Eating on the road: is your ground beef tainted, injected with ammonia, or both?

npclark2k and MorgueFile.com

Hamburgers are a staple road food - fast food restaurants abound and offer quick meals and clean bathrooms. But there is a down-side to those less expensive meals. Ammonia.

Although the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) oversees the safety, and has been more or less concerned with contamination of bacteria such as E coli, the New York Times reported on Thursday that one company, Beef Products Inc has managed to avoid close examination of their beef product because they inject the meat trimmings with ammonia.

You did read that correctly.

The company, Beef Products Inc discovered a way to make the unusable beef parts - fatty trimmings - into chopped meat. The trimmings are prone to E coli and salmonella, but they are cheap and can be added to actual ground beef to lower the cost of the final product.

The “treatment” is to process it with ammonia. The main concern that seemed to lead to the newspaper article is that the process doesn’t quite work as promised. Meat with the “processed trimmings” has been found to be contaminated with bacteria.

And, according to the New York Times, this substance has been added to children’s school lunches, and ... “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.” Cargill, one of the nation’s largest hamburger maker, is also a buyer of the “ammoniated trimmings.”

A bit later comes the acknowledgment that the ammonia changes the flavor of the meat. Duh. And at least one source quoted in the article characterized the substance as “pink slime."

Oddly enough, the USDA does not require labeling of the ammonia as an ingredient. Lobbyist for the meat industry, which frankly should be more concerned with maintaining its credibility with the American public than backing up questionable practices in the industry, prevailed. Apparently the USDA allows chemicals in poultry without requiring their listing as an ingredient.

Perhaps the USDA needs to be more concerned with maintaining credibility with the American public than allowing questionable practices.

Of course the beef industry as per BeefProducts.com thinks its perfectly fine - perhaps they even eat it themselves just to prove how safe and delicious it is. They point out that ammonia naturally occurs in beef. Arsenic also naturally occurs in food, but we don’t eat that either.

Oh, yes. It’s also “green.”  I want my food to be "natural." Is this just another chemical in my food? Ammonia and ammonium hydroxide are naturally occurring in all proteins. Ammonia is essential for life and we have included information about its uses and benefits for your convenience. (Source: http://www.beefproducts.com/government_academic/faqs.cfm#eleven

In response to the NYT article, spokespeople from the industry and corporations made firm assertions of the safety of its beef. Fast-food chains McDonald's Corp. and Burger King Holdings Inc. and agricultural conglomerate Cargill Inc. all use the meat in their hamburgers. All said they'll keep using the meat and that their products are safe (Source: http://www.examiner.com/a-2397191~Customers_back_ammonia_treated_beef_after_report.html)
avoiding the issue of whether it’s a good idea to add ammonia to food products.

Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment says the website FoodIncMovie.com

What do you think?

(c) Neala Schwartzberg