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[Capntastic]

See, now, if that's the issue that was being made, I'd accept it as valid. But there's a few problems with that:

The issue is that something that was not sold as 'beef' is now being sold as 'beef' and consumers are only now just being alerted.  If your stance is "companies can do what they want so long as consumers don't notice" then I can see how you wouldn't care, but it's actually pretty important people have a basic idea of what they're eating.  Since you're, again, fine with anything that comes from a cow being sold as 'beef', would you care if ground up bits of brain or whatever made its way into the mix without labelling?

As with the pressed-slime steak analogy, it's just that sort of logic taken to its extent:  that it's fine to sell whatever you want as beef so long as you play semantics games.

[Skyrunner]

Nope. On steaks, that would be outright lying. Steaks have labels like 'US Beef A' or 'Government A' or stuff. They are bound by law to be 100% the thing we want.

[kaijyuu]

I was under the impression that "beef" = "anything from a bovine."


But yeah, not interested in semantics games either. IMO this is fine so long as people know what they're eating. I don't see anything more horrible about these trimmings than any other part of the animal, but people have a right to know regardless. So it's a labeling issue. Label it right, and all problems solved.

[Lord Dullard]

Nope. On steaks, that would be outright lying. Steaks have labels like 'US Beef A' or 'Government A' or stuff. They are bound by law to be 100% the thing we want.

Unless, say, a highly placed official within the USDA made a ruling that chemically sanitized and color-dyed previously-almost-rotten steaks were in fact 'US Beef A' without actually changing the definition of what 'US Beef A' is or alerting the consumer base to the ruling, or enforcing new labeling standards.

[nenjin]

What bothers me the most about this is it's the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturing at its best. They've managed to reduce their unit price by replacing the product with a lower quality substitute that is very hard for the consumer to detect. It's not an issue of it being a binder or an emulsifier. And certainly not an enhancer.

I hate to use this analog, but Cocaine dealers do the same thing. They cut pure cocaine with just about anything that has the right consistency and is white, and can basically increase their sellable product by 20 to percent.

The result? Your nose gets messed up with a ton of stuff it was never meant to have in it. And while pink goo is not the same as raw baking soda or other chemicals, the process by which the pink goo becomes "safe for human consumption" does require a chemical treatment.

I haven't stayed terribly up to date with this, nor have I stopped eating ground beef hamburgers, but is there any actual evidence yet of corruption other than the fact the regulator landed a cushy job in the industry after leaving the government?

[Sir Finkus]

Steaks are entirely different because steaks are made from specific cuts of meat.  If someone was representing "pink slime" as a sirloin steak I'd have an issue with it. 

Beef is a much broader term.  Everything from the tongue of a cow to the testicles is considered beef.  If you've eaten a hot dog or a sausage, you've probably eaten organ meat and other "gross bits".  Cow brain isn't legal to put in food because consuming it can increase your risk of getting mad cow disease.

[Capntastic]

Alright so with the brain example you admit that there's a qualitative difference between portions of the cow even if it is all still "beef", and you still don't see a problem with a method that can increase salmonella risk.

I mean, America has had huge problems with its food industries before, and this is very much chipping away at the sort of regulations that elevated us out of that era.  I don't think that concern over this is unworthy.

Edit:  It's not like the health risks, quality loss, weird alkaline taste, etc, are saving the consumer more than three cents a pound anyways.

[TychoTheDwarf]

Yeah, no more fast food burgers for me and I'm damn well going to start grinding my own if I can get a grinder.  This government's torrid love affair with private industry is disgusting.

[Gotdamnmiracle]

I'm a pescetarian. I hate the food we get nowadays. We will only be able to eat fresh food if we grow it ourselves. Y'know what is significantly better than meat? TVP. Spice it, and it is exactly like taco meat.

[alway]

School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers

Emphasis added.
What that sentence means:
1. Only some years do they test worse than "many." What number qualifies 'many?' Hell if I know.
2. Again, it states 'many,' instead of 'all;' we can infer from this they are probably around the bottom of the pack, but we can also infer they probably still aren't the worst.

[Duke 2.0]

 I think the people arguing that this isn't too big a deal are looking more at the side of the stuff not being outright sawdust. The aspect of companies lying to us so so obvious before this came up that it doesn't really need to be debated or pointed out. Prosecute the people responsible, let the system carry through, we are still gonna eat our cheap meats because we kinda already accepted that ground beef isn't 100% beef.

[Capntastic]

School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers

Emphasis added.
What that sentence means:
1. Only some years do they test worse than "many." What number qualifies 'many?' Hell if I know.
2. Again, it states 'many,' instead of 'all;' we can infer from this they are probably around the bottom of the pack, but we can also infer they probably still aren't the worst.

I don't get it, is your argument that because it's not the literal worst pseudo-food product they've tried that we shouldn't be suspicious of it being foisted onto the public without proper labeling?

[Skyrunner]

Perhaps (I may be wrong), it is 'No, this is not a great controversy'? We already know these things happen, and it is no big surprise that this was discovered?

[alway]

My argument is simply this: it is comparable with other beef products produced through other methods. Unless you care to call out all those other products and their methods of production, you can't make an argument that it should not be used on the grounds of health concerns when those same health concerns are you deem acceptable in similar products.

[Capntastic]

My argument is simply this: it is comparable with other beef products produced through other methods. Unless you care to call out all those other products and their methods of production, you can't make an argument that it should not be used on the grounds of health concerns when those same health concerns are you deem acceptable in similar products.

Yeah but the article I linked that you cherry picked a quote from pretty clearly shows it to be more likely to cause e. coli than other products.

"School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods. From 2005 to 2009, Beef Products had a rate of 36 positive results for salmonella per 1,000 tests, compared to a rate of nine positive results per 1,000 tests for the other suppliers, according to statistics from the program."

So, basically, 4 times as much contamination.