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Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

>Basically, pink slime is highly processed leavings of beef that cannot be used except by putting it through more or less a blender and a chemistry lab.

After butchering a carcass, you're left with a lot of fatty trimmings with small amounts of meat attached that are uneconomical to recover by hand. If you gently heat the fat trimmings and spin them in a centrifuge, you cleanly separate the lean meat from the fat. That process weakens the cell walls of the muscle fibres, which increases the risk of bacterial growth; to kill the bacteria, ammonium hydroxide gas is used to raise the pH. The FDA deems ammonium hydroxide to be safe, so it is widely used in US food manufacturing as an acidity regulator and antimicrobial agent. Other regulators disagree on the safety of ammonium hydroxide, in which case citric acid is used.

The production of LFTB is no weirder than any number of other food processes. It's a simple, efficient method for separating meat from fat. The media have made a mountain out of a molehill by sensationally revealing a "shocking secret" that is neither shocking nor secret. Personally, I think that a lot of consumers just prefer not to think about how meat ends up on their plate and recoil at any discussion of the process that turns live animals into hamburger patties.

We really need to be talking about the use of antibiotics as a growth promoter, which is a slow-motion catastrophe that the US regulators are largely ignoring.

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That's a fine sell. Now sell me on, "this is so OK that we should have a statutory right not to ever mention this fact.

Which is to repeat the point that this tug-of-war isn't about "can you do it?" or "is it safe" but "do you even have to say anything?".

The problem is indeed how little consumers can determine about safety once it becomes obvious industry is throwing things all in a giant food processor and then mixing up things that appear simple. It makes people nervous even if, let's say, in this case everything is fine.

Because, suppose, in the case of antibiotics, everything is not fine at all? Do you want the precedent that "hey, once the expert decide everything is OK, then it's decided that things are sooo OK that you aren't allowed to talk about it at all". Which is to say, safe or not, problem or not, it's pink slime. That was what it was called before ABC and that's rather clearly an appropriate term.

And pink slime is shocking because consumers don't know anything. Keep the situation where the real processes of food production are shocking and hidden? Good idea? I believe not.

>That's a fine sell. Now sell me on, "this is so OK that we should have a statutory right not to ever mention this fact.

Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory. Over-labelling is just as problematic as under-labelling, as we have seen with Prop 65; adding more words to a label often actively impedes the ability of a consumer to make meaningful choices. We rely on the regulators to determine what processes and ingredients are sufficiently safe for the food chain and to highlight issues of particular concern.

Some people think that FTLB is unsafe, but they have no real evidence for that claim. It has attracted a vastly disproportionate amount of attention, seemingly only for reasons of squeamishness.

Regulators are not infallible or incorruptible, which is why it is important that they are held to account. If we're quibbling over the labelling of something that's demonstrably fine, we're not talking about the hundred other glaring issues in the US food system that need to be addressed much more urgently.

FTLB is simply irrelevant. It's broadly beneficial, but it's neither good or bad enough to warrant our attention. The grossly disproportionate amount of attention it has attracted is symptomatic of a faddish, panic-driven and deeply irrational approach to food that is entirely unproductive.

Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory.

What I am talking about is "doing you have the right know what's happening?" What that is printed on the back of a given label is a different matter, you think?

Some people think that FTLB is unsafe, but they have no evidence for that claim. It has attracted a vastly disproportionate amount of attention, seemingly only for reasons of squeamishness.

Sure, for reasons of squeemishness. Industrial scale food production is complex. Some of the details make people squeemish even if they're safe. Other details make people squeemish and are in fact things to worry about.

The relevant question is should light be able to be shed everywhere. Should industrial be forced to openly defend unappealing but safe practices or should industry have a giant hammer to shut up any mention of things with "bad visuals"?

>What I am talking about is "doing you have the right know what's happening?" What that is printed on the back of a given label is a different matter, you think?

The article we're discussing is about a change in USDA labelling requirements. I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

The article described changes in description regulation but it wasn't about whether "pink slime" had to appear labels, since it never did appear to begin with - "finely textured beef" previously could be mixed with regular ground beef and not labeled. Not it's no longer classified as something different - where it seems reasonably clear this is a somewhat different product.

And this change was essentially just the last push to stop any negative publicity surrounding this product, with the lawsuit again ABC looming prominently. And in the lawsuit, you have liable laws that give steep monetary damages for what we've discussed - pointing to details that are true and "icky" if arguably safe.

Edit: Link to discussion of ABC liable trial from lead article.

https://newfoodeconomy.org/heres-look-pink-slime-trial/

Smells very much of a SLAPP suit imo. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

To me the main issue is improper animal husbandry and disgusting slaughterhouse practices directly impact food safety. Grinding beef at the slaughterhouse, using additives even though ammonia is used to make it safer does not make it safe. Bacterial contamination in conventionally processed ground beef is much higher, prevalence of multi-drug resistant bacteria for example was 18% for conventionally processed vs. 6-8% for organic and grass fed respectively. If you scroll to the bottom of the article there are some informative bar graphs. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/how-safe-is-your-gr... Unfortunately for consumers the US Government deregulated the term "grass fed" as of two years ago, therefore it now means there is no legal standard to the term and doesn't really mean anything. You have to trust the supplier. http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/release-usda-revokes-... edit: fixed second link

> If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory.

o with one or two 2D barcodes

> Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory.

I agree with this take in general. But in labelling a product "ground beef", a consumer would consider the ingredients to be beef that is ground. Separating the meat from the fat in trimmings is good (use more of the meat please!), but the process is not grinding. If the market determines "heat-separated ground beef" (or whatever) to be less appealing, then perhaps they're right that it should demand a lower markup.

It's about nomenclature, not safety.

> Separating the meat from the fat in trimmings is good (use more of the meat please!), but the process is not grinding.

What does it mean exactly to be ground? When I look at their product, it looks like it's come out of a meat grinder to me. What does that have to do with the process of separating the fat from the meat which is what is in question here?

>What does it mean exactly to be ground?

Not sure what the exact definition would be but I certainly wouldn’t assume it to be ‘ammonia treated slurry flash-frozen on 20ft rollers’. My mind trends toward those old school funnel-top hand-cranked meat grinders when I hear “ground”. Obviously they aren’t hand-cranking the stuff but what I saw on the video on the linked page is far from what I expect when thinking of ground.

> What does it mean exactly to be ground? When I look at their product, it looks like it's come out of a meat grinder to me.

I can show you some incredible fake and inedible food that looks just like the real thing. Appearance isn't really a good measure for what something is.

As for what it means to grind: "To reduce to smaller pieces by crushing with lateral motion." I don't think the process meets any reasonable definition of ground.

I'd probably personally buy it, but I'd really want it to be labeled in some other way.

So the argument here is that it's mislabeled because it wasn't crushed with a lateral motion? And that's misleading to customers?

I think the argument is more that consumers have a very specific idea about what constitutes ground beef: a few specific cuts of beef put through a meat grinder. Full stop.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with using the whole cow so to speak -- people love chicken nuggets and hot dogs -- but you should at least be upfront about the difference. If I tried to pass off a tub of 'pink slime' as ground beef in a kitchen I would would get thrown out.

But the key is that the same cuts are used for this product. They're just separated from the fat more efficiently. It's not a different cut, it's just recovered in a different way. They could then choose to grind it afterward or not, but either way that is something which just affects the final shape/texture of the product and I don't think the mechanics of how it is shaped is what is really bothering people about BPI's product.

It’s not simply recovered in a different way. Send a several pounds to a lab and the difference is easy to detect.

You can argue that said difference is meaningless, but that’s what markets are there to decide and misleading labels rob markets of pricing power by hiding information from consumers.

IMO, it really comes down to planned economics vs free markets. Producers hate free markets as a rule, but avoiding them has real costs.

From the regulations linked in the article:

‘‘Chopped Beef’’ or ‘‘Ground Beef’’ shall consist of chopped fresh and/or frozen beef with or without seasoning and without the addition of beef fat as such, shall not contain more than 30 percent fat, and shall not contain added water, phosphates, binders, or extenders. When beef cheek meat (trimmed beef cheeks) is used in the preparation of chopped or ground beef, the amount of such cheek meat shall be limited to 25 percent; and if in ex- cess of natural proportions, its presence shall be declared on the label[...].

"pink slime" is shorter than "ground beef" by one letter, so it's kinda hard to see using it as "over-labeling".

But he is of the opinion that whether something is or is not "pink slime" is irrelevant to the safety of the product. Ergo, it is just noise.

Which is ok, but when grinding is not involved calling something ground is directly misleading.

If I sell a taco and never mention what it’s made of then sure. It’s only when I sell taco and say this is made from beef but actually mostly contains soy that people are going to get upset. Similarly, if I say ground beef, I would expect actual grinding to be involved not some other process.

Great example with the taco... considering what taco bell and jack in the box make their tacos out of.

I also once ordered from a "Burger" place via grubhub... I'm fairly certain what I got was not beef, but some veggie burger as a social experiment. The rating of the site on grubhub was pretty low after about a month though.

It's pretty easy to deceive while staying within the bounds of legal. In the end, I'd rather the mechanically separated beef over being tricked into soy. I'm allergic to legumes. Not as bad as some people I know with deadly soy allergies, but enough that I notice. For a very long time, before diagnosed, I just got used to throwing up a bit a few times a day after eating.

It's fine that food production is complex. And people don't know every process that goes into making their food. But when an individual process is uncovered in the media, and there is a public outcry, the answer is not to hide it from future oversight under the pretense that people are idiots.

If it's not a big deal, educate people and don't worry that it's not considered "ground beef" (because, come on, it's not).

Some food processes are complex. Ground beef is not. Making it involves taking the meat off the carcass, trimming the fat and putting it through a grinder -- either the industrial sized one or typically smaller sized ones that are found in the meat departments of any reasonable super market.

As far as "but what are we going to do with those other trimmings?" -- go to any Asian or Hispanic supermarket and see for yourself -- they are sold to the same people who buy the ground beef under the name of "Beef trimmings" or "Beef bones" etc.

> Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory.

Not at all. The fact that this is even being brought up in the argument illustrates how much the industry needs to be regulated.

I had an organic burrito on Thursday because my wife in our old age is obsessed at buying only organic products... largely from a bodega in a Dominican area of Brooklyn -- not even Whole Foods.

The following are the ingredients involved:

1. Flour tortilla -- made in Brooklyn by a small plant that sells them to bodegas and small supermarkets. In a strange coincidence I used to walk by that plant and I talked to the family that owns it. The tortilla contains the following ingredients:

* Flour, Salt, baking soda, pork fat, water

their tortillas keep in a fridge for about a week and half. I asked him why would not he add preservatives? His answer was "Because they cost money and tortillas dont taste as good. Mine are a bit more expensive than the ones from giant companies but I make a lot more money than them"

* Ground beef ( could be organic )

She buys it from the butcher that grinds it on premises or at Whole Foods or I buy a whole 30 lb of sirloin and grind it myself.

* Dried beans ( could be organic )

* Rice ( could be organic )

* Tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro, radish, jalapeno, cucumbers, avocado, limes ( all could be organic )

* Cumin, salt, pepper

* Sour cream ( mostly organic but definitely that as the totality has the following ingredient list: milk, enzymes )

That's what an organic burrito looks like. If you are on a west coast, especially in SF it would be called "Mission Burrito". Cheap as hell because it has no extra process inputs. Qdoba and Chipotle manage to make gobs of money selling them: because their COG on one are about $2.50.

I believe the standard for restaurant food is that the food itself should be 1/3 of the purchase price. Which looks to be right on target, since I think a burrito at least around here is usually about $7.50

> 1. Flour tortilla -- made in Brooklyn by a small plant that sells them to bodegas and small supermarkets. In a strange coincidence I used to walk by that plant and I talked to the family that owns it. The tortilla contains the following ingredients:

> * Flour, Salt, baking soda, pork fat, water

What's in the flour? Is it bleached? Treated with a maturing agent? (Most AP flour in the US has been treated with both.) Has it been enriched to replace nutrients lost in the processing?

The person to whom I replied was talking about "organic burrito" which is either USDA certified 100% organic or an irrelevant label. If it is USDA certified 100% organic it has strict rules for every component that goes into it.

Where did the wheat come from? What chemicals and microbes were in the soil and water that the wheat grew in? What substances have been intentionally added to the soil and water? What are the genetic traits of that wheat and how have they been altered? What was added or removed from the wheat when it was processed into flour? What contamination might have happened during the journey from field to plate? How was the chemical composition of the wheat affected by the specific processes used during the production of the tortilla?

Each of those questions has a long, complicated and potentially uncertain answer. At any stage in that process, that plain and simple flour could become seriously toxic. The same applies to every ingredient in the burrito, with a far longer list of questions for meat and dairy products.

"Simple" is rarely simple and "natural" is often far from safe. Organic vegetables are frequently severely contaminated with dangerous bacteria due to inappropriate processing of organic fertiliser or contaminated groundwater. Some aquifers have dangerously high levels of naturally occurring arsenic, rendering the surrounding land unsuitable for many types of agriculture. A lot of common cooking and handling processes can produce toxic chemicals or drastically increase the risk of bacterial contamination. There are a million different ways for food production to go badly wrong.

If you spent every waking moment of the next five years trying to understand precisely what went into that grocery store burrito, you'd still come up short. The simplest of ingredients is still immensely complex. Our food chain is built on trust; trust in the farmer, trust in the distributor, trust in the manufacturer, trust in the retailer. That chain of trust is held together by regulation. You as a consumer are almost entirely powerless, because you don't have the means to validate the claims being made by anyone in that chain. That's an uncomfortable thought, but it's true and it's why evidence-based regulation and effective enforcement are so vital.

So from "organic burrito" being complicated we are down to single ingredient being complicated.

USDA certified 100% organic flour is super simple. It pretty much requires that every single step in a process take only USDA certified 100% organic inputs.

The really funny part is that the parent's comment sound like it was written by the old food giants whose lunch was being eaten by the organic food companies -- the ones that the old giants are buying for hundreds of million dollars because they can't figure out that the fewer ingredients there are and the fewer processes there are the fewer problems there would be.

Food is like code. The fewer lines of code, the fewer bugs. The fewer libraries, the fewer bugs.

You could fit that telephone directory in a link from a QR code, and at least one person would read it when it mattered. Individuals don't read privacy policies, but usually one person will.

"Pink slime" is not a useful term: "slime" doesn't convey anything concrete and "pink" stops being accurate when it's cooked.

Your argument about a statutory right not to mention things confuses me. Isn't that generally true of food production? You don't sell "eggs from caged, unhappy chickens who live their brief miserable lives in their own poop," you sell "eggs," and perhaps "cage-free eggs." You don't sell "ground beef from a cow that was stun-gunned and then sliced apart while potentially still conscious," you buy "ground beef," or perhaps ground beef with a kosher or halal slaughtering certification.

If your dispute is with the word "ground," will you be happy to call it just "beef"? It's not anything that wouldn't be in an unprocessed cut of meat from the butcher, and I'd certainly expect that to be called "beef" too.

(A note on my motivation: As a customer I worry my prices went up when fast food restaurants started avoiding "pink slime" for FUD reasons, without measurably improving the quality, taste, healthiness, or truthfulness of my burgers.)

Fine as far as it goes.

I would assert there is less difference between sirloin and skirt steak than there is between ground beef and LFTB.

It’s illegal to claim that skirt steak is sirloin. Why should it be legal to call LFTB ground beef?

Don’t you think you could tell the difference between a sirloin steak and skirt steak? Totally different shape, texture, level of fat, and flavor. But not sure one could tell ground beef (no regulation on what cuts are used: could be chuck, brisket, a mix) from the same ground beef with some LFTB mixed in.

It’s really shocking to me, and I’ve eaten lots and lots of meat (including beef) from animals raised and then killed by my close relatives. It’s only that my grand-parents weren’t using a centrifugal thingie to get the most out of the cow they had just sacrificed, and ammonium hydroxide might have been from an alien planet to them. The way we industrially process meat is shocking, yes.

> It’s only that my grand-parents weren’t using a centrifugal thingie

Did our other close relatives use the centrifugal thingie while processing the meat from animals they raised and killed?

Wanted to not repeat the same word in two consecutive phrases, hence my not-perfect choice of words, but to answer your question: no, afaik all the relatives that I know who had killed their meat didn’t use any industrial-like tools to process it.

Seems pretty straightforward. Grind and heat up meat trimmings, spin it to squeeze the heated fat out. Add citric acid as a preservative, flavour it with some spices, freeze an you have nice bit of fairly lean meat you wouldn't otherwise have. Nothing that couldn't be done at home. I wonder how fast it needs to spin.

And isn't it great that we have figured out ways to efficiently use more of the resources we have available?

The alternative is we just throw it away and raise more cows, using far more resources.

> sensationally revealing a "shocking secret" that is neither shocking nor secret

In which case, what's the problem simply labelling meat that has been through this complex mechanical and chemical process? Let consumers choose from a position of awareness. Allowing it to all be labelled the same as meat that has simply been through a mincer is industry burying it for easier profit.

Thankfully the EU chose to ban these ammonia treated processed products, though industry is working quite hard to find loopholes to sell us a product we won't buy knowingly.

I'm slightly entertained to learn that what the USDA defines as "lean" at 22.5% is higher fat than the cheap higher fat mince (20%) in UK supermarkets. Lean here would normally be 10 or sometimes even 5%.

Fully agree the antibiotic abuse needs to be resolved though.

Lean in US supermarkets tends to be, as you said, 10 or sometimes even 5%. I buy 9% because I've found lower than that impacts the taste too much.

Really appreciate the calm, thoughtful, and informed devil's advocate perspective, we need more of that for meaningful discussions.

> We really need to be talking about the use of antibiotics as a growth promoter

I don't have fully formed views on this so I'm curious...

Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines? A cursory search makes it look like significant chunk of animal antibiotics are ionophores, which are entirely different from what's used in human medicine... maybe you have a different concern?

Are you ok with ionophores? Or if not, how do you propose limiting the impact of coccidiosis, which seems widely prevalent in poultry and leads to massive gut damage and animal suffering if not treated prophylactically?

Your point on 'pink slime' seems to be that once you dig beyond the headlines, food regulation and safety issues are far more complicated than the bumper stickers.

Not so with animal antibiotics? Or is your concern with those similarly more nuanced than most of the popular complaints?

>Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines?

Yes. Over 60% of the antibiotics given to livestock are medically important to humans. There's clear evidence that this is translating into increased antibiotic-resistant infections in both livestock and humans. The FDA have implemented the Veterinary Feed Directive, but these regulations are light-touch compared to the EU and have some fairly glaring loopholes.

There's a legitimate debate about the use of ionophores, but medically important antibiotics are all too often used as a sticking-plaster to ameliorate the effects of poor animal husbandry. If you're keeping huge numbers of animals in cramped and unsanitary conditions, you should really fix that issue before you start routinely dumping lincomycin or penicillin into feed. The use of medically important antibiotics purely for the purposes of growth promotion is both widespread and unjustifiable.

The problem is inarguably worse in the developing world (particularly Asia) but the US should really be a leader rather than a follower on this issue. The WHO have issued clear guidelines on preventing antibiotic resistance in agriculture, but the FDA have been dragging their heels on actually implementing those guidelines in an effective manner.

Other countries (particularly the EU) have implemented relatively strict controls with no real impact on animal welfare and fairly marginal economic impact. Even if you doubt the strength of the evidence, the risk/reward calculus strongly points towards heavy restrictions on the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock; slightly cheaper meat is a pretty poor upside compared to the risk of an antibiotic-resistant epidemic.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258970/9789...

Mostly agreed... To me, it's not so dissimilar to the processing of a lot of other foods... segmenting citrus for pre-pealed/canned versions or handling/processing of cashews or even how black olives are express-ripened beyond nature.

While, personally, I feel that lean meats are wholly unnatural and fattier cuts/grounds should be preferred, I'm not sure there's a lot to get worked up about. The low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-salt diet trends are probably the single worst trends to happen to american health. The issues around antibiotics are also huge.

For the most part, people are far better off avoiding refined sugars, grains and refined vegetable oils. If most people did that, without any other measures taken, things would be a lot better. Not eating processed meat in general not withstanding.

You seem quite informed on the subject — do you have an opinion as to whether meats labeled 'raised without antibiotics' or 'no hormones added' are any better or worse than conventional?

So if I want to eat nice meat cuts ground up, without getting slime, what do I do?

Know your farmer.

In Canada, you can go to a local grocery store or meat shop and choose meat cuts and have them grind them for you on the spot.

In the US too, all major grocery stores in my area you can ask them to grind up a chuck roast or any cut of meat and they will. It costs a little more depending on the price of the cut you select.

My mom had a crank operated grinder that was mainly for making sausage but worked pretty well. Where it came from is relegated to the forgotten past.

Given how bad ground beef is for your health you're better off swapping it for ground chicken / quorn / lentils.

I've personally largely switched to veggie ingredients for Lasagne and Moussaka. That was for taste reasons too but the health benefits are a nice bonus ;)

I'm surprised that I'm getting so many downvotes for this post? Are people so scared by even the mention of eating a meal without meat?

I eat a healthy and well balanced diet and I honestly don't understand that way of thinking from my fellow carnivores.

It’s because “don’t eat ground beef” isn’t a useful answer to the question “how do I best select ground beef”. There may be very good reasons to swap it out for chicken and veg, but this isn’t the place to bring it up.

You want ground ${Specific-cut-name}

ground sirloin

ground chuck

ground round

etc.

Go to a grocery store or meat shop which does their own grinding. The pink slime processing is only economical at the hugest industrial scales. Anything processed at a smaller, more local scale won't have that.

> So if I want to eat nice meat cuts ground up, without getting slime, what do I do?

(1) buy a meat grinder, or

(2) go to a butcher (often even a grocery store butcher) that lets you select a cut and have it ground.

That's true even without the slime issue, because “ground beef” isn't coming from “nice cuts” with Abby particular consistency.

The idiom "it's best not to watch the sausage being made" comes to mind, here.

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