Is Meat Glue Safe?

tarale /CC BY-SA 2.0

I have blogged about the adding of "pink slime" and "meat glue" to our meat products before all in the name of the almighty dollar. It would seem that some have heard the cries of an outraged public and have promised to suspend the use of pink slime. Good news; but, what about meat glue?

Transglutaminase and beef fibrin, often called meat glue, is an ingredient used across the food industry to hold together smaller cuts of meat, poultry, and fish that’s been used for decades. Meat glue itself isn’t considered dangerous by most, but there is a larger fear of food borne illness when small pieces of meat, sourced from different places, are held together.

The FDA (Federal Department of Agriculture - USA) says the ingredient is “generally recognized as safe” but consumers have been grossed out by the idea that they could be eating beef tenderloin that’s actually tiny little pieces of beef glued together and sold at a higher cost.

Meat glue is actually a powder added to meat and rolled up in plastic wrap. The meat is refrigerated for 6 hours and the result is a solid piece of meat that’s seemingly impossible to tell from the real thing.

“The amount of bacteria on a steak that has been put together with meat glue is hundreds of times higher,” said microbiologist Glenn Pener reported on Future in Vegan.

Like pink slime, the practice has endured harsh public scrutiny as much because of a lack of transparency as anything else. But meat glue, unlike pink slime, is labeled. The ammonia used in pink slime isn't listed on any ingredient labels because it's considered a "processing agent" even though it's completely misleading to think that it doesn't end up in the final product.

But even if it’s listed very few people actually knew what it was until recently. In an effort to ensure that meat glue doesn't endure the same fate as pink slime, the meat industry is responding to recent criticism.

Food Safety News reports:

"We're definitely making an effort to engage," said Janet Riley, the head of public affairs for the American Meat Institute, which represents the major players in the meat industry. Riley has made a point of addressing transparency concerns head on, noting that the practice of using TG and beef fibrin is "absolutely not a secret."

And is it safe? Again, Food Safety News:

Dana Hanson, an extension meat scientist at North Carolina State University, said that it is possible that different cuts put together could be more susceptible to contamination by potentially introducing pathogens into the center of a pieced-together steak. But Hanson said that federal cooking recommendations would be sufficient to kill any bacteria.

But once again, public input is making the food industry shutter in fear of a negative reaction and without a doubt, transparency is a good thing.

Three Hamburger Giants Ban the Use of "Pink Slime"

Photo courtesy: theimpulsivebuy/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I have done several blogs on the evils of fast food. McDonald's has long been a favourite target of mine. From using eggs from battery hens (cruelty) to serving ordinance changes in Santa Clara, CA these food giants have a lot to answer for.

And who can forget the blog about a McHappy meal left on an office shelf for one year that didn't look much different one year later than the day it was shelved. Let's move on to the artist who bought 10 hamburgers and proceed to "paint" a giant picture of the Mona Lisa using only the grease from the patties. You'd think that would be enough; but, wait...now we have pink slime.

Bolivia has caused McDonald's to close all its restaurants in their country. Bolivians believe that food shows how much you love and respect your family and friends. Food is never cooked "fast" - it's a sign of disrespect to the community. What an enlightened attitude. Good on Bolivia!

Now I have discovered yet another way these corporations destroy our health while picking our pockets. Read on to find out about "pink slime" an integral ingredient in those burger patties the world wolfs down at an alarming rate. There are a few other gross ingredients that will also be outed here. If this doesn't swear you off fast food burgers for life then the pink slime has already affected your brain cells; and, there may be no help.

It’s been a rough year for ammoniated beef. It’s a fancy name for a scary practice cooked up by Beef Products Inc, a company that saw sales plummet by 25 percent this year due to the general public responding to questionable meat processing practices. And most recently, the decision by Taco Bell, McDonald's, and Burger King to stop use of the industry named "pink slime." Pink Slime? This can't be good.

Food Safety News reported on the process:

Beef Products Inc. uses an innovative process to turn fatty beef trimmings, which used to go mainly into pet food and other byproducts, into hamburger filler. Because the trimmings are at risk for E. coli or Salmonella contamination, the company adds a mixture of ammonia and water (ammonium hydroxide) to kill bacteria.

It’s been called “pink slime" by none other than the USDA. It behooves me to ask at this point: If the USDA (who are supposed to be watching out for the public health) called it pink slime, why in the world did they ever approve it?

The New York Times reports that a "[USDA] microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

More and more people learned about the process from the popular movie Food, Inc. And then there was its appearance on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. “[Oliver] called the "clever scientific process" shocking and a breach of consumer trust.” Especially considering that according to The New York Times, the federal school lunch program used 5.5 million pounds of ammoniated beef in 2008. These are our children, our future. Why are we not providing them with nurishing, body-building fuel so they can develop to their fullest potential? After all, these are people who will grow up to rule the world; and, my pension.

Apparently all the bad press eventually took its toll and at the end of 2011 three mega-chains: Taco Bell, McDonald's, and Burger King all announced that they would be discontinuing use of the product.

Both McDonald's and Burger King claim that the move isn't in reaction to all the bad publicity (of course, not)and Taco Bell gave no comment (at least, they didn't lie) on the matter. But whatever the reason, it comes not a moment too soon.

Ammoniated meat became the dirty little secret of the meat industry because it was excluded from recalls and random testing because the ammonia treatment was supposed to make contamination much less likely. The only problem was it didn't work.

The New York Times reports of specific problems with the beef in lunchrooms:

[G]overnment and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

Even worse, ammonia isn't listed on any ingredient labels because it's considered a "processing agent" even though it's completely misleading to think that it doesn't end up in the final product. How fraudulent is this?

This is proof positive that the public does care about what they're putting into their bodies especially when the facts come to light. And it goes to show that truth in labeling could mean the end to other questionable practices like genetically modified ingredients and meat glue, for example.