Lean Finely Textured Beef, dubbed ‘pink slime’ and once used mainly for dog food, has been officially classified as ‘ground beef’ by the USDA.
Pink slime is a meat byproduct that became legal to sell in America in 2001.
It is made by heating beef trimmings, running them through a centrifuge, and exposing them to ammonia gas.
The resulting product is added to ground beef, often without any labels.
Once used only in pet food and cooking oil, pink slime is banned for human consumption in the European Union and Canada.
What does the change mean for consumers? Probably not much.
Companies who used lean finely textured beef as filler in the past didn’t have to disclose it.
So previously, consumers may have been buying ground beef with the added LFTB in it, without them knowing.
Now, with the reclassification of LFTB to simply “ground beef,” consumers could be buying ground beef with added “ground beef.”
When the news of the additive first broke in 2012, McDonald’s pledged to stop using it and many campaigned against the substance, which led to a $1.9 billion lawsuit against ABC News for reporting about South Dakota-based Beef Products Inc’s beef.
ABC News reached a settlement with a South Dakota meat producer in 2017 after it filed a $1.9 billion lawsuit against the network over its reports on the company’s lean, finely textured beef product that critics dubbed ‘pink slime’.
Dakota Dunes-based Beef Products Inc. sued the television network in 2012, saying ABC’s coverage misled consumers into believing the product is unsafe and led to the closure of three plants and layoffs of roughly 700 workers.
After the reports aired, some grocery store chains said they would stop carrying ground beef that contained the product.
BPI claims sales declined from about five million pounds per week to less than two million pounds per week.