Oliver Exorcises Dog Food Grade Pink Slime From McDonald’s Burgers
Now that Food Revolution’s Jamie Oliver has succeeded in humiliating McDonald’s into terminating the use of that disgusting pink slime as the cornerstone for their pseudo hamburgers, McDonald’s released a statement claiming that at the beginning of last year they made a decision to discontinue to the use of ammonia-treated beef in their hamburgers, but [wink, wink] it has only been widely reported within the last few days.McDonald’s denies that Oliver’s show had anything to do with discontinuing the use of ammonium hydroxide — “an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives” — in its otherwise inedible scrap meat masquerading as McDonald’s hamburger.
M. Alex Johnson with MSNBC reports that besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound ammonium hydroxide releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs.
“It’s also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products.”
Oliver’s campaign to get fast-food chains to stop using the pink slime began in April when he included a segment on what he called “pink slime” on his TV show. Oliver demonstrated how it’s made from scraps that are soaked in ammonium hydroxide and then ground into a pinkish form that looks something like hamburger meat.
Oliver claims the pink slime is in 70% of U.S. beef, out of both fast food restaurants and public school cafeterias.
“The use of treated scrap meat to me as a chef and a food lover is shocking,” Oliver said. “Basically we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it ‘fit’ for humans.”
The Daily has reported that the USDA plans to buy 7 million pounds of the pink slime for public school cafeterias in the next several months.
According to the Daily, the USDA buys the treated ground beef from Beef Products Inc., a South Dakota-based company that pioneered the practice of rinsing beef scraps and by-products normally relegated for dog food with ammonia hydroxide, a mixture of water and ammonia found effective in ridding meat of bacteria such as E. coli.
