newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The meat industry calls it “lean finely textured beef,” It has been called beef trimmings, and soylent pink.

But Gerald Zirnstein, a former United States Department of Agriculture scientist told ABC News that 70 percent of the ground beef found at the supermarket contains something he calls “pink slime.”

Zirnstein added, “It’s economic fraud.  It’s not fresh ground beef.  It’s a cheap substitute.”

Pink slime is created from waste trimmings. According to the Daily, it is made by grinding together connective tissue and beef scraps that usually land in dog food, and treating it with ammonia hydroxide to kill bacteria.

A 35-year veteran of the Food Safety Inspection Service, Carl Custer, said he first encountered the pink slime in the late 1990s. The USDA ruled that the former lean beef trimmings were edible. “Undersecretary JoAnn Smith pushed it through, and that was that,” Custer said, according to The Daily. “My main objection was that it was not meat. It’s more like Jell-O than hamburger.”

Smith had served as president of the Florida Cattlemen’s Association and the of the National Cattlemen’s Association in her past. According to The Raw Story, she took a position on the board of directors at Beef Products, Inc., the makers of pink slime, after leaving as undersecretary in 1993.

McDonald’s announced in February that it would no longer use the pink slime, but it is still found in a number of school cafeterias.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver said, according to KCPQ, “It's cheap meat given to dogs, but after it's processed it can be given to humans.”

A USDA statement said that all ground beef purchases for the National School Lunch Program include stringent pathogen testing and compliance with applicable food safety regulations.