McDonald’s Discontinues Use Of ‘Pink Slime’ In Burgers
No more slimeburgers? Until recently, 70 percent of burgers in the United States contained “pink slime”, also known as ammoniated boneless lean beef trimmings, a cheap beef filling unfit for consumption until it is gassed with ammonia. Now McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King are dropping the magic additive following a campaign of withering criticism from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Via the Argus Leader:
McDonald’s and two other fast-food chains have stopped using an ammonia-treated burger ingredient that meat industry critics deride as “pink slime.” The product remains widely used as beef filling in burger meat, including in school meals.
The beef is processed by Beef Products Inc. in Iowa and in three other states. One of the company’s chief innovations is to cleanse the beef of E. coli bacteria and other dangerous microbes by treating it with ammonium hydroxide.
“Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form…
Mexican Meat So Full Of Steroids That Athletes Fail Drug Tests
Wow – think twice before you eat that delicious taco/burrito/quesadilla south of the border. And one has to wonder if steroid and other drug use in farm animals is much better in the U.S. Tim Johnson reveals the ugly truth about the meat we eat, for McLatchy News via The Miami Herald:
CELAYA, Mexico — Positive drug tests for five standout members of Mexico’s national soccer team have forced Mexican officials to acknowledge a problem that goes far beyond sports: Much of Mexico’s beef is so tainted with the steroid clenbuterol that it sickens hundreds of people each year.
Use of the steroid is illegal. But it’s found a niche among ranchers, who marvel at the way it helps cattle build muscle mass before going to the slaughterhouse. The beef is pink and largely free of layers of fat, winning over unwitting consumers.
Ranchers call the powdery substance “miracle salts.” A few call…
Half Of Supermarket Meat Contains Drug-Resistant Bacteria
WebMD’s Brenda Goodman reports on this shocking new study:
There’s a new reason to be careful when handling raw meat at mealtimes.
Researchers testing raw turkey, pork, beef, and chicken purchased at grocery stores in five different cities across the U.S. say that roughly one in four of those samples tested positive for a multidrug antibiotic-resistant “superbug” bacterium.
“The findings were pretty shocking,” says study researcher Lance B. Price, PhD, director of the Center of Food Microbiology and Environmental Health at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Flagstaff, Ariz. “We found that 47% of the samples were contaminated with Staph aureus, and more than half of those strains were multidrug resistant, or resistant to three or more antibiotics.”
The presence of drug-resistant staph bacteria, a category that includes methicillin-resistant Staphylococccus aureus (MRSA), in farm animals and food has been a closely watched problem in Europe, where it has been traced to outbreaks of human…
Outrage Over South Korea’s Mass Live Burial Of Pigs
Factory farming practices are always bloody and cruel, but this seems to go above and beyond. Following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, since December South Korea has killed 20% of its domestic livestock — 3 million animals have been exterminated, mostly pigs, who are being buried alive by the thousands in gigantic pits. The practice is traumatizing workers (who hear the pigs’ screams in their sleep) and provoking outrage around the world. Video footage is difficult to sit through:
Fake Steak, Not-Much-Meat Tacos, And More On Chain Food Menus
The lawsuit against Taco Bell for selling meat tacos that contain only 35% beef has opened up, excuse the expression, a can of worms in the kitchens of chain restaurants. ABC News’s Alan Farnham finds that’s only the beginning of the deceptions being perpetrated by corporate purveyors of “meat”:
…Kantha Shelke, chief science officer of Corvus Blue LLC, a Chicago food science and nutrition research firm, says it’s frankly impossible for a consumer to know how much meat is in a food item at Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King or any other fast food restaurant. That’s because such disclosure is not required. Even when an item is touted as being “all-beef,” it may be only 70 percent meat and not run afoul of regulations.
Non-meat ingredients in meat items include ones that add flavor or promote consistency, and binders. “American consumers think they’re being cheated out of their money when they hear that…
Eat Meat From Cloned Cattle
If you really enjoyed a steak from one cow, now you can have the exact same cow again! It’s like a Twilight Zone episode where your plate keeps refilling with the same piece of meat. In an attempt to increase production rate of quality meat, the US has been mass producing meat from cloned cattle. BBC has the report:
Some of the cattle cloned to boost food production in the US have been created from the cells of dead animals, according to a US cloning company.
Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal’s meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass.
US scientists are using a variety of techniques to assess which animals have exceptional qualities.
These attributes include meat quality, productivity or longevity.
There is a long tradition of resurrecting dead animals for cloning – Dolly the sheep being a case in point.
These exceptional…
