I am a proud American citizen who enjoys all of my rights and responsibilities for living in this great country. I am excited about our first amendment right to freedom of expression, especially since I have the right to write this blog. I believe social media leaves an outlet for the common American to share their point of view. I wonder if the news media feels threatened by this.
I am furious about the media taking control of an agriculture issue and changing the industry over night. They took an issue and twisted it. They scare uninformed people trying to become informed by watching "news". Unfortunately they have now shut down business, taken people's jobs, and hurt rural America. Lean Finally Textured Beef which they labeled "pink slime", twisted the facts and shut down the process. LFTB comes from the trimmings when the beef processor fabricates the carcass into subprimals. The starting raw material averages about 70% fat and 30% lean. “It is chunks of fat that has muscle tissue in it, but it’s not cost-effective to pay someone to take the muscle out with a knife”.
I am bringing the facts with my own commentary.
1. Lean Finally Textured Beef has been produced for two decades.
A 20 year old story is not news.
2. Food grade ammonium hydroxide (basically ammonia + water), which has been
declared safe by the Food and Drug Administration since 1974, is used to produce a number of products such as puddings and baked goods and can be used in the processing of boneless lean beef trimmings to control any harmful bacteria that may be present in the beef.
I haven't heard of any pudding companies shutting down.
3. This product is not labeled when you purchase beef because it is 100% beef.
If they would have labeled it up to this point LFTB, would we really have noticed?
4. If consumers say we do not want LFTB in their ground beef product we as cattle producers will need to feed approximately 1.5 million more cattle and harvest them every year.
I don't think you need to have passed math to figure out that with cow numbers down and much of cow country in drought, we can't do that.
5. So far, the impact of the misrepresentation of LFTB has cost the 50% lean ground beef market nearly $10/cwt.”
If they are no longer allowed to pull every piece of lean beef off the carcass on our behalf (we don't even have to do it ourselves) and just leave that "extra" as waste. We can only expect to not have enough product to feed the population and for the price of what we do have to go up.
When HSUS threatened Ohio, I told the high school students I was teaching that they were an organization that wanted to end meat consumption by humans. They immediately said, "they can't keep me from eating meat". I told them "they won't tell you, you can't eat meat. They will just make it so you can't afford to eat meat. Is it knocking on our door?
Where ever you shop for your ground beef this weekend - just ask to have them mix yours with LFTB.
Want to know more read:
http://meatsafety.org/ht/d/sp/i/76540/pid/76540 or
http://www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/76184%20 or
http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/lift-up-the-lean-beef/ and especially
http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/in-defense-of-a-good-man/
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