Kindly wear a hair net, remove jewellery, wash and disinfect your hands before working with food.  It is so much more professional and hygenic.

The White Rabbit wrote:

Pakman wrote:

WR i don't get your question?

Not so much a question as a ponderance. I should find someone who knows about the interaction of ammonium hydroxide with meat and what other compounds may be formed. I'm not necessarily expecting it to be bad, I'm just generally interested.

The only thing I find referred to is the pH level of the meat. Beef is usually around 6 pH and the the "pink slime" process USDA approved had a level of 9.5 pH.

But the higher the pH the more the meat become unpalatable. I believe 10 pH was the level deemed "unpalatable".

Let's keep thinking people! 

A mix of 80% regular ground meat at 6pH and 20% AMR at 9.5pH would end up at a pH level of what 6.5 or 7 ??? But isn't the reason you don't find 100% AMR product (besides the palatability) the calcium levels?

I saw a claim someplace that someone got some "pink slime" ground beef and some without and did a burger test and preferred the one without. I didn't actually bother reading it though. There are too many variables to do a taste test. I think you would have to use the same cut of meat, grind it and add to one portion the AMR then grill side by side to have a real comparison.

Patty vs. patty I can't imagine much of a taste difference. There are some claims about schools complaining about the taste to the meat. I can't remember if that was before the tainted meat incidence or after though.

Ashen wrote:

Joey McGee...  You claim to enjoy debate ,but from what I can see your tactics are more in line with those employed by internet trolls. You have made broadcloth assumptions about me , draw conclusions on those assumptions then proceeded to namecalling and ridicule.   

A little lesson about the difference between fraud and misleading.  While defraud and mislead  may appear as synonyms in a thesaurus , there is worlds of difference in a legal context.   A company that commits fraud is breaking the law, while it is possible to mislead the consumer without breaking the law. It is an ethically grey business practice but very common.

Companies employ many different strategies in the area , and usually aimed at improving their monetary bottomline.   Changing packaging  so less product is inside but it appears to be the same size as the consumer has always bought. Pink slime is a classic example of this , these companies knew exactly what they were doing and lobbied the FDA extensively so they would not have to disclose the change, or process.   Interestingly enough , the lady who was in charge of that decision left the FDA for a well paying position with a company with extensive ties to BPI.   It wasn't illegal at the time but would not be allowed under the new lobbying regulations.   

What did they gain out of this ?   Money.  Pink slime was used in place of a product with a higher monetary value but still sold at  that higher premium.  The price of ground beef did not suddenly drop by 23 Cents a pound with  pink slimes introduction. It was a  money grab pure and simple, not some altruistic progam on their part to utilize scraps and trimmings so less cows needed to be butchered.   If butchering 2 million more cows could somehow have provided them with an increase of their profit margin, that is what they would have done.

You blame Jamie for portraying the process improperly , but the industry has had years to explain it  and failed to do so for a simple reason. They understood they were manipulating the expectations of their customers and didn't want the inevitable perception of their product as inferior. Simple reason again is money, it is not possible to sell a percieved inferior product for the same as a premium product.

The issue of whether scientifically pink slime is  ,a) ground beef, b)safe or not, is irrelevant in the face of the perceptions of those who buy it.
I personally think fillet mignon/beef tenderloin is overpriced and crappy steak but it is held as a premium by the vast majority of consumers.
Perception has a great deal to do with value, irrespective of the actual merits of a product.

Purposely endevoring to supress the knowledge that they were subsituting a product they knew would be percieved as lower value with a premium and maintaining the same pricing , is the very definition  of what I would call misleading. The lobbied FDA ruling means it was not fraud but I don't see how anyone can deny it is ethically well into the dark grey zone.

Yay Ashen!!!!