Pink slime, it's what's for dinner!

According to recent news stories (here and here), the USDA has approved the use of so-called "lean textured fine beef" or "boneless lean beef trimmings", aka "pink slime", in school meals.


Pink slime is basically recovered beef meat that has been treated with ammonia gas. In this case, "recovered" refers to the fact that this meat used to be deemed unsuitable for human consumption, in part because slaughter conditions made unhealthy by exposing it to cow feces. It is "recovered" in the sense that it's no longer used as dog food. In other words, it's recovered because it now generates a higher revenue than it used to.

If you live in the USA, pink slime can be part of your hamburger today, and you'll never know it because it doesn't have to be labeled - after all, it's just meat.

If this seems strange to you, it's because it is.

Pink slime might well epitomize the problem of industrial meat production. We have animals that are slaughtered in factories, their carcases treated with toxic chemicals, and the resulting "meat" sold to unwitting consumers. At the same time, the USDA refuses to mandate clear labeling thereby preventing consumers from making informed purchasing decisions.

Digression: why oppose labeling? those with nothing to hide will not fear labeling requirements, unless it's the cost of the label that's the problem??


To argue, as the president of the American Meat Institute, that pink slime reduces waste and is therefore a "sustainable" product is to insult the intelligence of one's audience. There is nothing sustainable about the mode of production that produces pink slime. Industrial meat production is, by its very nature, unsustainable, as argued elsewhere on this blog. While I do not doubt that producing and selling pink slime is financially profitable, its production cannot transform an unsustainable industry into a sustainable one. To invoke sustainability is disingenuous, if not outright mendacious.

Personally, I sidestep this entire problem by not eating much hamburger to start with. If I do, I buy it straight from my butcher and watch him grind it for me using his refrigerated grinder - I know exactly what cut of beef he's using to make my hamburger.

If you don't have access to a butcher, or if your butcher won't grind your beef to order, you have three choices if you want to be sure to avoid pink slime:

• grind your own hamburger
• eliminate hamburger from your diet
• shop only at supermarkets that guarantee that their ground beef is "pink slime"-free. There is a list of supermarkets in the ABC story linked above.

If your supermarket isn't on ABC's list, you could ask what their policy is on pink slime. I know I would.

The Human Cost of Animal Suffering

In a column in the New York Times, Mark Bittman discusses some implications of industrialized meat production.

He makes some interesting points, most notably that the disconnect between animal slaughter and the vast majority of meat consumers has insulated those consumers from the realities of meat production, and allowed them to abdicate their responsibilities as meat eaters.

These responsibilities, as I discussed in previous posts, include sticking to the inter-species "contract" established between livestock and humans:

• Humans provide comfort, food, veterinary care, evolutionary advantages, and a humane death to their livestock.
• In return, the livestock provide their meat, skin, milk, etc...

Clearly, this compact is not made at the individual level, but it hard to argue that as species, cows, pigs, ducks, etc... have not benefited from their symbiotic relationship with humans.

The industrialization of meat production violates all of the humans' obligations under the "contract". Animals are raised in uncomfortable conditions, given unhealthy foods, pumped with hormones and antibiotics, culled instead of cured, and slaughtered in abhorrent conditions.  As consumers, we are responsible for the way in which the products we buy are produced: with our dollars/euros/yens, we agree to participate (or not) as the final rung in the production chain. This means that by consuming industrial meat, each one of us is endorsing the violation of the inter-species contract described above.

I'd like to think that most meat consumers are willfully or unwillingly ignorant of the manner in which their meat is produced, and that is why the industry is able to operate as it does. At the same time, it is fairly clear that the industry has taken great pains to hide its practices, sensing, perhaps rightly, that knowledge might bring on scrutiny and reduced meat consumption.

Animal suffering

I'll try to address here the first of the criteria for moral meat eating.

The first thing that we have to remember is that livestock animals (cows, sheep, fowls, pigs, and all animals that we might raise for food) are mortal.

If we accept that livestock are animals like any others, an argument voiced to argue against their organized slaughter, then we must accept that, as herbivores, they are in the middle of the food chain, destined to be some other animal's prey. As such, their destiny is to be hunted down and killed, whether by a lion, a bear, a wolf, a human, etc... Alternatively, they can die of disease, fire, drowning, or starvation. Dying from old age isn't quite an option for animals, except for pets. Old and/or weak herbivores (think gazelles, zebras, gnus...) are the easiest preys for the lion, crocodile, or what-have-yous that lurk in the tall grass. As part of natural selection, predators routinely pick-off the weakest prey. It's not philosophy, it's Darwinism.

In the wild, to the extent that such places exist, the herbivore has a fair chance at escaping his predator. Domesticated livestock meets their demise at an appointed hour. This is because we control every aspect of their life, from birth to breeding to slaughter. This control, in turn, means that we have a dual responsibility to ensure that:

1. the life of our livestock is free of the pain and suffering that befalls wild herbivores
2. the manner of death is as painless and stress free as possible

The farmer is therefore responsible for ensuring that his livestock is raised under comfortable conditions. This is to say that the animals have enough space to roam, have appropriate shelter, are protected from predators, are availed plentiful, adequate food, and are given medical care. In short, they trade their freedom for comfort. Medical care cannot include the massive preventative application of hormones or antibiotics, while space and shelter must be sufficiently roomy so that animals can follow their rooting and exploring instincts. Food must be natural, to the extent possible, not result from human transformation processes.

One might object that a cow born in captivity has not willingly entered into this bargain: comfort and death against freedom. However, HFW makes a convincing point that, on a species basis, livestock animals have entered into this bargain with humans, growing more numerous and healthy than they could ever have dreamt to be in the wild (i.e.: compare the number of gazelles to the number of cows worldwide). In this sense, a symbiotic relationship of sorts has been established between humans and livestock, albeit one that involves the slaughter of one half of the symbiosis to feed the other.

Going back to item 2 above, the farmer is also responsible for choosing a slaughterhouse where his animals can meet their demise in a stress-free manner. While this might seem unrealistic, it should be clear that there is a big difference between a place where animals are killed after a wild stampede where some might be gored or trampled to death, and one where only a few animals at a time are killed in individual pens, by a person who administers a swift death. The difference might seem artificial, but it is fundamental in my view.
It should be clear that what I described above is the exact opposite of factory farming, where animals are kept in confined spaces, pumped up with antibiotics and hormones (in the US), and fed fish or other animal meal. Further, I essentially rule out eating meat that has been slaughtered in an industrial slaughterhouse.

Of course, that means ruling out most of the meat available in supermarkets in France and US today, but that's another story.