Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 6, 2012

'Soylent pink': The Obama administration's USDA just ordered 7 million pounds of this disgusting, ammonia-laced pink slime to feed to US school children

Rather than First Lady Michelle Obama strong-arming cold cereal companies to change their recipes, trying to ban pizza in schools while trying to force students in Los Angeles schools to eat her Nanny State lentil and brown rice cutlets, perhaps she can turn her meddling food obsessions and power-grabbing and stick her nose into a much larger, much more alarming and potentially unhealthy problem.

Her husband’s USDA just bought 7 million pounds of disgusting “pink slime” made from animal connective tissues — euphemistically named “Lean Beef Trimmings” — doused in ammonia to then shape into hamburger-like patties to feed America’s school kids.

Yes, ammonia.

That 7-million-pound USDA pink slime order is 1.5 million pounds greater than the department’s order was in 2009.

Pink slime made from beef connective tissue — that’s tendons, sinew, not muscle, not meat. Soaked in ammonia.

What is the Obama administration’s food police doing when you really need them? Targeting homemade cookies. Confiscating homemade turkey and cheese sandwiches.

This disgusting ammonia-laced pink slime (which is meant to kill E. coli and salmonella in the faux meat, but is failing) is so disgusting and fraught with safety issues, fast food restaurants like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell won’t touch it any longer. McDonald’s had been using it until recently. The pink slime is concocted from cow by-products that are normally used in dog food. But it’s apparently A-OK acceptable to feed to American students during the Golden Age of Obama.

Shame on the George H.W. Bush administration for initiating it and double-triple shame on the Obama administration for not only continuing the practice, but for increasing the amount of pink slime bought.

Why FLOTUS Michelle hasn’t spoken out against this pink slime being fed to school children EVER is indeed curious. And mighty suspicious.

Anyone know if the “pink slime” company, Beef Product, Inc., is an Obama fundraiser bundler or one of his major campaign contributors?

Reported by The Daley Gator, via Take Part — Pink Slime: It’s What’s for Lunch in America’s Schools:

Forget the corn dog and pizza quarrels. Healthy school lunch advocates have a bigger problem on their plates: a 7 million-pound order of connective tissue and beef scraps doused in ammonia, set to hit school lunch trays in coming months.

Despite being dropped in December by McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King, the infamous concoction – known as “pink slime” – is still in high demand, thanks to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) purchase that will keep it on school lunch menus. Yes, keep; it’s been there for years and is set to stay.

The substance is smooshed into meat patties and served up as hamburgers, but the meat product is made from parts of cows “normally destined for dog food and rendering,” reports The Daily.

Microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein and retired microbiologist Carl Custer say the goop is “a high risk product.” The two conducted a study on pink slime in the late ’90s, when JoAnn Smith – known for being buddy-buddy with the beef industry – was serving as undersecretary for the George H.W. Bush administration. (Smith was president of both the Florida Cattlemen’s Association and the National Cattlemen’s Association). At the time, Custer sounded the alarms for food-safety concerns, but the USDA ignored his warnings, Custer says, soliciting a second assessment of the slime’s safety.

Because the meat scraps are particularly vulnerable to contamination, South Dakota company Beef Products, Inc. came up with the idea to soak the stuff in ammonia to kill E. coli and salmonella in 2001. The USDA stamped it with approval and shortly thereafter, the slime was available for public consumption.

Years later, Zirnstein feels the same as he did a decade ago. Speaking of his two-year-old son, he told The Daily, “…you better believe I don’t want him eating pink slime when he starts going to school.”

But skeptics aren’t stopping the pink slime from oozing its way through public schools. The USDA has purchased a sizeable order – 1.5 million more pounds than it bought in 2009 for schools – from Beef Product, Inc.

As for safety concerns? In 2009, The New York Times reported that government and industry records showed dozens of incidences of E. coli and salmonella pathogens in schools’ Beef Products meat, despite added ammonia.

From Huffington Post, Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals:

Pink slime — that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade — may have been rejected by fast food joints like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation’s school lunch program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 7 million pounds of the “slime” for school lunches, The Daily reports. Officially termed “Lean Beef Trimmings,” the product is a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. It’s then blended into traditional meat products like ground beef and hamburger patties.

“We originally called it soylent pink,” microbiologist Carl Custer, who worked at the Food Safety Inspection Service for 35 years, told The Daily. “We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat.”

Custer and microbiologist Gerald Zernstein concluded in a study that the trimmings are a “high risk product,” but Zernstein tells The Daily that “scientists in D.C. were pressured to approve this stuff with minimal safety approval” under President George H.W. Bush’s administration. The USDA asserts that its ground beef purchases “meet the highest standard for food safety.”

Controversy surrounding “pink slime” stems from various safety concerns, particularly dangers associated with ammonium hydroxide, which can both be harmful to eat and has potential to turn into ammonium nitrate — a common component in homemade bombs, according to MSNBC. It’s also used in household cleaners and fertilizers.

Oh, dear Lord, this is appalling. Our children are EATING this dangerous crap.

HuffPo continues:

In 2009, The New York Times reported that despite the added ammonia, tests of Lean Beef Trimmings of schools across the country revealed dozens of instances of E. coli and salmonella pathogens.

News video from USA Today:

Michelle’s beloved greasy, deep-fried fat cakes, French fries, her fattening burgers and chocolate milkshakes are starting to sound pretty darned healthy about now.

And safer. I don’t think you can make a bomb from a fat cake. Maybe you can, don’t know.

More hypocritical mandates from this White House. Stories like this one should make a parent seriously consider homeschooling… Chocolate milk has been banned in many schools, home-packed lunches have been nixed, and HHS inspecting parents’ lunch choices and chicken nuggets have been forced upon young students. But “Soylent Pink” masquerading as a healthy meat, no problem-o.

Statistics show that about 17 percent of U.S. children and teenagers are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means that 83 percent are not.

You may recall that in September 2011, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that Americans are going to have to “adjust” their tastes to like healthy food.

Did Tommy Boy mean this “Americans’ taste adjustment” to include eating “pink slime”?

Michelle Obama’s mantra — Do as I mandate, not as I do, you ignorant peasants… we can’t leave it up just to the parents, after all.

Hopenchange, ladies and gentlemen, is a fraud.

FLOTUS Michelle Obama's food police lunch mandates are bombing in L.A. public schools while students across the nation are being fed pink slime soaked in ammonia

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