I just read Guff Worth”s letter regarding Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB) and found it to be a marvel of selective explanation.
I”m sure Mr. Worth would consume LFTB, or pink slime as it is more popularly known, with great gusto, but I don”t think the rest of us would if we have a choice. Lean Finely Textured Beef is the most euphemistic description I”ve ever heard for what is essentially treated dog food.
I think the greatest gift to mankind that the conservative mind has ever produced is the ability to conjure up an image with a phrase that is the most diametrically opposed to the thing it is describing. Surely LFTB is at the pinnacle of that misapplied naming ability. I think If those of us on the other end of the spectrum had that naming ability we would rule the world.
LFTB is the offal left over after a cow is butchered. It includes guts, fat, sinew, and assorted organs that no human would willingly consume. The key-term is “willingly.”
Apparently the beef industry has been putting one over on the public for more than a decade now, by secretly allowing as much as 15 percent of ground beef to be supplied by this offal. The interesting part to me is how outraged Mr. Worth is that this fact was finally discovered. He compares this product to pureed sirloin. This could not be further from the truth. In reality they heat up this dog food to a temperature where the fat can be separated from the lean part with a centrifuge. They then treat it with heavy doses of ammonia to kill the rampant e.coli that grows in these cuts of beef. Normal cuts of beef do not require this treatment, because they are inherently cleaner bacterially. I can only imagine what tortured logic Mr. Worth is using to compare this procedure to pureed sirloin.
As far as the argument goes I guess it is OK that pink slime has been mixed with ground beef all this time, because no one has been physically hurt by it. He rationalizes this by saying we are using the cow more efficiently and making it go further. Also, we have created more jobs by using this offal. I think those arguments are specious.
Worrying about efficiency and unemployment only seems to come in when it coincides with the health of the bottom line of the owner or shareholder of these offal factories.
The well-off do not worry about the cost of the cuts they eat and there is little chance they would be habitually eating cheap ground beef laced with pink slime since they don”t have to and can thus chose not to. But they would like you and me to eat it, because it helps their bottom line.
Finally we get to the crux of the argument ? It is a healthy product. True, no one has died from it or been injured in any way, to our knowledge. But let me ask you this, would it bother you if the cook at the restaurant that you ate at spat in your food? What if he actually told you that the more he spat in it the cheaper the meal would be? Yes, it is a ridiculous question. If your meal was tainted that way intentionally the person doing it would never let you know, and you would never be the wiser.
That is what the non-regulated meat industry has been doing and they have been embarrassed at being found out.
They have been spitting in our food, because it was cheaper for them to do it that way. It is about showing respect for your fellow human being and they have shown a sad disrespect for the public at-large by this episode. It is also sad when conservatives feel it necessary to carry water for such a forlorn cause.
Eric Habegger
Lakeport
