meat and bone meal made from cattle was routinely fed to other cattle to boost their meat and milk production.

pink.slime_.daily_.show_-300x165The camera showed members of the studio audience gasping in surprise as vegetarian activist Howard Lyman explained how cattle parts and downer cattle (downer is the generic term used to describe cattle who can simply no longer stand) were rendered and fed to other cattle.

News of the popular show’s content swept through the cattle futures markets, contributing to major declines in beef contracts as traders feared it would turn Americans away from beef. Yet, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced its ban on ruminant protein in ruminant feed, the move was widely praised as prudent given the severity of the consequences should BSE be discovered in North America.

Even the U.S. rendering industry, which in the early days of public attention after the March 20, 1996 announcement linking BSE to human deaths in the U.K. argued that negative public perception of the industry was simply a function of inflammatory language (one industry official, during a panel discussion in July 1996, said that part of the problem was that the word downer was a negative term; instead, industry was urging producers and others to describe such animals as non-ambulatory), eventually supported the measures, with the U.S. National Renderers Association quoted as saying the ban on mammalian protein in ruminant feed put “a protective blanket around the cattle industry.”

Shortly thereafter, Oprah, along with her production company and vegetarian activist Howard Lyman, were named in a $10.3 million lawsuit brought by Texas cattle ranchers.

Beyond the media circus in Amarillo, Texas, where the savvy Oprah taped her show during the trial in a star-studded appeal to public sentiment, the trial was the first legal test of food defamation laws, then on the books in 13 U.S. states.

Oprah won, not only in court, but in the court of public opinion.

In a if-you-don’t-know-history-you’re failed-to-repeat, Beef Products Inc. has not only filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News seeking $1.2 billion in damages for misleading consumers about lean finely textured beef, more commonly known as pink slime, but has also demanded others turn over all e-mails about pink slime.

As reported by ABC, several food writers, including a New York Times reporter, have been subpoenaed by a meat producer as part of its $1.2 billion defamation lawsuit against ABC in regards to the network’s coverage of a beef product dubbed “pink slime” by critics.

hamburger.oprah_.961-300x230The subpoenas were issued to five writers — three reporters for the online Food Safety News, Times reporter Michael Moss and food writer Michele Simon — asking each to supply copies of any communications they had with ABC in 2012.

Beef Products Inc. sued the network in 2012 seeking $1.2 billion in damages for the coverage of the meat product the industry calls “lean, finely textured beef,” which critics dubbed “pink slime.” BPI said ABC’s coverage misled consumers into believing the product was unsafe and led to the closure of three plants and roughly 700 layoffs.

ABC’s attorneys say that in each of its broadcasts about the product, the network stated that the U.S. Department of Agriculture deemed the product safe to eat. They say BPI might not like the phrase pink slime, but like all ground beef, it’s pink and has a slimy texture.

Attorney Bruce Johnson in Seattle is representing the editor of Food Safety News, Dan Flynn, reporter James Andrews, and former reporter Gretchen Goetz. Johnson on Tuesday said the subpoenas were “overreaching” and that the publication would fight the requests.

BPI attorney Erik Connolly said the subpoenas are “appropriate and would be enforced.”

A spokeswoman for the New York Times said Moss’s subpoena had been stayed.

Simon said she has responded to the request, but did not provide any documents because she doesn’t keep emails dating back to 2012.

“BPI’s lawyers are engaging in a fishing expedition by spreading the subpoenas so far to every journalist and food blogger that has ever said anything about pink slime,” Simon said.

The plaintiffs have also sought subpoenas for two food-safety research labs and a blogger who has written about the meat filler.

In addition to ABC, the lawsuit names ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer, correspondents Jim Avila and David Kerley; Gerald Zirnstein, the U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist who named the product pink slime; former federal food scientist Carl Custer; and Kit Foshee, a former BPI quality assurance manager who was interviewed by ABC.

‘What if it weren’t called pink slime?’ Still would’ve been shown the door

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People want to know about their food. Where it was grown, how, what’s been added and if it’s safe.

The N.Y. Times, as usual, gets that little bit right in a commentary yesterday, but wrongly thinks right-to-know is something new, that media amplification is something new because of shiny new toys, and offers no practical suggestions on what to do.

The term pink slime was was coined in 2002 in an internal e-mail by a scientist at the Agriculture Department who felt it was not really ground beef. The term was first publicly reported in The Times in late 2009.

In April 2011, celebtard chef Jamie Oliver helped create a more publicly available pink slime yuck factor and by the end of 2011, McDonald’s and others had stopped using pink slime.

On March 7, 2012, ABC News recycled these bits, along with some interviews with two of the original USDA opponents of the process (primarily because it was a form of fraud, and not really just beef).

Industry and others responded the next day, and although the story had been around for several years, the response drove the pink slime story to gather media momentum – a story with legs.

BPI said pink slime was meat so consumers didn’t need to be informed, and everything was a gross misunderstanding. BPI blamed media and vowed to educate the public. Others said “it’s pink so it’s meat” and that the language of pink slime was derogatory and needed to be changed. USDA said it was safe for schools but quickly decided that schools would be able to choose whatever beef they wanted, pushing decision-making in the absence of data or labels to the local PTA. An on-line petition was launched.

Sensing the media taint, additional retailers rushed to proclaim themselves free of the pink stuff.
BPI took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, the favored reading choice for pink slime aficionados, and four mid-west governors banded together to repeat the same erroneous messages during a media-show-and-tell at a BPI plant. Because political endorsements rarely work, and the story had spread to the key demographic of burger eaters, others sensed opportunity in the trashing of BPI. Wendy’s, Whole Foods, Costco, A&P, Publix and others launched their own media campaigns proclaiming they’ve never used the stuff and never would.

Guess they didn’t get their dude-it’s-beef T-shirts.

These well-intentioned messages only made things worse for the beef producers and processors they were intended to protect.

Here’s what can be learned for the next pink slime. And there will be lots more.
Lessons of pink slime
• don’t fudge facts (is it or is it not 100% beef?)
• facts are never enough
• changing the language is bad strategy (been tried with rBST, genetically engineered foods, doesn’t work)
• telling people they need to be educated is arrogant, invalidates and trivializes people’s thoughts
• don’t blame media for lousy communications
• any farm, processor, retailer or restaurant can be held accountable for food production – and increasingly so with smartphones, facebook and new toys
• real or just an accusation, consumers will rightly react based on the information available
• amplification of messages through media is nothing new, especially if those messages support a pre-existing world-view
• food is political but should be informed by data
• data should be public
• paucity of data about pink slime that is publicly available make statements like it’s safe, or it’s gross, difficult to quantify
• relying on government validation builds suspicion rather than trust; if BPI has the safety data, make it public
• what does right-to-know really mean? Do you want to say no?
• if so, have public policy on how information is made public and why
• choice is a fundamental value
• what’s the best way to enable choice, for those who don’t want to eat pink slime or for those who care more about whether a food will make their kids barf?
• proactive more than reactive; both are required, but any food provider should proudly proclaim – brag – about everything they do to enhance food safety.
• perceived food safety is routinely marketed at retail; instead market real food safety so consumers actually have a choice and hold producers and processors – conventional, organic or otherwise – to a standard of honesty.
• if restaurant inspection results can be displayed on a placard via a QR code read by smartphones when someone goes out for a meal, why not at the grocery store or school lunch?
• link to web sites detailing how the food was produced, processed and safely handled, or whatever becomes the next theatrical production – or be held hostage

Pink slime maker shuts 3 plants

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KCAU-TV reports Beef Products Incorporated will shut down three of the company’s four plants effective May 25, 2012. The plants that will close are located in Amarillo, TX; Garden City, KS; and Waterloo, IA. The meat processor’s plant in South Sioux City, NE will remain open and could even see expanded production in the future.

Back in March, BPI temporarily suspended operations at the plants after a widespread public backlash against their product. BPI produces lean finely textured beef or LFTB, a product dubbed as "pink slime" by many critics. Once the term was used repeatedly on social media outlets and national news broadcasts, the demand for BPI’s product decreased and the meat processor was forced to scale back their operations. At the time, BPI announced that it would pay full salaries for the 650 employees of the 3 affected plants for a period of 60 days.

On Monday, BPI spokesperson Rich Jochum released this statement to Channel 9 Eyewitness News, "While we had hoped to be able to resume operations at those plants, that is not going to be possible in the immediate future and the temporary suspension of operations will in fact result in the elimination of those jobs effective May 25, 2012."

The BPI plant in South Sioux City, NE has remained open, but at reduced capacity. Jochum says, "We intend to continue operations at this location and expand production here as market activity allows."

Pink slime, yellow journalism and the amplification of risk

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Public discussion of pink slime – LFTB, yo! — has denigrated into an Internet-energized caricature faster than the U.S. found itself at war with Spain over Cuba in 1898.

Technology will do that; but the basic framing of the public and political dialogue is the same, with contributions from hacks on many sides in the absence of data.

Is pink slime, or lean finely textured beef – safe and sustainable? Probably.

Does it make other beef safer when added to ground meat to make hamburger? Probably not.

Jim Dickson and colleagues at Iowa State verified the process works back in 2002. Within the food science nerd community, there has been some chatting about the rigor of the study but that’s normal: dispute and dissent, backed by evidence, is what makes science great (Niebuhr, S. and J.S. Dickson. 2002. Impact of pH Enhancement on the Populations of Salmonella, Listeria and Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings. Journal of Food Protection 66:874-877).

The politically-inspired formation of public opinion – the rhetoric – is an ancient art a lot easier to engage in rather than the actual grind of generating data.

Food is political, but it should be informed by data; and that data should be public.

There is a paucity of data about pink slime that is publicly available, so statements like it’s safe, or it’s gross, are difficult to quantify.

But many have no problem using pink slime as a launching pad to further validate their own personal agendas, and, I guess, make them feel better.

The cooking tips of Mark Bittman are occasionally useful. But like most entertainers, his forays into social policy sorta suck, error-ridden and conspiracy laden.

From his perch at the New York Times, Bittman once again proclaims industrial production is the root of all evil, because “E. coli, found in the digestive tracts of cattle, is common on factory farms where cattle are fed only grain.”

That’s nothing more than a political opinion, using selective or barely-existent science. Dangerous strains of E. coli happen, in all ruminants, so telling people it’s OK to eat ground hamburger at 120F may appeal to personal choice, until someone barfs. It’s bad science and bad policy. Bittman’s a repeat offender, placing politics and porn before evidence-based safety, and uses pink slime as a launching pad for a screed about antibiotic resistant pathogens in the food supply.

So do activist groups, some of whom say pink slime is nothing, the feds really want to reduce the amount of veterinary inspection at slaughter plants and that’s the real issue.

So do those who rail against media excess, employing rhetoric to write in excessive columns for media, that pink slime’s all a manufactured scare and people should go back to sleep.

Those who have recently discovered the Internet after Al Gore invented it in 1995 sagely state that social media makes everything happen really, really, really fast.

The derogatory phrase, yellow journalism, is credited to newspaper owners Slick Willy Randolph ‘Rosebud’ Hearst and the slightly creepy Joseph Pulitzer. The wiki version is that at the close of the 19th century, those two were fighting a circulation battle in New York City, and made their stories about alleged atrocities in Spanish-Cuba credible by self assertion and providing false names, dates, and locations of skirmishes and atrocities committed by the Spanish. Papers also claimed that their facts could be substantiated by the government.

Beef Product Inc., the makers of pink slime, when not lashing out at the meida, were quick to say government testing validated their views, and U.S. Department of Agriculture types said thousands of tests had not found the dangerous bugs – at least not the ones they were looking for. Relying on government validation builds suspicion rather than trust. If BPI has the safety data, make it public.

Amplification of messages through media is nothing new, especially if those messages support a pre-existing world-view.

In 1988, the Kaspersons and colleagues first formalized the theory of the social amplification of risk, which helps explain why minor technical risks become major public risks (see abstract below). Social media just accelerates the speed at which people can confirm their own pre-existing bias. It’s always been there, now it’s faster. Companies that expect to profit from the sale of food or wares may eventually catch up; maybe even the commentators.

The politicization and follow-the-leader soundbites of pink slime are worthy of a Monty Python skit. And leave that Welsh tart alone.

The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework
Risk Analysis, Volume 8, Issue 2, pages 177–187, June 1988
Roger E. Kasperson, Ortwin Renn, Paul Slovic, Halina S. Brown, Jacque Emel, Robert Goble, Jeanne X. Kasperson, Samuel Ratick
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1988.tb01168.x/abstract
Abstract
One of the most perplexing problems in risk analysis is why some relatively minor risks or risk events, as assessed by technical experts, often elicit strong public concerns and result in substantial impacts upon society and economy. This article sets forth a conceptual framework that seeks to link systematically the technical assessment of risk with psychological, sociological, and cultural perspectives of risk perception and risk-related behavior. The main thesis is that hazards interact with psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes in ways that may amplify or attenuate public responses to the risk or risk event. A structural description of the social amplification of risk is now possible. Amplification occurs at two stages: in the transfer of information about the risk, and in the response mechanisms of society. Signals about risk are processed by individual and social amplification stations, including the scientist who communicates the risk assessment, the news media, cultural groups, interpersonal networks, and others. Key steps of amplifications can be identified at each stage. The amplified risk leads to behavioral responses, which, in turn, result in secondary impacts. Models are presented that portray the elements and linkages in the proposed conceptual framework.
 

GE pigs, pink slime gone; what’s next?

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A friend in grad school used to get pigs off.

He needed their semen for genetics research and, that was how to get it (with props, the mount-equivalent of lingerie, I guess).

That was 1986, and I would soon drop out of grad school to pursue Hunter-S-Thompson-esq journalist escapades, but not nearly as interesting.

The grad student worked with John Phillips, a prof in molecular biology at the University of Guelph, an excellent teacher (the rest of the department? not so much) and my occasional squash partner. After one match, I commented, with the arrogance of youth, you’re putting on a few pounds.

He said, when you’re this age, it will look pretty good.

Was he ever right.

Dr. John teamed up with a microbiology prof and in the 1990s they developed the Enviropig, a genetically engineered pig that could reduce phosphate contamination into the environment. Enviropigs digest feed more efficiently than naturally bred pigs, resulting in waste that may cause less environmental damage to lakes and rivers.

The project has sat in regulatory limbo for over a decade.

The project has produced eight generations of Enviropigs, including the current herd of 16 animals. But they may be the last of their kind, after Ontario Pork yanked their funding last month.

Self-proclaimed enviro-types claimed victory, but again, there were no winners.

Unlike pink slime, there were no politicians grandstanding the cause, no media reacting to media about sensationalist coverage, no talking heads about the excellence of science.

Nothing.

But why not, if the science is sound and the cause just?

There will be another pink slime, sooner rather than later – and those same self-proclaimed environmental activists have already taken ownership of pink slime as a catchphrase for things hidden. Food and Water Watch proclaims that doo doo chicken is the new pink slime.

Meanwhile, AFA Foods, based in King of Prussia, Pa., which processes 500 million pounds of ground beef products a year, declared bankruptcy yesterday, after the public outcry over pink slime derailed its efforts to save its already struggling business.

A meat manager for a major New York supermarket chain told Advertising Age, "The morning after the reports came out, ground-beef sales dropped. We ended up throwing chopped meat away. We don’t even use pink slime and we had to put signs up everywhere saying that. People wouldn’t even touch it."

All of this is a culture where food science is nothing compared to food porn (see below).

Governor’s Ball: Politicians come out for pink slime; urge it not be called pink slime

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 Dude it’s beef.

That’s the slogan Midwestern governors came with to a press conference after a tour of the Beef Products Inc. plant in Nebraska yesterday, much like the background audience at a Today Show taping on the streets outside 30 Rock.

It’s beef, but is it meat?

The safety of pink slime, or lean finely textured beef, and the operations of BPI don’t seem to be in question: choice, right-to-know, and what constitutes meat are in play.

Food safety type Michael Batz and others have noted the original beef was whether this beef constituted an adulterated product. According to the regs Batz found, there are nine definitions for meat that is considered “adulterated.” One states, “If any valuable constituent has been in whole or in part omitted or abstracted therefrom; or if any substance has been substituted, wholly or in part therefor; or if damage or inferiority has been concealed in any manner; or if any substance has been added thereto or mixed or packed therewith so as to increase its bulk or weight, or reduce its quality or strength, or make it appear better or of greater value than it is.”

I don’t know. Others can inform on that one. But the PR goes on, laying bare the bicoastal political landscape of the U.S.

Meatingplace.com reports that during an emotionally charged 45-minute news conference that followed a media tour of a Beef Products Inc. plant in South Sioux City, Neb., governors from beef-producing states alternately appealed to and browbeat the media on its coverage of lean finely textured beef.

Nancy Donley, president of STOP Foodborne Illness, whose 6-year-old son died of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome caused by eating an undercooked hamburger said she was there to “stand tall and in support of our dear friends Eldon and Regina Roth” and their company. She praised BPI’s food safety innovations in keeping the types of pathogens that killed her son out of meat products. “These folks save lives.”

Gov. Rick Perry (Texas) asked ABC News Senior National Correspondent Jim Avila to justify his news reporting which is seen by many as a tipping point in media and social media coverage that led to food retailers and school districts rejecting the product, even though it has never been implicated in a consumer illness.

Avila at first refused to answer, but later pointed out that ABC had never reported that the product was unsafe, but focused on the fact that ground beef products were not labeled to indicate the presence of LFTB. To this point, many of the speakers said the product is simply beef and not a filler or an additive.

The emotional pinnacle of the event came when Avila questioned Donley on her organization accepting financial donations from BPI.

Donley said STOP Foodborne Illness has been grateful to BPI’s support “with no strings attached.” She said BPI has never asked her “for anything — ever.” Her voice shook as she said, “No price can be put on my son’s head. I cannot be bought,” to a round of applause.

Gary Acuff, director, Center for Food Safety Texas A&M University addressed the ammonium hydroxide pathogen intervention BPI uses by noting ammonia is used as a leavening agent, in coffee creamers and in chocolate products. He said tofu contains about four times the ammonia that LFTB does.

Acuff also noted that recovering the extra beef from each animal that is made possible by BPI’s process is a sustainability issue. By some estimates, it would take an additional 1.5 million head of cattle to produce the beef that will be lost if the product is no longer in the market. Gov. Perry said the process extracts 10 to 12 extra pounds of beef from each carcass.

Gov. Terry Branstad (Iowa), who yesterday announced he had convinced Hy-Vee supermarkets to return to carrying products with LFTB, said he planned to engage every other major supermarket chain in similar conversations.

How many scientists wouldn’t have loved that level of government and individual support with technologies such as rBST, genetic engineering and irradiation?

The complete press conference can be found at
http://www.livestream.com/argus_leader_tv/video?clipId=pla_93f78142-699e-44cf-ab00-62f4e864a162.

If I ran BPI and made pink slime

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I’m Eldon Roth.

I’ve spent my life committed to making food safe for millions of people. For me, my wife, my kids, my grandkids, and millions of school kids across the U.S.

If I’m at a family BBQ, or meeting with government inspectors, I say the same thing: we provide safe, sustainable meat, at an affordable price.

I’ve watched the devastation that dangerous bugs like E. coli O157:H7 can wreak on people’s lives, loved ones, and innocent children who just wanted a burger.

That’s why my company, BPI, instituted the best food safety practices for beef production – and long before government told us what to do.

It was the right thing to do.

My company publicly discloses all test results, good or bad, not because we have to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Bacteria happen. We’re doing whatever we can, along with the best science, to provide safe, sustainable and affordable beef.

Freedom of choice is a fundamental right in American society; it’s something I personally value. That’s why we provide any and all information about our products and processes. Labels, websites, smartphone codes, you want it, we’ll make sure it’s there, because I value choice.

And I choose safe food.

(Note: this only works with the risk assessment and management expertise in place to underpin the communication claims).

Vote for Summer.

The latest in defensive statements that won’t work can be found at http://www.meatami.com/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/76702/pid/287
and
http://www.meatingplace.com/MembersOnly/webNews/details.aspx?item=31730.

Pink slime producer suspending production

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The Associated Press is reporting that the company that makes "pink slime" is suspending operations at three of four plants where the low-cost beef filler amid a public outcry over concern about the ingredient.

Beef Products Inc. spokesman Craig Letch on Monday told AP about the operations suspensions at plants in Texas, Kansas and Iowa ahead of a public announcement about the plan. The company’s plant at its Dakota Dunes, S.D., headquarters will continue operations.

The ammonia-treated additive known by the industry as "lean, finely textured beef" has been used for years but recently became a target of activists seeking to have it banned from supermarkets and school lunches. The U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to allow school districts to stop using it. Some retail chains have pulled products containing it.

The pink slime games; chronicles of the bizarre

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Beef Products, Inc. ran a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal Friday along with copy by Nancy Donley, President, STOP Foodborne Illness talking about the role of ammonia hydride and food-grade antimicrobial sprays in hamburger production, along with some choice words from Eldon Roth, CEO of BPI, about the "campaign of lies and deceit that have been waged" by the "entertainment media, tabloid journalists, so-called national news." He says the "misinformation campaign" may result in the "loss of over 3,000" jobs. He also says that the "lean beef" from his company has been in over 300 billion meals.

The choice of a print media outlet appealing to the business elite raises some issues: do many people who eat hamburger from grocery stores or school cafeterias routinely read the Wall Street Journal? Is print media the best way to reach Americans? Who are the PR geniuses that came up with this strategy and why do they keep telling BPI to blame the media for reporting on what is a right-to-know issue?

New York-based Wegmans said Friday it will stop selling ground beef that includes the ammonia-treated filler known as "pink slime in response to customer concerns caused by "sensationalism" over the product.

A spokesman for Cargill, the leading U.S. ground beef producer, told The Daily that "pink slime" is "pretty much over." And that "the industry produces 800 million pounds of finely textured beef every year. We’ll likely have to raise an additional 1.5 million head of cattle to make up for the loss.”

As predicted when USDA abdicated leadership and left things pink and slimey up to schools, PTA meetings are now seemingly dominated by fillers rather than meat.

The Boston school district, among others, has taken the step of purging all ground beef from its menus to immediately get rid of pink slime. Other districts, like the New York City schools, have begun phasing out ground beef containing the additive from their lunchrooms.

Michael Peck, the director of food and nutrition services for the Boston schools, said the district had decided to hold and isolate its entire inventory of ground beef, leaving over 70,000 pounds of beef — worth about $500,000, Mr. Peck estimated — confined to a warehouse until the district knows more about what is in it.

“It’s another example of the alteration of our food supply,” said Mr. Peck, who is concerned about the use of ammonia hydroxide gas to kill bacteria in the product. “Have we created another unknown safety risk?”

In Portsmouth, N.H., it was the memory of an E. coli scare over spinach that led Deborah Riso, the district’s nutrition director, to decide she would take no chances.

“You just pull it because you don’t know,” Ms. Riso said from her office, where she was expunging ground beef from the April school menu. “I had a hamburger bar, so I’m going to do a hot roast beef sandwich. I had a beef or chicken burrito — I’m going to go with the chicken and rice burrito,” Ms. Riso said. “You can still make a nice product without beef.”

The schools’ exodus is grounded less in science than in instinctive revulsion, said Donald W. Schaffner, director of the Center of Advanced Food Technology at Rutgers University.

“I don’t see that there is a scientific or health benefit from the point of microbiology or even toxicology,” Dr. Schaffner said of the rush to pull the beef from school menus. “The reason why it’s resonated with people is not so much that it’s unsafe, but the idea that we’re putting ammonia in our food is unpalatable to people.”

Reuters reports that every time someone calls former U.S. government scientist Gerald Zirnstein a whistleblower, he cringes a little.

When he coined the term "Pink Slime" to describe the unlabeled and unappetizing bits of cartilage and other chemically-treated scrap meat going into U.S. ground beef, Zirnstein was a microbiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

He made the slime reference to a fellow scientist in an internal – and he thought private – email. But that email later became public, and with it came an explosion of outrage from consumer groups.

"You look through the regulations and a lot of that stuff was never approved for hamburger. It was under the radar," said the 54-year-old Zirnstein, who lives outside Washington, D.C. with his wife and 2-year-old son. "It’s cheating. It’s economic fraud," he said in a telephone interview.

Zirnstein, who worked in a meat plant growing up in Kansas, said the situation came to his attention a decade ago. In 2002, he was working as a USDA food scientist and was assigned to a project to determine what was going into ground beef and whether the ingredients met federal regulations.

At the same time, the beef industry was asking the government to endorse a new product they called "lean finely textured beef" that was largely trimmings typically used for pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were treated with ammonia to kill dangerous bacteria.

USDA officials approved the processed product. Zirnstein was disgusted, and made his opinion known to co-workers in an email that called the processed product "pink slime." The email was later released to the New York Times as part of a Freedom of Information request for a 2009 investigative article on food safety. The newspaper article mentioned the slime reference in passing.

"Nobody did anything (about pink slime). USDA dropped the ball again. The meat industry soft sold it," said Zirnstein, who left USDA and took a job as an industry consultant but now is unemployed. The issue got renewed life when British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who advocates for American children to eat healthier food, devoted an episode of his television show to the topic in April last year.

Oh, and pink slime isn’t used in Canadian burgers – at least according to Health Canada, which says it hasn’t ruled on the product because no one has asked. But Canadians do ship burgers to the U.S. that contain E. coli O157:H7. And get recalled.