To Condemn Lean Finely Textured Beef

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Recommended: Impact of the food industry

For a business in the food industry to be able to be competitive there is a need for a means of making food cheaper. Some companies process and engineer meat and vegetables, but in recent years business’ have begun to add filler products to ground beef, extending their yield. The FDA approves this product to be safe for consumption although consumers that are wary of their consumption are highly opposed to the addition of Lean Finely Textured Beef to their ground beef. To add Lean Finely Textured Beef to a unmarked package is volatile and unethical and the FDA needs to take a new stance.
In 1994 a man named Eldon Roth, an inventor, found a way to reduce the number of deadly bacteria in ground beef (Marler, 2012). At the time it was considered revolutionary because it led many consumers to believe that ground beef was free of hazardous bacteria such as E.Coli and salmonella. They were misled and the concept to producing this processed meat has been foreign to many until 2009 when Michael Moss, journalist for the New York Times, published an article “Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned” which became notorious within the food safety enthusiasts and won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting (Marler, 2012). Lean finely textured beef is the term the processing company Roth founded, Beef Products Incorporated, prefers to call what many of us today know as “Pink Slime”. (Moss, 2009)
The process for producing lean finely textured beef (LFTB) is simple, but many regard as unethical. The trimmings for cows were normally thrown away or fed to dogs until Eldon Roth found a way to apply the scraps, and use them to create a filler in ground beef that would reduce the cost. These trimmings are normally found towards the ...

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...ef Products Incorporated is facing many recalls in the recent past and will be further scrutinized by the FDA and U.S.D.A. along with the public. Meat sold with lean finely textured beef needs to be labeled as such and consumers should be more aware of what they are purchasing. Personally, it is unethical to treat food with a hazardous chemical, especially when it is the basis for dog food (Moss, 2009).

Works Cited

Marler, Bill. "BPI and Pink Slime." Food Safety News. N.p., 17 Sept. 2012. Web. .
Moss, Michael. "Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned." New York Times. N.p., 30 Dec. 2009. Web. .
Our Commitment. (2014, January 28). In Beef Products Inc.. Retrieved January 29, 2014

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