Bill Black - Green Slime Drives Our Financial Crises
April 16, 2012 “Pink slime” just had its fifteen minutes of fame. BPI, the producer of pink slime, calls it “Lean Finely Textured Beef.” BPI’s slogan is “expect a higher standard.” Pink slime starts with fatty tissues that are inherently more likely to be repositories of salmonella and e coli infections. The tissues are shredded and rendered and most of the fat drained off. The pink slime, however, is still more likely to be infected after this processing and that makes it dangerous and can make it smell spoiled. BPI’s “innovation” was to gas the pink slime in Mr. Clean (ammonia) to try to kill bacteria and reduce the stink. The resultant pink slime is then frozen into bricks and shipped in bulk.
Pink slime was originally limited to dog food, but it has secretly been fed to Americans for a decade. Major hamburger chains, grocery stores, and school lunch programs added it to make up 15% of our burgers. The government didn’t require disclosure of pink slime or ammonia. Tests have established that pink slime remains more likely to harbor dangerous bacteria and that the only way to reduce that problem is to add so much Mr. Clean that the pink slime stinks and tastes awful. Because BPI could not sell the product if it continued to stink and taste awful they reduced the amount of Mr. Clean they used in processing and the risk of the pink slime harboring dangerous bacteria rose.
The New York Times revealed the pink slime scandal in a story that ran on December 31, 2009. Unfortunately, it buried the lead. The story broke the news that Gerald Zirnstein, a government microbiologist, had dubbed the product “pink slime” in 2002, but it did so around the 25th paragraph and the story did not generate a demand for reform.
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