42 replies to this topic

[Hysssss-teria]

Well, I'm sad to see that there are more Bad Guys and Might-Be-Bad Guys on this list than there are Good Guys. And I'm made even sadder by the fact that we ONLY have Bad Guys in our area :(

http://blog.timesuni...-the-list/8877/

According to The Daily, these are among the stores that say they do not sell meat with pink slime:
Safeway -- A&P -- Whole Foods -- Costco -- Publix -- H-E-B -- Waldbaum's -- Price Chopper

These are among the stores that do not sell pink slime in store-ground meat, but sell pre-packaged ground beef from suppliers that may contain pink slime:
Jewel-Osco -- Kroger -- Food Lion -- Winco -- Fred Meyer

These are among the stores that do sell store-ground meat with pink slime:
BJ's -- Target -- Hy-Vee -- Walmart -- Albertsons -- stop & Shop -- Zaycon Foods

[Hardison]

Hysssss-teria, on 21 March 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

Well, I'm sad to see that there are more Bad Guys and Might-Be-Bad Guys on this list than there are Good Guys. And I'm made even sadder by the fact that we ONLY have Bad Guys in our area :(

I feel your pain. I have purchased meat at Albertsons.

I am very surprised that Costco doesn't sell this stuff. Two stores that I do shop at , Sprouts and Fresh and Easy, aren't on any of the lists. I will contact them directly. I am also curious about Trader Joe's. I have never bought ground beef there and I don't even know if they sell it.

Edit: I called Fresh and Easy and was told that they don't use the "pink slime". I sent an email to both Sprouts and Trader Joe's and am awaiting a response.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Another good reason to become a vegetarian.
The only pink slime I might see is from strawberries or beets.

[Sandra Piddock]

Shortpoet-GTD, on 21 March 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

Another good reason to become a vegetarian.
The only pink slime I might see is from strawberries or beets.

What you get from strawberries and beets isn't slime - it's nectar of the gods.

We don't have the 'pink slime' problem here, because the Spanish are proud of their food and the way it's produced. Also - which is the main factor - they don't look for the cheapest option if it means sacrificing flavour.

[Hardison]

Hardison, on 21 March 2012 - 12:55 PM, said:

Edit: I called Fresh and Easy and was told that they don't use the "pink slime". I sent an email to both Sprouts and Trader Joe's and am awaiting a response.

Just to update this thread. Both Sprouts and Trader Joe's do not use "pink slime."

Despite this, I still am going the mostly vegetarian route. I will still continue to eat fish though. I don't even eat much red meat. I have probably purchased ground beef maybe two or three times within the last year, but that's enough to turn my stomach. Also, I have no doubt that there's a chicken and turkey version of this stuff out there.

[dconklin]

This did not make my night :(  Thank you for the information, but I always liked shopping at Stop and Shop! Their meat is more expensive, I would have thought they would not have gone with the pink slime.  I don't buy much ground beef, I think I will start to cut it out of our dinners.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Sandra Piddock, on 24 March 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

What you get from strawberries and beets isn't slime - it's nectar of the gods.

Did you see the laughing smilie? I was kidding.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

(And please be sure to click on the links inside the text. The first one states that the "meat" content in
most fast food chain hamburgers range from 2-14%. The vast majority of those burgers consists of "pink slime"
thanks, to the filler of nerves/bones along with other "wonderful, nutritious" goodies bathed in ammonia.
Georgia prison officials didn't even want to feed it to their convicted killers, so they sent it back. But
it's ok for our school system? )

"In a study titled "Fast food hamburgers: what are we really eating?" pathologists at the Cleveland Clinic dissected burgers
from eight different fast food chains to find out what was, or wasn't, inside. Published in the Annals of Diagnostic Pathology,
the paper begins with "Most consumers presume that the hamburger they eat is composed primarily of meat."
But what did they find?
Similar to a previous dissection they had performed on hot dogs, the researchers discovered waste and
by-products including connective tissue, nerve tissue, cartilage, bone, and in a quarter of the samples,
Sarcocystis parasites.
But surely these "fillers" were the minority, right?
Unfortunately not. After crunching the numbers, the researchers found that the amount of actual meat (muscle flesh)
in the burgers ranged from 2.1 percent to 14.8 percent. Instead of fries, perhaps fast food cashiers should be asking,
"Do you want meat with that?"
In addition to reducing quality, cutting corners also tends to reduce safety,
which is why the pink slime in question is injected with ammonia hydroxide:
to kill the Salmonella and E. coli (read: fecal matter) that it's often contaminated with.
Instead of addressing the contamination issue itself, the meat industry employs a cheap "technofix" to turn what was once considered waste into slimy profits.

This month the CDC released their latest national meat survey in response to this question.
They tested more than 5,000 samples of retail meat products straight off the shelves in California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.
What they found could hardly have been more disturbing:
90 percent of pork chops, ground beef and ground turkey,
and 95 percent of chicken breasts, were contaminated with fecal bacteria.
Which is more important, corporate profits or the safety and health of our loved ones?
Using "pink slime" as a springboard, let's make our answer very clear."
http://www.huffingto...ef=food&ir=Food

[mariaandrea]

Hmm, could have sworn I posted to this thread earlier. Guess not.
I'm lucky that my meat choices preclude eating pink slime unintentionally and that I have great local grocery stores and farmers markets and local meat producers. I'm really glad to see a list though so everyone can decide where to shop and what to buy where they shop.

And, yes, there's a chicken version of pink slime, used to make chicken nuggets. Never buy mass produced frozen chicken nuggets 'cuz you just don't know what it is in them. And of course, it's a food targeted to kids.

[still learning]

Shortpoet-GTD, on 25 March 2012 - 04:26 AM, said:

.....click on the links inside the text. The first one states that the "meat" content in
most fast food chain hamburgers range from 2-14%. The vast majority of those burgers consists of "pink slime"
thanks, to the filler of nerves/bones along with other "wonderful, nutritious" goodies bathed in ammonia.

Interesting links, but I don't see where "The vast majority of those burgers consists of "pink slime" " comes from.

I didn't see it in the HuffPost article you linked to.  It's not in the original article that Greger referred to In HuffPost (see http://www.tissuepat...ath_dec2008.pdf )
If you look at that tissuepathology article, the largest component of fastfood burger "meat" is water,  For the tissuepathology article they examined eight different kinds of fastfood burgers, got quite a bit of variation but none seemed appetizing.  Nothing about "pink slime,"  Doubt if they were actually looking for it, not sure how it'd show up.  Unidentified stuff maybe.

Regarding that other report, the national meat survey one, looks to me that people are misreading it (or misusing it), including Michael Greger at Huffington Post, who is an MD and should know better.  If you look at the subtitle of the report it says "National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System."  The report is really about the degree of antibiotic resistance of microbes found in meat products, not about  the degree of bacterial contamination of meat.  They seem to assume some degree of contamination in most meat and if you look at the report, going down to Table 5, that's seems to be the case.  The amount of contamination isn't shown.  Doesn't matter as far as the antibiotic resistance angle goes but definitely matters from a general public (and personal) health angle.

Assume some degree of bacterial contamination?  Sure.  Unless you keep to clean-room standards there will be some.  Even hospital operating-room standards don't take you down to zero contamination.  It's a matter of how much and what kind of contamination is allowable.   You'd like to have zero of the really pathogenic O157:H7 strain of E. coli, but it's not reasonable to expect zero of the other strains that we all have already in our intestinal flora  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

still learning, on 25 March 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

Interesting links, but I don't see where "The vast majority of those burgers consists of "pink slime" " comes from.

http://nutritionfact...ts-in-a-burger/
That link talks about the fact that they don't use the muscle "meat" but the leavings/trimmings that are
put into burgers contain cartilage, blood vessels, nerves, parasites and ammonia which is commonly
called pink slime.
But I suppose you could call it an opinion piece, not based in fact. That's your choice.

Edit-Links added from other threads on this.
http://www.altenergy...ink-slime-beef/
http://www.altenergy...ere’s-the-beef/

Mc's said they would stop using the stuff this year, which means they have been using
this &*^%^& all along.

[hunysukle]

I am surprised that grocery stores are getting by with it! What happened to food regulations? Every day I hear more disturbing news.

[still learning]

Shortpoet-GTD, on 25 March 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

But I suppose you could call it an opinion piece, not based in fact. That's your choice.

OK, your opinion it is.

The Nutritionfact video you linked to doesn't say that "the vast majority of those burgers consist of "pink slime""""
It says that they contain pink slime.  Not the same as the vast majority consists of pink slime.  Could say the vast majority consists partly of "pink slime" according to Wikipedia http://www.tissuepat...ath_dec2008.pdf

The Nutritionfact video starts with material from  http://www.tissuepat...ath_dec2008.pdf which says nothing about "pink slime," then switches to a NY Times article about "pink slime" that says nothing about how much is actually included.

My understanding from the tissuepathology piece is that there isn't much actual solid muscle meat included in the fastfood burger patties.  Lots of connective tissue, lots of blood vessels and, most of all, lots of water.  Plenty of vegetable material in two of the eight kinds sampled.  Nothing said about pink slime.  I don't know whether the pink slime content shows up in one or more of the regular categories or not.  I'm pretty sure that a lot of the non-muscle stuff like isn't included in anybody's "pink slime" accounting since it doesn't get the cooking/ammonia treatment.  Take the "pink slime" out and leave everything else the same and you can still get a lot of in the hamburger "meat" that isn't appealing.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

still learning, on 25 March 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

OK, your opinion it is.

The Nutritionfact video you linked to doesn't say that "the vast majority of those burgers consist of "pink slime""""
It says that they contain pink slime.  Not the same as the vast majority consists of pink slime.  Could say the vast majority consists partly of "pink slime" according to Wikipedia http://www.tissuepat...ath_dec2008.pdf

The Nutritionfact video starts with material from  http://www.tissuepat...ath_dec2008.pdf which says nothing about "pink slime," then switches to a NY Times article about "pink slime" that says nothing about how much is actually included.

My understanding from the tissuepathology piece is that there isn't much actual solid muscle meat included in the fastfood burger patties.  Lots of connective tissue, lots of blood vessels and, most of all, lots of water.  Plenty of vegetable material in two of the eight kinds sampled.  Nothing said about pink slime.  I don't know whether the pink slime content shows up in one or more of the regular categories or not.  I'm pretty sure that a lot of the non-muscle stuff like isn't included in anybody's "pink slime" accounting since it doesn't get the cooking/ammonia treatment.  Take the "pink slime" out and leave everything else the same and you can still get a lot of in the hamburger "meat" that isn't appealing.

When the stated range of "meat" is listed as 2-14%, the remainder (the vast majority) is something else.
Pink slime, water, chemicals-whatever. It isn't "meat."

[dconklin]

I wish I had a big enough piece of land to raise my own cows and chickens! It is a hard thing to say goodbye when you raise them, but you know where your beef came from that way.  It disgusts me that we have been eating this stuff for how long and it is only coming out now.  Everytime I think about it, I get frustrated.

[steph84]

I also feel frustrated dconklin! I just feel like big food companies have been deceiving consumers just to fill their pockets while our health is put at risk. This is just unacceptable and I hope that people stop purchasing it so that they get the message. I'm thinking of raising my own chickens now and just kicked the beef.

[mariaandrea]

If you have a farmers market near you, get to know the producers and buy meat from them. I know the farm where my beef comes from because it's from the small town I grew up in and I have friends who live near it and see the cows in the field. And in a small town, everyone knows everyone else's business so when they say organic and free range, everyone knows it's true. And, for the meat brands in the grocery stores, I know which ones are okay because I've researched them. Of course, it's a lot more expensive, so beef is rarely on the menu, but it's a treat when it is and I don't worry about our health - either from eating too much beef or from eating non-organic beef. The same goes for chicken.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Woot-Woot!
Once again, our angry voices are being heard. (Still can't figure out why we can't make a dent regarding
climate change, but that's another thread.)

"The controversy over the ground beef filler dubbed "pink slime" has hurt U.S. ground beef demand, a Tyson Foods Inc
executive said on Tuesday.

Heightened awareness and debate over the product, which the industry calls lean finely textured beef, has "put a fair amount of pressure on ground beef consumption," Tyson Chief Operating Officer Jim Lochner said.
Concern over the filler, made from scraps of beef sprayed with an ammonia gas to kill any bacteria,
has prompted major grocers and fast-food chains, from Wal-Mart Stores Inc to McDonald's Corp, to stop
buying ground beef made with it."
http://www.baltimore...0,2441971.story

"Joining other grocery chains, Safeway and Giant, two of Maryland's biggest grocers, announced this week that they
will no longer sell "pink slime" beef."
http://owingsmills.p...stores-c5c0db91

"Kroger Co., the nation’s largest supermarket retailer, on Thursday joined the growing list of companies that have
dropped the beef product widely referred to as pink slime from their fresh meat cases."
http://www.latimes.c...0,1133733.story

"Beef Products Inc, the top producer of ammonia-treated beef product dubbed 'pink slime' by critics, said on Monday
it had halted production at three of its four plants in three states for 60 days from Monday.

The plant closures were hailed as a victory by activists who had argued that the product was unappetizing."
http://www.baltimore...0,6163734.story

[dconklin]

Shortpoet-GTD, on 27 March 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

Woot-Woot!
Once again, our angry voices are being heard. (Still can't figure out why we can't make a dent regarding
climate change, but that's another thread.)

"The controversy over the ground beef filler dubbed "pink slime" has hurt U.S. ground beef demand, a Tyson Foods Inc
executive said on Tuesday.

Heightened awareness and debate over the product, which the industry calls lean finely textured beef, has "put a fair amount of pressure on ground beef consumption," Tyson Chief Operating Officer Jim Lochner said.
Concern over the filler, made from scraps of beef sprayed with an ammonia gas to kill any bacteria,
has prompted major grocers and fast-food chains, from Wal-Mart Stores Inc to McDonald's Corp, to stop
buying ground beef made with it."
http://www.baltimore...0,2441971.story

"Joining other grocery chains, Safeway and Giant, two of Maryland's biggest grocers, announced this week that they
will no longer sell "pink slime" beef."
http://owingsmills.p...stores-c5c0db91

"Kroger Co., the nation’s largest supermarket retailer, on Thursday joined the growing list of companies that have
dropped the beef product widely referred to as pink slime from their fresh meat cases."
http://www.latimes.c...0,1133733.story

"Beef Products Inc, the top producer of ammonia-treated beef product dubbed 'pink slime' by critics, said on Monday
it had halted production at three of its four plants in three states for 60 days from Monday.

The plant closures were hailed as a victory by activists who had argued that the product was unappetizing."
http://www.baltimore...0,6163734.story

Woohoo :)  :)  By Giant being added to the list, I am sure Stop and Shop will be on there too.  They are somehow linked (all their store brands are the same and gift cards are good at both stores.)  I will email Stop and Shop tomorrow (I am half asleep now) and see if they are on the ban too.  I can ask my local one when I go shopping, but I think going to corporate will be more effective.  Thank you for the good news!

[Hardison]

Shortpoet-GTD, on 26 March 2012 - 03:27 AM, said:

When the stated range of "meat" is listed as 2-14%, the remainder (the vast majority) is something else.
Pink slime, water, chemicals-whatever. It isn't "meat."

This is absolutely terrifying. I really don't want to know who long this has been going on. It do think it's great that the stores are bowing to pressure and taking that crap off the shelves.