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"Pink slime” is the repulsive industrial food product du jour, but it’s actually been a staple of beef production for years. The slimy additive, also known as “lean, finely textured beef,” is good for beef producers because it cuts back on waste and saves about 3 cents per pound of meat.
But suddenly, pink slime’s bad PR is poised to kill the goo’s use entirely. In the past few weeks, this meat additive popped up in hundreds of headlines. Hundreds of thousands of people signed online petitions pushing for a ban on the stuff. Several restaurant chains, grocery stores, and school districts committed to ditch pink slime-containing beef. Anti-pink-slime propaganda has been steadily oozing its way across the nation, and along the way, it’s provided a lesson on how consumers can wield their power to effectively reform America’s industrial food system.
Pink slime went viral thanks to a revolting name, a celebrity activist, and a think-of-the-children angle. The takedown kicked off in January when McDonald’s, at famed chef Jamie Oliver’s urging, voluntarily eliminated pink slime-loaded beef from its supply chain. Burger King and Taco Bell followed suit. But the real outcry began after activists traced the slime to the mouths of kids—a report showed that pink slime regularly appears in USDA-approved school lunch meat. The media churned out stories, food bloggers vilified the slime, online petitions to the USDA went viral, and concerned parents flooded their school districts with phone calls."
.....
"Take artificial food dyes like Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6. These synthetic colors and others—of which food producers use about 15 million pounds every year—have been linked to hyperactivity in kids, cancers, and allergic reactions.
The FDA refuses to regulate Big Meat’s use of antibiotics in food animals, despite the fact that the practice has been linked to a spike in drug-resistant diseases like MRSA.
In fact, the meat industry continues to feed its animals about 29 million pounds of antibiotics every year—about 80 percent of America’s total antibiotic use. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals like bisphenol-A (BPA) and phthalates—which studies link to cancers, obesity, diabetes, and other health problems even at low doses—are continually used in all sorts of food packaging. And these three prevalent issues are just the tip of the industrial food iceberg.
Let pink slime guide the way. Let's start referring to Red 40 as “ADHD Red,” and Yellow 5 and 6 as “Cancer Yellow.” Jamie Oliver should ride his recent activist success to shine a light on the major problems associated with antibiotic use in the food industry, the same way he did with pink slime and sugar-loaded flavored milks before that.
Advocates would be wise to highlight pthalates’ and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals’ ubiquity in kids’ products like plastic toys and snack food packaging. If pink slime teaches us anything, it’s that Big Ag and its industrial food cronies don’t stand a chance against consumers wielding their forks—and their wallets—for good."
"Pink slime” is the repulsive industrial food product du jour, but it’s actually been a staple of beef production for years. The slimy additive, also known as “lean, finely textured beef,” is good for beef producers because it cuts back on waste and saves about 3 cents per pound of meat.
But suddenly, pink slime’s bad PR is poised to kill the goo’s use entirely. In the past few weeks, this meat additive popped up in hundreds of headlines. Hundreds of thousands of people signed online petitions pushing for a ban on the stuff. Several restaurant chains, grocery stores, and school districts committed to ditch pink slime-containing beef. Anti-pink-slime propaganda has been steadily oozing its way across the nation, and along the way, it’s provided a lesson on how consumers can wield their power to effectively reform America’s industrial food system.
Pink slime went viral thanks to a revolting name, a celebrity activist, and a think-of-the-children angle. The takedown kicked off in January when McDonald’s, at famed chef Jamie Oliver’s urging, voluntarily eliminated pink slime-loaded beef from its supply chain. Burger King and Taco Bell followed suit. But the real outcry began after activists traced the slime to the mouths of kids—a report showed that pink slime regularly appears in USDA-approved school lunch meat. The media churned out stories, food bloggers vilified the slime, online petitions to the USDA went viral, and concerned parents flooded their school districts with phone calls."
.....
"Take artificial food dyes like Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6. These synthetic colors and others—of which food producers use about 15 million pounds every year—have been linked to hyperactivity in kids, cancers, and allergic reactions.
The FDA refuses to regulate Big Meat’s use of antibiotics in food animals, despite the fact that the practice has been linked to a spike in drug-resistant diseases like MRSA.
In fact, the meat industry continues to feed its animals about 29 million pounds of antibiotics every year—about 80 percent of America’s total antibiotic use. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals like bisphenol-A (BPA) and phthalates—which studies link to cancers, obesity, diabetes, and other health problems even at low doses—are continually used in all sorts of food packaging. And these three prevalent issues are just the tip of the industrial food iceberg.
Let pink slime guide the way. Let's start referring to Red 40 as “ADHD Red,” and Yellow 5 and 6 as “Cancer Yellow.” Jamie Oliver should ride his recent activist success to shine a light on the major problems associated with antibiotic use in the food industry, the same way he did with pink slime and sugar-loaded flavored milks before that.
Advocates would be wise to highlight pthalates’ and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals’ ubiquity in kids’ products like plastic toys and snack food packaging. If pink slime teaches us anything, it’s that Big Ag and its industrial food cronies don’t stand a chance against consumers wielding their forks—and their wallets—for good."