Remember "Pink Slime?" The beef industry is hoping you forgot
Supporting small, local butchers is what we need to strive for
Welcome to Raw Milk Mama, a newsletter about food freedom, our food systems, and how to create local food security in our communities. Sign up here for weekly posts, or keep reading...
Are you old enough to remember the “Pink Slime” controversy from 2012?
It went something like this:
ABC news did a segment revealing that Beef Products Inc (BPI)—one of the big meat packing companies—was using a process to take beef trim (everything left on the bones after they finish cutting off the meat) and turn it into “lean finely textured beef” (LFTB). Otherwise known as “pink slime.”
They did this through a complex process where they took the trim from hundreds, maybe thousands, of beef carcasses, ground it up, heated it, spun it through a centrifuge to get the liquid fat removed, then sent it through a chamber where it was mixed with ammonia to help sanitize it. It needed to be sanitized due to the high potential of bacterial contamination on it. At the end of this process, frozen bricks of this substance are shipped out to be mixed with other ground beef to increase the fat content uniformly.
The term “pink slime” became controversial. The meat company that created “lean finely textured beef,” BPI sued ABC for huge amounts.
So what happened next?
The meat companies rebranded “lean finely textured beef” (that still goes through the same process), and they now get to call it ground beef.
(These types of shenanigans and lack of basic transparency are why I chose to be a vegetarian for so many years in high school and college. That was, until I found a farm I knew and trusted)
I have 2 questions for you
Did you know this type of processing and labeling is happening to your meat and completely legal?
Do you want this–whatever “it” is–in your food?
If you answered “No” to either of those questions, there are things you can do to ensure this is not in the food you bring into your household.
There’s not much you can do about institutional food except say “no thank you.”
But here are a few things to do today:
Get your meat from local farmers using small, ethical butchers to process on a small scale.
Call your Congressional Representative and your 2 Senators and ask them to please support local farmers and butchers by supporting the PRIME Act.
This bill gives farmers and small, custom slaughterhouses the option to work together to serve us.
We CAN and we must begin to take back our local food systems and build in accountability through direct interactions.
We deserve to know where our food comes from and how it is produced.
We need peace of mind in knowing how our meat is produced and processed is important. It’s vital.
Being able to find and connect with local butchers gives us built-in transparency and input in the processes.
Face-to-face food acquisition matters. Being able to talk to our farmers, meet our processors, and understand how food goes from field to table is essential.
In this age of information, transparency isn’t difficult. But those who have something to hide don’t want us to see what they are doing.
It’s common knowledge in the farming, ranching and meat industry that processing is the weakest link in food security:
After decades of consolidation, there are about 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States, processing billions of pounds of meat for food stores each year. But a relatively small number of them account for the vast majority of production. In the cattle industry, a little more than 50 plants are responsible for as much as 98 percent of slaughtering and processing in the United States. (NYT April 2020)1
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can foster more local meat processing options by consciously supporting the ones that exist.
Yes, it does take more effort to find and source from a local farm. But it’s well worth it.
It’s time to reclaim our food system. It starts with supporting your local farm-to-butcher relationship. They are here for us and to serve us. Let’s make it a two-way street.
About Raw Milk Mama: I believe in the freedom to feed our families how we see fit. I also see the direction that our country is going--no one wants to live in a world where food scarcity is a constant reality. It's time to take back our food systems so they serve us, not monopolistic corporations.