IT IS: Lean muscle centrifuged out of fat trimmings from the carcass. In the BPI system, ammonium hydroxide is used to destroy bacteria (alternatively, citric acid is often used). This product is "generally recognized as safe" by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and it's used in a variety of foods. The beef is not "soaked in ammonia" as many reports have claimed, but rather sprayed with a "hydrolyzed ammonia" mist to kill bacteria which then evaporates and completely dissipates. According to Dr. Cross (an expert that I'll quote later), there is no ammonia in the final product.
IT IS NOT: Substandard meat coming off the floor or off of contaminated parts of the animal (by law, that does always get trashed)
Last week we talked thoroughly about food waste, and how very little occurs in the manufacturing process. Thank goodness slaughterhouses respect the lives of cattle to the point of using every last part of the animal and throwing only brains and spinal cords into the garbage, since this is what the post Mad Cow Disease laws dictate. All entrails, hooves, bones, fat, muscle, and anything else is salvaged. I've seen this firsthand, and I've helped process a live steer down to steaks, roasts, and meat trimmings.
Remember that every animal is completely hand butchered, always. I remember stripping pieces of fat off of the legs and off near other bones and seeing flecks of muscle end up in the "Fat" receiver. This wasn't just my fault, either! Professional butchers have to send those fat cuts with inevitable lean pieces.
I hate waste!! Don't you?? So does USDA. That's why Dr. H. Russell Cross, (who is now Professor and Head of Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University) formerly the Administrator of the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) at the time of LFTB's approval, makes the following statements. He feels strongly that this product and process is safe and a valuable source of nutrition at a time when we are faced with the growing challenge of producing more food with fewer resources.
"As Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) in the early 90s, I and my staff evaluated numerous research projects before approving lean, finely textured beef as a safe source of high-quality protein. The FSIS safety review process was and is an in-depth, science-based process that spans years, many research projects and involves many experts across all levels of the agency-and in this case, the process proved the product is safe."
"Approving lean finely textured beef as safe was the right decision, and today, it remains a safe way to meet the nutritional needs of a growing population. All beef is a good or excellent source of 10 essential nutrients including protein, iron, zinc and B-vitamins.
"Finely textured lean beef helps us meet consumer demand for safe, affordable and nutritious food."
Here are some other points:
- This food is pure beef muscle, nutritionally equal the rest of the ground beef coming off of that same steer. This process will extract an additional 10-12 lbs. of lean beef from every bovine processed.
- Over the past ten years, the incidents of positive-testing USDA ground beef samples for E. coli O157:H7 been reduced by half. This is the same decade that LFTB has been utilized.
- The product is beef, it was originally part of the animal, so why label it as being anything other than beef? It's not an additive.
- Food Safety News article
- Pink Slime is a Myth Website - These BPI company videos describe the process in more detail (http://www.youtube.com/user/
BeefProductsInc?ob=0&feature= results_main)
- Engineering a Safer Burger -- History of the product documented by the Washington Post, 2008
- International Food Information Council fact sheet on ammonium hydroxide
Neat or Nasty? What do you Think?
Cassie,
ReplyDeleteI can't find an email for you anywhere. I work for the Illinois Farm Bureau and was reaching out to see if you would like to do a workshop for us this summer?