Schools will soon be able to choose whether they serve children hamburgers containing 'pink slime', following an outcry over the processed beef substance.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce tomorrow that starting from this fall, schools can decide if they buy in beef containing controversial ‘pink slime’, according to ABC news.
This marks a U-turn for the USDA, which is responsible for school lunches, who were revealed to have made an agreement to buy 7million pounds of pink slime from food giant Beef Products Inc.
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Pink slime: Schools will have a choice on whether to serve the chemically treated beef to children
However, that treated meat will still go into school canteens over the next few months.
The ammonia-infused beef was also found to be present in 70 per cent of mince sold at supermarkets.
And after the use of 'pink slime' in restaurants gained unfavorable attention, leading fast-food chains promised to stop using the chemically treated meat.
WHAT IS 'PINK SLIME'?
Pink slime, known in the meat industry as 'lean beef trimmings', is made up of the remnants of a cow carcass once all the muscular cuts of meat have been removed.
The lean of the meat is then separated from the fat using a form of centrifuge.
Because the meat comes from areas of the body more likely to be infected, it is sprayed with ammonium hydroxide to kill microbes which cause food poisoning.
The presence of pink slime in a packet of beef does not have to be signalled by the labelling, as it is not considered a separate ingredient but a process.
Kit Foshee, who was a corporate quality assurance manager at Beef Products Inc., the company that makes ‘pink slime’ told Abc that the substance looks like ‘play dough’.
‘It’s pink and frozen, it’s not what the typical person would consider meat.’
Since being fired by BPI, Foshee has spoken out against the product and the company’s claims about it.
J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, defended the practice as a way to safely use meat that what would otherwise be thrown away.
'BLBT (Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings) is a sustainable product because it recovers lean meat that would otherwise be wasted,' he said in a statement.
And Boyle argued that the trimmings were ‘absolutely edible.’
Following a concerted campaign by the likes of British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, major restaurant chains such as McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell agreed that they would no longer put pink slime in their burgers and mince.
Campaign: McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell all stopped using pink slime following pressure from the likes of Jamie Oliver, pictured
The decision by the USDA to define trimmings as exactly the same substance as muscle meat - against the advice of department scientists - was made by an official who went on to work in the beef industry.
The department claims that its beef supplies 'meet the highest standard for food safety', but officials admit there is no way to tell which products are made with beef trimmings.
Retired microbiologist Carl Custer has spoken out against the use of pink slime, which he claims is 'not nutritionally equivalent' to traditional cuts of meat.
'My objection with having it in the schools is that it’s not meat,' he said.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2115417/Pink-slime-beef-menu-US-schools-opt-serving-processed-meat.html#ixzz1pDKZsH4f
