If you have not heard of pink slime, you are not alone. Up until the beginning of last month, LFTB
was a relatively unknown term. However, at
the beginning of March an online petition demanding LFTB be removed from school
lunches exploded on the scene, receiving hundreds of thousands of signatures. Fast forward to the present and Beef Products
Inc. is closing three of its four plants. Hm…must be something fishy.
Most would view this as a victory. The people raised their voices and defended
themselves against this potentially dangerous and unsavory product. However, it turns out that the public’s
reaction to LFTB may have been a little misguided. It turns out that Beef Products Inc. prides
itself on testing their product more frequently and for more pathogens than the
government requires. It is tested more
frequently than other components of ground beef. So could removing LFTB from ground beef make
it less safe?
Not so fast. There are several reasons to object to “pink
slime.” First, LFTB is composed of the
less expensive trimmings of the cow, it is not as high in protein as other cuts
of beef. Second, it may contain E.
Coli. Third, why was it not on meat
packing labels? What else could be left out?
What are we actually consuming?
Finally, the time has come to properly label meat.
~ Jessica
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