Unpleasant Facts About Hamburger Meat

Here are some good reasons to make a new year's resolution to eat less meat. The information below is taken from an article that ran yesterday in the New York Times.

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. This made Beef Products Inc. hamburger much less expensive than burger from traditional meat processors.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains.

Beef Products Inc.'s ammonia injection process made the meat smell funny, but it seemed to kill E. coli so the U.S.D.A. exempted meat from Beef Products Inc. from the testing required of other meat producers. Beef Products lobbied successfully for U.S.D.A permission to not list the ammonia as an ingredient.

School lunch programs using Beef Products Inc. did their own independent testing of the meat, and found numerous E. coli and salmonella problems.

The U.S.D.A is moving to require testing of Beef Products Inc. meat.

The founder and owner of Beef Products, Eldon N. Roth, declined requests for interviews or access to the company’s production facilities.

Some have described the ammonia scrapple paste, which is found in almost all American hamburger meat, as "pink slime" that is a far cry from what people believe is actually contained in hamburger meat.

Moral of the story: Eat high quality meat or none at all!