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Don't get slimed...
An overwhelming chorus of “eww, that sounds gross!” alongside some scary junk science about ammonium hydroxide, has led to a safe, nutritious product being pulled from stores – but there is an important lesson here for industry.
Beef Products Inc., the nation’s largest manufacturer of “pink slime” – aka lean finely textured beef – is suspending production of the product at three of four plants after major retailers said they would stop stocking it. The move follows a storm of media hysteria spewed forth onto a public that was largely ignorant of the ingredient and its uses, let alone how it was made – and of course, the “pink slime” moniker hasn’t helped.
The debacle should serve as a lesson to industry to become more transparent about its ingredients and processes, as just the latest example of consumer fear – and the ick factor – trumping safety and sustainability in the food industry.
So what can industry do to avoid being at the mercy of the next consumer scare?
First of all, tell people what you’re selling them, no matter how unsavory it may seem. The International Food Information Council (IFIC) is just one organization with resources for industry and consumers alike, including this straightforward overview of how ammonium hydroxide is used in food processing.
Industry needs to spend more time preempting consumer concerns, rather than reacting to them. (I’m looking at you, nanotechnology.) I think that better consumer awareness and education – and labeling in some cases – could have led to better acceptance of all kinds of ingredients and processes that many consumers find unappetizing, from lean finely textured beef, to irradiation, to genetically modified crops. In terms of beef, a leaner product that’s been treated for microbes sounds pretty good to me.
On the whole, the industry is terrible at communication. The current position seems to be an assumption that the processes of our highly mechanized food system are just too complicated for consumers to understand – so let’s bury our heads in the sand.
When industry does need to react, it should – quickly and with honesty. In the case of trans fats, for example, many food manufacturers rapidly and voluntarily switched to other (often more expensive) fats, after evidence mounted about its link to increased risk of heart disease. But there are still manufacturers using trans fats in their products. Is it any wonder consumers don’t trust the food industry when some manufacturers consider cost to be more important than switching out a dangerous ingredient? And when such behavior is legal?
Beef Products Inc. has given itself 60 days to sort out its “pink slime” PR disaster. If it fails, the American Meat Institute (AMI) claims that an extra 1.5 million cattle would need to be slaughtered to meet demand for ground beef without the feared “slime” – also putting an end to the far more sustainable practice of using every part of the animal, at a time when we are trying to produce more food from less land.
There are genuine problems with our food supply. This isn’t one of them.
The idea of “pink slime” might be icky, but it has definite advantages, and we should have heard about them before.
10 comments (Comments are now closed)
More uninformed people
Collagen- where the heck are you people from? As for nutrition, their label reads much the same as nutrition label on other beef items- know why? BECAUSE IT IS JUST BEEF! Grow up already! Get a life and let this good employer get back to work!
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Posted by Big Al
06 April 2012 | 21h48
Nutritious? Prove it.
Where, exactly, is the evidence that LFTB is nutritious? I have yet to find a nutrition label for the stuff. I really doubt that connective tissue has the same iron and vitamin content of beef muscle. And no one is addressing this issue.
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Posted by Mae Blank
02 April 2012 | 16h18
Hear! Hear!
This is one of the most important writings I have ever read in Food-Navigator. Companies - just clean up your act then print the facts on your label what a concept!
If companies would return to that behavior, then the distrust and avoidance they now experience would be eliminated. People would again be able to buy with confidence instead of searching every label and thousands of web pages to find the scraps of truth about the foods they eat.
In short, just label it so consumers can chose what they want to put into their mouths. The longer you persist in the deception the more people will turn to local growers they can trust or grow the food themselves.
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Posted by Jerry Segers
29 March 2012 | 05h51
It's not that bad
It's not actually that unhealthy, it just sounds bad--she's right. It's actually lean--not fatty. It does contain a lot of collagen. (The stuff that makes Jello wobble). That's not unhealthy--quite the opposite. It's not as nutritious as 'real beef', but then, we eat way too much meat and protein, so the amount we lose by eating this stuff is really unimportant. We should perhaps be asking not why schools want to put 'pink slime' in kids' hamburgers, but why are schools serving our kids HAMBURGERS? Or pizza, or hot dogs...
No wonder everyone's fat. How about a casserole with a bit of ground beef, and LOTS of vegetables in it? Kids won't eat it? Let them bring junk food from home, don't serve it to them in school.
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Posted by Donna
28 March 2012 | 15h34
Terrible at communication, or just terrible?
Perhaps the industry is "terrible at communication" is because it has so much to hide. From CAFO pollution, to human kidney damage linked to the consumption of GMO's, to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on factory farms, to turkeys being stomped to death by sadistic slaughter plant workers,the meat and high-tech pharming industries in general want nothing more than to keep consumers in the dark while cartoon pigs sing and sell their own sizzling hams.
Fortunately, the more consumers learn (often courtesy of risky undercover investigations), the more they reject the conventional food industry's whitewash (er, hogwash) about food cost and safety
.
If we want to lower food prices, we must stop using taxpayer money to subsidize the overproduction of commodity crops, and get back to small, diversified and sustainable family farms. Let the taxpayers keep the money the government currently siphons from our wallets to prop us the corporate mega-farmers growing pesticide, herbicide and hormone-ridden empty calories, and let us spend it on whole, clean and sustainable foods of our choice.
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Posted by Jennifer Christiano
28 March 2012 | 07h53
REALLY ?
WOW, I think I'll stay with the journalistic input from www.foodsafetynews.com and opinion from Bill Marler esq. on this subject. Also, some great footage is available through the movie, "Food Inc." if anyone is interested in seeing this process. Too bad about the new Ag industry Gag laws. The food industry benefits from transparency. If you as a producer have nothing to hide, then you don't need gag laws, and the companies that are first movers will benefit greatly.
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Posted by Javaguy
27 March 2012 | 20h16
Stam Miguel
Consumer's ought to have the opportunity to know what is in their foods and to say "No, I don't want to eat that.". Calling it lean textured beef is just a whitewash. Regardless of what you call it and how you couch it in positive terms, don't feed it to us without telling us in plain terms how you made it, why you are using it, and why we should think it is something we all want in our diet.
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Posted by Stanley G. miguel, Ph.D.
27 March 2012 | 19h20
Common Sense prevails
Caroline you are talking to me. I am sixth generation U.S. Farmer who 13 years ago said I need to be the voice for the American Food system and yet did not get on top of this issue quick enough.... again. You common sense approach is too be applauded and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...that will be the end result of this terrible short term situation. Tell me though with of the food processes that use ammonium hydroxide it is BEEF that gets black eye. Why not Catsup that has three times the ppm of ammonia? Thanks
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Posted by Trent Loos
27 March 2012 | 18h56
Not news, not editorial, too close to propaganda, readers beware
Caroline Scott-Thomas needs to make an even handed effort to explain the shortcomings of pink slime beyond the communications disaster. Icky is not the problem here. A journalist on this newsletter delving into industry commentary is specious. Safety and sustainability are not the main reasons for marketing pink slime, which is why these concepts are not part of the Beef communications strategy. In an industry that is still making bank on consumer ignorance, sustainability is foreign to the business model of suppliers, ingredient manufacturers, and retailers who consider pink slime, GMO and irradiation part of a sustainable growth strategy. Consumers would be well served to ignore this propaganda and explore better journalism which includes some scientific debate on these modern systems to control agriculture.
I have plenty of other criticism of the use of pink slime. I don't need Foodnavigator to agree with me. I would be satisfied to see this newsletter export broader objective reporting whenever safety, sustainability, and questionable practices are concerned.
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Posted by Abe Heller
27 March 2012 | 18h50
Slime is Slime
No matter how you try to spin the slime, it's still slime. There are no nuritional values to it. Cartiledge, sinew, grissle etc, besides of having no good values, the saturated fats would have a picnic clogging up tha arteries. The FDA will tell us everything is good for us, of course, who pays their salaries? People have to research everything they eat nowadays. Please don't try to tell us poison is good for us. We haven't been dumbed down that much.
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Posted by Mike
27 March 2012 | 18h45
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