Not everything Jamie Oliver does has a libertarian touch, however, I like a lot of what his “Food Revolution” is doing to educate and empower individuals in terms of eating real food and ditching the chemical slop being turned out by the corporate-socialist food machine.
Although Oliver often appeals to government to help drive the change in food habits, his campaign to educate people about the beef turned out by the industrial food supply is a good example of using facts and persuasion to educate people on the reality of industrial-processed food. Oliver has been hard at work exposing the methods that are used to repurpose formerly discarded beef cuts – throwaway scrap – as edible food. Oliver refers to the process wherein ammonium hydroxide is used to treat the beef scrap to kill the pathogens. The ammonia-treated beef scrap is minced and mixed with the ground beef to (1) produce more meat and (2) save the costs of discarding the scrap. Oliver calls this repurposed scrap “pink slime.”
Thanks to Oliver’s celebrity status and ability to draw the media, McDonald’s announced it has discontinued the use of the repurposed slime in its “100% ground beef.” Here is McDonald’s slick attempt at explaining why it abandoned a practice that was perfectly “safe.”
Burgers are at the heart of the Golden Arches, and the fact is, McDonald’s USA serves 100% USDA-inspected beef- no preservatives, no fillers, no extenders- period.
For a number of years prior to 2011, to assist with supply, McDonald’s USA used some lean beef trimmings treated with ammonia in our burgers. We were among other food retailers who used this safe product.
At the beginning of last year, we made a decision to stop using this ingredient. It has been out of the McDonald’s USA supply chain since last August. We wanted to be consistent with our global beef supply chain and we’re always evolving our practices.
The chain takes to calling this repurposed scrap “lean beef trimmings.” As the company’s statement implies, everyone else was doing it so they did it. In fact, using these “lean beef trimmings” is so “safe” that when Oliver began to gain a lot of publicity with his anti-slime campaign, McDonald’s immediately ditched its practice that was formerly unknown to most people. In this MSNBC article, McDonald’s claims, of course, that Oliver’s exposure of the meat industry’s use of pink slime had nothing to do with the chain discontinuing its practice of selling lean garbage trimmings to its customers. Here’s a quote from the article:
Besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs. It’s also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It’s regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as “generally recognized as safe.”
The USDA, indeed, does not require labeling for the use of ammonia in your food. Instead, the government opts to spend its time and our money destroying the commerce efforts of entrepreneurs like small farmers and artisanal food makers. See the video below for Oliver’s demonstration of how the pink slime is made.
