

‘Pink Slime’ Furor Means Disaster for U.S. Meat Innovator - tshtf
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/-pink-slime-furor-means-disaster-for-u-s-meat-innovator.html

======
joezydeco
_"Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, whose state is home to a BPI plant, is seeking
a congressional investigation of what he calls a “smear campaign” against
BPI."_

Look, it's a lot simpler than that. It had nothing to do with the idea of
mechanically separated meat (wait until they learn about McNuggets!)

A lot of parents quickly got exposed to the concept of beef being treated with
ammonia. All the science reports in the world can prove it's effective and
safe, but you can't erase that mental image in their heads that (food +
poison) = bad. The mindset of a parent is just different from that of a food
processing executive.

~~~
jballanc
Heh...just wait until the world learns what gives Brie it's distinctive
flavor.

~~~
cracell
Looking at the wikipedia article on Brie and I'm confused as to what you are
referring to. You just mean the mold?

~~~
jballanc
The mold used produces ammonia as a side product. Too much ammonia means
overripe cheese, which is no good, but a little touch of ammonia is an
important component of the overall flavor.

------
alanh
Cry me a freakin’ river. People are right to be grossed out and offended that
this was being fed to their kids across the nation. And we’re supposed to
ignore any potential concerns over quality just because some poor, rich
“innovator” is struggling now that the truth is out?

Please.

This article reeks of PR — even using much of the same language that BPI does
on its own website, pinkslimeisamyth.com / beefisbeef.com. For example, “puffs
of ammonia hydroxide.” Puffs? Does that sound like a very technical or
descriptive term an actual journalist would independently come up with?

~~~
Zikes
The fact is that there is currently no actual health or safety concern about
this "pink slime", and the only reason for the outcry is an emotional reaction
to what it looks like before it's mixed with the ground beef.

I would wager that many of them would have an equally emotionally charged
reaction to seeing the butchering and separation process for the rest of the
beef they eat, but would forego campaigning against it because it's the same
beef they've always eaten, and that makes it more "real" or "authentic".

When it comes down to it, any process for turning an animal into edible meat
is gross and offensive.

~~~
AndyNemmity
"the only reason for the outcry is an emotional reaction to what it looks like
before it's mixed with the ground beef."

Not true. The reason for a lot of people is the expectation that food is
minimally processed. When I buy I steak, I have an expectation that it is
literally a cut out of a cow.

This expectation is far larger in Europe than in the US, however it's the same
expectation.

I buy a meat product, I am getting a natural thing. The only reason it wasn't
an issue before is no one knew. There was no proper labeling.

So simply label things as they are with all the processed parts. Then you will
know if there is a real issue with the public.

The refusal to label things is because there will be an outrage, and if people
want to refuse to eat pink slime out of their own concerns, that is there
choice.

I don't get the minimization of this. You act like this isn't a reasonable
choice, it is.

You can choose a different direction, but there should be explicit labeling so
we all have that choice.

~~~
jmj42
Then your (and their) expectation is uninformed. There is relatively little
food that is "minimally processed" anywhere in the industrialized world, and
expectation to the contrary is willful blindness or lack of information.

Zikes is right. The sudden outrage is nothing more than knee jerk reaction
based on an emotional response rather than based in science.

~~~
morestuff
Producer fails to inform consumer.

Consumer gets informed out-of-band.

Consumer is annoyed that they were not informed by producer.

???

Blame consumer.

~~~
jmj42
Producer fails to inform consumer.

Consumer fails to understand the crap they put in their bodies.

Consumer is shocked that their processed food contains, um, processed food.

Who is really to blame?

------
molsongolden
I haven't read too deeply about the process but I don't understand how so many
people (including people on here on HN) can get so worked up and refer to this
meat as "pink slime".

Have you ever trimmed a large cut of meat at home? There are always pieces of
meat stuck in the fat that you can't easily get to. They warm up the trimmings
then spin them to separate the meat from the fat.

That doesn't sound like pink slime or filler to me. It sounds like little
pieces of meat that would otherwise be thrown away and wasted.

~~~
jakeonthemove
What's with the downvotes - molsongolden is right - if it's edible, why
shouldn't it be available for those who don't care? But obviously, the fact
that most people care will drive this company and this type of meat off the
market.

I also don't get why people avoid GM crops - just because they were modified
by humans doesn't make it worse. After all, we drive cars and use electronics
that don't kill us at every move, right?

~~~
wpietri
Regarding GM crops, I'm generally for them. Almost all human food has been
extensively modified genetically, albeit mainly through breeding and natural
mutation, not gene transplantation. So I think a lot of people freaking out
about GMOs have a false natural vs artificial thing going on.

However, I think people have reason to be cautious. Pretty much every new
technology has a lot of surprises early on as people learn to manage it.
Especially given that GM organisms generally can reproduce, it's totally
plausible to me that we'll end up with at least one thalidomide or Chernobyl
or cane toad or leaded gasoline sized problem for GM crops.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Ohh, "innovations" that are based on truth not being exposed work not so well
when information could not be so easily controlled, like with Internet.

I started buying eggs only from natural farms the day I started working for an
egg "industrial plant". I suppose if people get to see how chicken live
enclosed cage barely bigger than the animals they will think it twice about
buying them.

In America you have Genetically modified food that you don't know is GM, and
all kind of antibiotics and steroids on meat. So it seems that "out of sight,
out of mind works"

------
edj
As a little bit of an aside, does anyone else find it infuriating when
articles like this are thick with links that don't lead to the destinations
you'd expect?

For example, about halfway through this article there's mention of a prize-
winning New York Times article that popularized the phrase "pink slime". I'd
like to read the article, so I clicked on the link... and got a stock ticker
quote for [NYT]. I get that Bloomberg is in the financial news business, but
come on! There's no footnote with the actual link and not even a title for me
to search with. It's just bizarre.

~~~
dmckeon
The NYT article is at:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=1&p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

and is mentioned in: [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/the-
pink-men...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/the-pink-menace/)

------
zeruch
While I audibly laughed at the idea that there is a "Meat Industry Hall of
Fame" I am really finding it difficult to believe that there was somehow
"innovation" here (I really think that word is overused, and in this case
repulsively so).

Now I don't fault the guy for coming up with a method to separate meat from
fat mechanically (itself not an act of villiany), but the end result is what
it is...and calling it "lean finely textured beef" stretches well into
absurdity, especially when you add the lack of clarity as to what an "ammonia
puff" entails and its real impacts, the fallout once its in the public eye
should not be surprising.

------
gdubs
Although it was interesting to see the other side of this controversy, I have
to agree with the folks here who felt it was too much like a PR piece. I don't
know why, but every time the article mentioned the 'blogger', I detected a bit
of disdain.

The standout point for me, from the Bloomberg article was that ammonia occurs
naturally in beef. I don't know how much more appetizing it makes it, but it
starts to sound a lot different than a ammonia of the household-cleaner
variety.

What I don't understand is why, with all of the food-science being done on
mass produced meat to make it smell like this, and feel like that, we even
need to bother using animals in the first place. This recent piece by Mark
Bittman on a new and improved fake-meat is pretty interesting in that regard:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/finally-
fak...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/finally-fake-chicken-
worth-eating.html)

The people here who talk about killing your own meat, and how people know that
an animal died to get to their plate, and so on, I think, are perpetuating a
false equivalence. The common perception, crafted by the food industry, is a
cow on a placid farm that lives to a nice old age. A lot of money goes towards
alleviating the image of thousands of sick, smelly cattle cramped into prison
cells. (Full disclosure: I've become more and more of a vegetarian over time.)

So, besides moral issues related to suffering and health issues like increased
resistance to antibiotics due to improper handling of waste at farms, there's
also the issue of how much petroleum it takes to produce a calorie of beef (3
to 1 calories, or something similar if I remember correctly). And how toxic
some of these farms are to the water supply. And how cow-released methane may
be one of the main contributors to global warming. And so on.

But, I'm not really posting here to posit what some may consider to be fringe
views regarding our food supply. What I found interesting about the article,
and I'm guessing why it was posted here in the first place is that the Roth
was a hacker. He came up with a brilliant solution to a problem. And, it would
appear from the article that his technology is now under-fire because it makes
for an easy target. Ammonia is the stuff you clean your counter with; you're
not supposed to spray it on your hamburger.

I'm not a fan of ends-justify-the-means tactics, an after reading the article
I do get the sense that people who would like to see reform in the food
industry are using this as a way of raising public outcry. Shining a light on
where our food comes from is good. But, unfortunately the outcome of this
story will likely mean that an innovator is the loser and the industry at
large will carry on just fine.

What would be great is to see Roth, or someone else with a hacker mentality
set about transforming the industry into something more sustainable and less
reliant on the farming of animals. The Bittman piece linked to above shows
that it's possible for us to begin replacing at least some of our meat into
non-animal varieties. Transforming a really old-school industry full of
entrenched interests and out-dated – prehistoric – means of production should
appeal to someone here, right?

Anyway, sorry for the long post – the subject is fascinating to me.

------
joejohnson
This piece is ridiculous! They repeatedly claim that the outrage against Pink
Slime is undeserved, citing the fact that the substance hasn't been linked to
any reported cases of food-borne illness. Why does that matter? It's
disgusting nonetheless. Once large numbers of consumers became very aware of
this process, people quickly decided that they would rather not have something
so disgusting in their food.

~~~
mistercow
It is disgusting, but then, so is the concept of peeling off an animal's skin,
grinding up its tissues, and eating the result. What's weird to me about the
pink slime thing is the inconsistency. Meat is gross. You can ignore that and
enjoy your hamburger, or accept it and become a vegetarian.

~~~
wpietri
One grossness doesn't justify another. Any 10-year-old can tell you how weird
and gross sex is. But you're still allowed to say, "Honey, I'll pass on the
scat play, thanks."

That's especially true when the grossness is concealed from you via PR and
corporate BS. Dog meat is probably not different nutritionally from hamburger.
Heck, it could be better. But if McDonald's "fortified" their hamburgers with
5% Lassie, people would still be rightfully pissed.

~~~
mistercow
I agree that people have a right to know what is going into their food, and
that the way this has sort of hidden (in a half-assed way) from the public is
wrong.

But I disagree that that's why people are upset about it. If McDonald's had a
note on their ads that said "made of 5% dog meat", people would be just as
angry.

Actually, euthanized animals from shelters are often rendered down to turn
into gelatin and other basic chemical components that then find their way into
cosmetics and food products. This is, of course, a good thing by any measure
other than "ick" factor (the alternative is raising and killing more animals,
after all) so I do not long for the outrage that will eventually come when
people find out they've probably eaten dog gelatin.

~~~
wpietri
I disagree. If McDonald's announced that they would be adding dog next month,
there would be outrage. If it were to come out that they had been doing it for
the last year but had tried to pass it off as a vitamin supplement, people
would be burning shit down. Both "I ate what?" and "My trust has been
betrayed!" are powerful motivators.

~~~
mistercow
Well we'll never know probably, but my guess would be that McDonald's would
issue a statement apologizing and promising never to do it again, and people
would get distracted by whatever inconsequential celebrity gossip caught their
fancy within a week.

------
OpieCunningham
_“BPI’s product is no more or less safe than other parts of hamburger,” Marler
said. “There’s a lot of scraps that get put into hamburger because that’s what
the hell hamburger is.”_

Um, no. A hamburger is ground beef underbelly or chuck. You can add lots of
stuff - pink slime, soy protein, corn syrup, dried onion powder, MSG - but
that stuff isn't hamburger, it's just what you've added.

------
nickler
The factory farming debate is finally entering the mainstream mindset. It's a
pandoras box of ugly truths that no one will be comfortable seeing inside.

I spent two years looking to find ways to innovate away from factory farming,
and every solution seems to revolve around major market forces and changing
consumer habits.

Disruption in this market looks to be, bottom up, coming from cottage/micro
producers, and thus, slow. If someone can efficiently disrupt distribution
away from grocery chains you'll see a major change in food consumption, in the
success of more small, high quality producers. Look at high end wine as an
indicator.

As a restaurateur/chef for many years this is a passion, but I can't see it
getting fixed anytime soon, even with the gastro-activism we're starting to
see now.

Any of you smart app builders looking to disrupt something mind crushingly
difficult, look at food.

------
helipad
I'm surprised the furore has suddenly taken place now. 'Pink slime' has been
known about for some time.

Indeed, I remember Jamie Oliver's TV show in the US where he actually poured
ammonia over meat that had been through a washing machine - yet suddenly the
idea gains traction now? Interesting..

------
jakeonthemove
Well, people made up their minds - whatcha gonna do? Saying that it's unfair
is a bit stupid. It's business...

However, stuff like this could really impact future advances in food
production (which the world needs). I still don't get what's the BFD about
avoiding GM products - I think it's one of the best things to happen to
humanity (how many people didn't die from starvation and how inexpensive is
food today - all because of GM crops).

Cloned meat receives the same treatment, when in reality it could be the next
best thing for both people and nature...

~~~
alttab
GM crops, including "roundup-ready" Bt corn have been banned in France,
Germany, and other countries. GM crops have been topics of studies that have
linked GM food to organ failure, autism, and vitamin deficiency. The
pesticides used along side these large, unnatural monoculture crops have been
linked to colony collapse disorder and potentially the single driving factor
in dying bee populations.

I'm not surprised to find a pro-GMO attitude on a technology site, but there
are always two sides. Unfortunately on one you get fear mongering, but on the
other you get propaganda from those that directly profit from you agreeing
with them.

Links for the curious:

[http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.as...](http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=2007)

[http://myrighttosafefood.blogspot.com/2009/04/germany-
bans-m...](http://myrighttosafefood.blogspot.com/2009/04/germany-bans-
monsantos-bt-corn.html)

[http://www.inquisitr.com/206612/honey-bees-dying-from-
corn-i...](http://www.inquisitr.com/206612/honey-bees-dying-from-corn-
insecticides/)

<http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm>

------
ronbo
why are they in so much trouble? Seems like the market for alternative use
proteins would use up this capacity. The dog and cat food market is huge, but
has lower margins.

