Lean, finely-textured beef (LFTB), commonly referred to by media outlets as “pink slime,” is “back in demand,” according to Yahoo! News.
In 2012, a series of media attacks on LFTB, including several by ABC News, scared grocery stores like Kroger and Safeway and restaurants like McDonald’s away from using the meat product even though it had been safe and approved for use by the USDA for many years.
Beef Products Inc.
By Julia A. Seymour | August 22, 2014 | 10:19 AM EDT
By Mike Ciandella | September 11, 2013 | 12:33 PM EDT
Summer is almost over, but Politico is still ready to throw lean, finely-textured beef back on the fire to cook some more, following ABC’s 2012 roasting of the product and the company that makes it.
The Sept. 9 Politico story referred to the beef as “controversial” twice, “scraps” twice, and “the product” six times. It even referred to it as “remnant scraps of cattle carcasses.”
The description that Politico gave for lean finely-textured beef was repulsive – and completely misleading. “[L]ean finely textured beef is made from the remnant scraps of cattle carcasses that were once deemed too fatty to go into human food. The scraps are heated and centrifuged to reclaim bits of muscle and then the product is treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli before being mixed into ground beef.”