ABC helps shut down three factories making healthy food.

huevonkiller · Dec 6, 2012

Earlier this year, my old employer, ABC News, "alerted" the public to a new threat, ground beef made with "pink slime."

It sounds awful! ABC's reporting frightened most school systems so much that they stopped using that form of meat. The food company lost 80 percent of its business.

But the scare is bunk. What ABC calls "pink slime" is just as appetizing as other food.

"Bunk is the polite word," Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center says. "ABC went on a crusade. Three nights in a row back in March, they pounded on this."

Well, why shouldn't they, if there's something called "pink slime" in beef?

"Because it's not pink slime. It's ground beef."

"A couple activists who used to work for the FDA didn't like this really cool scientific process that separates the beef trimming so you get the remaining ground beef. So they coined this term deliberately to try to hurt this company."

The company, Beef Products Inc., does something unique. It takes the last bit of trim meat off the bone by heating it slightly. That saves money and arguably helps the environment—not using that meat would waste 5,000 cows a day. In 20 years, there is no record of anybody being hurt by what ABC and its activists call "pink slime"—what the industry just calls "lean beef trimmings" or "finely textured beef."

"Everybody constantly says, 'You should eat leaner beef.' So when we try to eat the leaner beef, then they take that away from us, too," Gainor said. "The company ... has received awards for how good a job they do for consumer safety. It was just one constant hit job."

An effective one. After ABC's reports, Beef Products Inc. closed three out of its four plants. Seven hundred workers lost jobs.

Scientifically illiterate, business-hating media will always do scare stories. Don't believe them.

Most of them, anyway.
Click to expand...

http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/05/food-bunk

Eastoff · Dec 6, 2012

oh my... I feel... I feel violated and tricked.

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ABC helps shut down three factories making healthy food.

huevonkiller Change (Deftones)

Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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ABC helps shut down three factories making healthy food.

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huevonkiller Change (Deftones)

Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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