The April/May issue of Mary Jane's Farm has a news article about 'pink slime'. What is this? Well, it is a product that is produced by Beef Products Inc. of South Dakota. According to the article it consists of "rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses". Once upon a time it was used for pet food, but in the last few years that has changed. Now it is in our food. It is made into a mash and frozen and is then added to hamburger as an additive.
One of the problems w/these parts is that they are easily contaminated with pathogens, E coli and salmonella for example. To reduce the risk, BPI sprays the slime with ammonia. BPI also talked friendly officials into classifying the ammonia as a processing agent instead of an ingredient, therefore it is not listed on the food label.
The good news is that because of good investigators, who discovered this product is far from pathogen free, people are waking up. Finally the USDA is included in routine testing and pathogen recalls. Until recently they were not.
The bad news, according to the May, 2010 issue of acres magazine is that this stuff is in 50-70% of all the hamburger in the USA, including MacDonalds, Burger King, Cargill, grocery stores and the school lunch program, which has raised the acceptable amount of pink slime from 10%, to 15% of the hamburger fed to your kids.
If you are interested in watching this being produced, rent a dvd of the movie Food Inc.